"You want to move out? Again? I thought we discussed this already."
"Yes, I know," Haruka responded. "I know it's earlier than we planned, but I think we're ready. And the school year is about to end, so if we move quickly-"
"Yes, yes," the woman said, almost dismissively.
She was seated across from Haruka and Chiaki. At one end of the table, Kana glowered.
Chiaki realized suddenly, that she was dreaming. But she had no desire to interrupt the course of events.
"I'm sure you've thought it out perfectly, Haruka-chan," their aunt said. "You plan it out perfectly, every time we discuss this, and my answer has always been the same. It's true that you're a marvel at housework, but I told you, just because you can live alone doesn't mean you should."
"But we want to-" Haruka began.
"I know you do. I can't understand it. Is it really that bad living here? I've told you already, you're not a burden to us."
"It's too crowded in this house," Kana said, low and impatient. "It's not any fun living here. We're in the middle of nowhere and there's nothing to do. And frankly-"
"Think about what you're saying, Kana-chan," the man at the other end of the table said, leaning forward, annoyed enough to finally speak. "If you were to move out, Haruka would have to take on all the household burdens. Even if she could handle that, my intention always was that you three, especially her, would enjoy a normal childhood. Show some maturity! Is that really worth it so you can have more 'fun'?"
A distant part of Chiaki registered amusement at the line. Kana had always been like that. But even though she was a participant, she felt curiously detached, like an observer, completely aware and totally unaware of what was going on.
"It's not just-" Kana began, but Haruka cut her off with her hand.
"Let me handle it," Haruka said, with just a hint of authority.
"I know you don't understand why we want to leave," she continued, addressing the other side of the table vaguely. "But this time we have another compelling reason."
"Oh? What's that?" the woman asked.
For the first time in this conversation, Haruka acknowledged Chiaki's presence, glancing meaningfully in her direction.
"We think a change of scenery will be good," Haruka said. "Sort of like a breath of fresh air. I think we all want a fresh start. And Kana's right; there are a lot more things to do in the city. We're not suited for this country life."
"And what makes you think forcing her to move a second time will accomplish?" their uncle asked, sounding annoyed. "Besides making things worse?"
Haruka looked down at the table.
"Just think about it for a bit. We-"
"There are too many memories in this house," Kana interjected, sitting up. She looked around to make sure she had their attention. She did.
"We want to leave them behind," she said. "We don't want to have to remember any of it. A new life, fresh faces, back in the city. It will be good for all of us. Especially her."
"We'll see," the man said skeptically.
I remember, Chiaki thought, ignoring whatever it was the others were continuing to say.
A few weeks later, their relatives had surprised them by driving them to the city to look at housing.
A month later, everything was different again.
Chiaki got up and walked outside, breaking the chain of memory. It didn't seem to matter.
She got on the tiny bicycle, one she knew Haruka gave away years ago, and rode out along the deserted streets, rode by the shuttered shops of the dying town.
She stopped by the entrance of the deserted primary school, simply dropping her bicycle on the pavement and running in.
"So you came after all," the voice said.
The boy stood in the shade of one of the trees.
Makoto! the conscious part of her exclaimed, but even that was not enough to disturb the string of events.
She stepped backward in shock and surprise, but stopped almost as quickly, squinting.
Boy?
"What the hell are you doing?" she heard herself asking.
"Damn it," Mako-chan said, pouting, voice higher now. "I almost had you."
She pulled out a comb and smoothed her hair back down, put hairpin back in place.
"What's with the get-up?" Chiaki asked.
"I just wanted to try something," she said, shrugging. "It was easier than I thought it would be. I think it might be helpful. So why are you late?"
Chiaki looked away.
"It was harder to dodge my sisters than I thought, but I was able to do it. I just had to wait"
Mako-chan's lip curled slightly, a minor gesture, but to the conscious Chiaki, it was deeply, deeply disturbing. She realized that the hairpin was gone, and the hair back to spiky. She looked like Makoto again. She had never realized just how much they looked like each other. Cousins?
"Well," Makoto said, "that's what I was thinking about. Maybe if I dress as a boy, that will make them accept me. I don't know what they have against me."
"Neither do I," Chiaki said.
A sound behind her, and suddenly the girl was gone. Chiaki looked around desperately, but Mako-chan had disappeared into thin air.
She ran forward, panicking.
"Where are you?" she shouted.
The crushing loneliness—
"I knew you were sneaking around out here," Kana said from behind her.
Chiaki woke with a startled gasp.
"Holy crap," Touma exclaimed, recoiling. She had apparently been leaning right over Chiaki's face.
"She's awake!" Yoshino said, kneeling to her right.
"Oh, thank goodness!" a female voice said. "I guess we won't need that cold water."
The young woman rushed over and Chiaki dimly registered her as the "chief housekeeper" she had met, that one time in the countryside.
"You feeling okay?" she asked with a concerned expression, crouching down.
"I'm fine," she said, pushing herself up into a sitting position, throwing aside the cover to her sleeping bag. "What the hell are you all doing?"
She had been careful to inject a note of annoyance into her voice, trying to mask the effect of the dream on her, and also to hide the fact that she was already pretty sure what was going on.
Why didn't I realize this might happen? she thought.
"We couldn't wake you," Uchida said, eyes wide. "We've tried everything! We tried shaking you, hitting you—Touma here was about to try pinching your nose and covering your mouth!"
Chiaki glanced at Touma, who looked briefly bemused.
"It works on Natsuki," Touma explained.
"She seems to be fine," the woman said, standing back up. "Should I get her breakfast?"
Chiaki glanced around at the half-eaten food on plates strewn around the carpet and realized they had eaten while they were waiting. They were also dressed, she realized.
"No, that's fine," she said, shaking her head. "I'll eat something on the way there."
That's it. Bury yourself in mundane details.
The woman glanced at Yoshino queryingly.
"I'll have the cook do something then," she said, after a moment, leaving the room.
"I wouldn't want to make you guys any more late, after all," she said, crawling out and beginning the process of packing her sleeping bag.
"Aren't you curious what time it is?" Yoshino asked. "How do you know what time it is?"
Right on target, as always, Chiaki thought.
She looked down, mostly to hide her expression.
"I looked at the clock."
Touma and Uchida glanced at Yoshino's bedside clock which, of course, was invisible from Chiaki's position, hidden behind the bed.
Yoshino opened her mouth to say something, but Uchida surprised her by talking first.
"Is this why you were late two days ago?" she asked, beseechingly. "You're never late!"
Chiaki remained silent, head bowed, making the packing process take much longer than it needed to. She felt her cheeks burn slightly.
"That's true," Touma continued, thoughtfully. "And all this talk about dreams—you looked like you were having a really bad one."
"And you didn't look surprised at all when we told you about it," Yoshino said, finishing the collective thought.
"It's just something, okay?" Chiaki said, not looking up. "It's not a big deal. All it does is make me late."
She clearly didn't want to talk about it.
The others glanced at each other, seated on the floor.
"It doesn't seem like you're sick…" Yoshino said, to the others as much as to her.
"Do you think…?" Uchida began, voice trailing off.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Touma asked, finally. "You know, whatever dreams you were having? It might be important."
"No," she said, without hesitating, pushing herself up off the floor.
"But—" Touma began.
"I'll be getting ready in the bathroom," Chiaki said decisively, striding out the door.
"Have you at least told your sisters?" Yoshino asked, as her back passed out of view.
She didn't answer, of course.
The dream didn't make sense, of course, she realized as she walked out. But it reminded her of something she had almost forgotten.
The crushing loneliness. She remembered it now. She would never let it happen again.
Makoto looked down at his right leg grimly, having placed it on the toilet to get an elevated view.
Damn it. Kana was right. That's definitely hair. I'm going to have to do something about this or Mako-chan is going to raise more suspicion than it's worth.
I could start wearing pants all the time as Mako-chan, but you know, that's really more plausible if I'm a guy. Maybe…I should shave and start wearing pants all the time unless I'm Mako-chan? But then what if we have swimming in PE?
