Chapter 7: A Light Shining at the End of the Darkness

Chapter 7: A Light Shining at the End of the Darkness

Chapter 7:

A Light Shining at the End of the Darkness

I T WAS NEARLY NINE O’CLOCK , and an intensely chilly wind was blowing outside. The lights at the edge of each step faintly illuminated the area by my feet, but it was hard to say that it was still sufficiently safe, due to the snowfall. I trudged up the few dozen steps, taking take care to avoid slipping and falling on the snow underfoot. I was sure that few people would fancy the idea of coming up here at a time like this.

Out in the darkness, where I couldn’t even see my own breath, I continued up the steps and arrived at the somewhat open platform. And on that wooden deck…I saw a lone small figure from behind. She must have been gazing out at the scenery, but because of the darkness, she looked awfully melancholy. There was no one else around, of course. I had seen her at mealtime earlier, but I had to wonder, how long had she been here, in this place?

The sound of the wind was so strong that she didn’t seem to notice me approaching. I decided to announce my arrival by stomping my feet as I walked, so as not to startle her. It seemed like the sound reached her ears, albeit faintly. When she reacted with a start, I decided to call out to her.

“Is it okay if I stand next to you?” I asked.

“Huh—?! A-Ayanokouji-k-kun?!”

“Quite a coincidence, huh?”

“Y-yes, a coincidence indeed.” Ichinose awkwardly looked away, gazing out at the nighttime scenery.

“Sorry, but actually, it’s not a coincidence. Amikura and some others were in a panic because they couldn’t find you. They said something about how they wanted to get together and talk until lights out.”

“Oh, really? O-oh, jeez. I ended up making a mess, didn’t I?” said Ichinose, feeling awkward.

“A little, yeah,” I said. “We should send a text message, just to be safe. I’m sure if we do that, Amikura will feel relieved, too.”

“Have you…exchanged contact info with Mako-chan?” she asked.

“Yeah, since we’re in the same group for the school trip. We’ve messaged each other a lot about stuff.”

I sent Amikura a message telling her that I had found Ichinose, and not to worry, as Ichinose would be back by nine o’clock. I noticed that the message was immediately read as soon as I sent it. When Amikura found out where Ichinose was, she replied with two stickers, relieved.

“Okay, the message has been passed on,” I said. “At any rate, this should quiet things down.”

“I-I’m sorry,” said Ichinose.

“It’s fine, honestly. It’s not like you’re breaking curfew, since you’re on the grounds still. We’re allowed to enter the rear garden until nine, so as long as you head back before then, that’s fine. It’s up to the individual what they want to do.”

“Okay… Thank you.”

Ichinose didn’t immediately respond with something like how she was going to head back so as to not make anyone worry, though, so there must have been something on her mind. School trips were a fun time, but we had to share that time with a lot of other students.

“Everyone wants to be alone sometimes,” I said. “With that in mind, I figure I’m probably bothering you now.”

Ichinose didn’t say anything in response to that. She simply kept looking out at the nighttime view.

“Sure is cold,” I added.

“…Yeah, it is cold, isn’t it?” she replied.

The howling wind assailed us, piercing cold shooting through even though we were wearing gloves.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“I’m not sure… I think maybe about five minutes,” said Ichinose. She must have realized that I had immediately seen right through her, though, because she corrected herself apologetically. “I’m sorry. It might actually have been more like thirty or forty minutes.”

“I figured. I couldn’t see any footsteps at all; they were completely gone.”

Until I came up here, there had been practically no evidence that Ichinose had gone this way at all. If I had come a few minutes earlier, then I might have been able to see faint footsteps, even though it was dark out. The snow was gradually starting to ease up, but the wind was still howling.

“I’m sure this doesn’t need to be said, but if you stay out here for long, you’ll catch cold,” I added.

“Yeah, you’re right…” mumbled Ichinose. It sounded like she understood it in the academic sense, but it hadn’t really sunk in, and she showed no signs of heeding my warning.

Before long, the snow had almost completely stopped. But that would most likely just be temporary. According to the forecast, we were supposed to have a strong snowstorm soon.

“I’m going to ask an insensitive question,” I said. “But what are you thinking about, staring out at the night sky, all by yourself?”

