An Adjustment
The day after I met up with Siyun, spent the whole day playing, and finally slept. Morning found me trading messages with him while he answered, one after another.
Maybe it was because I'd had such a rare, genuinely good time. I'd woken early, and since my eyes were already open I thought I might as well head to the PC bang early, too.
But it was still early, and I wasn't really awake yet. I'd just lie there a little longer, and then I'd go...
Something I had never once expected. The distance was long, and for all his talk Siyun hadn't seemed to care much about the rewards—and yet here he was, saying he'd drop by again.
The reason was so perfectly him. Thinking it over, he was coming because the rewards tempted him—truly, on impulse. Given the way he usually talked, and the way he behaved even in the game, there really wasn't room for any other motive to squeeze in.
Any hint that he'd found out I was a girl and was angling to pull something...
...Yeah. Absolutely not. If that were it, he wouldn't have hit the floor the first time we met and gone through that ugly little fit of denying reality.
I was in the middle of that nonsense when another message came in. In an instant I shot upright and out of bed, fingers already flying.
I all but ran for the bathroom, waiting on his reply. Almost at once a bright little ding went off. I checked.
Nine. Nine o'clock. It was plenty of time, and it wasn't. So first—a shower.
I didn't even answer. I tossed my phone onto one of the cushions sprawled across the floor and started washing up.
At this hour there wasn't time to get properly dressed up, so I'd have to split what little I had. ...No particular reason. It was just too embarrassing to walk out in nothing but a hoodie, the way I had yesterday!
I barely made it out on time. No—actually, I left about five minutes early. I'd gotten ready faster than I expected, so I had time to spare.
...It felt like it had been a while since I'd dressed like this. I hoped I didn't look strange. We weren't even dating, so there was no real need to fuss over something like this...
We had so much fun yesterday, and he even got me all sorts of things. Going out in that outfit again would feel wrong.
It was just my conscience, pricking me.
Because of me he'd left the PC bang and wandered all over, and at the arcade he'd played whatever suited me. If I didn't at least do this much, wouldn't I basically be a bad person?
Besides, it was about time for him to show. In the game, and yesterday too, he'd turned up a little earlier than we'd agreed.
I was turning that over, whipping my head this way and that, when I spotted him far off. The moment our eyes met I waved, and he answered with a wave of his own—easy, unhurried, just enough to return the greeting.
It felt strange, somehow. That someone who looked that put-together was my friend. In the game he did nothing but weird things, and he fired straight back at every weird thing I said. That a person like that looked like this—it really was strange.
More than anything, the strangest part was getting to see him for one more day. Knowing his personality, he wouldn't do anything annoying if it killed him. I'd never thought he would cross a distance like this for another day just to squeeze out a few more rewards. I didn't know where he lived, but it seemed to take well over an hour.
...Did he actually have ulterior motives? Maybe I just hadn't caught on. That was possible, wasn't it?
He closed the distance in long, easy strides. I held his gaze and looked up at him from below.
"Hi."
Then, for no real reason, I greeted him once more and simply stared. He looked a little thrown, and started staring back as if he couldn't make sense of me.
But there was no ulterior motive in that look. All it reflected was something like why is she being like this, did she eat something weird.
Of course, it might have been nothing but my own reading of him...
I can be sure of this.
I know my own looks are quite something. I get plenty of stares because of them, and thanks to that I can tell, from the way someone looks at me, whether or not they have designs on me.
And to my eye, he very clearly did not.
...Still. You never really know. There was always the one-in-a-million chance I was wrong. So I'd keep him in my sights, and I'd watch.
And so I—
"...Let's go. Before the seats fill up."
—said just that, and the two of us stepped into the PC bang together.
Inside, we spent a stretch of time not much different from yesterday. The game was up, we collected our rewards, and with nothing else to do we simply enjoyed it. If there was any difference at all...
"Hey."
"...What?"
"Why're you so quiet?"
...it was that I hadn't been saying much.
It wasn't that things were awkward. How could they be, after we'd walked around together yesterday—no, after we'd already talked things through even before that? I'd gone quiet only because I kept watching him, under the excuse of keeping an eye on him.
Had that been too much? Siyun kept groaning and asking, over and over, whether he'd done something to make me angry.
He hadn't. Not one bit. There wasn't even a reason to be angry in the first place.
Even so, watching him flounder was pretty entertaining, so I deliberately left it hanging, loaded with meaning. After that I took the lead and steered him toward a karaoke place.
We ended up at karaoke. There was no special intent behind it. I'd only been walking, working off dinner, when a karaoke room happened to catch my eye. I'd been under a lot of stress lately, and I wanted to blow some of it off at least once.
My verdict on the first song, once I'd sung my heart out...
"That was insane."
...was that.
Honestly, I'd expected him to laugh. I know perfectly well that I can't sing.
