Only the Pretty Ones
get the happy end
Yukiatsu has known beauty since his childhood.
Beauty is in bright blue eyes, in the flourish of a white ribbon dress, in a girl who is half-Russian and wholly happy. He knows this because even when she'd looked away and ignored his passionate confession of love (as passionate as a ten-year old could get) – she continues to be the same beautiful girl.
As he grows, he manages to find beauty in other things – though nothing can quite compare to Menma's smile and laugh, the way she'd puffed up her cheeks when she couldn't find anyone in hide-and-seek. Tsuruko stays a plain girl, with her monotone face and spectacles, her limp hair and clean black shoes. Still, there's a twisted sort of pretty about her – the moments when she looks at him for far longer than usual, the instances when the wind blows along the road and the edge of her skirt lifts just so he can see her knees. It's the miniscule things like these, because nothing about Tsuruko is ever apparent or loud or unmistakably there. Her beauty is an acquired taste. It's a sad thing that no one apart from him can appreciate this, but maybe it's better this way.
And then there is Anaru – strawberry lipgloss, high-heel balancing, fake-eyelashed Anaru. She is the commercial gorgeous girl, with her perfect skin, pretty clothes and adequately-sized chest. Everything about her look screams beautiful, just as everything about her inside screams ugly as well. He flexes his fingers and tells her she is 'gorgeous'. She frowns and blushes at the same time, and perhaps she is still in love with Yadomi. Her taste in boys must really suck.
Despite this, her reflection in the train window glances at his.
Naruko spends her life searching for beauty.
She dives into cosmetics and fake eyelashes, in ten different shades of red lipstick and fifteen brands of blush and in all the stores of the mall in the town. The girl endures her mother's nagging and maxed out credit cards for the sake of being pretty. But she never quite finds it because Jintan never looks at her the way a guy is supposed to look at a girl who loves him. She heart does not budge, it only clenches and clenches far beyond what romance novels can conjure up.
Yukiatsu takes her hand and brushes a thumb over her moisturized knuckles. It seems that he's borrowed more than a couple of chick books from Tsurumi over the years. He follows the formula of the 'aloof boy', with comments placed in precise trajectory and a careful gaze. (It won't work on her though. It doesn't.)
The boy destroys the equation by dressing up as the girl who's been haunting all their hearts for the past seven years. And he isn't quite like the cool, accomplished Yukiatsu she'd thought and envied him to be. It doesn't make him any more attractive, but it makes him more tolerable. At least she knows she isn't the craziest one in their motley crew.
The more Yukiatsu elbows his way through life's expectations (their school uniforms shouldn't be within five feet of the other), her late working shifts and his cram school nights to talk to her, the more Naruko doesn't know what to think about him. Is he really oblivious to Tsuruko? Or does he think ignoring her eyes on his shoulders is enough?
But she doesn't reject his offer to walk her home. Maybe she's the crazy one.
She watches their shadows walk on the sidewalk as they pass a solitary streetlamp. Jintan isn't so tall, he doesn't stand as straight or as confidently as Yukiatsu, and he certainly wouldn't want to walk her home so late when he could be playing computer games. Her shoulders shudder. Yukiatsu tilts his head and asks her if she's fine (and aloof boys shouldn't be saying that).
"I must become something beautiful."