The movie was over.
The credits rolled down, the lights came up, and one by one the audience began to leave their seats.
Even then, Nobara was still fidgeting, stealing glances at Junpei.
“This is awkward....”
It felt like they had gone all the way back to square one.
The relationship they had built up over the course of the day had, at the same time, touched a painful memory of his and collapsed completely.
What was she supposed to do about this?
A calm voice reached Nobara’s ear.
“It’s over. Let’s go.”
“Huh? Oh, right?! Let’s go!”
She hadn’t expected him to speak first.
Trying to hide her embarrassment, she forced herself to sound bright, and her voice came out louder than it should have.
“Wait, why am I so on edge?”
Nobara suddenly realized she didn’t want Junpei to hate her, and she grimaced.
She had only been a little excited because it was a date. It wasn’t like they were especially close to begin with.
She should just apologize cleanly.
If he accepted it, they could stay friends on good terms. If he didn’t, that was fine too.
Yeah. It would be fine.
She tried to hypnotize herself with that thought, but even as they stepped outside, her mouth still wouldn’t open easily.
The cold night air of late September autumn filled the space between them.
The back of Junpei, walking ahead of her, felt just as cold as the wind blowing through.
Throb
“What the...?”
Her chest stung.
She wanted to dismiss it as just an arrhythmia.
She had a vague idea of what this feeling was, but she didn’t want to admit it.
How much time had passed while they walked like this, unable to move forward or back?
After walking in silence for a while, they returned to the same spot where they had first come out.
“Already...?”
They still weren’t visible, but Yuji and Megumi would probably show up here soon too.
Then they’d greet each other as if nothing had happened, part ways, and meet again at school the next day.
It would all become meaningless time, and someday it would be forgotten.
But was that really enough?
She had enjoyed spending the day with Junpei.
She had felt a kind of emotion she’d never known before.
Today, away from the non-daily life of being a jujutsushi, had been precious.
And yet she hated ending it this ambiguously.
Nobara decided to be brave.
“Um, Yoshino?”
“What.”
“That, earlier, when we were watching the movie..... I’m sorry. I won’t mess with it again.”
“......”
“I didn’t know you wanted to hide it. I was just trying to joke around a little....”
Nobara realized too late that the more she spoke, the worse it sounded.
Junpei wasn’t responding, so her words kept stretching out, until it sounded like she was making excuses.
That wasn’t like her at all.
The more she talked, the more tangled her sentences became, and her own thoughts turned into a mess.
Junpei, listening in silence, was in no better state.
“Haa.....”
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
Seeing Nobara so restless made him feel uneasy too.
Sure, when she’d touched the scar without asking, his anger had shot straight to the top of his head.
He had been furious at her thoughtless way of prodding at a painful place without permission, but thinking about it now, it wasn’t such a huge offense.
The reason he’d stayed quiet from earlier was partly to cool down, but also because Nobara’s unusually timid, watchful expression had irritated him.
Why was she looking at him like that? That wasn’t like her.
Everything had been fine, so what was this?
What did she want him to do?
Unfortunately, he wasn’t broad-minded enough to just smile and forgive her. And he didn’t want to be.
If he let his anger out, he’d feel better, but he’d also end up putting distance between himself and Nobara.
After weighing pride against pity, he chose another path.
A method available now that his head had settled a little as he calmed down.
Honest conversation was the first step toward solving a problem.
Whether it was between lovers or friends.
“Why did you do it?”
As gently as he could.
He wanted her to understand that he was angry, but that instead of blaming her, he wanted to understand why and meet her halfway.
“.......I was curious.”
“You could’ve asked me before doing it.”
“It was distracting you from the movie too.... and I kept looking at your face, and it got frustrating, ah.”
Ah.
“......”
“.......”
For a while, silence passed between them.
But it was a little different from the cold emptiness before.
Even Nobara, who had misspoken, and Junpei, who had somehow stumbled into something vaguely like a crush, could each sense the other’s feelings a little now.
