Chapter 19
As I walked past the last corner of the stairs, I suddenly stopped. Niou, who was walking behind me with his head down, didn't notice and bumped into me. Luckily, I was steady enough to reach out and catch him.
"Don't talk," I whispered, then peeked out cautiously to observe the two people in the corner.
Niou looked in the direction I was looking, and saw that Yagyu was talking to a girl. The girl had her hands behind her back and was carrying an exquisitely wrapped gift bag.
"Do you know him?" Niou mouthed to me silently.
I stared at the girl's face for a while, then shook my head. If I had seen her before, I would definitely remember her, so I guessed she wasn't a classmate or a member of the student council.
"Puri, I declined." Hearing him say that, I turned around to look. Yagyu first bowed very politely and apologized, then returned the girl's gift with both hands, and seemed to glance in our direction as he looked up.
Oh no! I immediately shrank back, then peeked out again a moment later, this time making eye contact.
Since we'd already been caught watching the show, Renwang and I stopped hiding. Seeing the girl run away with red eyes, we hugged each other and exclaimed in unison, "Wow—!"
Liu Sheng's expression seemed to suggest that he was waiting for us to perform, and he wasn't in a hurry to speak.
"I think it's quite cute," I commented first.
"She looks a lot like Kasumi Arimura, and her voice is similar too." Niou nodded in agreement.
"Young Master Yagyu still has high standards." I patted Yagyu on the shoulder and walked ahead with the lunch bag.
After hearing my teasing remark, Renwang chuckled.
Liu Sheng, standing next to me, shook his head and sighed helplessly. Then he looked at the guy who was still laughing. The two of them were walking behind me and playfully pushed each other a couple of times, as if they were exchanging information that I shouldn't know.
"It's not very polite to whisper to a third party." Before opening the rooftop door, I turned around to look at them.
"Young Master said he doesn't ask for much." Renwang betrayed his partner, then rushed out the door and ran away.
So I waited for Yagyu to tell me what they had said that I shouldn't hear, but he just gave me a polite smile and reached out to hold the door, making a "ladies first" gesture.
He knows best that I can't hold back, and he knows I won't fall for that.
I turned around, raised my hand, and slammed it on the door. I stopped him and said, "If you don't tell me, I won't let you through. Anyway, you can't beat me."
We faced off for a few seconds, and Renwang couldn't stand it any longer. He came back, put his arm around my shoulder, and forcibly pulled me to sit on the bench.
I told her that I have someone I like.
Just as I was jokingly preparing to counter-grapple Niou, I heard Yagyu speak.
A strange emotion flashed through my mind in an instant, so much so that I didn't have time to discern my feelings. This was different from the feeling I had just experienced when I secretly watched him being confessed to. I wasn't just watching the show from a bystander's perspective; he was confessing to me, to Niou, and to his two friends.
Actually, I have many natural ways of responding, such as "Who is she?" or "When did you start liking her?" These are questions that I would definitely blurt out in my daily life.
But when I realized that this statement might not be an excuse but more likely the truth, I was speechless.
"Like I said, this kind of rejection isn't fashionable these days." Niou picked up some vegetables from his bento box, chewed them with a heavy expression, and after swallowing them with difficulty, he looked at me and added, "But you're still much better than me."
"Why are you attacking me personally?" I immediately snapped out of my jumbled thoughts.
"After all, who else but you would directly reject someone with 'I don't like you and I probably won't like you in the future, so goodbye'?" Niou shrugged.
"What's the difference between him and me?" I pointed at Liu Sheng, who was eating quietly. "Isn't this the same answer that cuts off all possibilities? I'm just telling the truth. His answer might be exposed immediately."
"So you really have someone you like?" Niou swallowed the rice in his mouth again with difficulty. His pained expression always made me feel like someone had poisoned his lunchbox.
Yagyu had anticipated that Niou was not there to help him out of his predicament. He slowly finished a piece of beef, then put down his chopsticks. He looked at me, then at Niou.
I was genuinely curious, but Niou seemed to be just watching the show.
Grace Kelly.
The moment I heard his name, my expression froze. The next second, I jokingly kicked Yagyu, but he blocked it.
"Why don't you mention Ingrid Bergman?" I said.
"Then I'll choose Is Davis," Niou chimed in, and I rolled my eyes at him.
This was a rare occasion for the three of us to get together for lunch after the midterm exams. After finishing our previous topic, we chatted about other things, but Liu Sheng never actually mentioned any names. I suspected that the person might not even exist, but I also felt that he might just not want to tell me. After all, it was someone else's private matter, and it would seem a bit impolite of me to press him further.
