10. Post-Match Settlement

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Second set: 25–17. Group C advances.

Namimori Junior High was not particularly strict about sending everyone home. Once the activities and competitions they had signed up for were over, people were free to do whatever they pleased.

Some had to take the subway home and left early with their bags already on their backs. Others stayed at school to have fun, either watching the other matches or finding friends to hang out with.

After handing out several bags of homemade consolation cookies, I said goodbye to my temporary teammates and helped the students in charge of logistics tidy everything away.

Most of the spectators left as well, since the court had to be cleared for the remaining classes.

Once I had finished dealing with the odds and ends, I snuck off to see whether Yamamoto Takeshi was still around. But after searching high and low without even catching sight of a scrap of his clothing, I could only turn around and bid farewell to the PE teacher, who smiled the moment our eyes met.

Had he gone back to his class? Continued practicing with the baseball club? Or gone home?

As I recalled, the Yamamoto family seemed to run a sushi restaurant. Perhaps he needed to hurry home and help out.

While changing, I encouraged myself.

It’s fine, it’s fine… It’s fine.

Apologies were best made sooner rather than later, but if I missed this opportunity, there would always be another.

It wouldn’t be difficult to find the right moment. I wasn’t worried that anyone might see us and mistake me and Yamamoto for having some special relationship. After all, teachers often entrusted me with various tasks, so I regularly went to the neighboring class to call people out to work. Even if rumors spread, their respective fanatical bodyguards would uproot them at the source.

Besides, Yamamoto and I really had nothing to do with each other.

I folded my sportswear and put it into my bag. Then I slung my black athletic shoulder bag over one shoulder and picked up, with my other hand, a stack of numbered bibs bundled in a plastic bag on the floor. The student affairs committee overseeing the communal changing rooms this year was absurdly troublesome—petty, stingy, forever fussing over the smallest things and invoking regulations at every turn. They absolutely refused to let classes temporarily store their supplies here. They had clearly suffered persecution at the hands of the disciplinary committee and returned to take revenge on ordinary students.

I was just about to leave when, the moment I pulled open the door, I ran straight into someone.

I looked up. “Futaguchi?”

“…”

It seemed she had been hesitating outside from the beginning. Now that she had been caught, she froze for two seconds like a thief caught in the act.

“…Oh,” she said. “You haven’t left yet.”

“I still need to go back to my class.” I stepped aside, dragging the bag of bibs out of her way. “Why haven’t you changed yet, either?”

At that, the girl quickly glanced down at her sportswear. She did not answer immediately. Instead, a faint flush brushed across the rims of her ears. Then, as though stiffening her neck, she strode into the room and said without looking at me, “A classmate kept me talking for a few minutes. That’s all.”

My gaze followed her as she moved. At her words, I smiled.

“You worked hard today. Go home and get some rest. I won’t interrupt you while you change.”

If everyone went home early, I could go home early too. Once I settled the matter concerning Yamamoto, I would be able to watch the newest episode of my current anime tonight—and see my favorite character come alive on the screen again.

“Nishiga,” Futaguchi Seisa suddenly said.

I did not withdraw the foot I had been about to step out with. I merely stopped and looked back.

“Hmm?”

Futaguchi stood with her back to me, both hands tucked into the pockets of her track jacket.

All I could see was the dark brown short hair at the back of her head, and a small stretch of nape beneath the slightly disheveled strands. The four dark blue words, “Namimori Junior High,” printed on the white school-issued jacket. Volleyball shorts, black knee pads, a reddened patch along the outer side of each lower leg, and long Achilles tendons.

That back remained quiet for a moment.

I waited. Eventually, she forced out a somewhat feeble, “Never mind.”

“Really?”

“I suddenly forgot what I wanted to say a second ago.”

“I know that feeling. Especially when memorizing things before an exam. You can be in your teens and still be practically indistinguishable from someone with senile dementia.”

“…Don’t you think you can be pretty vicious sometimes?”

I gave two little snorts of laughter and reached beneath my shoulder to unzip my bag.

The girl, her expression complicated, turned around to open her locker. Perhaps she noticed what I was doing out of the corner of her eye, because she looked over in surprise. I went back, took two steps toward her, and pressed a small tube of ointment into her hand.

“What… Oh.” Futaguchi Seisa lowered her head and widened her eyes slightly. Her voice, which had been steeped in gloom, finally acquired another emotion. “No, no, Nishiga. I have plenty of medicine at home!”

“This isn’t ordinary ointment,” I said. “It’s imported and incredibly effective. It brings swelling down very quickly. I have plenty at home too.”