I had some idea of what to expect, but I still couldn’t know until I heard it come from her mouth. Although I had asked her a question, Ichinose didn’t answer right away. She didn’t even look at me; she just continued staring out at the scenery.

“I think I…I want to be alone right now,” she replied softly.

A gentle refusal. She wasn’t looking for someone to talk to, and she was urging me to leave. Or perhaps she might have been saying it was me specifically who she didn’t want to be near her right now.

“I guess I just don’t feel like leaving you alone right now, though,” I said. “It’s especially dangerous on the way down.”

“Thank you for being worried about me. But it would make Karuizawa-san sad if she knew we were alone here like this, just the two of us. I really wouldn’t want to do that to her.”

No one was coming all this way, so I didn’t think that was going to be a problem. Apparently, Ichinose still cared deeply about other people, even at times like this.

“Yeah, it’s definitely true that Kei would get the wrong idea if she saw us, for sure,” I agreed.

“Yeah.”

“You really sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.” After giving me that same short answer once more, Ichinose continued looking ahead, not averting her eyes from the scenery. Right away, I turned my back to her and started moving away.

“Okay, then I’ll head on back,” I said. “But get back before nine. They’re going to lock the doors.”

“Thank you. I’ll be careful,” said Ichinose.

After I took one step, the snow that had briefly stopped started falling again, coming back even stronger than before. I turned to take a quick look at Ichinose’s back, and saw that it didn’t look any different from when I first saw her on the school trip. It had gotten much smaller, much weaker—when was the last time I had seen the lively, animated Ichinose Honami from when we started school in our first year?

It wasn’t like something had happened on the school trip. Rather, it was like a buildup of things. The water that had continued to accumulate in the cracked cup was now about to spill out. From what I could tell, Ichinose’s emotional well-being, which had been gnawed at and undermined, had now gotten to be in a very precarious state. If it were just that the water was going to spill out, that would be fine. But if the cracks widened and the cup broke apart, it might be impossible to put it back together like it was before.

That is to say, it might be the end of Ichinose’s class. The path to Class A would be closed off to them.

Right now was not the moment for her class to fall into ruin. If that happened, it would be a hindrance to my plans.

“I’ll wait here,” I announced, sitting down on the steps leading back to the ryokan.

“…Why?” asked Ichinose.

“I wonder.”

“But someone like me shouldn’t matter to you at all, Ayanokouji-kun. So, why…are you waiting?”

“Dunno,” I answered evasively. I decided that I shouldn’t say anything to her. I knew she wanted me to leave, but since she didn’t have the ability to compel me to do so, she had no other choice but to give up. If she really hated the idea of being with me, then the best thing she could do would be to walk away.

A few minutes passed. Nothing happened at all; time passed in silence.

“So, do you…want to chat?” she asked.

I wondered if she simply couldn’t stand the silence when it was just the two of us here alone, or if she decided that she might as well say something. She had mumbled her words in such a quiet voice that I might have missed them if I had been lost in thought.

“To tell you the truth, there’s actually something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time now, Ayanokouji-kun,” she said.

This was far, far better than just sitting in silence for the time we had left. It’d also serve as a distraction from the intense cold of the snow, which was making my butt go numb.

“Do you…know about something called the White Room?” Ichinose asked.

I had wondered what she was going to talk to me about in this situation, but what she said turned out to be something entirely unexpected. I’d been entertaining all kinds of possibilities, but this was completely different from any of them. Why were the words “White Room” coming from Ichinose’s mouth?

For an instant, the image of Sakayanagi flashed in the back of my mind. Recently, there’d been some times when the class leaders had gotten friendly with one another, like cooperation between classes. But I couldn’t imagine that Sakayanagi would talk about such a thing so casually. In that case…

Perhaps Ichinose had been threatened by Tsukishiro or someone on his side during the special exam on the uninhabited island. It would make sense if she had remembered hearing the name of the White Room from one of them saying it.

“I’m not really sure what you’re talking about,” I replied.

“I see… Well, if you don’t know what it is, Ayanokouji-kun, then please don’t worry about it. I might have misheard.” After saying as much, Ichinose suddenly stopped talking, just standing there under the cold sky. Then, she exhaled deeply, her breath a white cloud.

I had my doubts as to whether she completely believed my answer. It would probably be best for me to press her a bit on it, just to be safe.

“Where did you hear about it?” I asked.