And in a sense, I don't seem to expect to hear anyone's name.
I don't often have friends I can talk to, and I haven't fully gotten used to my quiet second year of high school. If Liu Sheng were to fall in love at this time, it wouldn't be something to be happy about for me.
People are generally selfish if they consider things from a personal perspective.
Of course, when analyzing things afterward, I can always reason out my emotions from beginning to end using various reasonable logics, and whatever my reaction was, it was all normal. But what I was thinking about more in that moment was Liu Sheng's casual question to me during our casual conversation, "Do you have it?"
The completed sentence is, "Do you have someone you like?"
I was so caught up in Niou's lame joke that I didn't answer.
Those who know me know that I am a person driven by logical thinking. Liking or loving things is not based on logic. I cannot separate the characteristics of the people around me with my own characteristics one by one to calculate the compatibility between the two. This cannot prove "liking".
But I'm only seventeen now, so I can't just conclude that I might never fall in love with anyone.
I thought of that blue color I didn't understand again. Niou once said that Yagyu and I were both logical freaks, and I think that's one of the reasons I feel uneasy.
If the person Yagyu likes actually exists, then he would no longer be my kind of person, and the comfort I feel when I'm with him would no longer hold true.
Maybe I just prefer comfort?
Since I can't reach a conclusion, I give up.
Ironically, I don't have anyone around me who can answer this question. I can't possibly ask Tezuka if he's ever liked anyone; he seems even more clueless than me. Niou is even less likely to answer; he told me that when he broke up with his girlfriend, the person in the sunset looked like a piece of paper that could be blown away by the wind at any moment.
Actually, my maternal grandmother was probably the most qualified person to explain this to me, but I didn't admire her relationship with my maternal grandfather.
I've been troubled by this question that doesn't need explaining for a long time. Although it hasn't affected my daily life, I've been thinking about it over and over again whenever I have free time. Fortunately, my life is very fulfilling and doesn't give me that opportunity.
In early June, after a tough battle on the clay court to the finals, Tezuka was still no match for the player from Spain. His performance took a sharp turn for the worse in the last two games. The broadcast of the junior group competition on my computer had already ended, and the director did not show any more shots of anyone except the champion. I closed the page, stood up, and went to the balcony.
The sea was quiet in the early hours of the morning. The moon hid behind the clouds, and there was no light at all. It was as if the whole world was asleep. I was still awake, and then I heard my phone ring. He always called me.
He must have been very physically exhausted. I could hear Tezuka panting. After calming down, he told me that this was the first time he felt he had lost so badly.
I could faintly hear the voice coming from the other end of the line. I guessed that Tezuka was calling me from the locker room or some smaller space, which was very unusual for the always open and always impeccable Tezuka Kunimitsu.
"I wish I were here with you." So I blurted out.
He was clearly taken aback for a moment, then repeated what I said: "It's enough that you're here with me."
Now it was my turn to be stunned. These words sounded like he was being coquettish with me, but since they came from Tezuka, they definitely weren't. There are many ways to interpret these words, but at this moment, I understood only one meaning—he didn't just need me; Tezuka Kunimitsu only needed me.
My initial joy turned into something else entirely. "Most needed" and "only needed" have different meanings, implying that the unique one clearly carries more emotional weight.
My maternal grandmother once said that my maternal grandfather was her only one, her one and only.
So in that instant of realization, I both hoped I was Tezuka's only one and hoped I wasn't. Our relationships had overlapped throughout our lives, and I never considered that it could be love.
After only a few words, Tezuka urged me to go to sleep. Usually, I'd joke about it, but this time I pretended to yawn twice and quickly hung up, because the problem that had been bothering me had returned.
—Do I have someone I like? Have I ever liked anyone? What is liking someone? Will I ever fall in love with someone?
"Did your puberty come a little later than that of millions of Japanese high school students?"
Finally, I went to ask Katakura Minami, who had just escaped the misery of a Schrödinger's marriage to a wealthy family, only to find herself entangled in an ambiguous relationship with someone else.
She said the above sentence to me with a hint of helplessness.
"But I can't live my life like a Monday night drama." I didn't lose out verbally.
"You think you aren't?" she scoffed. "You just don't know it."
*Yagyu mentioned Grace Kelly because of the movie "Rear Window," while Sanae said it was because she felt Yagyu should prefer Ingrid Bergman in "Murder on the Orient Express." As for Niou, he was there to digress; Is Davis is the protagonist of "Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries."
*A drama series broadcast on Fuji TV at 9 PM on Mondays, a prime-time slot that has aired many popular romance dramas in the past.
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