Toradora! Vol. 7

by Yuyuko Takemiya

  Still holding on with all her strength, Taiga kept singing. She buried her face in its dusty-smelling body, still in bare feet as she stepped in time with the song. The Santa bear danced with her. To the right, to the left, then around and around, and this time around the other way.

  She laughed like an idiot and danced until her legs were about to give out. She hugged it and sang her song terribly. She sang her favorite phrase over and over again in a loop. She hugged it several times and fell down and laughed until she cried… It would have been nice if they could have stayed like that forever. If only she could have danced with Santa bear forever.

  But.

  “Ahh…it really is real! My dream really has come true!” she muttered and raised her face.

  Phew. She breathed out one long breath.

  The dream that couldn’t have come true had come true. It was reality. If it were a dream, she could have just wished for it to have lasted forever, but no matter how much she wished for it, she would have eventually woken up.

  Reality wasn’t like that.

  “Thank you…”

  She had to pull away the curtain with her own hand, with her real, flesh-and-blood hand.

  “Really, thank you…Ryuuji.”

  Out of breath from laughing too hard, she pulled off the bear head, which seemed like it must have been stifling. Even though it was winter, a bright red face plastered with sweat appeared from within.

  “Hey! Don’t take it off, you idiot!” Without thinking, he started to scold her. Why was he so flustered? Did he really believe she wouldn’t have figured it out?

  “So,” said Taiga, “where did you find this thing?”

  “I borrowed it from the guy who was wearing it.” Ryuuji bluntly turned his eyes away, but he smiled awkwardly. The bangs he had slicked up for the occasion were stuck to his forehead, all for naught. No, this wasn’t about his hair.

  “Wait…then what happened to the suit?”

  “Like I said, I traded with the guy who was wearing this. Oh, but I’ll return it of course! Naturally, of course!”

  Haaah. She sighed. What an idiot—Ryuuji was really an idiot.

  “I can’t believe you would take it off in a time like this! Seriously, you idiot! Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot! I went through all the trouble of getting it ready! And you were going to see Minorin!”

  “Why are you saying I’m an idiot?! Hm?! What do you mean I’m going to see Minorin?!”

  “Like I said, believe in angel Taiga-sama. Minorin should be headed to the party. She might already have even arrived. Look, you might still make it, so hurry up and go back!”

  “Huh?! But…well, but, today is… I look like this and I came home because I didn’t want you to be alone.”

  “What are you saying?! I’ll be fine!” She shot the lazy oaf down and smiled arrogantly. “We’ve got a genuine Santa and a genuine good girl here. It’s been a while since I laughed until it hurt! With the way you look…it’s hilarious! Oh, of course, I’m looking forward to tomorrow and the feast you promised. In the one-in-a-million chance everything goes well with Minorin, we’re having a feast tomorrow at your house! You haven’t forgotten, right?!”

  “O-of course not! It’s not like I’d forget!”

  “Good! Look, go! Stand! Hurry! If you’re not at the party, I’ll have lied to Minorin.”

  Ryuuji looked down at Taiga.

  Taiga shrugged and smiled again. She pointed straight at Ryuuji’s face.

  “And ‘Santa’ came, right? I’ve gotten my compensation, so now I need to be a good girl until the very end of the year. Let me be a good girl. My real present for you is having Minorin go to the party. So…please take it. Please.”

  Are you really okay alone?

  That was what she thought she heard Ryuuji say. Taiga repeated over again, I’m fine, it’s okay, and forcefully pulled Ryuuji by the arm. She tried to push him into the entryway from the hallway, but Ryuuji went “Whoa!” as though he had remembered something and went back to the living room. What is it now, you oaf, she thought when Ryuuji blew out the candle in the tree. “We’ve taken care of the fire!” He pointed at it to confirm. He said something about not being able to leave with the fire still on because he would be worried.

  He really was a sensitive guy.

