Loss 4: Yakishio Lemon Tells All

Loss 4: Yakishio Lemon Tells All

Loss 4:

Yakishio Lemon Tells All

T HE NEXT NIGHT, I WAS BROWSING THE LIGHT NOVELS at Seibunkan. Tsukinoki-senpai had made yesterday’s trip back from Shinshiro fly by with her nonstop chitchat.

I wanted to close the book on everything the second I got home, but I knew there was one more chapter left—Yakishio and Ayano still had to have their talk. My job was to see Yakishio safely to their meeting spot tonight. I had left home a little early, too antsy to sit still until it was time.

One thing about this meeting: Yakishio wasn’t going for pity points or to shoot her shot one last time. She’d already done that. This was more like a post-mortem sort of deal. What it would reveal was anyone’s guess.

“Oh, hey. New volume of HSG.”

HSG was, of course, the colloquial title for My Apartment Came with a High School Girl and Now I Can’t Afford to Eat —a story about a girl who bums with the protagonist and the hyper-realistic financial strain that comes with taking care of dependents. Most recently, another girl had joined the duo, thus forcing the protagonist to take even more drastic measures to make ends meet.

“Whoa, he takes up newspaper delivery?” I had to check this out.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder while I read the back blurb. “Figured I’d find you here, Nukkun.”

“Oh. Yakishio.”

There was the woman of the hour.

“I tried your house, but I heard you went to the station,” she said. “Had a hunch.”

“Oh. Cool. But, uh, what’s with the getup?”

She had on a running shirt and a pair of shorts. Hardly the attire of typical bookstore clientele.

“I was runnin’,” she said. “Also, since when am I not dressed like this?” She smiled proudly.

“You sure, though? That’s how you wanna see Ayano?”

“Yup. I wanna be myself when I do it.” She studied the shelf in front of me. “So these are those ‘light novel’ things. Think I could manage one?”

“I mean, they’re easy reads. Don’t see why not.”

“I haven’t even started on the book report. Which one of these is the shortest?”

“Yakishio, tomorrow is the last day of summer vacation.”

“Pro tip, all you gotta do is say you left it at home and you get a free extra week. Heck, sometimes you’ll get lucky and the teacher’ll forget all about it.” Yakishio reached for one. “Oh, hey, this one looks neat.”

I shook my head. “I wouldn’t. The protagonist streaks through town in literally the first few pages.”

“What about this?”

“Nope. MC gets mounted by a half-naked, eight-hundred-year-old little girl in the first color illustration.”

“I’m genuinely making an effort to pick out the most normal-sounding ones here.”

“It’s genuinely impressive how terribly you’re doing.”

I told her I’d lend her an easy one to knock out her report, and then we left. We stepped out into the streetlight-illuminated, not-quite dark of night.

Yakishio stretched. “Nothin’ like a good book to get the brain juices flowing, am I right?”

Imagine how it’ll feel to actually read one, I quipped to myself.

We still had some time to kill. Originally, the plan had been to convene near Yakishio’s place, then head straight to meet Ayano from there. I peeked at my watch.

Yakishio grabbed my arm and stole a peek too. “Whatcha gonna do? Walk?”

“I was gonna burn a bit more time and then take the tram, personally.”

“Hm,” she hummed, dissatisfied. She scraped the bottom of her shoe against the pavement. “Ah, well. Guess I’ll run a bit more, then meet up with you again.”

“Yeah, let’s just do that. Stick to the plan.”

Yakishio didn’t seem sold. On second thought, she had come all the way out here just to see me.

I scratched at the back of my head and stared off into nothing. “But I guess I’d get there right on time if I walked. I could use the exercise.”

Yakishio copied my tone. “And I could use a breather after all that reading. Walking would be a good way to stretch my legs.”

We glanced at each other at the same time. We shared a snicker.

“We are going the same way and all,” I said.

“Very true. We are . I guess I’ll just have to go with you then.”

Yakishio held her hands behind her head and gave me a snide look. I countered it with a just-as-snide grin.

***

Forty minutes of small talk went by. We talked about summer homework, the opening ceremony in two days, a senpai on Yakishio’s track team who was just a little bit scary. Over time, though, the pauses got longer. Her comments got shorter.

They were meeting at their old elementary school, and we were almost there.

I studied the building through the fence as we walked its perimeter. “Lights are off.”

Wait, this was totally trespassing. I’d only just realized.

