Volume 1
Chapter 1 Part
3
Translator : PolterGlast
From that day on,
Hikaru and I resumed our strange interactions. Last time it was online, and
this time it was in person. I thought it would be tough for someone like me who
likes to be alone, but spending time with him was surprisingly comfortable.
Being with him, who had a strange atmosphere, gave me a feeling of being alone
even though I wasn't.
My daily routine
hasn't changed at all. Hikaru and I, who are in different grades, never meet at
school (and even if we did, I would never speak to him), so I often see him
only after school.
I would go home and
immediately open the novel I was about to read. Then, four hours later, Hikaru,
who had finished self-study at school, would come to my house. We would spend
our time doing our own thing, with minimal conversation.
"I've told my
parents that I'm going to study at the home of the top student in my
grade," Hikaru said.
"I'm a regular
red mark addict," I replied.
Although it was my
second year, I hardly went to school last year, and I barely held my pencil
during my absence.
"Then why don't
you drop that phone and go to your desk right now?"
"No way, I'm busy
studying communication."
"That's just
Twitter, right?" Hikaru said in dismay.
Conveniently, my
parents both worked and came home late. And even when they did come home, they
were so uninterested in me that they did not even notice a high school boy
hiding in their daughter's room. So Hikaru and my parents never bumped into
each other.
My parents valued
their own time and, equally, respected the freedom of others. As individualists,
they barely interfered with me, their daughter. When I decided to take a leave
of absence from high school, they didn't say anything in particular. Even when
I was about to drop out, I didn't even consult them, intending to inform them
afterward.
I think it's probably
not a normal family, but I didn't dislike this environment. On the contrary, I
find families with close relationships like the Sazae-san's family to be
disgusting. It seems so troublesome, and I wonder how they don't get tired of
it. Hikaru looked at me strangely, saying, "Isn't this house too
quiet?"
My parents divorced in
the past and remarried when I was in middle school. It wasn't because they had
a falling out. It was probably because they didn't trust each other enough to fight.
Originally, we lived
in Tokyo, but when my father was transferred to Hokuriku, he had to separate
from my mother who had a job in Tokyo. After a few years, my mother got a job
that allowed her to work from home, and since she was not picky about where she
lived, she moved to Hokuriku with me and remarried. For people of my parents'
generation, it seems to be socially advantageous to be married. I thought it
was typical of them to be rationalists who disliked being unnecessarily
involved with others.
That's all there is to
it. It's such a simple and straightforward thing, yet people try to make things
complicated. Whenever I talk about my parents, people consider my situation as
pitiful. It always annoys me. I'm glad Hikaru isn't the type to pry into other
people's family circumstances.
The first day Hikaru
came over, I was sitting on the bed reading manga, as I usually do, and he was
sitting on the rug with his English textbook open.
"I know I'm the
one who asked for this, but thank you for letting me stay over," Hikaru
said, looking up from his textbook. "What's on your mind?"
"It's nothing. I
just felt sorry for the junior who was being taken advantage of by a senior
whom she admired," I replied while keeping my eyes fixed on my phone.
The roughly six months
I've been exchanging messages with Hikaru was enough time for me to trust that
he wouldn't harm me. If, by any chance, Hikaru were to try to attack me, I
think I would kill him. I haven't figured out how to do it yet, though.
"Like I said,
I..." Hikaru protested.
"Hikaru, you
probably want to say, 'I didn't lay a hand on her, so I'm not guilty,' but even
so, that's just plain despicable, you know?"
Hikaru's eyebrows
twitched. I continued in as calm a tone as possible.
"I think the
other party was expecting to become close to you, otherwise they wouldn't have
let you stay over. I don't know whether you are aware of this intention, but if
you are not, you are a fool, and if you are aware of it and taking advantage of
it, you are a scumbag."
I said all that at
once and took a sip of my bottled Coke. I regretted being so outspoken, feeling
like I might have gotten carried away.
"Well, it would
be even worse if you had actually made a move on her," I added, trying to
calm myself down, and looked at Hikaru.
He is a smart guy, so
I thought he might try to refute me fiftyfold, but he just stared at me and
then turned back to his textbook book. Perhaps he is more of a pacifist than I
thought.
There was no more
conversation after that, and only the ticking of the clock echoed in the room.
Silence was not my thing, but for some reason, I didn't mind the silence
between Hikaru and me.
When I looked up to
check the time, I noticed Hikaru staring at me intently.
"What?"
"Before we became
friends, I never thought Rin would be such a straightforward person."
"Are we
friends?"
"Ha~a? Of course
we are," Hikaru said, looking genuinely surprised. "You're really a
strange girl."
Was he referring to
before we exchanged contact information when he said "before we became
friends"?
"Before we became
friends... what did you think of me?" I asked.
"In a nutshell,
you were a quiet girl. You looked out the window with a look of indifference,
as though you couldn't even hear any of the noises around you."
I had some thoughts
about what Hikaru was saying, but I was surprised to find that he had noticed
me more than I imagined. I thought he just saw me as "someone on the
fringe of the extroverted crowd," but Hikaru described me in a way that
sounded like a novel.
"Being quiet and
not expressing your opinion are two completely different things," I said.
"Also, I thought
you were a bit of a pain. Acting like, 'I'm different from you all.'"
"Shut up."
With that, I
forcefully ended the conversation.
