by Yoru Sumino
“As long as it doesn’t have whipped cream,” I said.
“Who doesn’t like whipped cream? Well, you can eat the chocolate cake, then. It’s really good. They have more than desserts here, too—there’s pasta, curry, and pizza even.” She went out of her way to pronounce pizza with an Italian accent.
“That’s good news for me,” I said. “But can you just call it pizza like normal? It’s grating.”
“The parmesan, you mean?”
I wanted to dump parmesan over her goofy head, but I didn’t like to inconvenience other people, so out of compassion for the server who would have to clean up after, I didn’t do it.
I also didn’t want to satisfy her by appearing to be flustered. I acted like I had expected this to happen, and I stood and went to the buffet with her. A typical weekday may have had a smaller crowd, but our school wasn’t the only one with exams this week, and the restaurant was bustling with girls from all of the different high schools.
At the buffet, I picked out whatever caught my eye: a few carbs, some salad, ground beef steak, and chicken fingers. When I got back to the table, she was already sitting there looking happy. Her plate had nothing but desserts, and it had a lot. I didn’t much care for Western desserts—frosted cakes and fruit fillings and the like. I found them overly sweet, and seeing her plate made me feel a little ill.
About half a minute after she began eating, the girl said, “That murder is really scary.”
“Oh good,” I said with relief. “I haven’t heard a single person talking about that today, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d dreamed the whole story up.”
“I think nobody cares about it because it happened in some small town in the middle of nowhere.”
“That’s a more clinical analysis than I’d expect from you.”
Her statement caught me by surprise. I could hardly claim to know her well, but the image of her I’d built in my head wouldn’t have said that.
“I care about it,” she said. “I watched the news. Although I thought, oh, I bet that person didn’t think they were going to die before I did.”
She looked like she had more to say, but I jumped in. “I’m just going to ask this because anything’s possible, but did you know the person who got killed?”
She asked, “Do you think I did?”
“Do you think I think you did?” I replied. “All right, enough of that. Go on.”
“I care about what happened, but I think most people just go about their lives not particularly interested in thinking about life and death.”
“Sure,” I said.
She might have been right. Few people spent their days consciously aware of life and death. The more I thought about it, the more right she seemed to be. The only people who consistently faced their conceptions of life and death were philosophers, theologians, and artists. Well, them and girls stricken with a fatal illness and the boys who stumbled upon their secrets.
She said, “If there’s one good thing about having to confront death, it’s that I live each day knowing I’m alive.”
“Wiser words have never been spoken,” I said, only partly sarcastic.
“I know, right?” She exaggerated a sigh. “Ah, if only everyone could be close to dying.”
She stuck out her tongue, punctuating what was meant to come off as a joke, but I took it to be her true feelings. Sometimes, when a person says something, the meaning doesn’t lie in the message that was sent, it’s in how the listener receives it.
I ate the small portion of spaghetti and marinara sauce I’d put on my heart-shaped plate. The noodles were a little firm, but not all that bad. I realized that, for us, food was like our walks home. We placed an entirely different value on each bite.
Of course, that wasn’t the way it should be. I could lose my life the very next day, based on some killer’s whim—or if not that, something else. I should have placed the same value on that meal as the girl whose pancreas would soon take her life. Even though I could recognize that truth, I was sure I wouldn’t truly understand it until death came for me.
Suddenly she asked, “So, [Classmate I Can Get Along With]-kun, are you interested in girls?”
A dab of whipped cream had planted itself on the tip of her nose. How could someone with that ridiculous face have even considered matters of life and death, let alone offered insight into them? The look was too comical to ruin, and I decided not to tell her.
Instead I said, “What makes you ask that all of a sudden?”
“We’re at a restaurant where there’re only girls, but it just seems to have thrown you out of sorts. And when a cute one walks by our table, you don’t give her a glance. Even I take a glance, but not you.”
So much for trying not to appear shaken. I resolved to work on my acting ability; I wondered if I could improve before she died.
I replied, “I don’t like being somewhere I don’t belong, and staring at people is rude. I don’t act rude.”
“That sounds like you’re calling me rude,” she said, puffing out her cheeks. With the whipped cream still on her nose, this expression was even more amusing than the one before, like the kind of face you’d make on purpose if you were trying to make someone laugh.
“Here’s a rude question for you,” she said. “You told me yesterday you’ve never had a girlfriend or a friend. That got me wondering: Have you ever even liked anyone before?”
“It’s not that I don’t like people. You could say I like everyone.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. But have you ever like-liked anyone?” She sighed and popped a piece of chicken into her mouth. She seemed to be getting acclimated to my twisting of words. “Surely you’ve had a one-sided crush before. Unrequited love.”
“Unrequited love?”
“That’s the one that’s not requited,” she offered.
“Thanks,” I said. “I know what it means.”
“Okay, talk about it then. Have you ever had a crush?”
I decided making a big deal of it would just be even more of a hassle. I didn’t want to anger her like the day before; I was no match for that.
“Maybe once,” I said. “I guess.”
