“Hi,” he said, walking up to her.
“……”
No answer.
“Hello?” he said, somewhat louder.
“……”
Still no answer.
But he was pretty sure she’d noticed him.
Sakuta and Mai stood on the quiet platform, waiting for the train. There were three other Minegahara students scattered around. Then, a college-aged couple entered—likely tourists. They flashed a Noriori-kun day pass at the attendant on gate duty as they passed through.
After moving to the center of the platform, they almost immediately noticed Mai.
“Hey…”
“Isn’t that…?”
He could hear them whispering. Pointing at her. Mai kept her eyes on the tracks, as if she hadn’t noticed.
“You shouldn’t, you know!” the woman whispered playfully, clearly not trying to stop him at all. Their flirty teasing echoed through the hushed station. Sakuta found it quite grating.
Unable to stand it any longer, he turned to face them and found the guy pointing his phone’s camera at Mai.
Before he could tap the button, Sakuta stepped into frame. There was a click, but all he got was a close-up of Sakuta frowning.
The man looked surprised, then angry.
“Wh-who the hell are you?” he snarled, stepping forward. Couldn’t let some high school boy show him up in front of his girlfriend, after all.
“A human being,” Sakuta said with a straight face. Very literal. Technically correct.
“Huh?”
“And you’re a creepshot photographer.”
“Wha—?! N-no!”
“You’re old enough to know better. What you were doing makes me ashamed to be the same species as you.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were going to tweet that photo like you’d just slain a demon, right?”
“?!”
Anger and shame flashed across the man’s face. Sakuta must have hit the nail on the head.
“If you crave attention so badly, I could tweet your photo and tag it ‘Creepshot Photographer.’”
“……”
“Didn’t anyone teach you this when you were a kid? ‘If you wouldn’t want it done to you, don’t do it to anyone else.’”
“Sh-shut up, twerp!” the guy managed. Then he grabbed his girlfriend’s hand and dragged her into the Kamakura-bound train that had just arrived. Only a single track ran through the station, so no matter which way the train was headed, it stopped in the same place.
Sakuta watched the cars pull out and then felt eyes boring into his back.
Suddenly nervous, he turned around and found Mai pulling her headphones out, looking annoyed.
Her eyes met Sakuta’s.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Huh?”
He’d expected a different reaction and was unable to disguise his surprise.
“You thought I’d yell at you? Something like ‘Mind your own business’?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“I thought it but left it unsaid.”
“You could have left that bit unsaid, too.”
Frankly, this admission was tantamount to saying it in the first place.
“I’m used to that sort of thing.”
“Even if you are, it still eats away at you, right?”
“……”
A glimmer of surprise appeared in her eyes.
“Eats away… That’s very apt,” she admitted.
A smile crossed her lips, as if she was enjoying herself.
Feeling like she might actually be willing to talk some more, Sakuta stood next to her.
But before he could ask her anything, she said, “Why are you here at a strange time like this?”
“I got summoned to the roof by a girl from class.”
“A confession? You’re that popular? How unexpected.”
“A confession of undying hatred.”
“Oh?”
“She told me to my face she hates my guts.”
“Well, that’s the hot new trend.”
“It was certainly a first for me. What about you, Sakurajima? Why are you here so late?”
“I was just killing time so I wouldn’t bump into you again.”
He glanced over at her but couldn’t tell how serious she was from her profile. Deciding he’d rather not know if she meant it, he let it drop.
Instead, he turned toward the train schedule, changing the subject.
“What time is it now?”
“Time to get a watch.”
He held up both wrists. Both were bare.
“Then check your phone.”
“Don’t have one.”
“Not even a dumb phone?”
“Smart or dumb, I haven’t got it. I didn’t accidentally leave it at home today, either.”
He didn’t own any kind of phone.
“…In this day and age?”
Mai clearly found this hard to believe.
“I’m serious. I mean, I used to have one, but I got pissed and threw it in the ocean.”
He remembered it well. That was the day he’d come to check the Minegahara entrance exam results…
That little seven-ounce box, a handy-dandy device that connected him to the rest of the world, traced a gentle arc through the air when it sailed out of his hand and fell into the sea.
“Trash belongs in a trash can.”
She was absolutely correct.
“I’ll do that next time.”
“I take it you have no friends?”
Without a phone, how would someone make plans with other people? That was the world they lived in. Mai made a good point. Exchanging numbers, e-mail addresses, and IDs was the start of many a friendship, and the lack of any of these placed you outside the bounds of modern society. In the microcosm of a school, anyone who failed to stay inside the boundaries was regarded with deep suspicion. Sakuta had a lot of trouble making friends early on.
“I have two whole friends.”
“Why’d you make that sound like two is a lot?”
“Two is more than enough! I just have to stay friends with them forever.”
The number of phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and IDs on his contact list was irrelevant. Quantity didn’t matter at all. Not in Sakuta’s philosophy.
