Chapter Nine
Aihara avoided me the day after, and it appeared she was still doing so today. It was strange, but I wasn't complaining. At home, she refused to look my way and she stayed put in her room. At school, she walked quickly to class rather than lingering behind to talk to her friends like she usually did.
Today on the walk to school, she walked well behind me and not edging the two-yard border I'd drawn. Weird.
On the way into Tonon, I was fixed with a fair amount of stares.
A trio of girls snuck peeks at me and giggled. Aihara scurried on ahead of me and darted for the stairs, going straight for class. Again, weird. For a second day straight she wasn't chatting it up with her friends before class. This wasn't sitting right with me. She constantly came up with excuses to talk to or bug me at home and at school. If she was avoiding me, there must have been a good reason. And speaking of her friends, I couldn't find a single one of them around me.
More people caught fleeting glimpses of me as I made my way to class. Their gazes agitated me. What was it now? Another rumor I'd been caught in the middle of? It wouldn't have surprised me. Ever since I'd met Aihara, it was one disaster after the next. I never knew what I could expect from day to day.
Watanabe caught up to me on the way up the stairs.
"Hey," he said, catching his breath, "Why didn't you tell me?" I blinked, thinking.
"Tell you what?" I said.
"That girl is living in your house, right? The one who confessed to you?" I felt all of the blood leave my face, "You didn't know, huh? It's going all around Tonan. There's a billboard downstairs with a picture of you two on it."
I froze in panic, then I whipped around and started back down the stairs. Hearing some sort of announcement coming from the next hall over, I footed it.
As I came closer, I heard my name coming out of the mouths of the announcers. Dread washed over me entirely. How did they know?
Aihara… I thought, seething. So, this had been the reason she was avoiding me. Guilt.
"Naoki Irie and Kotoko Aihara living in the same house together!"
I sped up. At the scene, I was disgusted. Did these people really have nothing better to do with their school time?
Aihara's two friends stood shouting and waving papers around, all with a photocopied picture on it. This picture… I remembered the exact night. As for how the picture has been taken, my mother had to have had something to do with it. It was of me and Aihara asleep on the desk on that last night before the exams.
Then I spotted the billboard. A large copy of the picture was stuck in the center of the board, little tissue paper hearts surrounding it. Above it, in big, bold letters, read "NAOKI IRIE AND KOTOKO AIHARA LIVE IN THE SAME HOUSE! THEY'RE SO IN LOVE!".
A pounding headache formed right in the center of my forehead. I gritted my teeth as more people either looked at me and giggled or spread more news.
"I'd have never guessed it." I heard someone whisper.
"Yeah, me either. Opposites attract, I guess." Someone whispered back. I shot Aihara's friends a glare, but it only stopped them momentarily.
Seeing as how Aihara wasn't here and fretting over all of this, my guess was that she didn't know and I wanted answers.
I sped down the hall and upstairs to the doorway of Class F where I caught my breath.
"Aihara!" I shouted at her. She jumped, startled as I rushed toward her.
"What's wrong?" She said as I reached for her arm to drag her out with me.
"Just come with me." An eruption of "aww"s sprang forth behind us as I ran out the door, tugging Aihara along with me to meet the mess she'd created.
I pulled her down the hall and to the stairwell with me.
"I thought I wasn't supposed to talk to you at school." She said in confusion.
"I don't think it's going to matter too much anymore." On the first floor, I dragged her down the hall to where her friends had created the billboard.
Reaching it, I threw her in front of me. She gasped and gaped up at the billboard and the photocopied pictures. She then stared at her friends, seemingly betrayed or annoyed, or something of that sort.
Guiltily, she came back to me, "Um…" she said and smiled. No matter the situation or how mad I was, there she was, smiling. But that wasn't what I wanted to see.
"What's wrong with you? Could you not find it in you to keep this to yourself?" I retorted and the smile disappeared. I left her there in the hall to face her friends herself. If she felt bad, that was her own problem. She'd caused this by not being able to keep one simple secret. Then again, how much could I have been expecting from her? Class F had the reputation for having the biggest mouths in the school. I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was. I must've overestimated her.
I stomped up the stairs and to Class A where I sat fuming for hours while my classmates gave me funny looks. I would have been giving myself those looks, too. Since they were Class A, they'd probably already figured out that I'd helped Aihara get into the top 100 list, but couldn't piece together why.
As bad as today was going, at least I could say my other secret wasn't out of the bag. But, with Aihara being the way she naturally was, how long would that remain intact?
With class coming to a break, I stood to go to the bathroom downstairs. I passed the billboard on the way there and back, grounding my teeth together at the sight.
On the way back up to Class A, I ran into Aihara. As extremely mad with her as I was, I ignored her and walked right by like she didn't exist. But she stopped and gave me a sad look. Good… she was upset she'd let this slip, as she should have been.
"Irie-kun…" I continued forward, pretending to not hear her, "I'm sorry." She said. When I didn't stop, she chased after me.
"I'm really sorry!" I stopped, but I didn't face her.
"Since you're "in love" with me, perhaps you don't mind the rumor. Maybe you even enjoy it. But I really can't stand them," I said and started walking again, "Stop screwing up my life." I turned to stare her down dead. Her expression turned dull and her face dropped. I went back to class.
At the end of the day when I left Tonan for home, I didn't find Aihara anywhere. With that, I thought she might finally move on from this crush she had. Maybe my life would start going back to the way it was.
