There are times in one's life when, against one's better judgment, it appears to them as though the entire world is conspiring to make their day as much of a drag as possible. They might sleep through their alarm, which causes them to miss the bus, which in turns makes them late for school and subjects them to a public and humiliating excoriation by their teacher, all while their classmates watch on and laugh carelessly at their expense. Misfortune, like buses, tends to come in threes, and after the double whammy of having to deal with Isshiki and Yukinoshita doing their best to complicate my thoughts, I wondered if a third nuisance might come along and complete the set.
It turns out I needn't have worried. Then again, knowing my luck, I should've seen it coming.
"Fancy seeing you here." The elder Yukinoshita, having crossed the road with as much haste – disguised behind her usual nonchalance – as she could afford to muster, put on a show of pleasant surprise as her inquisitive stare darted between the two of us. "Maybe I should've expected it, seeing as Yukino-chan was nearby. The two of you are inseparable, after all. Birds of a feather, eh?"
"Better question is, why are you here?" I asked warily. Yukinoshita Haruno embodied all the quintessential qualities of the breed of person I was the absolute worst at dealing with: cheerful and calculating, magnanimous and manipulative, a wolf in shepherd's clothing leading the herd astray. Yet I had no choice but to consort with her for now – I could've fled before she approached, but that would've meant leaving Isshiki in her hands, something that I was loathe to do regardless of who was with me. "And what did you say to Yukinoshita just now?"
Haruno cocked her head quizzically. "But I am Yukinoshita, Hikigaya-kun. What would I say to myself that I didn't already know?"
I rolled my eyes. "You know what I meant."
"Maybe I do. But maybe the answer to that question also comes with a price. Starting with…" She abruptly drew towards Isshiki, who flinched and backed away slightly in response. "I'm Yukinoshita Haruno, Yukino-chan's elder sister," she said cheerily. "And you are?"
Having recovered from the shock of the spotlight being suddenly turned onto her, Isshiki squeezed her eyes tightly together, and when they opened again, the veneer of the sparkly, sanguine high-school girl was restored. As expected of her – such rapid transformations were simply second nature to her at this point. "Isshiki Iroha," she replied with a smile. "I'm the current student council president. We were just at the community center for a meeting with another school."
"The newly-appointed president?" Haruno clapped her hands together. "Congratulations! I hope you become someone worthy of the role. That seat used to be mine, after all."
Isshiki's eyebrows bounced upwards. "You were the student council president? At our school?"
"The one and only. So, you better live up to the position, for the sake of my legacy." Haruno winked. "I thought Yukino-chan might've been gunning for the job, but it seems like I have nothing to be concerned about. Especially seeing as you have such a capable assistant by your side."
"Actually, I'm not in the student council," I corrected her.
"Who said I was talking about you, Hikigaya-kun?" Ignoring the mortal blow she had casually inflicted upon me, Haruno snuck a glance into the traffic, and across the road to where we had last seen her younger sister before she had stormed off. "If Yukino-chan is going out of her way to give you a leg-up, then that can only be good news. Both for your sake, and for hers."
For a fleeting moment, she seemed unusually pensive, lost in a thought that threatened to manifest itself in her demeanor. Then, she snickered, as if laughing at her own sentimentality, and turned to me. "As for your question, I merely happened to be in the area when I bumped into her, and I asked her to come home. That's it, really."
"Didn't sound like it," I muttered. As troubled as Yukinoshita Yukino's family circumstances might be, it took a hell of a lot to rile her up to that degree. She had it in her to get mad at things – and she did so more often than expected – but she always kept her wrath shrouded under a veil of ice, channeling her red-hot rage into the frosty, biting remarks by which she made her name, killing with words instead of deeds.
In other words, whatever her elder sister had said to her must've really touched a raw nerve.
"What's the matter?" Haruno pouted, a childish gesture that was wholly incongruous with her actual age. "Don't you trust what your Onee-san says?"
"Not one bit. And if you have the time to be making a brother out of me, maybe you should be taking care of your real family first."
"You wound me, Hikigaya-kun. You know I only mean the best for you and Yukino-chan." Her eyes narrowed, and for a split second the hackles on the back of my neck stretch taut. "In any case, if she asks you what we talked about today, I want you to say nothing. You got that?"