For one thing, what exactly was a friend? Sakuta’s baseline was “someone who’d reluctantly put up with it even if he called them for advice late at night.”
“Hmm,” Mai murmured, taking her own phone out of her jacket pocket. There was a red cover on it with bunny ears.
She showed him the screen. The time was 4:37. The next train was only a minute away. But as soon as Sakuta had finally learned what time it was, Mai’s phone started vibrating. An incoming call.
He could make out the word Manager on her screen.
She declined the call, though, and the vibration stopped.
“You sure?”
“The train’s coming…and I know what she has to say.”
He thought he heard a note of irritation in that second part.
The Fujisawa-bound train rolled slowly into the station…
Sakuta and Mai stepped on together, then found empty seats next to each other.
The doors closed, and the train lurched forward. The car was reasonably full. About 80 percent of the seats were occupied, while a few people remained standing.
Two stations passed in silence. Leaving the ocean view behind, the train started rattling through the residential area.
“So about yesterday.”
“Forget about that. I warned you, right?”
“Your bunny-girl outfit was far too sexy to ever forget.”
The yawn he’d been trying to stifle managed to escape just then.
“It had me so worked up, I couldn’t sleep a wink last night.”
He stared at Mai reproachfully.
“H-hey! You’re not imagining me doing anything weird, are you?”
Sakuta had expected a look of scorn and possibly a stream of insults, but Mai was actually turning red and stammering. The glare she shot him was clearly an attempt to disguise her embarrassment. It was rather cute.
But she soon recovered.
“N-not that I’d be bothered at all by some young boy fantasizing about me,” she said, trying to put up a front. But her cheeks were still flushed. This was an obvious bluff. She might have come across as a mature adult, but there was definitely an inexperienced kid underneath.
“Don’t sit so close.”
She gave his shoulder a push, like trying to bat away something filthy.
“Wooow. So harsh!”
“You might get me pregnant.”
“What should we name it?”
“Really…?” Her gaze turned frosty.
Maybe he’d gone a bit too far.
“It wasn’t my outfit I was telling you to forget,” she said.
“Then what was that?” If Mai was going to bring the subject up herself, Sakuta was going to press her on it. This was what he’d wanted to ask about in the first place.
“Sakuta Azusagawa,” she began.
“You remembered my name?”
“I try to remember every name after I’ve heard it once.”
An admirable goal. She might have been on hiatus at the moment, but being in the business had clearly cultivated some lifelong habits.
“I’ve heard the rumors about you.”
“Oh…those.”
He knew what she meant. Same thing that had gotten him summoned to the roof today.
“I suppose saw is more accurate than heard,” Mai said, pulling her phone out of her blazer pocket again. The browser was open to some forum or other.
“You went to junior high in Yokohama.”
“I did.”
“And got in a fight that left three classmates hospitalized.”
“Well, you know, I’m such a great martial artist.”
“And that’s why you withdrew from the Yokohama high school you’d originally planned to attend and went with your second choice—Minegahara High. And moved here.”
“……”
“There’s more. Should I continue?”
“……”
“Well, like a certain someone just said, ‘If you wouldn’t want it done to you, don’t do it to anyone else.’”
“I don’t mind you asking. I’m honored you’ve taken an interest.”
“The Internet’s something else. All kinds of personal info, just out there in the open.”
“True.”
What else was there to say?
“Of course, no guarantee what it says is accurate.”
“What do you make of it?”
“It’s obvious if you think about it. Someone who’d actually done that wouldn’t be attending high school like nothing happened.”
“Wish my classmates had heard you say that.”
“Why not just tell them it isn’t true?”
“Rumors are like…the air in a room. The vibe or the mood or whatever you want to call it. These days, you’ve got to know how to read the room.”
“That’s true.”
“Anyone who can’t pick up on it well enough gets shunned. And the people who create those unspoken rules aren’t aware of it, so if you make a passionate argument for the truth, everyone’s just gonna be like, ‘The hell’s his problem?’”
The battle wasn’t with the people themselves, which was why nothing Sakuta could say would get him anywhere. Anything he tried would backfire in the most unexpected way.
“Fighting the air is pointless.”
“So you just let the misunderstanding stand? Give up without a fight?”
“This stuff is totally unsourced Internet gossip. I don’t see how I could ever be friends with anyone dumb enough to believe that crap without a second thought.”
“You sound pretty mad.”
Mai was smiling. It seemed like she agreed.
“Your turn.”
“……”
She shot him a grumpy look. But now that she had heard his story, she gave in.
“I first noticed when the holidays started.”
In other words, four days ago. May 3. Constitution Memorial Day.
“I went to the Enoshima Aquarium on a whim.”
“Alone?”
“Is that bad?”
“Just wondering if you’ve got a boyfriend.”