I read books, Hikaru
solved math problems. I play games, Hikaru watches YouTube on my tablet. About
an hour after Hikaru falls asleep, I crawl into my futon. When I wake up,
Hikaru is gone.
I didn't particularly mind
the noise. As a popular guy, he was surprisingly good at creating a quiet
atmosphere. When he slept on the rug at night, he was as still as a corpse,
which was a little scary.
And so, we filled in
the blank of about half a year and became 'good friends,' as he says.
However, sometimes we
would have petty arguments. The trigger was usually when he commented on a
novel I had written.
"You haven't
updated this, are you not going to write anymore?"
Hikaru came to my
bedside and held out his tablet. On the screen was a fantasy novel posted on a
certain novel posting website.
"The last update
was over a month ago, you know?"
Only seven chapters of
the novel had been posted and had not been updated since then.
"Oh, I got bored
of it, so I stopped," I said, pushing away the tablet that was
interrupting me from playing my smartphone game.
"That's a shame.
It was the only decent one."
"Ha?"
When I said that in a
low voice, Hikaru narrowed his eyes and laughed playfully, then sat back down
on the rug.
"The others are
so painful to read, both in terms of the characters and the storyline. Also,
it's hard to read because you focus too much on the description of the
scene."
"Shut up, nape
guy."
"Actually, this
is heavily influenced by 'Summer Anthem.', right?"
"If you have a
problem with it, don't read it."
I snatched the tablet
away from the annoying Hikaru and resumed my smartphone game.
"But I know
someone who likes this kind of novel."
"...Who?"
"Me."
"Whatever."
I spat out those
words, and Hikaru laughed bitterly.
I started posting
novels on the internet last spring — around the time I stopped going to school.
I was the worst
absentee, but the silver lining is that I have started writing novels. It feels
good to pour out my emotions into words. For me, writing novels is now an
essential part of my life, second only to eating and sleeping.
"Rin, you are not
good at writing dialogue, are you? That's why there's so much narration,"
Hikaru said, taking the tablet back from me and scrolling through the screen
with a serious expression.
I didn't voluntarily
tell Hikaru about my novel. It was around the time he started coming to my
house, and he found a stack of manuscripts I had printed out to proofread.
After being asked countless times what it was, I reluctantly told him that I
was writing a novel.
Of course, I didn't
tell him about my web novel account, but somehow he found my account and sent
me feedback. It was probably because I left the tablet logged into the site
when I gave it to him. It was a total blunder.
"I don't need
your advice," I said. "I'm not trying to be a writer. It's just an
outlet for my emotions."
For me, who was bad at
impromptu emotional expression, I was better suited to take a long time to
contemplate and deeply analyze my feelings in order to achieve emotional
stability. By doing so, I could deal with my negative emotions.
As a person with no
outstanding skills and poor interpersonal relationships, novels were the only
thing that kept me alive. It might sound exaggerated to say so, but in fact, as
a truant, I would not be able to maintain my mental health without my novels.
"Why don't you
write about your mom, Hikaru? Stories about toxic parents get a lot of views,
you know?"
After saying that, I
glanced sideways to check Hikaru's reaction.
I wasn't afraid of
saying the wrong thing to Hikaru. That was based on the trust that he knew me
well, and yet, sometimes I would do things like this to test him—to see if it
was okay.
"Don't call
someone else's mother a toxic parent," Hikaru said without paying any
particular attention, playing with his tablet expressionlessly.
I heard for the first
time that Hikaru didn't get along well with his mother when he first came to my
house. His parents had apparently divorced when he was young. He now lives with
his mother and stepfather.
Hikaru described his
mother as "a bit strict about studying," but from what I've heard, in
my sense of values, it seems more accurate to say "extremely" rather
than "a bit." When I heard that he was not allowed to eat for three
days in elementary school because of his bad test scores in cram school, I was
simply taken aback.
I wonder if it is
called child abuse. I have seen on the news that there are families who
physically and mentally abuse their children for poor test scores. In my
family, my grades are less important than the marriage of a distant relative.
But the word
"abuse" somehow didn't seem to fit him, who was both intelligent and
good-looking.
I imagined his mother,
whom I had never met and probably never would. She was a little different from
an educated mom. Hikaru had once mocked, "She wears heavy makeup and
flashy nails for her age."
Hikaru didn't seem to
like his mother's nails, but I honestly admired her sense of aesthetics. I
think it's quite something to pay attention to your nails even at her age.
However, I can also understand why he, as her son, would be uncomfortable with
a mother who had flashy nails.
I imagined a young,
beautiful mother. Perhaps she was mentally weak. She might have been frustrated
and irritated with a child who couldn't behave as she wanted, and she might
have lashed out.
No matter how tough
his family situation might be, I still think that taking advantage of a younger
girl after finding out that she has feelings for you is a terrible thing—I
didn't say that out loud though.
"We're kind of
similar, aren't we?" Hikaru said abruptly. He was the kind of person who
would suddenly say something incomprehensible.
"Huh? In what
way?"
"I think we have
very similar ways of thinking," Hikaru said again, smiling contentedly at my
blank expression, and opened the book he had picked up.
I blinked a few times
before vaguely mumbling, "I wonder about that."
And so, I spent my
days fairly pleasantly.
Spring ended, the
rainy season ended,
and summer arrived.
End of Chapter 1
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