An Eye-Catching Date (6)
Yuuya's uncanny luck had, quite literally, scorched Class 2-1's gambling den to the ground.
The dealer was in despair.
"Idiot. That's... that's impossible..."
Watching the second-year senior who had been dealing crumple after Yuuya's three wins in a row wrecked him was enough to stir a strange guilt. Even so, they couldn't stay tied to this place forever. The instant Sakuya had what she'd come for—the stamp—Tales Tale set off for the Old School Building. Lingering any longer wouldn't have helped.
As it happened, leave Class 1 and keep going, and on the third floor of the Old School Building there was a large-scale production run jointly by second-year Classes 9 and 10: a survival game, three against three. In scale alone it could stand beside the haunted house operating on the first floor. Naturally there were even more guests hungry for it than for the haunted house, and the line spilling all the way to the foot of the stairs made Tae-il's face fall.
But what else could he do?
"Ayane really wanted to try this!"
"Yeah. Let's do it."
A man whose debts ran far too deep, Tae-il was hopelessly weak when it came to Ayane.
Sakuya locked an arm tight around Ayane's neck.
"Ayane! You're secretly pretty good at darts, aren't you?"
"Ahem!"
Praise from Sakuya was rare, and Ayane preened, thumping her flat chest.
"I'll have you know throwing is my specialty!"
"That's our Ayane! So you'd be great at throwing fire extinguishers too, right?"
"Obviously— wait, Sakuya, you—!"
"Ahaha! It was a jo— I mean, not a joke— gyaaah! Ayane, calm down!"
"Ayane is being extremely calm right now!"
At the mischievous jab, Ayane actually produced a fire extinguisher and gave chase. Sakuya stretched those long legs of hers and ran.
"I was wrong! Waaaaah! Help me, Tae-il!"
"Hold it right there, Sakuyaaa!"
As ever, Tae-il was left wondering where on earth Ayane had pulled a fire extinguisher from. Leaving the two of them to spin their chase in circles around him, he flipped through the pamphlet.
"A survival game, huh..."
"What, you were interested in that too?"
"Honestly, not all that interested."
"Mm-hmm. And you're doing it anyway?"
"Well. It's nothing much. But Ayane likes it."
As he answered, he thoroughly mussed the bangs of Iris, who kept subtly pressing in against him.
"Aaah! Shin Tae-il, you— why would you just—!"
Iris frowned, carefully repairing the mussed bangs with both hands. At the sight of her irritation he smiled, soft and brief.
The Old School Building. Aged as it was, the wooden floorboards creaked under every step. Far ahead, Sakuya and Ayane—having raced well out in front in the course of their chase—waved their arms and waited.
Quietly, Iris asked in a voice meant for him alone.
"...Then if it's something the rest of us like, and not just Ayane, you'll say yes to all of that too?"
"We'll see? There's no reason I wouldn't."
The voice that answered sat a fair distance from anything solemn. Faced with a Tae-il who clearly wasn't taking her seriously, Iris sulked, lips pushed out.
"Hmph. Just you wait."
"Why?"
"If it comes to that, I'll go around whining to the others that you only give Ayane special treatment."
"Haha."
Tae-il laughed. It was a rather cute threat. But in a band that lived and moved as one body, unequal treatment was a genuinely lethal notion. He stopped and lightly pinched Iris's soft cheek.
"Mwuh— what?"
"Then what are you going to do if I give you special treatment?"
"M-mee— me?"
"Yeah. Only you, Iris."
"..."
At the mischievous question, Iris kept her silence. I don't want to answer. Her eyes said as much. Against that stubbornness he gave a wry smile, smoothed her cheek once, gently, and at last drew his hand away.
"You're special."
His hand moved carefully toward his own ear.
"You wouldn't know it, but..."
His thumb rubbed at the ear, shutting it out of sight as if to hide the embarrassment.
"What?"
He had barely murmured it, and then he started walking again as if in flight. His steps were quick.
"Hey— hey, Shin Tae-il! You explain that properly!"
Certain her own ears had failed her, Iris flushed and hurried after him.
Behind them.