“I’ve never had a boyfriend,” Mai said, rolling her eyes.
“Ohhh?”
“You’d rather I wasn’t a virgin?”
She gave him a sideways glance, like she was teasing him.
“……”
“……”
They stared at each other in silence.
Mai gradually turned red. Even her neck was red. She’d brought it up, but the word virgin was clearly far more embarrassing than she had thought.
“Uh, I wouldn’t have held it against you,” he said, trying to smooth it over.
“G-good. A-anyway! There I was, surrounded by families at the aquarium, when I suddenly realized nobody was looking at me.”
She was sulking a bit, which made Mai look much younger. He’d always thought she seemed really mature, so this felt like a new side of her. But mentioning this seemed like it would derail the conversation again, so he kept it to himself.
“At first, I thought I was imagining it. I haven’t worked in a couple of years; everyone was busy looking at the fish, et cetera.”
Her tone was steadily growing grim.
“But on the way home, I stopped in a café, and the truth became clear. The hostess didn’t greet me. Nobody showed me to a table.”
“And it wasn’t a seat-yourself place?”
“No. An old-style place. A row of seats at the counter and four little tables to one side.”
“No chance you’ve been there before and done something that got you banned for life?”
“Of course not!” One cheek twitched angrily, and she stomped on his foot.
“Your foot, senpai.”
“What about it?”
Mai had an impressive poker face. Like she genuinely had no idea what he was referring to. Perhaps this was nothing for a professional actress.
“I’m overjoyed you chose to step on mine with it.”
He’d meant this as a joke, but Mai seemed genuinely repulsed. The boy sitting next to her had just disembarked, so she took the opportunity to put a space between the two of them.
“I’m kidding.”
“You were at least marginally serious. I could tell.”
“Well, sure. What guy wouldn’t want to spend quality time with a beautiful senpai?”
“Riiiight. I’m never getting through this story if you don’t shut up. Where was I?”
“You’d just been banned from a café.”
“That’s enough.”
There was a glint in her eyes. She was clearly actually mad at him.
As a way of indicating remorse, Sakuta mimed zipping his lips shut.
“The café staff didn’t speak to me or respond,” Mai continued. Her mood had not improved. “Neither did any of the customers. I got so flustered I left and just started running.”
“How far?”
“All the way to Fujisawa Station. But when I got there, everything was normal. Everyone saw me. Surprised faces whispered, ‘It’s Mai Sakurajima!’ everywhere. So I figured I must have imagined what happened in Enoshima. But then I started wondering if the same thing would happen anywhere else. I began investigating.”
“Hence the bunny-girl outfit?”
“Dressed like that, everyone who can see me will naturally look. No way I can convince myself I’m just imagining it.”
That was certainly true. Sakuta’s reaction alone was proof of concept.
“So…this started happening in other places, too? At the very least, you ran into it again in Shonandai.”
“Yeah. I was
starting to hope there was no one left who could see me.”
She shot Sakuta a reproachful glare, like this was his fault.
“But school has been totally normal. For now.”
Mai flicked an eyebrow at the door toward the back of the car. Some boys in some other school’s uniforms had their phones out, angling the screens at—well, obviously not Sakuta.
“As weird as this all is, it sounds like you’re kind of enjoying it.”
Sakuta figured he might as well ask directly. She definitely didn’t seem like someone grappling with a tragedy.
“Because I am!”
“You’re serious?” he asked. He didn’t see the upside.
“I’ve spent my whole life at the center of attention. Always aware that people were watching. As a kid, I used to wish that I could visit a world where no one knew me.”
She didn’t seem like she was making this up. Even if it was a performance, what he knew about her made it sound believable. She had been a famous actress her whole life.
As they talked, Sakuta saw Mai’s attention drift to a movie poster hanging from the train’s ceiling. It was an ad for an adaption of a popular novel. The lead actress was a big name, one making a major push for stardom. She was roughly Mai’s age.
Was Mai still following current events in the industry? Did she miss it? No, neither of those felt right. It was like she was staring at something far away, conflicted emotions swirling behind her eyes.
Like she just couldn’t let go.
“Hello?”
“……”
“Sakurajima?”
“I hear you.”
She blinked once and looked back at him.
“I’m thrilled this is happening. Let me enjoy it.”
“……”
The train had stopped at Fujisawa Station. End of the line. The doors opened. Mai stood up first, and Sakuta scrambled after her.
“Get it now? See how crazy I am?”
“……”
“Just leave me alone,” she snapped. Then she sped up her pace, passing through the gates. She pulled away from Sakuta like this was good-bye.
Sakuta followed her from a distance for a while—to be fair, she was headed the way he had to go. They crossed the connecting passage to the JR station.
Mai stopped in front of a coin locker in the corner and pulled a paper bag out of it. Then she started walking again, headed for the counter of a bakery stand.
Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai, Volume 1 Page 3