“Almost time.” Yakishio held her chest and breathed. She muttered an encouraging something to herself. “All right.”

“Hey, so, it might be a little late to mention this, but are you allowed to just walk into elementary schools? I feel like that’s not allowed.”

“Yeah, you could have mentioned that earlier.”

I refused to be blamed for that.

She put a hand on her hip and tutted. “It’s open during the day. It’ll be fine so long as we don’t cause a scene or anything. Trust me, I’m used to this.”

A repeat offender. At least it wasn’t my butt on the line. As I started to raise my arm in farewell, Yakishio prodded it. “You said that on purpose to take my mind off things, didn’t you?” she said.

“Uh, no?”

“Thanks. I’m okay now. You wait for me here.”

Apparently, my job was round-trip. Good to know, though I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of standing around here in the dead of night.

Yakishio took note of my sketchy fidgeting and raised an eyebrow. “You’re not about to tell me you’d leave a girl to walk home this late all by herself, are you?”

“Psh. Me? No way.”

“Good. See you in a bit.” She gave one of her trademark grins then raised her hand. It took me about five turns of the ol’ brain gears to realize what the gesture meant and raise my hand as well. “It ends tonight!” She gave me five with all the force to make up for how long I’d kept her waiting.

She was off like a lightning bolt, hurdling the back gate with an ease that spoke to more than one offense.

***

The moonlit courtyard was smaller than Lemon remembered. Back then, everything was so new, every nook an unexplored piece of the world. Back then, “small” was hardly a word in her vocabulary.

Lemon walked through the old playground, feeling the nostalgic sting of cold metal against her fingers as she passed shrunken playthings. The quiet emptiness made her uncomfortable. She found herself wishing for morning.

She searched the campus for him, and there at the edge, in front of a white Stevenson screen, she found him. A tall, anxiously shuffling young man.

Her world turned. What was up threatened to become down. Lemon breathed, fighting against the instinct to flee, and approached. Every step was a victory.

When she stopped in front of him, she realized she hadn’t actually thought about what she would say. How she would act.

She half settled on a smile. “Thanks for coming, Mitsuki.”

“It’s important.”

It was deeper now, obscured beneath years of maturity, but Lemon knew and recognized the voice. She recognized the way he pursed his lip when he was nervous. It relieved her to know she wasn’t the only one. He was as lost as she was.

“Feels like it’s been a lifetime since we’ve been here, huh?” Lemon turned, inviting him to walk.

Mitsuki followed half a step behind. “Four years for me.”

“Then four for me too.” Lemon remembered lots of tears at graduation, thinking she would come back to play here all the time since she lived so close and then never actually doing it.

She jogged up to a jungle gym with a slide attached, admiring it.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself. It’s dark,” Mitsuki admonished.

“I’m not getting on it. I’m not a kid anymore.” She pouted her lips, frustrated that he’d spoiled her fun so quickly. “Remember when we used to get on the swings together and see who could jump off the farthest?”

“I remember you doing that, and nearly breaking your leg in the process.”

“Maybe. Whoa, this tire takes me back.” Lemon hopped onto one of the half-buried tires in the ground. No one actually knew what they were for. Some rode them, some crawled through them, some jumped over them. Lemon hopped across them, plopping down on the last one. “Were they always so small?”

“Pretty sure,” said Mitsuki. “I don’t remember you playing with them much the last couple of years we were here.” He sat down on a tire next to her.

That made Lemon smile. That really was enough for her. She savored the feeling. Because it was probably the last night she’d ever get to feel it.

“We met in second grade, right?” she finally said, as much as it pained her to end the moment. Mitsuki nodded. “I didn’t actually like you at first, y’know. All you ever did was read books, and I just didn’t get it.”

That was news to Mitsuki. He took it with a wry smile. “I got it into my head that I had to read everything in the class library for whatever reason.”

“Do you…? Nah. You probably don’t remember the first time we talked, do you?”

“It was when you hurt your foot.”

It was the fall of second grade. Lemon had sprained her ankle jumping off of the swing set, and though it wasn’t anything serious, she had been strictly told no rough-housing. An abundance of free time and boredom had been the start of their relationship.

“You do remember.” Lemon chuckled.

“How could I forget the day the queen troublemaker made it her business to interrupt my reading time? It was traumatic, I tell you.”

“Gee, tell me how you really feel! You seriously mean you didn’t just read to me because you felt bad for the sad, lonely girl who couldn’t go out and play?”