Her refusal came mixed with a complaint. “What is that tone? You sound like a top salesperson. No, that’s not the point. I wouldn’t even know what to do with something this good. The stuff at home works perfectly well if I just slap it on. Besides, my brother stocked up on a huge amount at the beginning of the year. I could take a few tubes from him and he probably wouldn’t even notice. You should keep this for yourself.”

“Something given by a friend is different from something taken from your brother, isn’t it?”

Futaguchi fell silent.

The girl looked at me, then at the little tube in her hand. On her still-youthful face flickered an emotion and awkwardness she was unable to conceal. After a while, I heard her say slowly, “Um…”

“What is it?”

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“…Don’t you want to know why I signed up to play volleyball again this time?”

…

Oh.

“Signed up.”

Her voice was slightly muffled, but every word was clear. The crucial sentence forced its way into my ears, and I suddenly found myself holding my breath.

So Futaguchi had not been pushed onto the court merely because they needed someone to make up the numbers.

The thought of going home was temporarily set aside. I remembered the assumption I had made earlier, and my throat tightened involuntarily.

For a moment, I did not answer, and neither did she. Futaguchi Seisa kept her head lowered, squeezed the tube of ointment once, and tucked it into her jacket.

The changing room was not large. The soft rustling of fabric sounded like the quiet noise of sneaking snacks in the middle of the night as a child.

“I do want to know,” I said.

The girl’s hand, hidden inside her pocket, fidgeted with the hem of her jacket. She raised her eyes to look at me.

“But,” I continued, hearing the almost gentle yet certain tone of my own voice, “whatever the reason, I think it’s a good thing. Being able to play alongside you again, I mean.”

“…”

“I’m sorry.”

“What?” Futaguchi asked, coming back to herself in confusion.

I held the strap of my bag in one hand. A fine, prickling shame stirred in my heart, but I still looked steadily into her eyes.

“When I saw the roster, my first reaction was to assume you had been forced into becoming a player because there was no other choice. I didn’t consider how you really felt about it.”

The brown-haired girl stared blankly, rather like a Snorlax.

“So I’m very sorry,” I continued.

“No, no, no.” She cut me off at once, growing agitated in disbelief. Both hands remained in her pockets, making her jacket flap like a pair of wings. “What are you apologizing for? I was the one who chose to quit the club. Anyone who saw me playing again would have assumed the same thing! And, if I’m being honest, I really was… Anyway, I was more or less pushed into it, and by then it was too late to regret it.”

I put on an even more stricken expression. “As someone who once fought alongside you, my thinking is still no better than an ordinary person’s.”

Futaguchi looked utterly mortified, as if thinking, How could you possibly have misunderstood me like that?

“No, that’s not what I meant! Not you!”

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t say it like you’re some scumbag who betrayed me!”

The girl was so frantic that it seemed her jacket might flap right off and fly away. I blinked, let my melancholy expression fall, and laughed.

“Fine, I was kidding. I know you were trying to comfort me.”

She immediately froze.

I curved my eyes into a smile. “You really are the same considerate Futaguchi as ever. Thank you.”

The tall opposite hitter’s petrification lasted exactly one second before murderous light returned to her eyes.

“You should apologize properly, Nishiga!”

“Ahahaha.” I laughed.

“I give up on you.”

Futaguchi’s cheeks were still a little flushed, but she fixed me with the dead-fish eyes of someone too lazy to bother with me. With a sharp clack, she yanked open the locker, then rummaged noisily through it and pulled out her uniform.

I watched her quietly.

All my life, whenever a character appeared in a comic or novel who was skilled at changing their tune according to whom they were speaking to—saying one thing to a person and another to a ghost—I usually felt nothing toward them. Sometimes I even disliked them for reasons I could not quite explain.

It was only after I grew a little older that I understood why.

Because I was exactly that kind of person.

It was as though I had been born knowing what answer would best suit the atmosphere; knowing what to do to make someone I cared about feel satisfied—not the satisfaction of blind flattery, but the optimal solution. Making sure the other person never had to worry about awkwardness, silence, or disappointment when they came to talk to me. Being excellent by society’s standards. Earning their trust, appreciation, and approval, and putting them at ease.

If that ever conflicted with some need of my own, I simply discarded the latter.

Futaguchi was not the straightforward type. She appeared to be sulking now, but in truth, she was relaxed inside—and secretly rather happy. I could see that. I understood it.

Every word I said was meant to please her.

Every word I said was voluntary.