Why does it matter? He asked himself, a moment later. Aren't you getting rid of her soon enough anyway?
He stood there for a long moment, then moved back to the sink.
What's wrong with me? Why can't I stop thinking about this?
Over the past two weeks, he had been Mako-chan only once, far less than he usually did. It made sense; he no longer had the need for stealth he had before. He could go as himself, if he wished. Plus, there had been those days he had been grounded. Soon enough, he would never have to do it again.
So why did it nag at him like a bad itch?
Ever since Sunday, it had gotten progressively worse. He found himself more and more inclined to stare at what the girls were wearing, more inclined to stop outside shop windows and look, more inclined to imagine what he would look like wearing various things.
He shook his head violently and grabbed at his own head.
It's just a bad habit! It'll stop if I wait long enough!
He looked at himself in the mirror. HIs reflection reminded him of those dreams, which had been getting more intense, getting longer, developing more plot.
HIs hand was still in his hair. He shifted it slightly, so that it parted. That's right; he hadn't gotten a haircut in a while, and it was starting to get longer.
For a brief, disorienting moment, he had a vision of what it would look like if it really did get longer, and if other things changed as well.
He lashed out with his right fist, barely stopping himself before it made contact with the glass.
It's getting to me in the daytime too, now. I'm losing it.
He braced himself on the counter.
There was another thing about those dreams, too. Touma's involvement was getting heavier—had always been heavy, now that he thought about it—
That's another can of worms, he thought. What the hell do I want, anyway?
How could he face them, either of them? But he had to, or else it would seem unusual. Especially after what had happened yesterday. He had to ask, as a friend, and he felt that—
Of course I'm concerned! That'd be normal, even if—
His heart burned in his chest. He stared at his reflection, stared at his own eyes in the mirror…
"Mako-chan!" his mother yelled through the door, startling him out of his trance. "What the heck are you doing in there? You're going to be late!"
What she left unsaid was her surprise that he was even up at all.
"I'll be done soon, okay?" he yelled back.
When he returned to his room after a suitably dignified pause, he shut his door and dug under his bed. He found it almost immediately, since he knew quite well where it was.
A single set of their school's female uniform, one he had kept instead of giving to Touma. Nominally, it was for "emergencies".
This was the summer uniform. This was the wrong season-
No, no. Focus!
He was going to hand it over to Touma. No sense in keeping it any longer, and he needed to get rid of it.
Why? Part of him asked.
He ignored that question, just like he ignored all the others.
He stuffed it into a likely corner of his bag and buried it under his notebooks, taking care not to let anything hang out. It would make his bag even heavier than it already was, but he would just have to suffer.
There was nothing to be afraid of.
"It's good to hear things turned out alright," Makoto said, awkwardly, not sure what else to say.
"Yes, I suppose," Touma said, leaning against the wall. She seemed normal, but Makoto thought he could detect a slight tension. He knew why he was nervous, but why was she?
It's normal, after what she's been through, he thought. It can't be easy to talk about this, even for her.
He thought for a moment. He knew he would normally say something, make some sort of joke, say something about how her experience was making him feel jealous, but he didn't think he had it in him. He couldn't even think of a good way of making it humorous.
I might as well be carrying a 1000-watt sign saying something's wrong, he thought sardonically.
"I—I guess we should head back, then," he said, turning to leave, fleeing the situation. "The next period is going to start pretty soon."
"Hold on a sec," she said.
Her voice seemed just a little off.
"What is it?" he asked, turning back. What was—
She was already next to him, pinning him to the wall with an elbow. Not too forcefully—he could have escaped had he really tried, but he was too surprised.
His blood pressure spiked.
He looked up, at her eyes above his, framed by hair, could feel her pushing up against him—
This is just like that dream!
"Wha—what are you doing, Touma? This—"
She tilted her head slightly.
"Your hair has gotten longer," she said blandly.
He looked away.
"Yes, I need to get a haircut. It's—please let me go. This isn't—"
Touma looked to her side, at the wall, but not really looking at the wall. He thought he saw her swallow.
She released him.
"What the hell was that?" he asked, immediately and instinctually.
"Sorry," she said, not really looking sorry. "I needed to test something."
"Everything you do is to test something!"
Touma just smiled vaguely.
It disturbed him. He had never seen this smile.
"I suppose. I want you to do something."
She looked at him.
He looked back, rubbing at his chest.
Touma looked up at the ceiling.
"For all Yoshino knows," she said airily, with almost no force behind her words. "There's still one thing I think she doesn't. I brought you one of your outfits. Wait for me after school, and you can change in the girls' bathroom. I'll cover for you."
"Wait—" Makoto began.
"And then we will visit Yoshino's," Touma continued, overriding him despite her still-aloof voice. "You haven't been there, right? I think you need a practice run. This will be perfect."
She looked at him, and again he looked back.
This is the last thing I need! I…
Why was she acting so strange?
"What's going on, Touma? Why do you sound so—"
"You will do it, won't you?" she asked, voice suddenly demanding and strong.
It wasn't that which affected him, but the way she had acted earlier, the constant need he felt to know what was going on, so that desire to protect.
He didn't want to do it, and frankly Yoshino scared him, but—
"Fine. I will," he said. "Your plan makes sense"—some sense, anyway—"but if there's something going on, I want to know."
He looked her, trying to extract words from her with his eyes.
She looked back and just smiled. That same, insane, vague smile that he had seen earlier. He didn't know what to make of it.
"We need to get back," she said, turning and walking away.
He just stared at her back.
She surprised him by turning her head back, still walking.
"I mean it," she said, this time with a hint of humor. "The chimes sounded while I was pinning you. I don't think you noticed."
Shit!
He ran after her.
"So what did you tell him?" Yoshino asked as they sat down at the four-desk table.
Following the normal pattern, they were in Uchida and Yoshino's classroom for lunch today. No one had really shown up yesterday, but still, best to follow the pattern.
"Just the truth," Touma said, after only the slightest of pauses. "Nothing special. Uchida seemed to have already been pretty thorough with her explanation yesterday."
"What about…" Yoshino asked, gesturing at Chiaki with her eyes.
"No. Not yet," Touma said. "I wouldn't even know how to describe it."
Next to her, Chiaki, wearing one of Uchida's spare uniforms, quietly unpacked her lunch, which today was identical to everyone else's. She didn't seem to be hearing a word they said. No one even took notice; this was pretty typical for her, in certain moods.
"She's been acting strange all day," Uchida said, not even pretending to be subtle. "I wonder what's going on."
"She doesn't want to talk about it," Touma said gloomily. "What can we do?"
She held up a piece of meat in her chopsticks, but seemed to have forgotten it was there.
"It's strange that a dream would affect her so much," Yoshino said, cracking the lid on her lunch. "I wonder what it was about?"
Touma shifted her hand—and the piece of food fell to the desk. Disappointed in herself, she picked it up and placed it on the lid, for later disposal.
They began to eat in silence. Chiaki, true to form, didn't even seem to have heard them.
"Where is Makoto, anyway?" Uchida asked after a while, to break the silence. "Wasn't he going to start eating lunch with us?"
"Probably with his friends," Yoshino said, skipping right past her main dish and munching on crackers and caviar. It was just like the cook to show off for something like this.
"I know what he said," she continued, carefully swallowing her food, "but it's still sort of strange for a guy to start eating lunch with a bunch of girls and totally abandon his own friends. At the very least, he's got, you know, split time."
"Maybe," Touma said, mouth full of food, gesturing with her chopsticks. "Maybe not. He rushed out the door when lunch started without even saying anything. We waited for him, but he didn't come back. I think he was carrying his stuff."
Chiaki placed her chopsticks down on the desk with a loud clatter, startling all of them.
"I'm going to the bathroom," she said, getting up and walking away determinedly.
They watched her walk away.
"I've never seen anyone that serious about going to the bathroom," Touma said, after a moment, thoughtful.