"..."
"..."
Rena and Yuuya, who had ended up overhearing the whole exchange, stared at each other in blank awkwardness.
"...Haa. We should go too."
Rena, growing used by degrees to Tae-il's harem antics, recovered first and shrugged.
"Those two really will try anything, won't they? It's sickening."
"Y-yeah..."
"Tsk! I'm embarrassed just listening."
She wasn't wrong. Their talk was the squirmy, ticklish kind that shamed whoever happened to hear it.
Even so...
Yuuya envied the girl called Iris. He had said it with such certainty—that from the moment she was born, she had already been, to him, a presence so special that nothing in the world could take her place.
Someday, I want to hear it too...
A confession in that same shade. As if to force the envy down, Yuuya's left hand seized her right thumb and pulled, hard.
"Yahoo! Ayane's grand victory!"
Ayane, the star of the win, sprayed V-signs from both hands in every direction.
"Good work, Ayane."
"Ah! Iris worked hard too! You were excellent bait!"
"Heh. First time in my life I've been treated as bait..."
"Same here."
When Iris and Sakuya, who had been on Ayane's team, shrugged off their gowns, full chests swayed free. There hadn't been much of a secret to the victory. Looks so striking that even the seniors playing zombies on the set couldn't hide them had done the work of bait, and Sakuya's brilliant hair refused to stay concealed no matter how she crouched behind cover or behind a zombie. The two had naturally become provocation itself, drawing the enemy and pinning down the other team's position; the moment their quick reflexes found someone, Ayane punished them with hit-and-run.
"Still, that was close!"
"Tell me about it."
Annoyed, Rena shook her sleeves and flicked off the yellow wetness soaking her gown.
"Mm-hm! The pipsqueak was so tiny she was hard to find!"
"You were hard to find too, pitch-black like that."
"Ahem!"
Rena clicked her tongue.
"Tch."
No jab landed on Ayane, who had seized the game's victory fair and square.
"I-I'm sorry... Tae-il."
"It's all right."
Cast without warning as the reason for their loss, Yuuya shrank in on herself and carefully watched his face. The formidable luck that had broken a second-year dealer was powerless here.
"You didn't scrape yourself badly, or get hurt, did you?"
"Mm..."
The people in zombie makeup had startled her more than once, but that was all. Fidgeting with a water gun whose magazine was still nearly full, she couldn't let go of the fact that she hadn't managed to do anything. She scrubbed hard at the yellow liquid staining the pure-white doctor's gown. The cloth was waterproof; a scrape from a towel damp with hot water left it clean in an instant.
Three-on-three survival. They had finally gotten to play after a forty-minute wait, and it was over in the blink of an eye. Thanks to the wish tickets staked on the bet, Ayane, Iris, and Sakuya were now rich in them.
"Wahaha! You'd better brace yourself, Shin Tae-il!"
"Haha."
Ever since that near-confession, Iris had started clinging to the wish tickets with a peculiar fixation. At the persistence she'd shown out on the set, Tae-il grumbled.
"If you can help it, don't just pile them up. Use them as you go. I'm starting to get scared of all these wish tickets you hoard however you please."
"Ehh. But it'd be such a waste to spend them..."
"Spare a thought for me. I'm the one who has to grant them."
Iris grumbled.
"If you don't want to, then don't. Wish tickets or not, you can just refuse."
"That's the part I don't want."
The flat answer made her flinch.
"You don't...?"
A life that amounted to nothing. Childishly, shamefully, he had resolved to become a protagonist, and he had made himself one vow.
Like a man.
Never give up...
Above all, he didn't want to keep showing a weak face in front of the people he hoped to look cool for.
I've already shown them more than enough.
Being branded a pathetic man for the rest of his life was the one thing he refused. And so, to Iris, who had thrown the question back at him, he answered—scratching his cheek, sheepish, wearing that smile which, as always, looked a little hopeless somewhere in it.
"Don't worry."
Thump.
Sound is a wave: a wave carried on the vibration of a medium, air and things like it. Sound itself holds no meaning at all. Even language, which wears the shape of sound, meant nothing until people chose to give it meaning.