Junpei was the first to move.
“Do you want to hear how this happened?”
Nobara’s eyes widened.
Though she didn’t say it, Junpei took that as a yes and immediately swept his bangs fully back, revealing the scar.
A burn mark, ugly and crusted over like a scab.
A scar so old that even Ieiri Shoko’s reversed cursed technique couldn’t heal it.
Proof of his weakness and ugliness.
He had only caught a glimpse of it in the dark movie theater, but now she could finally see it properly.
Nobara’s pupils trembled.
------------------------------
I still remember it clearly. It was probably around this time last year.
Not long after I first entered high school.
You know how it is, right? Within a month of the semester starting, people usually settle into the groups they’ll hang around with.
What? How old am I, exactly? Uh.... seventeen.
It makes sense you wouldn’t know. I never told you.
And don’t even think about suddenly calling me senpai or Yoshino-san now. Just treat me like you always do.
Yuji talks to me casually too, so there’s no need to be formal. It’d be awkward.
Anyway, I didn’t really belong anywhere. Or maybe I should say I couldn’t.
I was a little better than I am now, but even then I wasn’t the type to go out of my way to make friends.
Rather than approaching people myself, I waited for them to come to me first. If I could talk to them a little, I’d stick with them; if not, that was the end of it.
That’s easier, isn’t it? You know that feeling too? Doesn’t seem like it, though.....
Fine. Just listen first.
After some time passed and cliques started forming, I ended up hanging around with a few guys who’d been pushed out of their own groups.
I didn’t have other friends, and neither did they, and surprisingly, we got along well.
Our shared hobby was movies. Whenever we got together, we’d watch films, analyze them, or just talk about what we liked to kill time.
We always met in an abandoned empty classroom.
The three of us would gather there and hang out a lot..... then one of us suggested we start a club.
A film studies club, he said.
Thinking about it now, that was really otaku-like.
Anyway, back then I thought it would work out.
We had an unused classroom, it wasn’t the kind of club that needed dues, and the activities were perfectly wholesome.
And usually something like that could go on your student record as a credential later.
I wanted to be a film director. I was interested in shooting and directing, so I figured maybe I could leave even one line saying I’d been researching this kind of thing since I was a student.
And it was fun too.
The problem started there.
There was a guy in my first-year class who entered school with me named Ito Shota.
He had a good face, was athletic, and came from money. He studied pretty well too.
On the surface he looked excellent, but underneath he was rotten through and through.
He’d bribe teachers to fake awards, or grab someone he didn’t like and beat them until they passed out.
Smoking, drinking, all of that was normal for him.And on top of that, he was absurdly good at managing his image.
He was disgusting, but I thought as long as I didn’t get involved, it’d be fine.....
I was unlucky.
Ito found our classroom while looking for a hideout.
And by then, Ito was already the king of the school.
How do you think that went?
I got kicked out without even being able to protest once.
The vice principal doted on Ito so much that when he submitted an application under some weird skateboard club name, it got approved right away.
We had priority.
The other guys were scared of Ito and went along with it without saying a word, but I didn’t.
If I bowed my head here, I felt like I’d spend the rest of my life as a coward.
So I resisted.
I told him to give it back. That it wasn’t his rightful place.
I guess I had some sense of duty or justice. Or maybe my pride just wouldn’t let me.
And that was when hell began.
I was extorted for money.
Whenever they felt like it, I’d get called to the back yard and beaten.
I got drenched in the milk from school lunch.
The indoor shoes I’d left in my shoe locker would suddenly disappear.
My locker would be a total mess.
At first, I thought I could handle it alone.
If I kept resisting hard enough, those guys would get bored and back off.
Or maybe at least one person would stand up for me.
I was stupid.
The friends who were afraid they’d become targets too if they defended me cut off contact.
The teachers shut their mouths and pretended not to know, maybe because they’d taken money from Ito.
And if they had no interest in the first place, that would’ve been a mercy.