"Maybe she really wanted to go," Uchida commented.
I have truly lost it this time.
He hid in one of the stalls of the boy's bathroom, holding up the dress shirt of the female uniform he had pulled out of his bag.
It was such a simple plan. Bring it with him, give it to Touma after school. Simple. If Touma wanted him to be Mako-chan again, wearing something else, then fine, he would. It shouldn't even make a difference.
But the more he thought about it, the more it nagged at him.
He was giving it away, his one chance to do it again. His one escape route after he finally fulfilled his promise to Touma, closed the book on Mako-chan, and forgot about that part of himself forever. His one way out, and he was giving it away.
It shouldn't matter!
But it does! I know it does!
He knew why he had been desperate that morning to get rid of it. It was a temptation, one he couldn't risk being close to, one he had to dispose of. But when it came to actually doing so…
He clutched the fabric in his hands.
What the hell is wrong with me?
It was then that he had a truly crazy idea, one that defied all sense of reason.
He held the shirt up, stared at it, and could almost feel his own pupils dilate.
No, I can't! What am I—
Irresistibly, he moved his hand towards his collar, getting ready to make the change, the absurd logic drumming itself in his mind.
Do this, just once, it said, and you'll never feel the urge again. After all, what else would there be left to do?
And if I'm caught, then I certainly won't do so again—for a different reason.
It was horribly illogical, and he knew it, but the temptation now was so, so strong—
A loud crashing noise, just outside the entranceway, shocked him from his trance. He looked down at his unbuttoned shirt in horror, and hurried to put it back together.
"Oy! Watch where the hell you're going, baka-yaro!" shouted a voice, muffled by distance and the doorway to his bathroom stall.
His eyes widened. He knew that voice, of course.
Chiaki rubbed her backside, having fallen to the floor from the collision. She had been so focused in looking around her that she hadn't seen the third-year male, equally oblivious, walking the other way.
Yes, she was aware of the contradiction there.
Well, this is a disaster, she thought, morbidly.
"I ought to lay you out," she growled at the student now trying to help her up.
"I said I was sorry already!" he protested.
She shoved herself up, eschewing the pro-offered hand.
"I'd like to hear it a couple more times," she said, glaring at him, fist raised.
Chiaki was frustrated, and enjoyed taking it out on others.
The student backed off a couple of steps.
"First-years these days…" he commented, to whom she couldn't tell.
He then fled headlong.
Chiaki sighed.
She didn't know what she had been thinking, believing she could find Makoto just by going out and looking. A full circuit of the floor had yielded nothing, and had wasted significant amounts of time. Clearly, he didn't want to be found.
She leaned against the window on the side of the hall and stared out the window, at the many students, and rare couples, dining under the trees.
Chiaki stood there for a long moment, watching.
I should just go back. I'm not accomplishing anything out here. I'll catch him after school.
She turned, sighing again, and noted the restrooms on the other side of the hallway.
Now that you mention it, I do kind of need to go, she convinced herself. No sense wasting this trip—
A slight movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She tilted her head slightly.
Oh?
She lunged forward, jerking Makoto out of the entranceway before he had a chance to react, grabbing him by the collar.
"Stalking me, are you?"
"N—No!" he spluttered. "Stalking? No, I just happened to be here!"
"Uh-huh," she said, skeptical. She let go of him though, confident he wouldn't go so far as to actually run.
He rubbed at his neck, circling back to pick up his dropped bag, wondering why everyone was so violent today.
"Any reason you've been avoiding me the whole day?" she asked, arms crossed.
That was perfectly true. He had spent the whole day finding obvious excuses to leave every time she so much as glanced in his general direction—well, between classes, anyway. He had never before made so many bathroom trips in one day.
Makoto stiffened, still in the process of picking his bag up off the floor.
"No I haven't!" he said, way too late.
"Like hell you haven't. Come on," she ordered, gesturing with her finger that he should follow.
He turned to look.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"Somewhere else," she said simply, already leaving, confident that he would follow.
He did.
He found himself in the abandoned wing of the school.
"I wonder why they'd just leave a place like this," he commented, mostly to himself.
"They're reopening it in a week," Chiaki said, surprising him by responding. "Since they've gotten rid of the termites."
She didn't look back though.
"Oh, I see," he said, thinking he had never heard about these termites.
Chiaki slid open the door to one of the empty classrooms and stepped in, beckoning him to follow.
"I think we're isolated enough now," she said, turning to look at him for the first time in the entire walk. "Close that door."
He realized as he slid the door closed that he was very, very nervous.
"Now," she said, briskly, leaning on a dust-covered desk. "Let's hear about why you've been avoiding me. I have a few theories, but I want to hear it from you."
He hesitated in answering, which gave Chiaki time to review her plans mentally.
Among the theories she had in mind was the one Chiaki thought of as "Yoshino's theory". She didn't want to believe it, but it seemed disturbingly likely.
So what if they have fallen for each other? Part of her thought. You're not ready for this. It hurts you. You don't want this.
She looked down at her hand.
That's a lie. Even if it hurts, I won't stand for being left alone!
I don't want to be alone again.
"Chiaki?" Makoto asked, finally, tentatively. He hadn't said a word. Based on her previous behavior, he had expected her to continue acting brusque, demanding answers, but instead found her looking pensive, staring at her hands.
That seemed to wake her. She glanced around rapidly and stood up straight. She continued without missing a beat.
"So? Was it because of what happened yesterday? Are you unhappy about being left out? Or the fact that no one told you?" she asked, rapid-fire.
"I-" Makoto began, standing nervously.
"Touma must have told you," she said, overriding him, providing answers she clearly already had prepared. "There was no time; things were happening too fast. And after that, it wouldn't really have been appropriate to invite you."
"I wasn't-" Makoto said.
"Though, you know," Chiaki drove on, oblivious. "It probably didn't make sense to have both me and her, but Yoshino is an excellent chaperone, and I got sort of roped in—"
"Chiaki!" he yelled.
She stopped, obviously shocked at herself.
She was rambling. He had never heard her do so before. Between that and her erratic behavior…
"I was okay with it," he said, as reassuringly as he could. "Really. Though I would have wished for someone to call me. It's not as if I don't care. Then again, I don't really have a cell phone..."
Babbling on about tangential topics, he felt strangely less nervous. It was no longer like an interrogation.
Chiaki thought. Despite what she had said about "theories", she realized that he had just rejected her best alternative. Then—
She sucked in a breath, loudly enough for Makoto to stop talking.
"Is it possible that you saw?" she asked, looking at him carefully and earnestly.
"Saw what?" he asked, after a moment, looking back.
She searched his eyes. He looked nervous, but didn't seem to know.
The possible implications of that tore at her.
No! You're assuming too much!
Even if he hadn't, there were other perfectly good explanations.
Still…
She risked an extra detail.
"Tuesday, after the game? If you didn't see, then nevermind."
She tried to say it almost flippantly.
His eyes widened and darted around wildly.
"How—how did you know I saw?" he said, horrified. "I haven't even told Touma that! Did Akira say something?"
Almost paradoxically, Chiaki relaxed. She had at least prepared an answer for this.
So that was how he knew, she realized.
"Maybe he did," she said, dragging out the words. "But if you saw it, then you also know that…it didn't quite turn out…"
Her voice trailed off. This in and of itself was pretty bad.
"I saw," he said, his eyes focused on the wooden chair next to him instead of on her.
"I should be angry at her," he said quietly, after a moment, continuing his strange pattern of avoiding her eyes. "But it's funny."
He thought about what he should say.
"I can't be angry at her," he continued. "I hope that makes sense. But I am jealous, of course."
He smiled wanly, a quiet version of the winning smile he didn't know he had, subconsciously try to make her happy.
It didn't work this time.
Chiaki didn't say anything. He had blown her hopes apart.
"Chiaki?" he asked, trying to make eye contact.
