Chapter 30: Spot the Difference

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Translator: Soafp

---

The next day was Friday.

Amanatsu had messaged me again, to the point where she seemed ready to come here even in a typhoon.

But the trains were scheduled to be suspended, so physically that was impossible. There was no need to worry.

The wind was blowing outside.

As time passed, the trees visible from the window leaned more and more strongly.

The typhoon was expected to hit at night.

Toshie-san gladly took us in for the duration of our stay.

I was grateful he agreed without asking for the details.

Normally, anyone would want to worry and ask a ton of questions.

That was how strange Sakura's condition was.

Since our conversation yesterday, she'd clearly been speaking less.

There was only one reason.

She was trying to break the promise to give up cleanly and go back to school after one week of dating.

She probably hadn't meant to lie from the beginning.

But after spending a few days with me, she'd ended up not giving up at all—if anything, she'd just complicated her feelings even more.

“Waaaah, I want to go eat hamburgers with Fujimaru!”

It happened while we were eating lunch in the living room of Toshie-san's house, with nothing to do in my room.

Shizuka-chan's whining voice echoed through the house.

“You can't today. The weather's bad.”

“But we promised!”

Apparently, she had made plans a week earlier to go to a restaurant where dogs were allowed.

Because of the typhoon, it had been postponed, and now she was acting spoiled.

“Then at least let me play outside with Fujimaru! School's canceled, after all!”

“School was canceled because it's dangerous outside. You need to listen. If the weather's good on Sunday, I'll take you then.”

“Muuuuu!”

Families with small children have it rough.

Kids get carried away by their emotions, can't control themselves, and end up shaking up everyone around them.

I was thinking that maybe, by high school age, they would settle down and become easier to handle—

and then I noticed Sakura, with her gloomy, clouded eyes.

…Well, there are exceptions everywhere.

Still, when I really thought about it, Amanatsu, Shinonome, and even the girls in class who had been badmouthing Shinonome had all let their emotions run ahead of them and done stupid things too.

If I thought about it that way, maybe acting strangely was actually pretty normal, more or less.

If that was true…

Was I the strange one?

No, that couldn't be right.

Why should I have to set my standard by people who had messed up and were now wallowing in misery?

---

The incident happened before evening.

I was in Sakura's room playing cards with her when Toshie-san burst in, sounding frantic.

“Sakura! Subaru! Have you seen Shizuka?!”

I looked at Sakura.

It seemed she didn't know either.

“We haven't. What happened?”

“She's disappeared since a little while ago. I looked away for just a second and she was gone…”

What Shizuka-chan had said earlier came back to me, and I had a bad feeling.

What if she'd gone out on her own to play?

“We'll help look.”

“That'd be a huge help!”

“I-I will too!”

Sakura stood up at the same time I did, and I checked her face.

I hesitated to bring along someone so emotionally unstable.

But after seeing her switch out of that dark expression in an instant, I gave a firm nod.

I shouted Shizuka-chan's name and searched through the house once.

She might have been hiding somewhere.

But she wasn't anywhere.

So she really had gone outside.

The wind outside had already grown rough.

Black clouds covered the sky.

Fine rain had begun to fall.

“Shizuka-chan!”

Wearing rain gear, I searched the neighborhood thoroughly with Sakura and Toshie-san.

This wasn't the kind of weather where a small child could be running around happily.

Even if she had gone out on a whim, she should have come back already.

Unless she'd been caught in an accident…

Without meaning to, my pace quickened and my voice got louder.

The last bits of calm on Toshie-san's face disappeared, leaving him visibly desperate.

“Shizuka!”

And then—

On a road near the beach, we found a small back shaking with tears.

Toshie-san shouted and sprinted at full speed.

“Dad——”

He hugged the child and lifted her up.

“I was worried sick!”

“Waaahhh.”

It was Shizuka-chan.

She seemed to be safe.

Thank goodness…

I let out a sigh of relief, and Sakura beside me did the same.

Toshie-san asked his daughter in a gentle voice, caring for her.

