Toradora! Vol. 2

by Yuyuko Takemiya

  ***

  “…And that is her true nature.”

  “That girl is evil!”

  “You said it. That’s Ami’s real personality. She’s been like that since before she started kindergarten. She’s spoiled. Stubborn. Tyrannical. The quintessential example of a spoiled princess.”

  Ryuuji trembled as he looked at his friend’s face. He was on the verge of crushing the leaf of the decorative plant he was holding. “Wh-what kind of terrible personality is that…? Where does she get off calling herself ‘Ami-chan?!’ God, she scares me! Was she possessed by the devil? Because that’s the only explanation I can think of!”

  “…You said it.”

  Up until now, he hadn’t ever seen a girl talk like that in his life. …Well, someone in his class might have, but Ryuuji barely approached girls as a rule, so he probably never noticed. The one and only girl Ryuuji spent his days with was Taiga (who of course was her own flavor of terrible), but he had a feeling Taiga’s personality and Ami’s charted widely different trajectories. It might’ve had something to do with the accidental way he found out about how brave Taiga really was, or how she was pretty much an underdog, but he felt like he’d pick Taiga’s personality over Ami’s every time.

  “It’d be great if Ami’s outer persona were the real thing, but for some reason or another… there are underlying problems with her personality. When she doesn’t care about the person she’s with, her real self comes out. And the people she doesn’t care about are usually girls.”

  “…D-does that mean that models really do need to be that nasty to make it professionally…?”

  “I don’t think it was quite like that. It’s more like she created a mask when she started modeling. Personally, I’d rather she just dropped the facade and acted like her real self all the time.”

  “Well, her real self being what it is… I have to wonder if that’s a good idea.”

  Kitamura slowly, slowly tilted his head at his friend’s words, but Ryuuji suddenly leaned forward. What’s wrong, Palmtop Tiger? “Is Taiga really okay letting her walk all over her like that?” At least hurry up and tell her I’m not some delinquent thug… He bit his lip, both his eyes glinting brutally. Ryuuji stared at the two beautiful girls.

  Taiga, still silent, wore a calm expression.

  “Don’t tell me she’s holding back because she’s your childhood friend!”

  “Holding back” were words that normally wouldn’t have a place in Aisaka Taiga’s vocabulary, but she had a definite weakness for Kitamura. That must be it. He couldn’t think of another reason for Taiga’s silence.

  And that was the moment when it happened.

  How did it come to this?

  A scene exploded into Ryuuji’s vision. There was only one word for it.

  SLAP!

  “…Wha?!”

  Ami clutched her cheek, eyes open wide. She couldn’t get out a word.

  “A mosquito. There was a mosquito on your cheek.”

  Beside Ami prowled the tiger, fangs momentarily bared in a thin smile. For just a moment, her red tongue flashed across her lips.

  “You’re lucky, really. Imagine trying to sell that precious face of yours after it got devoured by mosquitos.” Taiga paused. “Oh. My bad. It was just a fly.”

  “Erk…!”

  She opened one wee hand to display the corpse of the fruit fly she’d just ruthlessly executed.

  When she saw it, Ami’s face turned scarlet before their eyes. “Wh-wh-what have you done?!”

  Naturally, she was in a rage. But then Taiga scoffed at Ami with a snort of her nose. “Hey, I did it out of the goodness of my heart. You ought to have a better sense of gratitude.”

  “Gratitude?!”

  Ami’s screech approached the ultrasonic. The surrounding customers began to notice the commotion.

  “GRATITUDE, MY ASS! What’s wrong with you?! I can’t believe this! Where do you get the nerve?! This is the worst—the worst! The! Absolute! Worst! This is why I didn’t want to slum it in a joint like this!”

  “…You sure are loud.”

  A single wrinkle carved a line across Taiga’s forehead. Her glittering eyes narrowed eerily. Her blood-tinged aura grew. Tsk. Even the click of her tongue was a bullet loaded with malice. And then—

  “Shut up, you spoiled brat.” Taiga threw out her words with sharp, high-handed contempt.

  Ami’s voice finally petered out. She’d met her match.

  “…Awha…uhh…uh…wha?”