She again lunged forward, but this time grabbing him by the shoulders. He looked at her in shock. She had been so rigidly composed a moment ago, but now—now, she looked in despair. And he had no idea why.
"Then why?" she demanded, eyes pleading, shaking him forcefully. "Why are you avoiding me? Is it because I haven't been paying enough attention to you? You know why. I thought you understood—"
"Of course I do!" he yelled, trying to stem the tide. "I care for her too! Yes, maybe I'm a little jealous, but I swallow it, since I care too."
Strangely, that seemed to make it worse.
"Then why?" she demanded. "You're avoiding me, but you haven't given me a single reason! Are you giving up? Are you giving up just because she's kissed me? You know I hate being given up on!"
If you two abandon me—
"And if you were worried by the way I banned you from the house—that was partly jealousy, with the whole Haruka thing. That goes both ways. Though I admit it started off one way."
She punched him softly in the chest with her right hand, once, then again, a pale imitation of her usual instinctive violence.
"You baka-yaro…" she said quietly.
Makoto looked at her with shock and a small dose of fear.
"No, of course not—"
"If Yoshino is right…" she interrupted, looking him in the eye, swallowing to stabilize her shaky voice. "If Yoshino is right, then please don't leave me behind. That's all I ask. Just don't leave me alone."
"Yoshino?" Makoto managed to say. "What are you talking about?"
Chiaki looked straight at the ground.
"I suppose I should demonstrate to you what you're missing," she said.
"What are you—" he began.
She pressed her lips against his.
A warm body, warm lips—for a long moment he was lost. It was…electric. There was no other way to describe it. And the way she moved…
It ended, leaving him panting.
Then, and only then, did his mind recover.
"Chiaki—"he tried to say.
Her face seemed to twitch. She crossed her arms, as if cold.
"Chiaki?" he asked, confused and worried.
"It hurts," she said, but clearly not in response to him, looking somewhere else entirely. "I don't know why."
"Tell me what's wrong, Chiaki!"
He raised his arm to emphasize what he was saying.
"Lunch is almost over," she said mechanically, turning to leave.
"Chiaki, I—" he began again, to what was suddenly an empty room.
I love you! I can't stand to see you like this.
He sank to his knees.
There's no way I can leave her now.
Standing outside the door like he was, Makoto couldn't help but overhear.
Okay, so maybe he leaned over just a little to get closer, and maybe he could simply have moved to avoid eavesdropping, but the point remained that he hadn't intended to overhear.
"Chiaki-chan," their homeroom instructor said, muffled by the partially-closed door of the room. "Ordinarily, 'family business' would be none of my business—"
"It isn't," she growled in response. Makoto could hear the annoyance even from where he stood.
"—but it becomes so when it starts to interfere with your studies," the man persisted. "And it is indeed part of my duties to monitor your welfare. Now, it's true that it's the end of the year and it's not too big a deal—"
"Damn straight," Chiaki said.
During the pause that followed, Makoto imagined their teacher sighing.
"I'm just concerned, okay?" the teacher said sympathetically. "It'd be one thing if you were just missing class, but your behavior is getting strange. For one thing, you're zoning out in class."
"I'll focus more," Chiaki said, making it clear she wanted this conversation over.
"That's not the point," he insisted. "I've never had to worry about you before. I just want some assurance that things are fine."
"You have it. They're fine," she shot back, not giving an inch.
Makoto knew that Chiaki's interactions with their teacher were normally quite friendly. But if he were her, in this conversation, he didn't know that he would have been any less acrid.
"Do you mind bringing one of your sisters?" he asked, trying a different tack. "It must be hard on them, with no parents. Even a phone call—"
"What the hell are you trying to imply? No!" she said, clearly angry now.
"What if I call—"
"What the hell are you doing?" Touma asked, pulling Makoto away from the classroom doorway, where he had mysteriously ended up with his ear right at the edge of the partially closed door.
Makoto shifted guiltily.
"You were taking so long to get back, and I didn't really have anything to do, and I couldn't stand in there—"
"Forget it," she said, clearly not buying any of it. "And club business takes time, okay? I didn't know they would be looking for me either."
Makoto looked straight at her, which meant looking at her neck. So distracting—
"Let's go," she added, starting to walk away.
"Actually…" he began tentatively.
She stopped and looked back.
"Could you tell me exactly what you're planning?" he asked, shifting, this time from the awkwardness. "I mean, I'm not sure anymore if I want to do this, and it would help if I knew what you were doing."
He lamented how frustrating it was to ask something without being to say exactly what he was asking, or being able to explain the real reasons behind his asking, beyond a vague "I'm not sure if…"
She grabbed him by the wrist, startling him.
"Trying to back out, huh? Well I won't let you!"
He tried to protest, but as she dragged him down the hallway, she ignored his words without any sign of acknowledgement, and he knew she wouldn't let him go.
She dragged him into the bent entryway of the nearest girl's bathroom before sticking her head in to look around.
"It's clear," she said, shoving her bag into his hands. "It's all in the bag, go find a stall."
"But—"
"Just do it!"
He walked to the nearest stall, guiltily glancing around.
Well, the rumors about the bathroom, at least, seem to be untrue, he thought sardonically, opening the bag.
He'd noticed that whenever Touma chose clothes for him, she had a bias toward the more feminine items in his collection. That seemed to suit her taste. He couldn't even protest, since he had bought them in the first place.
He took a deep breath, and began to change.
"Looking good," she said when he finally emerged again.
"Ah, thanks, I guess," he said.
He looked at her impassive face. It wasn't her style to compliment him. Or was she trying to needle him?
They headed out. The padded bra bothered him, but he knew he'd get used to it again soon enough.
They found Yoshino's car already waiting for them discreetly.
"You're late," Uchida complained, opening the passenger side door. Yoshino watched them from deeper inside.
"Sorry," Touma said. "It takes some time for Mako-chan to get here from her school, you see."
Uchida rolled her eyes.
"We could have picked her up," Yoshino commented, leaning forward.
"No need, no need," Touma responded, quite politely, before sticking her head into the pitch-black car.
"I'm sorry, Uchida," she said. "Do you mind sitting in front? I've got stuff to say to Mako-chan here."
"I guess," Uchida said, trying to read Touma's face.
She got out and moved to the front passenger seat.
The moment Makoto sat down and closed the door, he grabbed Touma's sleeve.
"Uchida's here too?" he asked, whispering.
"Sure," she said, ignoring his implied signal to speak quietly. "Why not?"
While Makoto fumbled for a way to indicate his displeasure, Touma turned towards Yoshino.
"Chiaki has gone home, right?"
"Yes," Yoshino said, looking at her sidelong. "We didn't tell her. That's what you wanted, after all."
"Good, good," Touma said, seemingly satisfied.
They sat in silence for a while as the car drove.
"Ah, Mako-chan," Touma said suddenly, grabbing him by the shoulder. "I don't see enough of you! You should visit more often!"
Uchida looked back at them, only more perplexed now.
What she is doing? He thought. What's the point in trying to fool Yoshino now?
The other fact, the one he was trying to ignore, was that she was being uncomfortably intimate—enough that Yoshino looked at them wonderingly. He knew she didn't care very much, but he really wished she would remember that it was very distracting to guys such as him. Though it was strange; she didn't usually do this.
No, that's not fair. How could Touma know you've been so irrational as to develop a crush on her?
With that thought, he blushed irrepressibly.
Touma finally stopped her act, but it was already too late: Yoshino had already raised an eyebrow.
Damn. I wonder what she's—
No, he would avoid speculating on her thoughts. And she would know the truth soon enough.
He cringed, looking out the windows to his left, away from Yoshino and her dark, calculating eyes.
When no one said anything for a while, he examined the car to distract himself.
Fancy, he thought.
It was nothing compared to the mansion.
Eventually, after he finally finishing gawking, they finally settled in to crackers and other snacks. Makoto had wanted to try playing games on Yoshino's giant TV—even though he wasn't much of a gamer—but Touma had insisted they go under the gazebo outside to "enjoy the view." It had taken him too long, but he eventually realized the obvious underlying logic.
