Chapter 8
After the situation was settled, Shota immediately took Takamine to a nearby café.
Now that they’d made contact, there was no reason to stay at the meeting place, and he wanted to get away from the commotion for the time being.
Perhaps Takamine understood his intentions. She followed right behind Shota without saying a word.
And so, this was how things stood now.
“Hmm.”
Takamine gulped down some iced tea, then made a displeased face. Shota flinched at the sight, reminded of what she’d just done moments ago.
The way she’d grabbed the delinquent who’d been bothering her and flipped him over.
“It really isn’t sweet.”
Takamine slurped her iced tea, then offered an observation he couldn’t make sense of.
Of course iced tea wasn’t sweet. It was just black tea.
Shota did his best to keep those words from slipping out. The scene from a moment ago had come back to him, after all.
“Takamine. ……Have you done martial arts before?”
Shota asked, keeping a careful eye on Takamine. He hoped the topic would ease the awkwardness between them.
“Ah….”
Perhaps Takamine felt the awkwardness, too. She let out a faint exclamation and rolled her eyes as if sorting through her thoughts.
“…I just learned a little self-defense.”
“Oh, self-defense. …You must have a real talent for it.”
You lifted someone up and threw him, and you called that just a little practice? How much talent would someone need to pull off a move like that after only a little training?
He couldn’t even begin to imagine. Still, he could tell she had extraordinary talent.
“Thanks for the compliment. You could learn to do it in no time, too.”
“…I don’t think so. Haha.”
No matter how he looked at it, it was impossible. Sorry, but he didn’t have the kind of talent Takamine did. He was just an ordinary student.
Shota laughed awkwardly. Then, with that laugh, silence fell between them.
They’d run out of things to talk about. They’d only started speaking to each other very recently, so despite having been in the same space all this time, they knew very little about each other.
Considering that smooth conversation usually came from knowing a little about each other beforehand, the silence between them was only natural.
“…So, what about your younger sibling, Arai-kun?”
They had nothing to say to each other and had been quietly sipping their drinks when Takamine spoke first.
Ah. Here it comes.
Shota swallowed hard. Then, with the look of a guilty man, he brought out the words he’d been rehearsing in his mind.
“…Sorry. Yuki got an upset stomach today, so I had no choice but to come alone.”
“I see. Then it can’t be helped.”
‘Huh?’
Her matter-of-fact answer easily overturned the many scenarios he’d imagined. Surprised by Takamine’s calm response, Shota found himself studying her face.
Slurp, slurp.
She was peacefully sipping through a straw the iced tea she’d just said wasn’t sweet. From the looks of it, she didn’t suspect a thing.
Takamine’s underwhelming reaction made all his worries seem pointless.
Was that really the right reaction?
The person the whole meeting was for couldn’t come, and she didn’t seem to care at all. Wouldn’t most people ask more about what had happened—or, if they were more sensitive, press him for an explanation?
Hmm. He wasn’t sure.
Shota scratched his cheek as he watched Takamine. In many ways, she was a difficult person for him to understand.
“…Well, I should get going.”
As he spoke, Shota lifted himself slightly from his seat. The whole point of this meeting had been for Takamine and Yuki to spend time together. But Yuki wasn’t there because of her upset stomach.
In other words, Shota was only Yuki’s guardian, not one of the people the meeting was for. There was no reason for him to stay.
Shota realized that right away. And surely Takamine realized it, too.
She must have been keeping him company out of consideration for him.
That was what Shota thought. So he decided to show her the same consideration.
“……Huh? Why, why?”
Takamine set down her glass and asked why he was in such a hurry to leave. Her voice even trembled.
“Huh? No, it’s just… Yuki isn’t here, right? So I should go.”
“Ah…. W-wait a second.”
Had he said something strange? …No, he hadn’t. Then why was Takamine so flustered?
More importantly, he hadn’t realized Takamine could get flustered like that.
Shota was struck by how fresh and unexpected her reaction was.