Was he offering empty praise so I wouldn't feel embarrassed? No. That wasn't the face of someone doing that.
Then he was genuinely impressed? Surprisingly, it seemed he was.
Was that why? To put it the way the game would, his favorability had gone up. Not romantic feeling—just plain favorability toward me as a person.
How could a person be this decent? Then again, if he weren't, there was no way we'd have kept playing together all this time.
Thinking that, I found I wanted to hear him sing, too. There were plenty of songs left, so I'd get the chance. Quietly hopeful, I held the mic out to him.
Time slipped on and on, and before I knew it we'd finished the last song. There'd been a stretch in the middle where something I tacked on dragged the mood down, but fortunately it got smoothed over.
It wasn't as if I'd felt jealous at the mention of someone he loved enough to practice for, enough to want to show them. We'd known each other a long time, but we'd only actually met for two days. Feelings like that had no way of taking root.
I just—I didn't even know why—got a lump in my throat and added it anyway. A part of me had felt a little envious, too.
...I wouldn't do that next time. Telling him about my personal business would only put him in an awkward spot.
Even so, maybe because he'd managed, somehow, to loosen the air between us again, the walk while he saw me off stayed loud and bright.
We talked about the game and chattered the same pointless nonsense we always did. It wasn't all that long, but we'd walked a fair way, and suddenly we were in front of the station.
I walked with him up to the turnstiles, the same as yesterday, when a thought struck me out of nowhere.
I want to hang out with him tomorrow, too.
It was about tomorrow.
Today he'd come on a whim. Because of that, yesterday and today had both been good days—two of them. I hadn't spared a thought for anything hard. I'd only done whatever was right in front of me. Enough that I'd even skipped the cleaning I did every single day, two days running.
That was why I wanted to see him tomorrow, too. I wanted to spend time like this with him again. I wanted the walk home not to feel like something I dreaded, but to become the waiting that led to tomorrow's fun.
But I couldn't be that shameless. He'd said it was all right, and yet a single line like that could never make the guilt vanish completely.
I'd wrecked a perfectly good mood right at the end. I hadn't known, but I'd still said something I shouldn't have, and I'd rubbed him the wrong way.
And it wasn't even me going to him. He was the one coming, and the distance was long. So I couldn't bring myself to just say, let's hang out tomorrow too.
What do I do. What would make this all right. In my heart I wanted to slip it in naturally—let's hang out tomorrow—but...
While I worried, we'd already reached the turnstiles. I watched him pull out his card and just stood there, unable to commit to anything at all.
Then—maybe because I'd suddenly gone silent—he spoke to me, caught in that awkward beat right before he tapped the card.
"What? You got something to say?"
I hauled in a startled breath. I'd thought he wouldn't notice. How on earth had he? I'd felt it since yesterday: his read on people was frighteningly fast.
Hemming and hawing. If I had to put my state into words, that was probably it.
He spoke like he couldn't stand the wait.
"What is it. Just say it. I've gotta go."
But my mouth never opened. All my focus was sunk into wondering whether I was even allowed to say this.
I held him there without even realizing time was passing. Not because I'd meant to.
Two minutes went by like that—two hours, by the feel of it—and at last he couldn't take it. He was just about to tap his card.
I opened my mouth the way you do when you think screw it, the way you do when you decide to just blurt it out once and see.
"...Tomorrow, too. You'll come?"
I caught his sleeve and held on, tight. I hadn't meant to. My hand had simply gone out on its own.
And then—
The answer came right away, riding a laugh that asked why I was even fretting over something like this, why I was even saying it out loud.
...He wasn't angry? From the way he'd reacted earlier, I was sure I'd put my foot in my mouth. We'd made up, yes, but for the mood to be good enough that he'd answer this cleanly...
No. No, that wasn't it. This wasn't the time for thoughts like that. This was the time to be glad I got to spend another day like this with him.
I wiped the crumpled, shrinking look off my face as if it had never been there, turned a faint smile toward him, and spoke.
"...Yeah. Then we're good. We've still got rewards to finish off."
"Yeah, yeah. I'll keep coming till we've eaten every last one, so don't you worry."
"Okay. See you tomorrow. Get there safe."
"You get home safe too. I'll text you when I get in today."
I didn't say it had been fun. Saying something like that felt, somehow, embarrassing.
I don't know if I should call it lucky, but he tapped his card at once and went through the gate. Because of that, he never brought up how stupid I must have looked.
Normally he would've snickered to himself and teased me for ages. He'd done it in the game, and he'd done it yesterday, the first time we met.
...Anyway, that wasn't the important part. The important part was that going home and passing the time had become hours I could spend waiting for tomorrow's fun.
I pressed down on the excitement as hard as I could, kept dragging down the corners of my mouth every time they tried to climb, and started for home. I was looking forward to tomorrow.