More isolated, of course. This way it's just Yoshino, and not also whatever servants happen to be in the vicinity.
He quietly sipped Yoshino's weird foreign tea while the others chatted, making a face at the taste.
The sugar doesn't hide the taste well enough.
"Give it a chance," Yoshino said, surprising him by addressing him directly. "You'll get used to it. Uchida did."
"It's pretty good, I think," Uchida said supportively.
"Yeah she got used to it," Touma said, setting her cup down on the ornate glass table. "After like seven years. Just give us green tea or something, like you used to do."
Yoshino pouted, a rare expression for her.
"It's Earl Grey, my favorite," she said, stubbornly. "I'm going to keep giving it to you until you like it. That's what I decided."
"You tell 'em!" Uchida added with sudden enthusiasm.
They looked at her questioningly.
"What? She looks passionate about it," Uchida said, slightly embarrassed.
After an awkward silence, Makoto drank the rest of his tea politely. Touma followed suit.
"Anyway," Touma said. "Mako-chan here has an announcement to make."
Yoshino and Uchida looked at him questioningly.
Damn it, Touma! At least have the decency to warn me!
He sat there looking at the table for a long moment, before finally propping himself on his arms and swallowing hard. He felt a surge of blood rush up his cheeks.
Uchida, watching him, suddenly intuited what was going on.
"You're not seriously going to—" she began, before biting her tongue and looking at Yoshino, who, wearing a look of strong interest, gave no sign of knowing what was coming.
Uchida didn't need to finish. The sheer astonishment on her face told him everything he needed to know.
Makoto swallowed hard, again.
That's it. Time to get rid of this irrational fear of Yoshino.
"The—the truth is…"
No, you're doing this wrong!
He cleared his throat and began again, but this time in his normal "Makoto" voice.
"Mako-chan was never a real person. Mako-chan was just a way for me to get into Chiaki's house. I—"
He stopped, taking a deep breath to stabilize himself. He looked back at Yoshino's eyes, which showed astonishment and utter bafflement at the surreal nonsense he was suddenly spewing. He looked away.
"I am Makoto. I—I…always have been. Just me, wearing girl's clothes and…and a padded bra. I—"
He was blushing the darkest shade of red he had ever managed, he knew, but there was no helping it. He reached up and pulled the hairpin out of his hair, quickly rearranging it into its normal disheveled look.
"I'm sorry for deceiving you!" he said loudly, closing his eyes. "I just couldn't stand to be banned from her house, and one thing led to another, and…and…"
He opened his eyes, finally risking a look at Yoshino's face. She had set down her teacup and was looking back with a wide-eyed catatonic look.
"Y—Yoshino?" he asked, warily.
Her eye twitched slightly. She reached for her teacup, hand shaking.
"Oy, Yoshino!" Touma said, getting up and leaning on the table. Uchida waved a hand in front of her face.
Yoshino sat frozen for a long moment, tea sloshing back and forth in her cup.
Slowly, she stood up and turned away from them, abandoning her tea. Makoto braced himself for the worst.
She seemed to say something. They all leaned in to listen.
Without any warning, she started laughing, spasmodically and uncontrollably doubling over. The other three just watched, at first surprised, then unsure of what to do.
After what must have been a full minute, she finally stopped convulsing with laughter, managing to straighten herself back up and wipe the tears from her eyes.
Finally she slowed down. Makoto wasn't sure if this was a good or bad sign.
"I—I'm sorry," she said, turning back around, still trying to remove the crazy smile from her face. "That must have been the most I've ever been blindsided. The absurdity just got to me. I didn't have a clue. Congratulations on fooling me."
"I thought you might have figured it out," Makoto said, saying the only thing he could think of.
"Why would you think so?" Yoshino said, looking him over. "And—oh, god, you just look so hilarious now that I know who you are."
Makoto just stood, silently embarrassed, while she snickered for a little while longer.
After a long moment, she seemed to recover her poise.
"It makes so much sense, now that I think about," she said, looking up thoughtfully. "It explains so much."
She looked back down.
Makoto, looking in her eyes, could almost see the wheels turning in her head. That smirk of hers was maddening.
"Does Chiaki know?" she asked.
"No," he and Touma said, simultaneously.
"That's going to be a problem, isn't it?" Yoshino asked rhetorically, smirk fading.
"Yes, yes it is," Makoto said, rubbing the back of his head, suddenly very self-conscious in his dress. "This is, uh, practice for the real thing. Supposedly."
"I see," Yoshino said, preferring to keep her thoughts to herself, for now.
They looked at each other in silence.
"There's one more thing," Touma said, once she was sure it was safe to change subjects.
They looked at her.
"Pretty soon everyone will know about this," she said, confidentially, "but would you two mind if he still did this once in a while? You know, if he went shopping with us? He'd really like that."
Makoto just stared at her, blinking and speechless.
"That'd be perfectly fine," Uchida responded, instantly, still sitting.
"I guess that'd be okay," Yoshino said, failing to suppress a newfound smirk.
"Touma! I didn't ask for that!" he managed to finally exclaim, appalled. He leaned forward as he did so, causing his dress to swirl slightly around his ankles.
"Don't be so shy, Mako-chan," Touma said, also trying to keep her mouth from twitching into a smirk. "I'm just asking for you. You know you want to."
"Don't just—" he began.
"Come off it, Makoto," Uchida said, drinking her tea and emphasizing her sentences for rhetoric effect. "You're not fooling anyone. We all know you like it. We won't make fun of you…too much."
"That's right!" Yoshino said, looking at Uchida with the light of sudden comprehension. For a confused second, Makoto thought Yoshino was agreeing with the rest of them.
"You knew the whole time!" Yoshino said, leaning over Uchida menacingly. "This is what you were hiding from me!"
They experienced a brief moment of silence.
"Y—yes" Uchida said, after deciding she couldn't possibly lie, leaning away from Yoshino and eying her warily. "But you have to understand, it was necessary—"
"This deserves punishment!" Yoshino exclaimed, jumping over and pulling Uchida by the pigtails.
"NO! Not the hair! It hurts! Come on, stop!" Uchida exclaimed desperately, grabbing at Yoshino's hands.
Touma and Makoto watched the comedy routine for a brief moment.
"Speaking of which," Touma said, turning towards Makoto. "This is a good moment to discuss certain issues."
"Yes," Makoto said, now slightly incensed. "Such as how you keep pushing me into things."
"Something like that," Touma said, turning and putting her hands on the table.
"Do you two mind if we go somewhere else for a while?" she asked.
Yoshino and Uchida froze in place.
"Oh, I don't mind," Yoshino said.
"Sure, go ahead," Uchida agreed.
They walked off, leaving them to their fun.
"So this was your room, huh?" Makoto asked when she closed the door behind them. He had taken the time, just before entering the building, to return his own hair to the correct female conformation.
"Yes," Touma said. "Though only for the first day. It's too much to explain."
"I see."
Touma shuffled over to her bags in the corner, which were now somewhat disheveled due to her repeated need to rifle through them for toothbrushes and other necessary items. She kneeled down and began putting things back in order, preparing for her later return home.
Looking at her from the back, Makoto realized that her hair was starting to resemble Yoshino's. He wondered when, if ever, she would cut it back again.
He shifted nervously in the silence.
"So why—" he began, before cutting himself off, thinking better of it. He wanted to question Touma's actions, but had realized that doing so would open a can of worms he didn't want to get into.
Touma zipped up a bag in one loud, continuous motion, before standing up.
"You want to know why I keep trying to encourage you to be Mako-chan more, yes?" she asked, turning to look at him with one eye.
"It doesn't make sense," he said, seeing no way out of this discussion. "If you just wanted to see Mako-chan more often, for some crazy reason, then you wouldn't have convinced me to start confessing it to everyone."