"If you say so." Wouldn't be too difficult, given she hadn't exactly revealed to me the reason behind their argument in the first place. I didn't feel the urge to probe further, though, so I was content to leave it at that. Some sleeping dogs were best left to lie, particularly when their owners were the Yukinoshita sisters. "Anyway, if there's nothing else, I think we should be going," I remarked. "It's late."
Isshiki nodded in agreement. "I have something to do at home, so I need to get back. It was nice meeting you, Yukinoshita-san," she added with a bow. "Maybe we'll meet again."
"Aw, and I was just beginning to enjoy myself. I'll see the two of you around, then. Best of luck with the presidency, Iroha-chan." With a wave and a twirl, Yukinoshita Haruno retreated back across the road, and before we knew it, she had vanished behind the blur of vehicles and flashing lights. If Yukino was a blizzard that froze everything she came into contact with, then Haruno was a tornado, sucking everything in, ripping it to shreds, then spitting the remains back out without a second thought and moving swiftly on to the next victim.
Of course, she and Yukino weren't the only ones with their own secrets to keep. I recalled Isshiki using the same excuse – that she had "something to do" back home – when she had procured my umbrella services that one rainy day. Perhaps I was overthinking it; perhaps not. One time was happenstance and two times was coincidence, or so it was said. Either way, asking about it would, from my experience, not get me very far.
"She's an interesting character, isn't she?" Isshiki commented as we continued on our way to the train station. "And it sounds like you know each other pretty well."
"That's one way of putting it. She's annoying, nosy, and wants to be part of everything. Once she has her eye on you, you can't escape."
"Huh. Sounds like the exact opposite of Yukinoshita-senpai. Except maybe the annoying part."
We arrived at the station, standing at the foot of the great concrete structure from within which the stark fluorescent lighting of the concourse emanated. Isshiki stopped just under the entrance, one half of her slim frame doused in white, the other half remaining submerged in darkness.
"Thanks for walking me here, Senpai. And for everything else today. I should consider myself blessed to have such a capable assistant." She grinned. "Or would that be Yukinoshita-senpai?"
"Yukinoshita can take all the plaudits for today. I don't really care." I stuffed my hands in my pockets and shrugged. "I'm sure she'd appreciate it if you thanked her, too. She did dig us out of the hole you made, after all."
"You didn't have to say that. Even if it's true." Isshiki huffed with a pucker of her lower lip. "I was just, you know, making a gamble. Like I said, that was the best thing I could come up with, and I was hoping that they'd be motivated to act if they had someone to light a fire under their butts. That's what you're good at doing, isn't it, Senpai?"
Somehow, hearing it spelt out in that way was embarrassing. Even if it was true. "If that's how you wanna put it. Either way, you should just leave the dirty business to other people for now. It wouldn't be good for your image as student council president if you went around antagonizing people who you thought weren't working hard enough."
"And why can't I handle the dirty business?" Isshiki's pout didn't subside. "Or is there something else you're implying?"
In truth, there probably was. It was not beyond the best of us to give in to preconceptions, and I – though admittedly far from being part of that exalted category of human beings – was little different. The moments I'd spent with Isshiki had slowly but surely generated a persona in my mind, an image of who I imagined and expected her to be that grew ever the more immutable as our interactions took on deeper meanings.
Yet only now, as we said our goodbyes and departed for the day, did I appreciate that imposing my image of her onto her reality would be the worst thing to do in the circumstances – both with regards to her ongoing quest to discover something genuine for herself, and with regards to my own personal principles, sculpted from the clay of painful experience. I wouldn't want others to see me through a lens that presupposed who I really was, and I would be best served treating others how I wanted to be treated. The old me wouldn't have particularly cared, but no matter how much I tried to deny it, something had changed within me, and changed me as a whole as well.
Whether that was for better or worse remained to be seen.
The bell rung, and with a rise and a bow, a school day like all the others was brought to a grinding halt.
As I slipped my books back into my shoulder bag and made ready to leave, a shadow abruptly loomed over me, freezing my limbs in place for the briefest of moments.
"What did my sister say to you yesterday?"