  “Okaaay, okay okay, I got it. I’m a klutz, so I won’t light a fire anymore. I swear. Are you okay now? Seriously, you’re a busybody…I get it, so hurry up! The party will be over! Look, look! Off you go!”

  She prodded and slapped at his back to push him. She even kicked his butt to boot. She pushed him to the entryway and threw him out the door into the hallway. If he ran around the streets looking like that, he’d definitely get noticed, but…no, it was Christmas Eve, so people would adjust to the unexpected.

  “Now go, you lazy dog!”

  “Thanks!” In the end, Ryuuji finally yelled that and turned his back to her. Taiga didn’t even look at Ryuuji before she closed the door.

  Then, she turned the key.

  He had finally gone.

  She took a breath. With this, her mission was really complete. Angel Taiga did what was necessary of her. The footsteps going down the stairs became more and more distant until she finally couldn’t hear them anymore.

  “Ahh…I’m so tired…”

  It was her own fault for making such a fuss. Alone in her house again, the silence returned. Taiga stretched as she went back to the living room in her bare feet.

  In the too-quiet room, the sound from the heater really was grating. But when Ryuuji was there, she hadn’t remembered it at all.

  “He finally left, he finally left, he finally left…”

  She returned to where she had originally been on the rug and hummed a lame song in a low voice as she thought about lighting the tree again. She would do it carefully, so it would be okay. What was the use of not lighting the candle she had just bought?

  “Huh? Huh, huh, huh… Why?”

  She couldn’t find the lighter.

  She tried to remember where she had put it. She could only remember putting it down right there. After that, Ryuuji had appeared and had made a fuss like an idiot and then he had blown out the fire.

  “Oh…maybe…”

  Maybe Ryuuji had thought she would do this and had taken it with him. That was the only explanation she could think of. He was Santa and didn’t even have a present for her. What guts he had to steal from her too! She decided that once it was the twenty-sixth, she could reduce him to two-thirds of his life.

  Unable to do anything else, she stood up and looked around for anything else she could use. She looked in the drawers of the table that Ryuuji had organized, and rifled through the TV stand Ryuuji had organized, and looked into the drawers Ryuuji had organized, but she really couldn’t find a lighter or a match. What is this? Taiga thought as she stood in place. It was her own house, but she couldn’t even tell where anything was.

  She couldn’t light the tree’s candle like this.

  “I don’t like this…”

  He really was a sensitive guy.

  “I really…don’t like this…”

  But he had made such an absurd entrance. What was he doing being a bear?

  “I don’t…”

  And he just dawdled forever. She wondered if he had actually made it.

  “I—”

  If he really did tell Minori his feelings…

  …she would hate that.

  “Huh? Why?”

  She was surprised when she questioned herself. When she touched her face with her hand, her fingertips were wet.

  Why? Why were there tears running down her face?

  “Oh…right.”

  She thought for a bit and quietly nodded and accepted it.

  Because this was the end.

  Just like a dream, she depended on Ryuuji to live. She told herself excuses that hadn’t made sense—“I’m not dependent on him, I’m letting him look after me!”—and she thought “This is
just for now. If Ryuuji were to move, or if I were to move, or if he started dating Minorin, or I started dating Kitamura, we couldn’t stay like this, anyway,” and she lived with Ryuuji. She had lived allowing Ryuuji to be kind and depending on him. This is also a dream, so it doesn’t make me weak. This is okay.

  Tonight, that would end.

  She thought that Minori was drawn to Ryuuji. She really thought that Ryuuji was in love with Minori. In other words, their feelings were mutual. So the two of them would probably start dating. Then she couldn’t be like she had been. She couldn’t come and go to the Takasus’ as she pleased like she had been. If anything happened, she couldn’t even call on Ryuuji anymore. She couldn’t walk beside Ryuuji anymore. She wasn’t the one who would be beside him.

  So…

  “I don’t want that…”

  She was sad.

  She was surprised.