“Why did you go outside?”

“Uu… I'm sorry. I just wanted to play a little, and then, and then…”

“It's okay now. Let's go home together.”

Toshie-san stroked Shizuka-chan's back as her words came out in a shaky voice.

The tension that had been stretched tight began to loosen.

“I was super freaked out. Well, thank goodness, thank goodness,” Sakura muttered, shoulders slumping.

But I couldn't shake a certain sense of unease.

Why had Shizuka-chan been standing there in that place?

She was an active child.

She was so curious she would pop into Blue Note even while it was open, and she preferred playing outside to staying home.

In other words, the area around the house was basically her own backyard.

So there was no way she'd normally get lost.

Why hadn't she just gone home right away?

And then I remembered that I'd checked the whole house thoroughly before searching…

A chill ran down my spine.

Looking at Shizuka-chan in Toshie-san's arms, I asked:

“Shizuka-chan… wasn't Fujimaru-kun with you?”

She burst into tears and opened her mouth in a tiny voice.

“He ran away while we were taking a walk…”

---

The rain and wind only grew worse.

We sent Shizuka-chan home, then continued searching for Fujimaru-kun.

But as the sun went down and night fell, the search was called off.

Toshie-san decided the risk of causing further trouble was too high.

“Thanks, Sakura, Subaru. Let's rest for now. We'll search again once it's light.”

“Yes.”

“…”

Sakura nodded silently with her head down.

A heavy mood settled over Blue Note.

I wanted to rush outside immediately too.

But if I did that, I'd only cause more trouble for everyone else.

So for now, all I could do was hope for Fujimaru-kun's safety.

“I'm sorry. Because of me…”

Shizuka-chan was clearly feeling down.

She was still just a child.

I only hoped this would be something she could regret without carrying a deep wound for the rest of her life…

Since we were cold from the rain, we decided to take showers one by one.

By the time everyone had washed off the sweat, it was dinner time.

I didn't feel like eating at all, but it was better to get something into our stomachs.

That was what I thought as we sat down to eat.

“Isn't Sakura coming yet?”

Toshie-san asked that.

It was unusual for her to be late for dinner.

I sent her a message, but it didn't even get read, and even after waiting a while, she still didn't show up.

That headache-inducing feeling I'd experienced so many times before started crawling through my mind.

Part of me hoped she wouldn't do something that reckless.

But at the same time, I remembered how she'd acted like this with Amanatsu and Shinonome too—doing whatever she wanted without thinking ahead and causing trouble for everyone.

I went straight to Sakura's room.

When I opened the door, I found her phone abandoned in the empty room.

“…That idiot.”

Yes. Sakura Hiiragi was exactly that kind of person.

---

I ran.

I kept running down the dark road at night.

My heart pounded wildly, and I was out of breath.

The violent wind was so strong it was hard even to keep my eyes open.

The sound of the wind was constant and harsh in my ears.

Even though I was wearing rain gear, I was soaked through in no time.

The rain was so cold, but inside the rain gear, heated up by my own sweat, it was unbearably hot.

And yet, separate from my growing panic, there was another part of me that was strangely calm.

It felt like I had been split in two, and one half was watching from above…

With my cooled-down mind, I thought about why she was always like this.

Everyone wanted to help Fujimaru-kun.

But she should know better than anyone what kind of trouble that would cause for everyone else.

No—maybe she really wasn't thinking about anything.

Come to think of it, she'd been the same way that day when she got attacked by the Chihuahua.

I remember that day well.

I was riding a bicycle with my childhood friend and waiting at a traffic light.

Then I heard a voice from behind.

“Wow, little Chihuahua, it's dangerous to be here all alone.”

“Waaauu!”

When I turned around, the girl was approaching the growling Chihuahua.

Anyone could tell the dog was excited.

But she reached out in a carefree way, speaking to it in a gentle voice.

“If you get hit by a car, it'll be terrible, okay?”

“Woof!”

It was a close call.

