We briefly conveyed the message「Looks like he still can’t be honest with us either. We’ll try come again next week」to Yamazaki-kun’s mother, and left the house with our heads heavily bowed.
As we were about to leave, I looked up at Yamazaki’s room to see if he might be peeking out at us, but the curtains were tightly closed.
To return the bicycle to Kaito, riding tandem once again, we took off towards the school.
「How was it, Yua? Did you get any impressions from talking to him?」
「It’s not a problem to me however many times he calls you a womanizing scumbag, Saku-kun. But I definitely can’t forgive him for calling me a meat slave.」
「If you took the converse of that, then I’d agree… For now, could you please stop squeezing my neck’s carotid artery in retaliation?」
Yua placed her hands on my waist.
「To be honest, that wasn’t a very good impression. I don’t like this kind of labelling, and this is purely the superficial aspect of what I felt from today’s conversation… but he felt like the stereotypical otaku as depicted by society. He probably has his circumstances, but that’s no reason for him to hurt people he’s never met before with irresponsible words.」
「Well, I guess so.」
To me it was business as usual, but Yua might not yet be used to receiving haphazard ill will from a stranger. Although inevitable for as long as you’re recognized as part of the riajuu group, it is in no way anything pleasant. I think she did a good job of handling him while keeping those emotions in check.
「Did you notice something, Saku-kun?」
「Indeed, something extremely important… that guy hates me, doesn’t he?」
「Seems that way.」
「Sniffle, sniffle.」
When I feigned exaggerated tears, Yua removed her right hand from my waist and patted me several times on the back.
「It’s okay, it’s all right. Saku-kun’s cool, after all.」
「Ah, that’s the thing you say when you’re casually trying to sidestep the issue.」
I couldn’t see her face, but I was sure she was muffling her laughter.
*Kishi-kishi*, the wheels of the mom-bike laughed too.
The setting sun dyed the faint, lingering clouds above. From bitter orange to tangerine, from tangerine to apricot, and from apricot to gentian and lapis lazuli blue, it painted a beautiful, almost fictional gradation.
Cuddled together with long shadows in tow, our silhouettes looked like a page out of a proper adolescence, moving forward without a care in the world for some shut-in hikikomori.
It looked even more fictional than the sunset on this day, and wasn’t so bad.
Continuing in this way together with Yua, it seemed like we could rush off to just about anywhere.
learning... please hold... 