Chapter 5.10
“I get that it was a joke.” My jaw tightens. “I’m just a little fucking sick of people making those jokes.”
Hina-chan’s brows furrow.
“I’m sorry, now I’m confused,” she says. “What jokes?”
“The ones about me and Fujimura dating or whatever. We’re not, okay? We never were in the first place, and we’re definitely not now.”
When my eyes focus again, Hina-chan has gone very still.
She’s not laughing anymore.
“…People make jokes about that?”
“Well… they haven’t recently,” I say. “But they used to. Like, all the time.”
“When you and he were friends?”
“Yeah. I thought that was in the past, but apparently fucking not.”
Hina-chan stares at me for a moment. Nods.
Removes her hand from mine.
Repositions herself on the couch.
She’s settling in.
Fuck.
“…So… a lot of people made those jokes?” she asks.
I think back.
“Well… not a lot of people,” I say. Intentional or not, she’s moved farther away from me, and my voice raises in response. “Mostly Shizuka-san, Fujimura’s sister. But a few of our classmates got in on it too.”
She nods.
“And,” I continue, riling myself back up, “just because people didn’t make the jokes themselves doesn’t mean they weren’t in on it! People would still laugh.”
“…”
“I think this one time I even caught his mom joining in.” I frown, trying to remember. “She wasn’t laughing laughing, but I dunno. You could see it in her eyes.”
“…Right.”
I look over.
Hina-chan doesn’t look back.
She’s biting the fingernail of her thumb. Thinking.
“Do you… know why they might have thought it was funny?” she asks.
“Um, because people are fucking stupid?”
“Okay, sure, but—”
“Especiallykids?”
“…Right.” She thinks for another second, then sighs. “Conversation for another time.” She scoots closer. “But back to the jokes?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s focus on Fujimura-kun’s sister.”
“Shizuka-san.”
“Sure, her. You said she was one of the main people making those jokes, right?”
She’s using the same voice people use for, like, dogs and children.
She’s done it before. I hate it.
Hate even more that it kind of helps.
“…Yeah,” I say.
“And, if they’re siblings, that means she probably knows him pretty well, right?”
“Yeah. They’re, like, really close in age, too, so I think they were, like, best friends or something. At least until I showed up.”
My stomach churns.
Good memories. Aged like fine milk.
“…Right. So, like, siblings teasing each other is pretty common. Or so I’ve heard.” Only-child Hina-chan chuckles. It’s a little forced. “But surely if she knows him that well, there are a million things she could tease him about, right?”
“Well, yeah. These aren’t, like, the only jokes she ever made.”
“Okay. It sounds like it was a pretty common one, though, right?”
“…Yeah.”
“So, did she ever say, like, why it was such a go-to joke for her?”
“Um… no?”
“Just… take a wild guess.”
“Hmm, I guess we did hang out a bunch. Our houses were pretty close, so we would, like, walk to school together and stuff.”
“Okay.”
“Oh! But she was there, too! We were all in the same class.”
“Duly noted. Anything else?”
“Hmm, and we would have sleepovers a lot—and Shizuka-san would have to sleep separately because, you know, she’s a girl.”
“So those were just the two of you?”
“Yeah. Oh, and we would use our given names with each other usually. It’s, like, a thing for him.”
I try to think of anything else.
Hina-chan waits.
“Uhhh… I think that’s it?” I say finally.
“…Okay.”
“But we weren’t dating!”
“Okay.”
“We were ten! Ten-year-olds don’t date.”
“I meeean… sometimes kids will say they’re dating. It doesn’t look like, say, you and me dating. But it can look like… um…”
Hanging out and using each other’s names.
Nope.
“We were both boys!”
“…Do you even want me to respond to that one?”
I huff out a sigh.
“Okay, fine. Ten-year-olds can date and boys can date and it’s the super-enlightened Reiwa Era and everyone can just do whatever the fuck they want nowadays. That still doesn’t prove that me and Fujimura were fucking in love or whatever.”
Hina-chan settles back on the sofa. Chews her nail. Thinks.
“Okay. So… just to make sure I understand,” she starts, her voice quiet and careful. It makes me want to scream. “You didn’t have feelings for him.”
“No.”
“But… did he have feelings for you? Kid versions, I mean.”
“No! No. He didn’t. He told me he didn’t.”
She blinks. Stops chewing.
“He told you… that he didn’t have feelings for you?”
“Yeah.”
“Just, like,… out of the blue?”
“Well, no, not out of the blue. We were talking about whether he had feelings for me, and he said we didn’t.”
Hina-chan stares at me.
“You were… talking about it.”
“Yeah. And he said he didn’t. That we didn’t.”
I watch that sink in for the next couple seconds.
Hina-chan closes her eyes. Pinches the bridge of her nose.
“And why were you talking about it?”
“…What do you mean?”
“Toji.”
There’s an edge to her voice now.
I freeze.
Her dogs-and-children voice is faltering.
“I have never needed to have a conversation with a friend about whether or not we were in love,” she says. Takes a shaky breath. “Most people don’t do that.It’s just, like, assumed.”
“‘Assumed’?”
“Yes! Not being in love is, like,… the default state with people! They don’t have to say they aren’t in love. They just aren’t.”
“I mean… I guess?”
“You guess. Great. So why did you two have to talk about it? How exactly did that happen?”
I tense.
Hina-chan is staring at me, waiting for me to answer. Waiting to judge whatever I say next.
Fuck.
I miss the bathroom.