I jumped in between them, got bitten on the butt, and somehow managed to restrain the Chihuahua.

Luckily, the owner who had been searching for it arrived right away, so I could hand it back over.

But until the ambulance took me away, my childhood friend and that girl were both crying their eyes out.

Now it's a nostalgic memory.

And it makes me want to click my tongue.

What do you mean, you admired me and wanted to help people?

If I hadn't been there, you would have been the one bitten.

In other words, before admiration or anything else, Sakura Hiiragi had always been that kind of girl.

A natural-born good person, and an idiot whose brain didn't have enough room to think about how her actions affected other people.

She got so focused on helping the Chihuahua that she never even considered the possibility of getting bitten herself.

“What a pain.”

It was the same this time too.

Who would be the most endangered if they ran off without telling anyone during a storm like this?

Who was the one who sabotaged herself while supporting Amanatsu's love life?

She always did things out of kindness and then ended up depressed. There was no helping it.

“This isn't going to get us anywhere.”

Searching randomly would only waste energy.

It would be better to narrow it down and check the most likely places.

Fujimaru-kun was still just a puppy under one year old.

Even if he'd gotten separated, there was no way he would have gone very far in weather this bad.

Sakura should know that too.

So I focused my search on places not too far from Blue Note, especially spots where she could shelter from the rain and wind.

Even for a guy like me, the wind was so strong I could barely walk straight, so Sakura might have taken refuge somewhere too.

And after running around for several dozen minutes, I finally found her.

She was sitting in the tunnel beneath a park slide, holding Fujimaru-kun in her arms.

“You…”

“H-Hatsukade, wh-why are you here?”

“Because I came looking for you, obviously. And Fujimaru-kun was with you too?”

“Y-Yeah.”

“I'm glad you both made it back safe.”

I was at my limit.

I slid into the tunnel and sat down beside her.

Fujimaru-kun seemed a little tired too; after licking me a few times, he quietly curled up in Sakura's arms.

“At least bring your phone with you.”

“…Sorry. I couldn't sit still, and before I knew it, I'd left the house.”

I figured that was probably what happened.

“Are you hurt?”

“I'm fine. Fujimaru is too.”

“…I see. I've got a lot I want to say, but you did your best.”

“When I saw Shizuka-chan's face like that, I knew I absolutely had to help.”

“Yeah.”

I immediately contacted Toshie-san.

A car should come to pick us up soon.

Sakura looked at my face awkwardly.

“Sorry for causing trouble again.”

“It's fine. I already accepted that there'd be some of this when I decided to stay with you.”

“Th-that's a little complicated too…”

I met her eyes.

A few days ago, she'd been so lively, but now her eyes were clouded over.

“You still don't plan to go back to school?”

“…No.”

“What if I begged you and said I don't want you anywhere except my classroom?”

“Ugh… that's unfair. But I can't. I'll definitely end up liking you even more. I already feel bad enough toward Nakina, after saying I'd support her so much. Even when you didn't know, I was already helping Nakina with her problems all the time. So, you know, this is kind of too much.”

There it was again.

We had landed right back on the same problem.

“What if I clearly rejected Amanatsu?”

“Somehow I feel like nothing would change…”

“Then what if I started dating Amanatsu?”

“Eh… I wouldn't like that either.”

What was the right answer?

How was I supposed to get out of this tangled mess?

I felt the same unpleasant sense of being stuck in one place, turning in circles over and over.

And then, suddenly, an unpleasant possibility surfaced in my mind.

“Can you imagine me dating someone?”

“…Now that you mention it. There have been plenty of moments where I got a little scared, but I can't really picture you liking anyone.”

“Yeah. I think so too.”

“Hey, what kind of question is that?”

“This is an important check.”

I looked into her eyes and told her:

“If I said I liked you, what would you do?”

“…Eh!?”

“What if I said I loved you so much that I'd do anything to date you?”

“W-What's wrong with you!?”

Sakura's face turned bright red as she wriggled in place.