"Yeah, crazy reason…" she commented, looking off to one side, chuckling half-heartedly.
"Hmm?" He asked, not sure he caught the sentence correctly.
"No, nevermind," she said. "You might want to sit down for this."
He did so, on the bed that was next to him, the one she had slept in, dreading what was coming.
"It makes perfect sense," she said, with a crooked smile. "And you know it. My goal isn't just to see Mako-chan more often. It's to make you admit it."
"What?" he asked.
"You responded too quickly," she said instantly, trying to pin him with a look. "If you hadn't been expecting that, you would have had to think about it. And you know what I'm talking about."
"I don't!" he insisted, trying to act as innocent as he could, but he knowing it would fail.
"It's just like Uchida said," Touma said, walking over to loom over him. Her face told him that, this once, she was not prepared to let it go.
"Come off it. No one believes you," she continued. "It was believable at the very beginning, but no one gets so good at it, works so hard at it, and goes out shopping so much on his own initiative, without some other reason. We see the zest in what you do."
She paused to recollect her thoughts.
"Just think about the speech you gave to me earlier and how deeply you were into it. I'm only saying what we've both already accepted. Yoshino just found out, but if I asked her, she would agree. You enjoy it."
"I do not!" he protested, but this debate was lost. It was too difficult to argue with someone who knew you that well. He could only continue to deny without elaboration.
"And you just admitted you know what I'm talking about," she said, leaning down and looking straight into his eyes. Her eyes showed a hint of mischief. "I saw the uniform you were hiding in your bag, Mako-chan. Far too obvious. You were being careless."
His eyes widened, and he blushed despite himself.
"What are you doing digging in my bag? That's—agh, nevermind. I was only bringing it to give it you! I wanted—I wanted to get rid of it!"
"Mhm," she said, standing back up and making a gesture with her hand. "And even if that were true, and you weren't bringing it to satisfy your own urge to dress up, then when why would you need to get rid of it? The most logical thing would be to keep it, for emergencies, which is what you've been doing."
She brought every logical argument she could think to bear, trying to checkmate him.
"I doubt you just suddenly had a bout of shame, after all these months," she elaborated. "And why give it to me, where it would still be distantly accessible? Why not throw it away?"
He stammered, trying to come up with an answer on the spot.
"You wanted to get rid of the temptation," Touma continued. "But you still couldn't bring yourself to get rid of it entirely. And if there's a temptation, then there must be something tempting about it."
She stopped to let that sentence sink in before continuing.
"When you're with your male friends, you act like an attention-grabbing idiot. You used to act like that around us too. But as you got more comfortable, you started doing it less and less. This is closer to your true self, isn't it? You only do that because that's the way you discovered you could fit in with them, but around Uchida and Yoshino, there's no need. And so you don't."
He bit his lip. Damn, they really did read each other like open books.
She leaned down again.
"It's such a simple first step. Just stop denying what you know to be true. We can work from there. What do you gain by it?"
"And what do I gain by admitting it?" he shot back, no longer able to contain himself, realizing full well he was conceding the point of fact. "What do I gain? I confirm to everyone that I'm crazy? You were right. I have to confess! I have to make it impossible to do this again!"
He dodged her gaze, losing composure slightly.
"That's the only way I can—can control myself! That's the only reason I agreed to this! Why—why do you keep getting in my way?"
"Such flawed logic," Touma said, shaking her head patronizingly. "It wouldn't stop you at all. All that you would have to do is to make the request I made for you today, and you could go right back to doing it! You'd just have to admit you want to."
"I would never admit that!" he said. "Even if—"
He stopped himself, biting his tongue just in time, but of course it didn't matter.
"What do you want?" he asked quietly. "Why does this matter so much to you?"
She sat down next to him.
"The real question is: 'what do you want?'" she rebutted. "Because I guarantee it's not to spend the rest of your life miserable."
"It will go away eventually," he recited like a mantra, miserable. "It will go away, if I manage to suppress it long enough. It's just a bad habit Kana got me into."
"And what if it doesn't?" she asked.
He just looked down, wishing desperately that life had turned out different somehow.
"It really isn't fair," Touma said, after watching him for a while. "I've spent most of my life living the mirror image of what you want, but it's not even considered that strange. I'm just a tomboy. Whereas you—you would be a pervert."
"I wanted desperately to be a boy when I was younger," she said, when he didn't say anything. "I think I told you that. And I tried, but of course it didn't work out. Not to mention my brothers were having none of it."
She absently looked at her fingernails, but in her mind dug through her own past. She spoke detachedly.
"I honestly thought I'd gotten over it, but when I met Fujioka, it turned out I hadn't. Not at all. It was just so relaxing, being able to act like myself, without him placing weird expectations on me. When he found out, I broke down. I actually broke down. I thought I was losing it forever."
"And you know, I sort of was. Fujioka tries his best, but I can tell he thinks of me differently now, just a little. It's not his fault. It wasn't really possible."
"I tried seeing if I could go back," she said, toying with her bangs. "And it seems the clothes, the hair: they don't really matter to me. But the attitude, the speech mannerisms, it feels so unnatural, so I stopped really trying. I'm sure you've noticed by now."
"I know," Makoto said softly.
Touma looked up in surprise at him finally reacting.
"I know it's not fair," he said, finally looking up at her. "But what the hell can I do? Life is what it is. I can't go around wishing things were a certain way. Like you said. It's not possible. No one will accept me. The only way out is to hope I can forget about it."
She looked at his slumped figure.
"You missed the whole point of what I was saying," Touma said, grabbing his shoulder.
"There will always be those who accept you," she said. "Fujioka accepted me, when I never thought he would. Chiaki did. All of you have. Even my brothers will eventually. And if one of you really did reject me, then there are always others."
"You heard what happened today. Uchida and Yoshino don't care. I don't care. And, in the end, you even dare to tell Chiaki. You would never do that if you didn't think she was okay with it! Your parents, the future—we'll cross that bridge when we come to it!"
She paused, trying to read his expression. She knew this realization had been long in coming, and that he had known all along, but that he had fought tooth and nail against it. She understood the process that underlay it.
"I know what it's like, okay?" Touma said, trying to get him to make eye contact. "I learned, the hard way, that as long as there's someone there for you, it doesn't matter. A true friend wouldn't care. Fujioka didn't. Chiaki will be there. I'll be there."
He started to move, and she removed her arm. She expected him to get up.
Instead, he leaned over and pressed his face into her arm, social taboos having just enough force to shift his aim. She didn't realize he was weeping until he felt the moisture soak through her thin shirtsleeve.
She stroked his hair.
"Life is so stupid," he said.
"I know," she said soothingly.
He sat up, wiping his eyes with his dress sleeve.
"I should stop ruining your shirts," he said.
"Too late," she said, smiling, thinking it was again time for some levity.
"When I said life is stupid," he began, looking away. "I meant something pretty specific."
Touma frowned, realizing this conversation was not ending in the way she had expected.
"I told you how I fell in love with Chiaki, how I wanted someone who would depend on me. Today, I was reminded of just how much I love her. But…"
"But you know, it's not bad having something to support me instead," he continued, looking wistful. "And you've got your own share of problems."
Touma widened her eyes.
"Now that I think about it, it's been true for a long time," he said, still avoiding her eyes. "But I never realized, not until recently, just how nice you are, how much support you need, how—how beautiful you are."
He swallowed, hard. He was starting to stutter.
"I love Chiaki, of course. But it's so stupid! I don't know how I let this happen. But after what you said, I just—just don't think I should hide it anymore. I shouldn't suppress it! You should know. You said you'd support me, so I'll take the risk—"
"I'm sorry!" he said, looking her desperately in the eyes, grabbing one of her hands. "This is a confession! I've fallen in love with you! I'm so, so stupid. I know you aren't attracted to guys, but I can't help but—If there were a chance, I'm not even sure which of you—I can't stand to lose—goddamn it, I don't even know what I'm saying! Just, just…"
He stopped, looking up at her wide eyes, breathing heavily.