I decided to question her, to make her think that the words were completely unfamiliar to me. If she didn’t answer me honestly, then all I needed to do was stop her from pursuing it any further.

“I heard about it from Shiba-sensei and the acting director during the Uninhabited Island Exam. They mentioned it in their conversation,” said Ichinose. “I couldn’t make out very much of what they were saying, but I overheard the part about how they wanted to get you expelled, Ayanokouji-kun, and the words ‘White Room.’ I was curious, so I tried to do some investigating, but I didn’t find anything, so I probably just heard them wrong after all. Don’t you think?”

“I have to wonder,” I said. “At the very least, nothing that sounds like that comes to mind, anyway.”

From the sounds of it, she had done some searching on her own, and she was doubting the credibility of her own memories.

“But still, why were they trying to get you expelled, Ayanokouji-kun?” she asked, worried. “Are you okay now?”

I supposed she had probably been wanting to ask me that for a long time, too. But it seemed that, thanks to the matter of Kei, Ichinose had pushed those questions to the back of her mind.

“That matter is settled now,” I told her. “I can’t go into the details, but there aren’t any problems anymore.”

I decided to steer her away from the matter of the White Room, and deliberately make her think that I had another secret. It would be much more troublesome later if information about the White Room leaked to the outside world.

“I see…”

She might have been a little bothered by me not being able to tell her about it. Depending on how she interpreted it, as either I couldn’t tell anyone about it, or I couldn’t tell her specifically , the meaning would change a lot. I could imagine her being shocked by the fact that it sounded like I considered her someone with whom I couldn’t share a secret.

Since there was no benefit to Ichinose in continuing this topic any further, I decided to steer the conversation in another direction.

“I have a question for you, too,” I said. “The Ichinose that I know isn’t the type of person who’d be all alone in a place like this, shivering in the cold. She’s the kind of student who would be surrounded by friends, and she and her friends would be smiling and encouraging one another.”

Within that statement, I had implied the question: How much longer do you plan to stay here?

“I’ve been having plenty of fun, though,” she replied. “I’m enjoying the trip.”

“It didn’t look that way to me when I saw your side profile just a little while ago. It didn’t look like the kind of face someone should be making on a school trip that was all about having fun.”

A conversation like this was probably necessary for Ichinose right now, in order to lay bare the part of her that she couldn’t talk about with anyone, that she normally kept buried deep down in her heart. The things that Ichinose, who bore heavy pressure as the leader of her class, continued to carry.

“Are you really going to wait for me?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’ll be with you when you come down the stairs,” I replied.

“…I see. Okay, well, in that case, at least come over here by me. You’ll freeze your butt off over there.”

“I’m grateful for the invitation. I think I already froze my butt off, though, actually.”

I hurriedly got to my feet, brushed the snow off my backside, and went back to stand beside Ichinose. I looked at her side profile once again, seeing that it hadn’t changed from before. When I’d checked my phone just moments ago, I saw that it was about 8:40 p.m. If I factored in the time it’d take to get back, then I’d say we should be able to stay here for another ten minutes or so.

If she wanted to pass the time we had left in silence, that’d be fine, I figured. I decided to wait for Ichinose to do something, with the intention of staying with her until the last minute. Every time the wind blew, snow fluttered. After about half a minute had passed, Ichinose opened her mouth. A puff of white breath dispersed into the air.

“With the way I do things…I can’t win against any of the other classes. That’s what I’ve been thinking about.” She probably hadn’t meant to let it happen, but tears started trickling down Ichinose’s cheeks.

“Can’t win, huh? Weren’t you going to continue pressing forward, though, being yourself, without hesitation, as you have been?”

“But, thanks to me, we’re—” Ichinose hesitated for a moment, and then found her words and started again. “Yes, you’re right. But…I’m just not getting results. Our class is definitely getting further and further away from Class A. That much is obvious to anyone.”

“And you’re saying that the cause lies in your approach,” I said.

“I can’t help but think things like… If only I could give my classmates direction like Sakayanagi-san, or if only I could have a strong pull like Ryuuen-kun, or if only I could bring everyone together like Horikita-san, then…”

“That’s just asking for the impossible,” I said. “All we are is ourselves. We can’t be somebody else.”

I knew that I didn’t need to even tell her that. But although she already knew it, there were times when it needed to be said.