Fujimaru-kun, held in her arms, looked up at her curiously.

“Just answer me.”

“T-That would be… maybe I'd go out with you?”

“What about Amanatsu?”

“If you said it like that… I wouldn't want to turn you down.”

“Then how about the opposite. What if I said I loved Amanatsu? Not just in the casual ‘maybe we're dating' sense—what if I said I loved her so much I could think about nothing else, and wanted to hold hands with her every single day going to and from school?”

“I can't even picture that… but I'd feel like dying.”

Sakura lowered her head dejectedly, but then she cut in with, “But…” and continued.

“If you show me that much, then I guess there's nothing I can do. I'd probably end up thinking that no matter how hard I tried, I never would've been able to date you anyway.”

“I see.”

I looked up.

The damp air inside the tunnel clung to my body.

Even in a situation like this, I still managed to keep a strange kind of calm somewhere in the back of my mind.

That feeling was a lot like when I looked at my classmates with a cold, detached eye in the classroom.

People I had no interest in.

Immature, not worth involving myself with, and fundamentally different from me.

At some point, I'd gotten into the habit of separating myself from other people like that.

That was probably why I could still stay calm even now.

I did mean it when I said I wanted Sakura to come back to school.

The reason I could think that was because I believed she was about to repeat a year because of me.

But when it came to matters of romance, I honestly couldn't care less.

It was because I didn't feel like I was actually involved.

Just like the way I looked at my classmates.

Since I'd always kept myself separate from it, it never really reached my heart.

Because I didn't care, I'd been able to keep brushing off Amanatsu's feelings so casually.

But if I had properly rejected her with real emotion, maybe Amanatsu would have acted differently.

The same went for Sakura.

She was always so positive, but maybe the reason she'd become so completely resigned was not only because she valued friendship, but also because she didn't see even the slightest chance of being with me.

I'd been worrying about how to solve Sakura's problem.

What had gone wrong.

But that wasn't it.

That wasn't the issue.

Wasn't the real problem that I had kept brushing off every feeling people sent my way?

If I was the one who had left everything unresolved and caused this situation…

Then—

The one who was wrong was me.

“Sakura, I'm sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“For these past few days, I've acted like your boyfriend, but the truth is, I never even tried to actually fall for you.”

“Well, that's because you were just going along with my selfish request, so it can't be helped—”

“No. It was dishonest of me to accept that kind of proposal when I never intended to do romance from the start. If I hadn't had that kind of attitude, maybe I could've fallen for you at some point.”

“…No, that's—”

“I think I've been avoiding the idea of falling for someone all along.”

Amanatsu too.

If I hadn't stubbornly refused romance so hard, maybe I could have fallen for her during everything that happened.

“To be honest, I'm not good with your impulsive behavior. But I am honestly happy that you cared about me so earnestly.”

“W-Wait!”

“And I think it's cute that you studied cooking so hard, or that you worked so hard on social media just so you could meet me again.”

“Tch…”

“I don't dislike you, Sakura.”

“…!”

“Look at me.”

I told Sakura the honest truth, even though she was trying to look away.

“This is my compromise.”

“…What?”

“When I asked you before what you'd do if Amanatsu and Shinonome liked the same person, you said you'd support both of them, right? It was contradictory, but you also said that mutual love isn't the only kind of love.”

“Y-Yeah.”

“Then include yourself in that too. Support Amanatsu's love, and be honest about your own feelings too…”

I swallowed once.

The sound was swallowed by the rain and wind outside.

“I'm not saying I'll never date in high school either. If I fall for someone, I'll face it properly. And if that happens to be you, Sakura, then I'll be the one to confess.”

“…H-Hatsukade…”

“I compromised too. So you compromise too. That's the most I can offer.”

I kept my gaze locked on her widened eyes and continued.

“But even so, I still don't think it's easy for me to fall for someone right now. So, every day when we see each other at school…”

The cloudiness in her eyes slowly disappeared.

“Make me fall for you, Sakura.”

And then her face lit up all at once.