Yume’s Turn
“Sorry, but I still have things I want to talk about with that girl, so I’m going to go after her. Yuuki-kun, you can just relax and wait here while you talk with my dad.”
Yuuki-kun looked at me with a slightly puzzled expression.
“It’s fine, I’m not going to do anything bad. I just want to talk a little. She said what she wanted and then ran off.”
Yuuki-kun still looked uneasy, but before that girl could get too far, I opened the door to the back room and stepped out.
“Yume, don’t go too far with what you say.”
My father, realizing what I was about to do, called out to me.
“It’ll be fine.”
I stepped out of the shop and looked around, but the girl was already gone.
I figured she must have gone back the way she came, so if I headed toward the school, I should run into her. When I followed that path, I found her sitting alone in a small empty park, her head down.
“Hey, Arisa-chan, right?”
When I called out to her, she jolted in surprise and froze.
Seeing that reaction, I gave a small chuckle and sat down beside her.
“It must be hard getting all that from Yuuki-kun.”
I spoke softly, trying to open the conversation.
She didn’t respond, but I knew she could hear me, so I continued.
“But you know, after apologizing to Yuuki-kun, getting yelled at, and feeling a bit relieved, don’t you kind of see it like some story where your love ends neatly?”
She hadn’t reacted before, but when I said that, she flinched and trembled slightly. Seeing that, I felt a flicker of anger, but I held it in and kept talking.
“I first met Yuuki-kun back in elementary school. My dad brought him in when he was crying.”
Back then, Yuuki-kun wasn’t as broken as he is now, but the signs were already there.
I think the thing with Arisa-chan made a big crack in him, but the smaller fractures had started even earlier.
What happened with Arisa-chan, what happened in middle school, and what happened again in high school.
My dad tried to fix things each time, but it didn’t last, and after what happened in high school, he finally broke.
That’s why I can’t forgive the girl who caused that deep crack.
“Back then, Yuuki-kun was even more pitiful than you are now, Arisa-chan. He cried a lot and looked like he was in so much pain.”
To Yuuki-kun, Arisa-chan must have been the one person in class he thought would believe in him, someone he could hold on to. But what he got instead was rejection and betrayal.
When I think about what it would be like if I had been in her position, in the same grade as Yuuki-kun, something heavy starts to build deep in my chest.
“And yet here you are, moping and crying, pretending to be the tragic heroine. I heard your story, but you still haven’t thought about Yuuki-kun at all, have you?”
At my words, Arisa-chan glared at me sharply.
But that kind of look doesn’t scare me.
“You keep saying things like, ‘I only acted that way because Yuuki-kun treated me normally,’ don’t you? But that doesn’t change what you did. Even today, wanting to be close again, that’s just about what you want. You never stopped to think about Yuuki-kun, did you?”
That was the part that bothered me.
This girl only thought about herself.
Yuuki-kun would never want to go back to how things were with her.
She just went along with what suited her, did whatever she pleased, and when someone called her out, she cried and acted like the heroine.
Arisa-chan hadn’t changed at all since back then.
She accused Yuuki-kun because of what her friends said, and when she learned the truth, she thought she could fix it with an apology. But because Yuuki-kun is kind, she just went along again.
On top of that, she still blames that boy and the teacher for what happened.
She destroyed her own trust through her own actions, and then cried about it.
It’s a terrible cycle she created herself.
“But well, I’ll give you credit for one thing, Arisa-chan. At least this time, you didn’t run away and tried to face your past. But everything came too late, didn’t it?”
Honestly, if she really wanted to settle her past, she should have done something about that boy and that teacher. But now it’s far too late for that too.
“Arisa-chan, do you know what the most important thing you can do now is?”
I asked her as she looked down, clearly unwilling to hear any more.
“Hey, what do you think it is?”
I waited until Arisa-chan finally spoke.
“…To save Yuuki, who’s going through a hard time right now, and help him, even just a little.”
I had to tell this foolish girl who said something that sounded nice just to ease her guilt.
“Wrong. What you should do is stop getting involved with Yuuki-kun. The more you stay in his life, the more it hurts him. It only brings him pain. So you’re not needed anymore.”
Arisa-chan would have to live with her guilt for the rest of her life.
I would never allow her to soften it or run away from it, and trying to escape from it was even worse.
She had to suffer alone, think alone, and find her own will.
Arisa-chan looked like she was in pain, as if she wanted to shout her anger and hatred at me, but no words came out.
Then she stood up and started to walk away.
“Oh, wait. There’s still one more thing you can do for Yuuki-kun. Give me that video.”
Arisa-chan stopped when she heard me.
“It’s the last thing you can do for him, so hurry up. Or are you planning to keep hurting him?”
I looked at the phone she was holding.
There was no point in her keeping that video.
Arisa-chan slowly unlocked her phone and selected the video.
All she had to do was use the share feature and send the video to my phone, and it would be over.
Once she did that, her role and any reason to stay involved would be gone.
My hands were trembling, so I took hers and gently pressed the button for her.
After confirming that the video had reached my phone, I turned my back to her.
“Goodbye, Arisa-chan. I hope we never meet again.”