“That’s the spirit. All right, out with it. What was she like?”
“Why do you want to know so bad?”
“I just want to,” she said. “You said we’re opposites, didn’t you? I’m curious what kind of girl you’d like.”
I thought about telling her to become her opposite, and then she’d know for herself. But I didn’t like pushing my values onto other people, so I didn’t say it.
“Let me think,” I said. “What kind of girl was she… She added ‘-san’ to everything.”
The girl brought her eyebrows together and twitched her nose. The whipped cream moved with it. Confused, she asked, “San?”
“You know, like after people’s names, to be polite? But with everyone. She was in my class in junior high, and she’d say bookseller-san, store clerk-san, fish seller-san. She did it with authors’ names in our textbooks. Akutagawa-san, Dazai-san, Mishima-san. She even did it with her food. Daikon-san, if you can believe it. Now that I think about it, it might have just been a habit of hers, like a vocal tic that had nothing to do with the kind of person she was. At the time, I thought it meant she held on to respect for the people and things around us. It represented kindness and elegance. Because of that, I felt something a little different for her than I did for anyone else.”
Having said all that, I took a drink of water before adding, “I don’t know if it counts as unrequited love.”
I looked at my classmate; she didn’t say a word. She simply smiled and took a bite of her fruit-covered cake. As she chewed, her smile deepened. I was beginning to wonder what she was thinking when she rubbed her finger on her cheek and lowered her head, looking up at me with her eyes.
I asked, “What?”
“Nothing,” she said. She wiggled a little bit. “Nothing, it’s just, that’s sweeter than I was expe
cting. It’s gotten me a little flustered.”
“Oh. Well, yeah, I guess she was sweet.”
“No, I’m talking about the reason you liked her.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I copied her and took a bite of my ground beef steak. It tasted good, too. She was watching me with a smile more pleasant than her usual one.
She asked, “What came of it? But I guess you already said—you never had a girlfriend.”
“Yeah. Well, in this case, what was on the outside matched the inside. She was cute, and some cheerful, popular guy in my class took her instead.”
“Hm. Then she didn’t have an eye for people.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. Never mind,” she said. “So there was a time when you were pure-hearted and stirring with fleeting love.”
“Sure,” I said. “Just out of courtesy, I’ll ask you the same.”
“I’ve had three boyfriends,” she replied. “Just to be clear, I took all my relationships seriously. A lot of people say junior high romances are just games, but they’re idiots who don’t want to take responsibility for their feelings.”
She was getting heated, both in her words and her expression. I shrank back a bit. I wasn’t good with heat.
For what it was worth, with her looks, I easily believed she’d had three boyfriends. She didn’t seem to wear much makeup, and she wasn’t some beauty who would make anyone’s head turn, but her features were striking.
Seeing me shift, she protested, “Hey, don’t pull away.”
“I’m not pulling away. But you’ve got something on your nose. Some whipped cream.”
“Huh?” she said, looking foolish as she failed to process it right away. If that was how she looked all the time, she might not have gotten any boyfriends. Finally understanding what I’d said, she scrambled for her napkin and put it to her nose. I stood from my chair before she finished wiping the whipped cream away. I wasn’t trying to leave again—my plate was just empty.
Thinking I’d try a little dessert, I got a second plate at the buffet. I was searching around for just the right thing, when, as luck would have it, I found one of my favorite sweets: warabi-mochi, a chilled, jelly-like treat, perfect for the summer. I put a few on my plate and drizzled them with the provided brown sugar syrup, which flowed from the ladle with an artistic beauty. When I broke from my rapture, I decided to get a cup of hot coffee while I was up.
As I weaved my way through the mass of school girls, I tried thinking of how to get her out of her bad mood. What had worked the day before? When I got back to our table, my fears proved false, and she was cheerful again.
But something else kept me from sitting back in my seat.
When my classmate saw me, her smile deepened. The girl who occupied my seat noticed her expression change and turned my way. The second girl’s mouth opened in surprise. I recognized her from somewhere.
The other girl said, “S-Sakura, when you said you came here with someone, you meant [Gloomy Classmate]-kun?”
She came off as even more headstrong than my lunch companion. After a moment, I placed her: I’d often seen the two girls doing things together at school. I thought she might have been on one of the sports teams.
“Yes,” my companion replied. “Why are you so surprised?” She looked at me and added, “[Classmate I Can Get Along With]-kun, this is my best friend, Kyōko.”
She smiled, while her friend looked unsure. I was left holding my dessert and coffee, waiting to see how this interaction would run its course. Part of me would have rather not stuck around to find out, but for the time being, I put my dishes on the table and sat in an open chair. Our table was round, with four chairs, either fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how this went. The two girls faced each other while I sat in the middle, where I could see them both without particularly trying.
“Wait,” the other girl said, “so you are getting along with [Gloomy Classmate]-kun?”
“Yeah. Surely you heard me say so when Rika asked,” she replied, giving me a small grin. Her friend’s confusion only deepened.
“But Rika told me you were joking.”