"Well, now you know," he said gloomily, looking down at the bed sheet where she sat, waiting for the shocked diatribe he knew must come.
It didn't.
He looked up, finally, to find her staring at the floor, twisting her hair in her hand.
"You—" he began.
"I was so sure," she said. "My love for her is unassailable and unconditional. There is nothing I would not do for her. That is what I told myself."
"I was not wrong," she said, looking down. "But I forgot that love is not exclusive, whatever the romance novels say. Monomaniacal, yes, but we love our families, our friends, just in different ways. And should things change just a little, if one is just a little careless, then things may change flavors."
It wasn't perfectly expressed, but it was one of the most poetic things he had ever heard her say.
"I was surprised because I expected anything like this to manifest itself first as a weakening of my feelings for her, but that…wasn't necessary at all."
She looked at him, finally, and the conflict in her eyes looked strikingly, intimately familiar. They—
His eyes widened.
—looked just like his own, in the mirror that morning.
"You really—" he began.
"You wormed yourself in the backdoor, you bastard," smiling again that strange smile of hers. "I made myself sound so awesome, didn't I? Well, it's a pretty good question, why I care so much about Mako-chan. I thought it was only because I cared about you, but it's also—"
She shifted herself partially onto the bed and leaned far over, straight into his face, invading his personal space in a manner which, he suddenly realized, she had been doing for the entire day.
"I like a pretty face to look at just as much as any of you boys," she said, thumbing his hairpin. "And you're so much more tempting in this form."
He recoiled, head spinning, crawling backwards.
"What the hell are you doing?" he asked, again blushing, trying not to look at her eyes, trying not to drown in her gaze.
"You look so cute when you do that, do you know that?" she said, moving over.
He realized that the headboard was right behind him and he had nowhere to retreat to.
"Such an unconventional guy," she said, grabbing her chin and forcing him to look back. "So passive, so emotional, so shy, and so…adorable. If there were any guy in the world I could fall for, it would have to be you."
"I know you're attracted," she continued.
He looked back into her eyes, so clear, and for that instant, the moment overrode his judgment, words he had heard earlier imprinting themselves on his thoughts.
I…should know what I'm missing.
His arm shot out and grabbed the back of her head, pushing it forward, so that her lips were positioned perfectly over his. It didn't have much distance to travel.
He got in a long, long moment of bliss. Ten seconds, maybe, if he had had the presence of mind to count.
Touma twitched.
A thunderous impact to the side of his head, jolting him awake.
He looked up at the source.
Touma rubbed the back of her hand, blushing furiously.
"What the hell are you doing?" she asked.
He blinked rapidly. What had he been doing?
"I—I thought that, you know—that maybe it was appropriate to—I, I got carried away, okay? But what the hell were you doing?"
He almost yelled the last sentence, as if the louder he said it, the more the blame could be deflected away from him.
Touma looked away.
"You—you weren't supposed to actually do it! I, I was just, ah…"
She blushed furiously, making intricate nervous gestures with her hands.
It occurred to him that she, too, had gotten carried away.
"We're sunk," he said, sitting back up. "We have no goddamn clue anymore, do we? Who we want. I don't even know how to go about deciding. Do you have any idea?"
Touma looked into the middle distance, having calmed down.
"We must tell her," she said. "It's only fair. Tomorrow, we can clarify everything. About you. About us. Maybe we can decide. Maybe we just…won't decide. Damn it, I don't know! I don't know. But the three of us will carry through."
"Touma…" he began. She looked at him.
"I'm not sure if it's safe," he said. "She's breaking apart. Something's wrong. I don't think—"
"Ah, geez!" Touma said, freshly aggravated. "You keep saying that, but…breaking apart?"
Touma stopped, narrowing her eyebrows in confusion, realizing he had never said this particular line before.
Makoto looked down.
"I—" he began, before stopping to think about it again.
"Let me tell you what happened at lunch," he said, finally.
Touma listened, with ever-increasing astonishment, as his story unfolded.
"Did she really—" Touma tried to ask, halfway through.
"Of course she did," Makoto said. "Why would I make this up? I doubt I'd have the imagination to. She's paranoid that we're abandoning her, and she won't talk about it. At all."
Touma realized something, and it showed on her face.
"That's—" she began. Makoto looked at her curiously.
"There's something else she won't talk about," she said. "She says she's been having these horrible dreams, but she won't tell us what they're about."
"Why do you say they're horrible then?" he asked.
"Because they affect her so much!" Touma said. "There was one just this morning, and you should have seen it! We couldn't wake her up, and the facial expressions she was making…"
She looked away, failing to finish the sentence.
"Anyway," she added. "I don't think you noticed, since you kept leaving for some reason, but she's been acting strange all day. Though I never thought this strange. She told us the previous ones were about her childhood, but I'm not sure."
They sat and thought for a while.
"Do you see my point then?" he asked, finally. "I don't dare do anything. Any little thing—just my cross-dressing alone, for example—might do it. She can't take it anymore."
"She needs our support," Touma said.
"She won't take it," Makoto said. "For things like this, she doesn't trust anybody. She could never ask Yoshino for help like you did. Not me, not you, not her sisters. You know that's how it is. She's always gone it alone, but this time she might…snap."
"We have to talk to her," Touma said. "What good are we otherwise? If she won't take it, we have to make her. What other way is there? We can sort out the other stuff first. First we need to know what's eating at her."
After a moment, Makoto nodded, slowly, hands on his chest.
"We've been here too long," he said. "They'll be wondering what the heck we're doing. I…I hope she's alright. I won't be able to sleep tonight."
"Neither will I," Touma said. "Let's go."
They found Yoshino outside the doorway, tapping her foot impatiently. Uchida tilted her head.
"That took quite a while," she said. "I was afraid I was going to have to intervene."
Uchida and Makoto looked at her in confusion, but Touma leveled a harsh warning glare.
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding, geez," Yoshino said, waving her hand. "Anyway, I have a great idea for dinner. I can take you guys to this place I know. Fancy and formal, but don't worry about it, I've got stuff you can wear. I already have a dress picked out for Makoto—I mean, Mako-chan here."
Makoto made a face but, unusually, didn't complain.
"Oh, that place? I love that place!" Uchida said.
Touma rubbed the back of her head.
"I guess, but I wouldn't feel right if we didn't pay—"
"Don't try," Uchida said. "You can't afford it."
Uchida realized immediately she had accidentally said the first thing that came to her mind.
Yoshino grimaced. The others looked at Uchida.
"What? It's true!" Uchida said, flustered, stubbornly refusing to admit error.
"Let's just go look at those dresses," Yoshino said, placing her face in her palm in intentionally open vexation. "When we get back, Yuka, I'm going to have a long talk with you about social niceties."
Uchida made an aggrieved expression and stuck out her tongue. Makoto and Touma glanced at each other.
"Let's just get going," Touma suggested.
"You sure you don't need any help with those bags?" he asked as they dropped him off in front of where he lived.
"Nah, I'm good," Touma said, waving back. "Thanks anyway."
He watched as the car pulled away.
Dinner had been…interesting. He had felt self-conscious, dressed as he was among all those strangers, but no one even stopped to look in his direction. Eventually, as he always had, he had gotten used to it.
He rubbed his belly. Kobe steak was indeed as good as they said it was, and Yoshino had over-ordered.
At first, he had been surprised at the decorum and politeness with which Uchida had carried herself, but it hadn't been hard to figure out the answer to that. She and Yoshino were practically attached at the hip, and she herself had implied she had been there before. Uchida was just used to it.
Man, no wonder she's like that. Yoshino is spoiling her.
He had changed back in a garden shed isolated somewhere on Yoshino's property, after swearing her chauffeur up and down to secrecy. He had acceded, but not before shaking his head ruefully at the kinds of friends Yoshino was accruing.
"So it goes," he said out loud, looking out at the now dark scenery.
I could get used to this, he thought, to himself. I really could.