The sound took form. This was no illusion. Bearing a definite meaning, it resonated inside Iris.
Forte.
Fortissimo.
Within the resonance, grown stronger, the sound—now possessed of meaning—delivered that meaning to her with exactness. As her mind slowly took it in, the powder packed tight inside the keg burst free.
Pop. Bang. Like fireworks.
"Ngh...!"
She had no way to resist the feeling slamming into her, and her face burned redder than it ever had.
Why— why does he just say things like that so calmly...!
How could anyone be so shameless? A problem child from birth. Really. Truly. The sort who would cause heaven knew what disaster, and heaven knew where, if she weren't the one beside him. A problem child without precedent, and without equal.
"Rea— llyyyyy...!"
Both hands came up to hide the face that laid every bit of her shame bare, her head lifted beneath them. She resented him. Shin Tae-il, smiling with that perfect calm, as if it were someone else's affair. Iris resented him down to the bone.
The entrance of the main building. Anyone who wanted in on the prize drawing had to come to the reception desk here and sign the register in person.
"Here!"
Sakuya, whose whole aim was a limited-edition pair of sneakers, grinned wide and held out her pamphlet.
"A pamphlet with ten stamps!"
"Yes, confirmed."
A gentle-looking girl smiled, took the pamphlet, and finished entering the signature.
"The drawing will be held at the Finale."
"Okay!"
Change the person all you like; the root of them holds. Fandom alone hadn't been enough for her—those hobbies had even spread their reach into music—but at the root, she was sports.
"So pure. Nice to see."
Rena, watching Sakuya from a distance, murmured it.
"You think so?"
Rena shrugged.
"Sure. Better than making a move on someone while reading dirty comics."
"Haha."
A girl who asks people to draw doujinshi with the two of us as the leads. And the genre, of all things, is NTL and NTR. Not your ordinary pervert.
"First woman like that I've seen in my life. Hang in there."
"Why do you keep talking like this is somebody else's problem..."
"Unlike you, when we're getting ready for Comic-Con I can keep that spitfire in line just fine with my right to appoint an assistant."
"I'm gonna lose my mind."
An ordinary boy, the protagonist of a doujinshi? What would that even feel like...? Tae-il couldn't begin to picture it.
What I know for sure is that I'm not exactly happy about it.
As his expression darkened by degrees, Rena caught the shift and snickered.
"Relax. I'll keep it within reason."
"Does 'within reason' even exist in that world...?"
"How should I know."
"..."
"Anyway."
With that, she pointed at Iris, hunched in a corner and muttering to herself.
"So what did you do this time?"
"I didn't do anything..."
"Then why is that pig like that? I'll have you know she's my childhood friend."
Rena, confident she read Iris better than anyone, knew there was only one person who could put her in a state like that. Shin Tae-il.
"..."
He couldn't find his footing.
"I don't even have a guess."
"You know. That dense protagonist who shows up in every rom-com?"
"Hey, Rena. Am I dense...?"
"Worse than dense. A straight-up scumbag. Well?"
"..."
Guesswork aside, something in him had clearly been struck, and he had no choice but to shut his mouth. Scumbag. It didn't have a particularly pleasant ring. But he had no grounds for refusing the name, either. Rena glanced at him groaning over it alone, unable to answer, and laughed under her breath.
"Idiot. If you're a scumbag, then act like one."
Even if that was what he was.
"Sorry."
The apology came out in a voice that had sunk flat. Rena's gaze passed lightly over the boy's face, crowded with melancholy and joy and guilt.
"Well..."
Doing her best to look as if it were nothing, she tapped the toe of her shoe against the floor and set both hands on her hips.
"Shriveling up from embarrassment isn't really my style, but..."
"Thanks. Not sorry."
Tae-il cut her off and smiled, bitter. Then, timidly, as if he couldn't be sure—scratching at his forehead to hide how cornered he looked—he asked.
"This is right, isn't it?"
Watching him, Rena let a smile rest at the corner of her mouth.
"Yep."
For now, that was enough. The time given to them still overflowed.