“Asking for the impossible. Yeah, you’re right about that. Right now, I…want something I can’t have,” said Ichinose.

“Even if it means changing who you are to get it?” I asked.

“If I could win…then I wouldn’t mind.”

Ichinose was looking for a change. Whether it was right or wrong was a secondary concern; right now, she was desperate for some kind of breakthrough. Normally, this would not have been an occasion when I would have reached out to her. However, the course of events that followed after Ichinose had told me that she had feelings for me back on the uninhabited island had included a number of unexpected incidents, even for me, which might have been why she had broken down so much.

There was still a little over three months to go until my promised meeting with Ichinose. I wondered if she’d really be able to make it until then without any help. Well, on second thought, no, this wasn’t the sort of situation where speculating was appropriate. Right at this very moment, Ichinose’s heart was on the verge of breaking. The effects of the poison were starting to manifest and circulate through her faster than I had anticipated.

Her love for me, and the presence of Karuizawa Kei.

Her class was in a downward spiral, and she couldn’t see any chances for them to make their way back up.

Although Kanzaki and Himeno were making moves, she couldn’t see her peers as having developed as much as they should have by this point.

And she wasn’t able to see what kind of future awaited her as a member of the student council, either.

Prospects were grim, with many difficulties in store.

She was surrounded by enemies on all sides, forsaken by everybody.

She was completely lost, trapped in a maze.

“It’s just so frustrating… It’s really frustrating…” she said softly. Her own powerlessness. That was what was hitting Ichinose hard, resulting in strong feelings of guilt. “It’s just so hard…”

If this were just a problem that affected her alone, then it would be fine for her to be depressed. But Ichinose was leading her class; she couldn’t allow that. Any failure in her class was also her personal responsibility. It was precisely because that’s what she thought that this sort of thing was happening.

“I’m sorry, Ayanokouji-kun…” Her feelings of frustration were conveyed very clearly in her trembling voice.

“What are you apologizing for?” I asked.

“For all sorts of things… Me crying like this is just going to make you feel uncomfortable, and yet…”

Ichinose was supposed to be smarter, more sensible. That hidden potential of hers was fading away completely. Her heart was far too fragile. That was her fatal weakness. Neither Horikita nor Ryuuen, nor even Sakayanagi, who was far and away in the lead, would stop for her. I was sure it must have been an unbearably painful struggle for her; she was in agony, about to fall. If I gently told her that she didn’t have to work so hard anymore, then she’d be relieved of her burdens. At the same time, however, doing so would cut off Ichinose’s legs. It was still too early for that.

You will fall a little later, I thought to myself . I can’t let you stop until you reach the final exams for our second year of school, the time that will decide the fate of the second-years. I won’t allow you to break. It is you, but not “you,” who will decide the time and place where you will either live or die as a student.

As Ichinose tried to endure her misery, I moved closer to her and extended my arm, reaching around her back. Then, I placed my hand on her right shoulder and pulled her in close, embracing her.

“Wh—?! A-Ayanokouji-kun?!”

“It’s okay to cry when times are hard,” I told her. “It’s okay to ask for help when you’re in pain. Everyone has times of weakness.”

“…B-but…” Ichinose bit her lip, which was already beginning to turn pale blue, and swallowed what she was about to say. She tried to pull away and move her body in the opposite direction, but her strength was fleeting.

“Isn’t there something you want?” I asked.

“…It’s hopeless. What I wanted, it’s…”

“Something you can’t have anymore?” I finished her sentence.

She struggled desperately hard to suppress the words that were stuck in the back of her throat—no, rather, the words that were about to pour out of her, from the depths of her heart. Even so, Ichinose simply nodded slightly in response, although she probably hadn’t actually intended to affirm what I had asked.

“Things can still work out in the end,” I said. “That’s what I think.”

“But—”

“If you don’t have the courage to take that first step, I can lend you a hand,” I added, cutting her off.

When I wiped the tears from her cheeks with my fingertips, I noticed that they had almost frozen. She no longer had the strength to run away. Instead, she relaxed, leaning against me, as though she were entrusting me with everything. All the while, she continued to gaze into the distant landscape, the snow still falling into the night.

That day, underneath that cold sky, the two of us huddled close together and felt each other’s warmth.