  She hadn’t thought about that at all. She hadn’t thought in the slightest that she really didn’t want to leave Ryuuji. The one she had been attracted to, the one she had admired and whom she had dreamed about was always Kitamura Yuusaku. She had always been thinking of him. The person she should have been in love with was Kitamura Yuusaku. But if she were, then why had this happened?

  That time—she remembered the day she had been hurt, when Kitamura Yuusaku confessed to the girl he liked. She thought about herself on that day, how she was in such a rage she didn’t think about herself, but went ahead to kill Kanou Sumire.

  That time, for sure, she was thinking of Kitamura more than herself. She was more worried about Kitamura’s pain than her own. The reason why she had been able to put her own feelings aside for later was probably because Ryuuji had been there. It was because she believed that Ryuuji would understand what was happening in her heart. So it was good that she hadn’t looked into how she had been hurt. She had thought that Ryuuji would always be by her side and watching over her.

  And then, she might have been right. Because the person who came to grab her hand as she was making the mistake of violence, who came to stop her, who came to help her, was Ryuuji.

  He spoiled her and cared for her. Without being aware of it, she had come to depend on and cling to his kindness to live.

  The reason why she had been able to love was all because she had felt Ryuuji being there by her side as her strength. It was because as she thought about the possibilities, as she thought about whether this or that could happen, as she thought about whether Kitamura could think this way or that, as she grew excited about those things, Ryuuji had always been watching over her. It was because she knew he would be watching over her. It was because she had entrusted her heart to him.

  Until it came to this—until she lost it, she really hadn’t noticed at all. Taiga hadn’t noticed at all the blessing it was that he had been the keeper of her heart. She hadn’t thought that Ryuuji being there was a strength. What an idiot she was. She wanted to kick off her own empty head. She didn’t even know the ground she was standing on. Without the soil called Ryuuji, there was no way any flowers could actually grow. She couldn’t even rub away the tears dripping off her chin.

  Without Ryuuji, she couldn’t even love.

  Because, like this, like right now, she could barely even stand.

  She didn’t know whether she could live or not.

  She needed Ryuuji.

  In other words, she loved Ryuuji.

  She had loved him for a long time.

  She didn’t want it to be the end, she couldn’t believe it was the end, she didn’t want to not be by Ryuuji’s side. She couldn’t stand it and couldn’t live with it. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want that to happen.

  No!

  “…!”

  She started running for dear life.

  She ran out of the living room, kicked open the door with her bare feet, and ran out the entryway. She ran through the cold hallway. Taiga followed after Ryuuji on the stairs he ran down. She went down three flights. The hem of her miniskirt split. She ran at full speed out the marble entrance with all her might. She didn’t know how to stop the tears that were overflowing. Please make it, please make it, she thought, not breathing, like she was praying.

  She hurled herself at the heavy glass door to open it. She tumbled into the cold wind blowing on the street at night. The freezing asphalt stabbed at her bare feet.

  She looked to the right. She looked to the left. He wasn’t there. Ryuuji wasn’t there. Ryuuji wasn’t here anymore. What should I do? she thought as she covered her face, contorted with tears, with her hands. Her feet stopped, and she breathed in a lungful of the winter air.

  “Ryuujiiiiiiii!” She turned to the night sky and yelled.

  She noticed a couple passing by looking at her in surprise. “A fight? That poor thing…and it’s Christmas Eve.” So she was pitiful. Taiga started bawling even louder like a baby.

  She cried and cried and called Ryuuji’s name.

  She knew that she couldn’t reach Ryuuji anymore, but she kept yelling. Even when her voice went out, she kept yelling.

  One part of her head was clear in her mind where the rest was in disarray, like a storm had passed through. There was a part of her looking down on herself crying and yelling as though exasperated. This is why I don’t like reality. Unlike a dream, it could be broken. It could be lost.