“[Classmate I Can Get Along With]-kun just doesn’t like that kind of attention, so he misled her. Rika believed him over me—and here I thought she was my friend.”
She said it jokingly, but her friend didn’t laugh. Instead, the friend turned an appraising gaze upon me. Our eyes met, which caught me off guard. I tried to gloss over it with a quick bow of my head in greeting; she reflexively nodded back at me. For a moment, I thought that would be the end of it, but a real best friend wasn’t going to let me off with only a bow.
“Hey,” the friend said to me. “Have we ever talked before?”
I thought that was a rude question, but since she didn’t seem to mean anything bad by it, I didn’t let it bother me.
“We have,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it was when I was working the front desk at the library.”
My companion, who was listening in, laughed and interjected, “You can’t call that talking.”
I thought, That’s just your opinion, but her friend muttered, “I wouldn’t.” Whatever the case, neither her friend nor I particularly cared what it was called.
“Kyōko, is it all right that you’re sitting with us?” the girl asked. “Aren’t your friends waiting for you?”
“Oh, right,” the friend said. “I was just about to head out. Listen, Sakura, I’m not complaining, but I’ve got to ask.” She glanced at me but otherwise kept her eyes locked on my companion. “You’ve gone out with him two days in a row, and now you’re at this place, alone, where only girls and couples go. So when you say you’re getting along, is that what you mean—as a couple?”
“No,” she said. I was about to say the same, but she beat me to it, so I held back. Both of us saying it at the same time might have come across as suspect.
The friend’s expression softened in relief. But then she frowned again with suspicion as she looked at us in turns.
“Then what are you?” the friend asked. “Friends?”
“It’s just what I said. We get along.”
“Forget it, Sakura. Sometimes you’re impossible, you know.” The friend looked at me. She knew—probably from experience—that she wouldn’t get any direct answer from my companion. “[Gloomy Classmate]-kun, if I said you two were just friends, would I be right?”
I took a moment to consider how to handle this stray bullet that had been lobbed my way. I chose the best response I had.
“We get along.”
I could see both their faces at the same time; one fed up and disgusted, the other beaming with delight.
The friend sighed dramatically, shot my cohort a glare, and said, “I’ll get to the bottom of this tomorrow.” She waved goodbye to her—and not me—and left.
I wondered if my companion’s plans for the next day were with this friend. It made me a little gleeful to think of her being put in the line of fire tomorrow instead of me. I’d given up on caring about the rest of the class staring at me. As long as it never came to real harm, I could ignore it.
Sounding half surprised and half happy, the girl said, “I can’t believe we ran into Kyōko here.” She plucked a warabi-mochi from my plate without asking. “We’ve been friends since junior high. She’s always been strong-willed, so I was intimidated by her at first, but as soon as we started talking, we hit it off right away. She’s a good girl, [Boy I’m Getting along With]-kun—you should try to get along with her, too.”
I paused, then took a deep breath and said, “Are you sure it’s all right not to tell your best friend that you’re sick?”
I knew I was going to spoil the moment by saying that. If her upbeat mood could be likened to bright, happy colors, this was dumping a bucket of ice water, washing the colors away to a dull gray.
But I didn’t mean it to deliberately hurt her.
For once, I was being thoughtful and sympathetic. W
hat I was really asking, without any other motive behind it, was if she really should be spending her limited time with me, of all people. Wouldn’t her final days be better shared with her best friend, someone who surely meant vastly more to her than me?
“Yeah, it’s all right,” she said confidently. “That girl gets emotional. If I told her, she’d probably start bawling every time she saw me. Where’s the fun in spending time like that? I’ve already made up my mind: For my own sake, I’m hiding this from everyone until the last possible moment.”
Her manner and expression remained upbeat, as if she had repelled my splash of ice water through sheer force of will. I decided not to ask anything like that again.
But this show of determination had another consequence. A doubt that had been dormant inside me since the day before now came bubbling up to the surface. I needed to ask.
“Hey, listen,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“Are you really dying?”
Her expression faded in an instant, and I immediately wished I hadn’t asked. But before that regret had a chance to linger, her expression came back, quickly cycling through a range of emotions as it had before.
First it was a smile, then she looked upset, then a bittersweet grin, then anger, then sadness, then upset again. Finally, she looked me straight in the eye, smiled, and said, “I’m dying.”
“Ah,” I said.
Her smile deepened, and she blinked faster than usual. “I’ve known I was dying for years now. I guess thanks to medical advancements, my illness doesn’t show, and I’ve been able to live longer than I otherwise would have. But I’m dying. They tell me I might have another year left, or I might not.”
She was saying things I didn’t want to know, and that I didn’t want to hear, but I was still listening.
“You’re the only one I’ll tell, [Boy I’m Getting along With]-kun. You’re the only one who can give me reality and normalcy. The doctors can only offer me reality. My family overreacts to everything I say, and they can barely, desperately hold on to a thin
veneer of normalcy. If my friends knew, I think they’d be the same way. You’re the only one who’s able to know the truth and still let me be normal. I can enjoy being with you.”