  Ami’s thin shoulders started shuddering. Her breathing grew ragged. Her cute face suddenly contorted.

  “Ah, this isn’t good,” Kitamura muttered, already on his feet. Ryuuji dashed along with him, back towards a very awkward table.

  It got worse when they arrived.

  “Yu…”

  It was like a shoujo manga. Flowers in full bloom blossomed behind Ami as she turned around—or that’s what it seemed like. And Ami carried herself to match. So pretty, so dramatic…

  “Yuusakuuuuuuuu! Waaahhh!”

  She jumped straight at Kitamura’s chest, tears in freefall.

  Her delicate shoulders shuddered as she sobbed, the sound of her voice never quite forming words, until finally she whispered… “I wanna go home now.” She lisped out her complaint like a child. She looked up at Kitamura from up close, eyes wet with huge teardrops.

  “Siiiigh… Why can’t you just get along? Really…sorry that she’s making such a commotion, Aisaka. Takasu, you too. I’m going to take her home.”

  Kitamura lowered his head and his eyebrows alike. Every inch of his body expressed profound apology. Then, still holding onto Ami, he skillfully retrieved her bag from the seat, turned towards the gawking restaurant crowd, and pulled Ami along to the exit.

  The one who was left behind was…

  “Ta…Taiga…?”

  “…”

  “…Hey, keep it together!”

  The phrase won the battle but lost the war was written all over Taiga’s face.

  Taiga pouted faintly, but her eyes slowly grew calm. She looked like a statue of the Buddha. Empty… silent. This development called for consolation, but Ryuuji illustrated another classic phrase—at a loss for words.

  “Well, um…right. Yup. Uh. Cheer up.”

  “…”

  “Let me put it simply. Kitamura and I saw everything. Kitamura doesn’t think one bit that you teased Kawashima Ami at all.”

  “…So what you’re really telling me is—after seeing everything, Kitamura chose to protect that girl and agreed to take her back home.”

  “…He didn’t protect her.”

  “…He gently held her, softly consoled her…”

  “…I don’t think he was holding her, but…whoa!”

  The waitress shrieked at the same time they heard the sound of breaking glass. The plate she was clearing had shattered to pieces on the floor. And that wasn’t the end of it. Probably feeling that something was off, a kid who’d been puttering around nearby suddenly burst out crying. Waaaahhh!

  Ker-splash! The milk steamer at the drink bar suddenly broke and belched out smoke.

  “Kyaa!” “Eyaagh!” The customers standing in line scattered away from the roiling milk steam.

  “Manager! The toilet is clogged…gahhh!” The sound of an employee who didn’t want to know what had happened rung out and immediately trailed off.

  “…I HATE that girl!” Murderous anger exuded from Taiga’s whole body, spewing thundering blue sparks. And she went right on emitting them, the force terrible to behold.

  It was all out of Ryuuji’s control now.

  Taiga’s lips were pressed tight together, mostly devoid of color; her clenched fists were shaking, and then…

  “Hey! Don’t cry!”

  “…Tsk.”

  If Kitamura had been there, it would have been a totally different story. But now, transparent tears had begun to well up in Taiga’s eyes.

  “People are looking. Pull yours
elf together!”

  “Uhhhnngh…” Groaning in frustration, Taiga rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her clothes. It was a disaster.

  Right when Ryuuji felt like holding his head in his hands, a piece of good news came to his ears.

  “Huh? What happened?”

  “Minorin…!”

  Back from wherever she’d been before, the waitress Minorin was on the scene. Her eyes went wide as saucers. “Taiga, you’re looking pretty unhappy. Did something happen?”

  “…No, nothing… I’m going to wash my hands. Because I touched something dirty.”

  “Wooow, you smooshed a fly.”

  Taiga showed the palm of her hand as she stood up, and Minori gave way to Taiga’s path. After that, Minori watched Taiga’s back for a while, then slowly turned back to face Ryuuji.

  “That other girl, what happened to her? Did something happen while I was on break?”

  “…No…or, well, actually, there was some trouble.”

  It wasn’t just because of his nervousness that he hesitated. He simply didn’t know how to explain what had happened. But why, out of all the times this could have happened, did it happen when Minori went on break?

