"I…can't stop….loving….Ryuji…"
The words echoed over and over again in Takasu's mind. It had been a few days since it had all happened – Taiga getting lost in the blizzard, him going out and looking for her with Kitamura and Kushieda, finding her nearly unconscious, and then hearing her utter those words as he carried her through the snow – and still, he was in disbelief at the very thought.
"She couldn't – I mean, she had to have been delirious or something. O-or I was imagining it. Or maybe-" he stopped himself. "I don't know what happened, exactly. But there's no way it was real. Right?"
After all, Taiga had been trying so hard to get him and Kushieda together. Especially recently, even though she had shot him down on the night of the Christmas party – before he'd even had a chance to confess his feelings. If anything, that had only strengthened Taiga's efforts. "I KNOW Minorin likes you!" she repeatedly insisted. "You just gotta try harder!"
"If she's in love with me, why would she be doing that? It doesn't make sense!" he angrily muttered under his breath. "Why would she sacrifice her own feelings-"
And then it hit him.
"-to make someone else happy."
In that moment, memories flooded back into his mind. How, because of his insistence, she had tried to reconnect with her father, even though she had to have known he would break his promises again. How, in spite of her own heartbreak, she had picked a fight with the student council president over her refusal to tell Kitamura her true feelings. How she talked about buying Christmas presents for all those orphans every year, and how she wanted to show them that someone out there was watching over them. She was always trying to put others before herself.
"The night of the Christmas party, too…" he somberly recalled. "She kept telling me to go out and find Kushieda, and so I just…left her there."
He buried his face in his hands. "God, I'm such an idiot."
All of this time, he had been so blind to her feelings, and the pain she was going through trying to hide them, so that he could be happy. But how could he be happy, knowing how she was suffering? A realization dawned on him as he remembered the words he had said on the day she'd gotten lost on the mountain:
"I said I'll never let her go again…and I meant it."