I looked up. The longer-haired Yukinoshita was standing inches away from my desk, staring down at me as she might look upon a fly that had landed in her soup. It didn't help that we were in my classroom, that realm of nauseating normalcy and mundane magnificence, wherein those familiar cogs in the gossip machine were already turning, whispering as they watched the imminent drama unfold.
"Aren't we supposed to be meeting in the clubroom?" I commented.
Yukinoshita, as anticipated, brushed the remark aside. "Just answer the question," she snapped.
I'd seen her get angry before, but the force of nature that now confronted me seemed to transcend such petty notions of emotion. The fact that she was here instead of waiting quietly in the clubroom was in itself adequate evidence of her exertion. She would get the answers she needed out of me, by fair means or foul, and she didn't care who saw her while she did. Knowing this, and knowing the subsequent trouble that my dear classmates might foment on my behalf, I had no choice but to appease her as swiftly as I could. Of course, it didn't help that Yukinoshita Haruno's warning from the night before now rung in my ears, tolling an incessant death knell for my impending demise.
"Nothing in particular." I shrugged. "She mainly talked to Isshiki. Since, you know, they're both student council presidents."
Without another word, Yukinoshita spun on her heels and strode forcefully out of the classroom, leaving a ripple of hushed voices in her wake. I glanced over at Yuigahama, who reciprocated my eye contact with an awkward smile and a shake of her head.
One didn't need to be a genius to guess where Yukinoshita was going. The only question that pertained to me was whether I ought to follow. In the end, I decided it would be best not to stick my nose into a conflict whose true cause was as yet unknown to me. Mover in the dark I might be, but sometimes it was more important to know when to walk in the light. I trusted Yukinoshita and Isshiki to sort out their differences like well-minded, reasonable people, even if all the signs pointed towards the start of a long and drawn-out skirmish, if not an outright war.
Ignoring the pointed stares and crescendoing flurry of whispers, I quickly made my way to the corridor outside. Behind me, a chair scraped, and a pair of soft, hurried footsteps approached.
"What should we do?" asked Yuigahama as we traipsed towards the stairwell.
"Nothing." I turned to the stairs leading towards where the clubroom was located. "I'm sure they'll be fine." As I took the first step down, a tug on my sleeve stopped me in my tracks.
"Is that really what you think?"
"It doesn't really matter what I-" I looked back at Yuigahama, expecting to see her usual look of innocent worry. Instead, what greeted me was a glare that conveyed what could only be described as exasperation. So she did have it in here to make a face like that, after all.
"You have to take responsibility, Hikki," she said sternly. That's what Iroha-chan asked you to do, isn't it?"
"How did you-"
"You and Yukinon aren't the only ones who talk to her, you know." She let go of my shirt with a subdued sigh. "It's not like you to not care. That's all I wanted to say."
Before I could think of an appropriate response, a voice that sounded eerily like my own suddenly spoke. "How would you know what's like me and what isn't? Don't act like you know me well enough for that."
Yuigahama's eyes widened, and she took a few steps away as though my face had, without warning, become as ugly as Yukinoshita regularly claimed it to be. "Why… why would you say that, Hikki?"
I didn't know either – in fact, I was as taken aback by what my subconscious had offered in reply as Yuigahama was. Yet deep down, I understood that whatever unwittingly came out of my mouth did so because it reflected a part of me that had been suppressed for far longer than was healthy for me. I, too, wanted to be genuine, but that meant confronting the brutal, objective reality of my existence, something for which I was wholly unprepared. The shadow of my true self reached all the way into hell, and I was nowhere near ready for the trek.
When people saw me, they saw what they wanted to see. However, as much as I hated to admit it, that was only because of the image I projected into the world, the image of the loner, the dead-eyed watcher, the seeker of things that "normies" dared not touch. No one knew me well enough to say that something "wasn't like me", but the fault for that lay at my feet and nobody else's.
Yuigahama bit her lip, her eyes trembling as she fought back the tears welling at the corners. "Fine," she muttered. "I'll go by myself. You can head to the clubroom if you want."
She swiveled around and stormed away into the distance. I could only watch as she slowly vanished, helpless in my inadequacy, alone in the crowd once again.