“Well,” I start. “…We were having a sleepover, and we started talking and stuff. And Fujimura was talking about all the different things he liked about me, so I was like ‘wait, do you have a crush on me?’ and he was like ‘no!’”
“…Uh-huh.”
“But then he was worried it could be a problem if he did have a crush on me, and I said it would be fine.”
“Again,” she deadpans. “Just a normal conversation between friends.”
“Well, I don’t know how ‘normal’ it is. It just felt like the right thing to say at the time.”
“…Sure. Because it wouldn’t bother you.”
“Um, no?” I’m so confused. “Should it?”
Hina-chan sighs.
“If I start asking that question, we’re never gonna get through this,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose again. “So then what happened?”
“Uhh, I forget how it went exactly, but someone was like ‘How could you even tell if you have a crush on someone?’ and I was like ‘If you want to kiss them’.”
“…”
“So then we thought about it.”
“…”
“And agreed that it wasn’t something we were interested in.”
“…Kissing each other.”
“Well, kissing in general, I guess.”
“…”
“Seemed kinda gross at the time.”
“…”
“Oh! But now it’s not! Now it’s awesome.”
I shoot her what I hope is a charming smile. Try to lighten the mood.
It’s 0% effective.
“But you didn’t kiss,” she says.
“What? No!”
“And you didn’t kiss any other times?”
“No! Why would you even ask that?”
Hina-chan stares at me.
Hard.
“Why would I ask that?” Her voice shoots upward. “I would ask that because we’ve been dating for almost a whole fuckingyear and I spent all that time thinking you and Fujimura-kun were just classmates. I would ask that because you were apparently close enough to beat out his actual flesh-and-blood sister as his best friend, and I only found out about it this week! And I would ask that because apparently people thought you were dating and you talked about kissing each other!!!Why, Toji? Why would you think it’s okay to fucking hide things from me like that?”
“I wasn’t hiding things from you!” I shoot back. “It just… never came up!”
“‘Never came up’.” She glares. “In all the conversations we’ve had—getting to know each other, talking about our different friends, talking about your history and different places you’ve lived—you’re saying it just ‘never came up’.”
“Yes!”
“Bullshit. I’m calling bullshit on that one.”
I let out a shuddering breath.
“Okay, fine. I didn’t intentionally hide anything from you,” I say. “We just…” I think. “…usually focus on Nagoya stuff.”
“Yes, ‘focus’!” she says. “Because it’s a cool city, and I love that we both have our own unique connections to it even though it’s, like, in a whole other prefecture! But our conversations were never supposed to be exclusively about Nagoya. I want to know about all of your life—including the parts that take place in tiny towns I can’t remember the name of.”
“Yunohana.”
“Yes! Yunohana. I want to know about your time in Yunohana, too. Especially for things like this.”
“Well… I’m sorry. I just… didn’t think it was relevant.”
“You didn’t think it was relevant that you’ve been sitting five meters from your super mega bestie all year.”
“Ex-super mega bestie.”
“Or that people used to say you were dating.”
“Which we weren’t.”
“Or that you talked about kissing?!”
“And then didn’t!!!”
Her face sets into a disbelieving smile.
She whets her lips.
Shakes her head slowly.
“I’m just… I have no words, Toji.”
She takes a breath.
Another.
“I’m sorry,” I try again. “I should have told you sooner. And you’ve heard everything now.”
“Everything everything?” she sneers. “No more fun surprises?”
“Fine, everything important.”
“Important to who?”
“To…” I can feel my jaw clenching. “Just important, okay?”
“Yeah,” she scoffs. “At least until next week when I find out you have a secret twin or something you’ve never mentioned. Then it’s ‘oh, I didn’t think that was important!’”
“Hey! That is not fair!”
“Nothing about this is fair! Do you think I like having to pry every little piece of information out of you? Notification: I don’t. Quite frankly, it’s fucking exhausting.”
“Then trust me!”
“I’m trying!”
“But?”
She opens her mouth to answer.
Closes it.
Stares at me as her shoulders heave with another deep breath.
“But I can’t. Do you even understand that? This has been fucking eating me up from the inside out, and every time you surprise me with some new revelation, all I can do is wonder what else there is that you haven’t told me yet. Whether someday there’ll be some final secret that’ll be a step too far for me. So tell me, Toji: what do I do with that?”
I think.
She sees me thinking and rolls her eyes.
Fuck.
“Well, I’m sorry,” I say. It sounds hollow even to me. “I’m doing my best.”
She gives a humorless little laugh and looks away.
First at her lap. Then the barely-lit wall across the room.
Finally, at the table.
The card on it.
“What are we going to do about the party?” she asks. Her voice is flat.
“Do you… still want to go?”
She shrugs.
“I’ll go if you go,” she says. And that’s… promising, I guess.
“Then… I’ll let you know?”
“Okay.”
Silence returns, and we sit there for a moment. Not speaking. Not moving.
Hina-chan is the one to break the silence.
“I’m going to get ready for bed,” she says, already standing from the sofa.
“Wait,” I say. And before I know it, I have my hand around her wrist.
She glances down at it, then up at my face.
She doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t say anything.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She blinks.
“Not really.”
I wait for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t. Doesn’t need to, I guess.
I try again.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Apparently not.”
“Okay, well… maybe getting some sleep will help,” I say.
I release her wrist and my hand just hangs awkwardly in the air. She doesn’t look at it.
“I’m going to get ready for bed,” she repeats.
I just… nod.
Then she walks towards the bathroom.