  Minori, whose easygoing nature approached the divine, hummed in consideration. “I don’t know what happened, but she’s pretty mad. …It’s rare for Taiga to be so docile.”

  “You call that docile?!”

  Now why was it?

  Why did Ryuuji feel more terror in that one moment than he had in the entire day combined?

  ***

  All the same, they finished shopping and returned to the Takasu residence. By the time Ryuuji was starting to make the rice, Taiga’s good mood had returned.

  “We probably won’t ever see each other again anyway. And it didn’t seem like Kitamura was dating her. More than anything else, I can’t stand humoring someone like that.”

  “Two cups is good, right? Should I make two and a half cups of rice?”

  “Two and a half’s fine.” Her face was still puffy, but as she fiddled with the jar of sugar in the corner of the kitchen, Taiga said, “I’m gonna be the adult here. I’ll hold back my hate.”

  “Is that something the person who went and slapped her can say? …Hey, I told you not to play with the sugar.”

  “…”

  “Don’t lick the spoon, either!”

  Chapter 2

  The next shock came to them one refreshing morning soon after the holidays ended.

  The time was just past eight o’clock in the morning.

  The place was their homeroom. Class had started early, since their teacher came in much earlier than usual.

  “Whoa…”

  The mouth of hell had broken open.

  That was probably how you’d describe this situation. Ryuuji covered his mouth to keep from shouting. What his eyes were telling couldn’t be real. He just couldn’t believe it—no—he didn’t want to believe it. But, somehow, this was no dream.

  He turned around and quickly mouthed to Kitamura—you didn’t tell me—but Kitamura’s expression was laidback. He raised his hand and threw out a carefree “Yo.”

  Anyway, it was a done deal. You couldn’t put something like this back in the box.

  Ryuuji felt halfway frozen. The deadly look in his eyes had gone into Trans-Am mode, tripling in intensity. All he could do was brace himself for whatever bubbled up from hell’s wide-open maw.

  Hell itself sauntered up to the teacher’s podium on skinny legs, beautiful hair swaying.

  The demon faced the front of the room, faintly embarrassed. Lit by gentle morning sun, her smile seemed to melt amid the beams of dazzling light. Finally, she slowly raised her eyes.

  “I’m a new transfer student starting at this school today. My name is Kawashima Ami. Nice to meet you!”

  Her face was clear, pure, and pleasant. A full-blown mask.

  Impossible.

  “…No way… how could it come to this…?”

  No one noticed his groan. The classroom had left Ryuuji in the lurch. He turned ghost-white, ignored by everyone.

  “W-wait, that girl—wasn’t she in a magazine?!”

  “For real?! Which one was it?! Man, she’s so cute!”

  No way. No way! It can’t be true, this is amazing, just amazing…! The ladies of the class were having a collective fangirl moment. The boys, on the other hand, were acting suspiciously timid. Strangely quiet. Enraptured, they looked up at the pure angel on the teacher’s podium with feverish eyes. Sitting diagonally ahead of Ryuuji was Noto Hisamitsu, who slowly turned his black-framed, bespectacled face towards him. In a happy, heartfelt whisper, he hissed out:

  “Jackpot!”

  Fist pump.

  “…Uhhh…yeaaaah…” Ryuuji managed an uncertain nod, but instead of making a fist, he choked down a bitter swallow.

  Ami was beautiful at the podium. Her eggshell skin was smoother still than the day before, her radiant aura all the brighter. Her gem-like eyes were large. Her lips bore an unceasing smile as she looked down on the class, head cocked to one side. She seemed so childish, surely because of her small chin, but her figure was of golden proportions. Ami was out of this world: a devastatingly beautiful girl.

  Ryuuji’s headache was pretty devastating, too.

  He gently turned to look at a seat nearly in the center of the classroom. Sitting there was the person who was perhaps most devastated of all. And her name was Taiga.

  He saw her.

  “…Whoa…!”

  And then he immediately looked away. That was a face he never should have seen.