Yamamoto had struck the nail on the head: I did not really want to do this. It exhausted me. And yet, whenever I instinctively acted this way, I was still doing what I believed to be right. Of course I was. Who would deliberately do something bad? Even thieves and criminals considered the bad things they committed to be good deeds—the sort of thing the culprit believed was permissible, or beneficial to themselves.

Everything I did was, in the end, something good for me.

…No. This was not the time to think about such things.

“Seisa,” I said softly.

The girl, holding her clothes, abruptly turned her head and stared at me as though her ears had deceived her.

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“Sorry. Is it all right if I call you that?”

“Sure.” Seisa was perfectly calm. “That’s fine.”

So I asked her directly, “Then what are you really thinking this time, now that you’ve signed up for the volleyball tournament again?”

The fact that she had tested the waters like that meant she already had an answer she wanted to convey to me.

Sure enough, Futaguchi Seisa’s eyes flickered. She had been facing the locker, but now she turned around and looked down at me, tightening her grip on the soft fabric of her shirt.

“I…”

Then, unexpectedly, another familiar voice came from the doorway.

“Nishiga, you’re in here—oh, isn’t that Futaguchi?”

Huh?

Seisa and I turned together toward the open door of the changing room.

There stood the tall, slender Makino, wearing her school uniform beneath a track jacket with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her hands were in her pockets as she looked around the room and raised an eyebrow.

“What’s with the atmosphere? Were you two arguing?”

In the corner of my vision, Seisa silently straightened.

I could not help smiling helplessly. “No. We were just chatting. I didn’t want to go back to class so soon, either. Were you looking for me, Makino?”

“I was.” Makino’s expression was composed. Her gaze left the girl behind me and settled on my face. “You sent out the most spectacularly awful ball in the history of awful balls, and we haven’t settled our accounts yet. Since there’s no coach here, I’ll make sure you remember today for the rest of your life.”

Me: “…”

That was a double affirmation of how awful the ball had been.

Makino: “Only realizing you should be afraid now? What were you doing before?”

She had always been susceptible to softness rather than force. Seeking a suspended sentence, I softened my voice with practiced ease.

“All right, all right… But before that, could you wait outside for a moment? Seisa and I still have something to discuss.”

“There’s nothing you absolutely need to finish saying.” Futaguchi Seisa, cold by nature, betrayed me without the slightest hesitation. “Go with Makino. I still have to change.”

What?

I stared at her in shock. “Seisa.”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Why are you calling me Nishiga again?”

“Is that really the important part?” The brown-haired girl’s ears flushed bright red once more.

“All right, Nishiga.” Makino gave a faint sigh.

She walked over at an unhurried pace, took hold of my arm, and stopped me from arguing.

“Back when Futaguchi hadn’t quit yet, you were always dragging her into your little comedy routines. Looks like you haven’t changed at all. She needs to change. Are you going to let her go home early or not? Come on.”

With no choice, I was dragged away, protesting all the while.

But just as I followed my senior step for step toward the doorway, the young woman pulling me suddenly stopped. One hand remained in her pocket as she calmly, habitually, turned her head to the side.

I heard Makino’s voice above me.

“You played a great match this time,” she said. “Your blocking was just as composed as ever, and you never gave up on shutting down this girl’s attack routes, right to the end. You did well. You only lost because volleyball isn’t a game played by one person alone.”

“…”

“If you get bored after school in the future, remember to change into your sportswear before coming over, Futaguchi.”

After saying that, Makino released my arm and walked outside ahead of us.

I quickly understood. I glanced at the senior whose seemingly steady back was, in fact, fleeing in disarray. Then I turned to look at the girl standing beside the locker, her expression slightly softened, as though she had not yet recovered.

These two were unbelievably awkward when it came to speaking.

Though perhaps I was hardly in a position to say that. Coming from me, that sort of narration sounded rather unconvincing. If I wanted to, being direct was no more difficult for me than tossing out an offhand remark.

Although sometimes, I would rather not possess such effortless composure.

“Makino’s right.” Seeing through everything, I merely waved. “We’ll talk later, Seisa.”

She was silent for a second before saying, “Oh. Take care.”

Ugh! What a heartless choice of words.

Seeing me visibly freeze in place, Seisa still wore the troubled expression of someone with a great deal on her mind, but she smiled faintly. The light amusement lifted the corners of her eyes and spread across her face like a victorious settling of old scores.

Then she spoke again in a small voice, adding, “…Take care, Vi.”

I lingered for a moment.

It was only when Makino’s distant call urging me to hurry rang out like a drawn blade that I finally broke into a delighted, wholly sincere smile. Before leaving, I nodded emphatically.

“Yeah!”