The more isolated I became, and the more I lost my will, the more Ito seemed to notice and the crueler he got.
The guy who had carefully chosen only places no one could see started throwing punches straight at my face, and his gang did the same.
This cigarette burn came from back then too.
I felt like I was really going to die. I felt like I was going to hate how helpless I was.
I charged at him, ready to die, and got beaten to a pulp for it.
Then he held my head down and ground out the cigarette he’d been smoking on me.
No matter how much I screamed or how many tears I shed, he never stopped.
I still remember Ito’s smiling face looking down at me.
But you know what?
The burn hurt, sure, but do you know what really hurt?
That no one took my side, even in that situation.
I had to admit I was the one in the wrong.
There wasn’t a single person who understood my effort, my loneliness.
My parents?
I never expected anything from my dad, who divorced and only sent child support like a machine.
I couldn’t tell my mom, the only person who had ever been on my side.
She divorced my dad and raised me alone.
She lived only for me.
What would it do to her heart if she found out her son was getting beaten at the expensive private school she’d sent him to?
So I hid it.
I made up an excuse that I’d fallen, then stayed shut up at home and waited until my hair grew long enough.
After that, I stopped going to school.
My homeroom teacher came by a few times, but I had my mother send them all away.
By now, there’s no way to know whether my mom really didn’t know, or whether she pretended not to know for my sake.
She passed away.
I still.....have trouble talking about that part.
Anyway, that’s the end of my story.
This was the violence inflicted on me for refusing to obey, and it was my most miserable memory.
The trace of my weakness and stupidity, when I couldn’t be saved by anyone and couldn’t even reach out to my mother.
So.....that’s why I got angry.
I didn’t want to show it to anyone else.
“For real.”
-----------------------------
Junpei himself didn’t know why he had laid out such a long, rambling story.
Looking back, he had always said he didn’t care, while still hoping to be understood.
He had decided not to trust people, but in the end, what he wanted more than anything was someone else’s sincerity.
I was this lonely. I was this hurt.
So understand me.
Please don’t curse me.
He had been neatly betrayed by the example of Mahito, but he couldn’t stop now.
It was Junpei’s inborn weakness, and a contradiction that every human being carried somewhere inside them.
When he finished speaking, a bitter smile hung on his lips.
It was both self-mockery over his past regrets and a sense of relief.
“Snff.....h-hhng.....”
“Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know, damn it..... why would you tell a story like that.....”
Nobara was crying before she knew it.
The bead-like drops that spilled from her unblinking eyes ran down her cheeks.
They were so pitiful, so grateful, so heartbreaking that...
Junpei’s hand moved toward Nobara’s cheek.
Swish
It was a natural touch, but neither of them felt embarrassed or thought much of it.
It was simply the way it should be, so naturally that it felt obvious.
“It’s okay now. It’s all in the past. It’s been a while since I talked this openly about something.”
“You...! After going through something like that..... how could you......”
“Because now I know there are people like you who’ll cry for me.”
Thank you. For listening to my story to the end.
For not laughing at my miserable past.
For crying with me over my scar.
“You had fun today, right?”
That last line sounded so gentle that Nobara, suddenly overwhelmed with hurt feelings, burst into even louder tears.
“Waaahhh!!”
“W-why are you crying again.....”
“It’s because of youuuuu!!!”
Junpei, at a complete loss, tried desperately to comfort her, but Nobara showed no sign of stopping.
Over the bewildered boy and the grieving girl, the dim moonlight settled down.
Softly, as if it understood everything.
-------------------------------
“Gojo-sensei.”
“What is it, Yuji?”
“Would it be okay if I cried a little?”
“As long as you don’t plagiarize the crying sound.”
“Waaahhh!!! Hwaaaahhh!!!!!! Hwaeuhwaaaahhh!!!”
“Seriously.... haaa.”
“Huh? Megumi, are you crying too?”
“Hey, come on! This is the emotional part! Don’t ruin the mood!”
“Sorry.....”
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