  Taiga’s eyebrows were raised so high they’d practically gone vertical. Her eyes oozed a seething flow of molten lava. Her rose-colored lips trembled, contorting into a sinister curl. Taiga was a lit fuse, just this side of exploding with rage—she’d lost patience with reality itself. Her cheeks were swollen, her teeth grit; she looked like she was gnawing on a bomb. Just then, her mere gaze could probably have struck a weaker man dead.

  That was when Ami, busy looking down on the class, became aware of Taiga’s very real bloodlust. For a moment, her eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. But just as one might expect, she handled it like a pro.

  “Everyone! Please call me Ami!”

  Ami hid it perfectly. No one could have guessed she’d seen Taiga; she scrunched her eyes as she gave her cutest smile. But even that was enough to utterly terrify Ryuuji. Are all girls like this? A cold, heavy chill ran through his body. His hands automatically closed the buttons of his open jacket.

  “Okay, everyone! Please get along with your new classmate! Now let’s have a round of applause!”

  The familiar, oddly cheerful shout of their unmarried homeroom teacher, Koigakubo Yuri—29 years old—rang out during the scattered clapping. She grasped Ami’s shoulders, entirely too familiar. “They’re all good kids. You’ll fit right in!” She squeezed her shoulders again, then held up a clenched, encouraging fist.

  …It seemed like something had totally altered her personality over the break. Before, she was always swathed head to toe in pretty, pink, popular fashion pieces, but now she wore a casual tracksuit and parka…

  “Here’s to a brand-new start for our second-years in class C!” She gave them all a big thumbs-up.

  “…Tsk.” Taiga clicked her tongue, exuding an oppressive and sullen aura as she glared up at her teacher.

  Today, the spinster was undeterred. “Let’s not click our tongues, now! Let’s smile and enjoy our day to the fullest!”

  “…Tsk.”

  “After all, we’ve added a new person like Kawashima-san to our rolls, so today—”

  “…Tsk.”

  Nrrrnnggh!—it seemed that was the only sound the poor spinster could get out, suddenly clutching at the top of her head. Then she twirled on the spot, dejectedly flopped her arms onto her desk, and let her head conk against its surface.

  “Y-Yuri-sensei…?”

  “Uh, is she okay…?”
<
br />   As expected, the classroom was enveloped in a hushed silence. Ami stood staring at the spinster’s side, stock-still.

  Eventually, the bachelorette raised her face a good ten seconds later. While slightly trembling, still half looking down, she strangled out a regretful personal announcement.

  “Y-your teacher, during this last break, had her last shot…or what seemed like her last shot, anyway…and missed…! So—so I have to do my best! I have to do my job as best I can, but, but…it’s fine. It’s fine if no one understands. B-because I think you will all understand in about ten years’ time…! Kitamura-kun, I’ll let you take it from here.”

  “You got it.”

  Immediately accepting the appointment, Kitamura stood straight up. He looked around the class as he spoke. “Okay everyone, please listen for a minute. You all might want to know that Ami is actually my childhood friend! I never imagined she would transfer into the same class as me, but, well—please try and get along with her. And that about covers it for morning homeroom! Stand! Bow!”

  I’m so done with this. The unmarried woman’s groan of sorrow was absorbed by the cacophony that practically exploded through the classroom.

  ***

  “K-Kawashima-san, would you like me to carry that for you?”

  “No, I’ve got it!”

  “Please let me help!”

  “No, no, I’ll do it! I can’t just sit around and leave it to all of you!”

  As Ami tried to carry desks and chairs into the classroom, a sudden crowd of boys surrounded her. The shy ones watched jealously from afar. It seemed everyone wanted to approach her, but being inside the crowd or outside of it was simply a difference in bravery.

  “It’s okay, really! I’m fine! I can handle something like this no problem. I’m actually pretty strong!” Without relying on anyone else, Ami heaved the desk up with her thin arms to demonstrate.

  “Ah, that’s dangerous!”

  “Kawashima-san, let us take care of it!”

  “It’s okay, I’m fine!” Unaided, she walked between the guys who wanted to lend her a hand. “…See! Right? This is super light!”

  She put the desk and chair down at the indicated spot and cheerfully beamed her angel’s smile. Just like that, the boys lost their pretext to talk to her.