  That moment he had appeared when she wished for him, the feeling of him hugging her—all of it had been real. She wanted to stay like that. She wished she wouldn’t lose it. Now everything would be smashed to pieces and disappear.

  It was always a foolish dream.

  That she mistakenly yearned for Ryuuji as a father figure. She mistakenly believed that Ryuuji and Minori would get together and that she would leave the nest and live by herself. That was the future she wished for, but she’d misunderstood everything. She was foolish, and she had been thinking with her eyes half-open if she thought that she could stand the loneliness as long as Ryuuji, as her father, would raise her and give her the strength to live alone. It was a mistake to think of him that way.

  Ryuuji wasn’t her father. She was fixated on her father, who wouldn’t think of her, and she was fixated on Ryuuji, too. And the moment she would “leave the nest” wasn’t something to look forward to. It was just loss. She would lose Ryuuji, and she would have to live a future in solitude on her own.

  In actuality, she wanted to be with Ryuuji. She had finally figured that out now. She wanted them to hold hands and proceed forward with each other forever into each new day, but now she couldn’t do that. She had been late on everything. Reality had been shattered. She had woken from her dream. All she had left was herself.

  Where did she go wrong? Ryuuji said it to her, hadn’t he?

  “I’m a dragon, and you’re a tiger. Dragons and tigers come as a set.”

  But her idiot self was stuck in a dream, a dream where she pranced around Ryuuji, was spoiled by him, and had become dependent on him. She had run from it and hadn’t thought about it seriously. She had put it off again and again, and that procrastination had left her like this.

  “Ryuu—ji…!”

  The world sank into tears.

  I don’t care, I’ll just break it all—she might say. If this were a manga or a TV drama, around this time, they would have conveniently framed out. Or the guy would have appeared in front of her eyes. But reality was cruel, and no one framed out for her, and Ryuuji didn’t appear. If she could have weakened until she died, it would have been dramatic, but humans didn’t die that easily. Especially a girl like her, who was built to be incredibly sturdy.

  She was unsightly, miserable, sad and lonely, wretched and pitiful, and looked like an idiot. But she was alive. That was Taiga’s reality. She wouldn’t run from this. She had cried, but she wouldn’t die like this.

  Because she wanted to become strong.

  Because that was the truth.

  She remembered the Miss Festival contest. Even in that time, she stood up. She
would stand up now. Even without Ryuuji’s or Minori’s support, she would somehow do it by herself. From here on out, she really would show them she could do it alone. She would stand.

  Taiga raised her face, wet from her tears.

  She accepted it all and took it in. Even if she was embarrassed, she would live. She would lose many things, she would bear a lot of pain, she would become ragged and raise herself up and then, someday, she definitely would become a real, strong adult. For her own future, she damn well would stand up. She would fall many, many times in the process. When that happened, she would tenaciously rise again. She was abandoned by her parents? Just come at her. She was suspended from school? Just keep it coming. Ryuuji also left? What more have you got? They could come at her with anything.

  This was all practice for the rest of the long life ahead of her that she would have to live alone.

  But she called his name out of regret for one last time, “Ryuu…damn it! Ackh!”

  She sneezed loudly.

  She was too cold in her bare feet with her shoulders exposed. Her nose was also running. Taiga gritted her back teeth, sniffled, and slowly got up. She brushed off the stuff that had gotten on her knees. She wiped her face, which was itchy from the tears and snot. Then she stood, walked, and uncoolly went back into her condo.

  Now, she really was alone.

  It happened after that.

  At the exact same time Taiga came running out of the condo entrance, Minori had been standing on the other side of the street. It wasn’t coincidence; Minori had headed to Taiga’s condo to ask what Taiga’s true intentions were.

  But then…

  Minori, who had seen everything, understood completely. She knew that what she suspected hadn’t been off at all.

  ***

  I really did it, he thought.

  In the winter sky, the stars and moon winked romantically, terrifyingly illuminating Ryuuji’s contorted demon face.