He dug around in his bag for his door key. Yoshino had called during the afternoon, so his parents wouldn't be surprised by his lateness.
"I'm back," he announced, stepping over the threshold, looking around.
His father's shoes weren't there.
That man never gets home on time, he thought. Well, what of it?
He closed and locked the door behind him, taking his shoes off.
"Welcome back, Mako-chan" his mother said, appearing in the hallway.
She seemed to hesitate. Her eyes flashed at him.
"Mom?" he asked.
"Go drop your bag off in your room," she said. "I prepared some fruit and stuff."
"Can I at least shower first?" he asked. I'm not really hungry right now."
"Well, I cut them, so they'll oxidize if we wait any longer," she said. "Just eat what you can."
"Alright, fine."
She had an inalienable ritual: fruit and tea at night, and she always insisted he join. It could be worse.
He did as asked, dropping off his bag, but he stopped to carefully hide the uniform back under his bed.
That's Mom for you, he thought.
On rare occasions, she was the type to drop words like 'oxidize' into conversation. He never asked, but he was sure she was much more intelligent than she let on. She never had any trouble when he asked about homework, and in fact seemed to find most of it trivial.
Well, that didn't necessarily prove anything. He was only in middle school after all.
He sat down across from her, politely grabbing and eating a kiwi slice via the provided toothpick. He didn't like kiwi—he thought it was too sour—but she was always going on about vitamin C and whatnot, so he knew to just bear it, lest she scold him.
"Well, did you have fun?" she asked.
"Yeah, I did," he said, truthfully. "There's not much I can say. I think I told you before that Yoshino is wealthy. It was fairly interesting."
She smiled through the steam coming from her teacup.
"How was dinner?"
"We went out to eat, actually. It was…pretty good."
"I see."
She set down her teacup, grabbed a strawberry, and bit off most of it whole.
"Well, enough envious curiosity from me," she mumbled through the fruit, before pausing to swallow. "I'm given to understand Touma-kun was there also?"
"Yes," Makoto said blandly, managing not to give much away on his face.
"I was pretty surprised that you weren't interested in her," his mother said. "She's a nice girl."
He closed his eyes and made a face.
Not again.
"Can we not talk about this?" he asked.
Especially not now.
"I visited her house, you know," his mother said. "She's a brave girl."
"I see," he said, refraining from comment.
How much does she know? he wondered. What is she doing visiting Touma's house?
"I was thinking…" she said, waiting for him to visibly pay attention. He reluctantly did so. He hoped she was switching topics.
"You know, back when you guys still had me fooled, I thought you guys would make a nice couple. She's pretty…tomboyish, don't you think? I thought it would complement you. That's what I thought."
She sipped her tea while he processed the sentence.
His hand twitched slightly.
What is she implying?
"Complement?" he asked out loud.
"She dresses a lot like a boy," his mother commented, seemingly not answering his question. "Well, most of the time."
She swallowed a kiwi carefully. He looked at her warily. He never knew how to talk to her.
"So I was thinking," she said, holding up her toothpick and spearing the air with it. "What's with all those dresses and stuff I found in your room that one time? They're hers, right? But I've never seen her wear any of it, or frankly, anything even resembling it. And if she's not your girlfriend, why did you have them?"
Makoto tensed. She had finally found the hole in the story they had weaved.
"W—well," he said nervously, trying not to sweat. "That's just it, you see. Her brothers—they don't really approve of the way she dresses; I'm sure you heard about. So, they keep buying her these things that she doesn't really want. And we had this idea that, uh, I should hold onto them for her and…let you find them, to throw you off the track. I'm sorry about that."
He suppressed a nervous chuckle. Those never helped. He was, however, proud of being able to extemporize the explanation he had used, as questionable and poorly delivered as it had been. It made just enough sense.
His mother stirred her tea with her pinky, a strange habit of hers.
"If that's so, then her brothers need to at least learn what sizes she wears," she said. "If she actually tried wearing any of the shirts I saw in her closet, not only would they probably not reach her waist, they'd be a little restrictive, if you know what I mean. What image do they have of her anyway? They'd just have to look at the shirts she actually wears!"
He shrugged, as nonchalantly as he could manage.
She drank the rest of her tea in one, sudden gulp, before getting up to refill the teapot from the hot water cooker on the counter.
He watched her sit back down. Then his eyes focused on her face.
Something was wrong.
"Not bad," she said, pushing the teacups and fruit aside, voice losing most of its previous casualness.
"Not bad," she repeated. "That was more plausible than I expected, even though it still didn't completely make sense. You're better at lying than I would have ever imagined. But I already knew that."
He stiffened, searching her face. He knew the fear showed in his eyes.
"But it's not good enough," she said, her face darkening. "Even if I were to buy a crazy explanation like that, your web of lies is too untenable now. For example, when I was chatting with Minami-san—Natsuki-kun, sorry, it's important I be clear about that—I was surprised to hear that he had never met you before. After all, didn't you both go on that trip to Yoshino's?"
He felt a drop of sweat crawl down the back of his neck. He didn't dare wipe it.
"Well, it's possible he's just forgetful," she said, "but I asked to see some of the pictures he took, and sure enough, you weren't in any of them. But that girl Mako-chan was all over the place. She looked pretty familiar, too. And I should probably also mention the bracelets and such I found in your drawer. The ones that matched the ones she was wearing."
She watched him from the other side of the table, face now serious and harsh.
He gave up entirely on maintaining a cool composure, collapsing forward to support his head with his arm.
So is this it then? I have to admit it now? I thought I'd have at least a year or so more to hide it. I'm not ready! But what choice do I have? If I don't say it now, she'll say it for me!
"You can stop now," he said, standing up. "I get it. You've figured it out."
"So what will you do now?" she asked, voice dangerously cool.
"I—"
He swallowed, steeling himself to make eye contact.
"I'll try to keep it a secret. My friends know, obviously. I'll just go on little trips, go shopping a little. That's all I want. Harmless."
He was conscious that what he was saying was the exact opposite of his own position, only that morning. A lot had changed.
She stood up, shoving her chair aside.
"No, it's not harmless," she said. "It's unacceptable."
"I won't accept that!" he exclaimed.
He expected her to be surprised by his minor outburst, but instead she just looked back, eyes hard and unreadable.
"I won't accept that," he said, breaking the eye contact and biting off his sentences. "I'll be like Touma. I'll just…deal with it. I don't care what you think."
His mother turned away, looking at the kitchen wall.
"I thought you'd say that. That's expected. It's not worth it. It really isn't. I won't accept this."
"I told I don't care!" he yelled back.
"Take your shower," she said, not looking back. "We'll talk about it tomorrow. You haven't escaped. And check your hair."
He turned and left, turning the corner, torn between angry and fearful. It was only as he approached his room that he realized there had been something weird about that conversation.
It's not anything like I'd expect her to react.
She had also said…
He walked into the bathroom, and looked at the mirror. His jaw dropped.
His hair.
I forgot to fix it! It's still Mako-chan! And I left the pink hairclip in!
He pulled it out angrily.
I'm so stupid!
Why hadn't any of them reminded him?
His dreams that night were more tumultuous than ever.
She waited until Makoto left to collapse and lean on the wall.
Spinning around, she headed back for the room she and her husband shared.
Crouching in front of their closet, she found what she was looking for.
She clutched the old picture of the two of them in high school.
I know what you would say, if you knew about this. You wouldn't approve of my response. You wouldn't. But it's not worth it. I know that.
I just want him to have a normal life.
She heard the sound of the front door opening and wiped her face, getting up.
Unlike me.
Author's Notes:
Yoshinophobia n. 1) An irrational fear of people, objects, or animals named "Yoshino". 2) An entirely rational fear of a certain girl from 'Minami-ke' named "Yoshino.
Makoto has been missing for a while. He comes back with a vengeance.
You know things are bad when you repeatedly screw up the gender pronouns. I must have accidentally called Makoto "she" at least seven times…