He lowered himself back onto the leather chair and waited for Takamine to continue.
“W-well…”
Takamine stumbled over her words, twisting a lock of her hair around her finger. She seemed to be searching for the right thing to say.
He’d never expected Takamine of all people to act like that. It was a fascinating sight. So Shota stared at her, without bothering to wonder why she was flustered.
“I told you before that I’d bring a friend, right?”
“Oh, right…”
“Yeah. I already told them to come here. But it’d be kind of awkward if they showed up and it was just me, right? So stay here.”
Takamine poured out a long explanation. As Shota listened, he got the impression that her logic was a little shaky. By the end, it was practically an order.
“…Okay.”
Even so, Shota said he’d wait. Seeing Takamine act like that made it impossible for his conscience to let him choose to ‘refuse.’
He was also a little curious about the person Takamine called her ‘friend.’ After all, this was a friend of Takamine Nagi, the so-called Rejection Princess.
Considering what he knew of Takamine so far, he couldn’t help being curious.
“Can I ask you a few things?”
“Huh?”
“It’d be awkward to just sit here waiting, right? Let’s chat a little in the meantime.”
He’d thought that once their conversation came to an end, silence would settle between them again. But Takamine suggested they talk.
Shota felt a little uneasy about Takamine’s suggestion, unsure what she was going to ask.
“Sure. Ask away.”
But his answer was yes. As she’d said, just sitting there waiting in such an awkward atmosphere was painful.
“Thanks. Then I’ll ask.”
Takamine smiled at Shota’s answer and raised her smartphone. He blinked in confusion, unable to understand what she was doing.
That was when it happened.
“What’s your favorite food?”
“……Karaage-don.”
“You have a pretty childish palate. All right. Then what are your hobbies?”
“I don’t really have anything I’d call a hobby……”
“I see. Next—”
As he answered, Shota wondered what on earth was going on.
She asked him rather formal questions, then quickly typed his answers into her smartphone.
The questions were different, but this was practically an interrogation.
Shota blinked repeatedly in disbelief. Still, he kept answering Takamine’s questions.
“What do you usually do on weekends?”
“…Just hang out with my friends or relax at home. It depends. …Hmm.”
As the questions continued, Shota wondered if he should say something soon. After all, this was more like a series of questions and answers than a conversation.
The kind where only one person endlessly provided information.
He was answering her questions for the time being, but this wasn’t at all what Shota had expected.
So shouldn’t he put a stop to it soon? That thought crossed his mind.
‘……She looks like she’s having fun.’
As he deliberated, Shota studied Takamine’s face. Her expression was the exact opposite of his own troubled one.
Interest, enjoyment, and so on.
How could she feel those things from this sort of question-and-answer session? Shota couldn’t understand.
In truth, he didn’t even want to know.
He simply,
didn’t want to interrupt when Takamine looked so happy.
That was what he thought.
And that was exactly what he did.
＊＊＊
Bzzzz.
They’d been carrying on with their interrogation-like conversation for quite a while when Takamine’s smartphone vibrated.
The vibration brought Takamine to a stop. It seemed that the person in question—Takamine’s friend—had contacted her.
‘Quite a while has passed.’
Shota looked at the clock hanging on the nearby red-brick wall of the café. It had been about thirty minutes since they’d entered.
That meant they’d spent at least twenty minutes on this inexplicable question-and-answer session. Shota was taken aback when he realized it.
However, his bewilderment vanished a moment later.
It was replaced by his anticipation of the person who was about to appear.
Who could it be? What sort of person could have earned the title of ‘friend’ from Takamine?
With his heart pounding, Shota tried to rein in his emotions. Then Takamine said the words he’d been hoping to hear.
“They’re here.”
And no sooner had she said that than—
Ding――
The café door opened with the clear chime of the doorbell. Shota knew that the sound meant the person he’d been expecting had arrived.
So Shota turned around without thinking, and
“Huh?”
He let out a weak groan. The person who’d appeared wasn’t someone he was particularly glad to see.