“It was less reading and more summarizing. You never had the attention span.”

“Right, that did happen. You pretty much just gave me the digest.” Lemon giggled. Mitsuki stopped playing at exasperation and laughed with her. “I never got books. They always made me sleepy. But whenever you talked about them, for some reason, I never felt that way.”

Mitsuki hummed in acknowledgment.

“That’s why I kept coming back, even after I got better.” That was when the excuses started. It was raining, it was too hot, too cold—Lemon found any reason she could to join in on whatever he was up to.

“Little did I know, I’d have to explain the entire plot of every Harry Potter book to you one day,” Mitsuki bemoaned, though not without a smile.

“Oh, you wanna complain? Imagine how confused I was when I saw the movies! You told me Harry marries Hermione in the end!”

“I didn’t think you’d actually believe me.”

“Great, so I’m just dumb then.”

Mitsuki burst out laughing. Lemon started to argue, but she couldn’t hold it in either.

She wiped the corner of her eye while she caught her breath. “Good times.”

“Hard to believe it’s been eight years.”

They could have kept reminiscing long into the night. How Lemon wanted to. But dawn would come regardless, and it was up to her whether she would be awake to see it.

Lemon took the reins and said, “Remember in junior high, when I said I wanted to go to Tsuwabuki and everyone laughed at me? Even the teachers. Pretty harsh, huh?”

“It did sound pretty insane with your grades.”

“You didn’t laugh, though.”

“But I did think you were crazy.”

“Wait a minute, that’s right! You didn’t laugh, but you did tell me pigs would fly before I made it through general admissions!” Lemon shot Mitsuki an accusatory glare. “You were literally like, ‘Go for a sponsor and pray.’”

“In my defense, your grades were pretty much in the pits.”

Tsuwabuki High School was particularly distinguished in Aichi Prefecture. One that might as well have been a pipe dream for Lemon at the time.

“Okay, so why did you help me then?”

“Well, why wouldn’t I help out a friend?”

Lemon flinched at the word. “Friends” was what they were. What they always would be.

“Awful lot of work to do for just a friend,” she managed. “You even taught me how to prioritize questions and maximize points and stuff. How do you even learn stuff like that?”

Mitsuki’s lessons had extended beyond the standard periodical quiz. He had gone to great lengths to learn the key points in every subject, right down to the idiosyncrasies of what specific teachers would be looking for, all to bump Lemon’s grades up to meet Tsuwabuki’s specific requirements for sponsored students.

“What can I say? I was a teacher’s pet. I probably could have made a decent guidance counselor back then.”

“Okay, but you literally wrote down all their birthdays and wedding anniversaries and everything. That’s a lot of work.”

“I’m an all or nothing kind of guy,” Mitsuki said. “That said, track was all you. You were team captain, and you stood up on that winner’s podium at the prefectural meet.” Although it had been he who suggested she shoot for both, on account of the fact that the next national inter-high would be held locally. “Also, don’t forget, you studied your butt off. By the time we were third years, you were one of the top students.”

“Top for our school,” Lemon corrected. “I was below average on the mock exams.”

The latter half of their junior high years had been a three-legged race with the two of them scrambling to make it in time for entrance exams. To an outsider, Lemon may have appeared superhuman, juggling so much along with track practice, but she knew what she had gone through to manage it. What they had gone through.

She held that shared suffering close to her heart.

“I just don’t get it,” she said, bending over like something was driving her crazy.

“You don’t get what?”

“Everything. All the crap you did for me when you had your own junk to worry about,” Lemon snapped. “ Would you do that for ‘just a friend’?”

Mitsuki furrowed his brow. “You told me that your family was full of scholars and lawyers. That you felt bad not being as smart as them. That’s why you wanted to go to Tsuwabuki.”

“I’m surprised you remember so much.” That didn’t escape Lemon’s notice. “Yeah, both my mom and dad…and pretty much everyone in my family went to really good schools. They always told me not to compare myself to them, but sometimes you can’t help it.” She sat back upright, bracing herself. “That’s only half-true, though.”

Mitsuki sensed the gravity of her tone, so unlike the Lemon he knew.

Lemon faced him squarely. “I just wanted to go to school with you.”

He met her gaze, forgetting to breathe. “Lemon…”

“I was honest with you, Mitsuki. Now it’s your turn.”

“My turn?”

“Why did you do all that for me? I want the truth.”

Mitsuki clasped his hands together. There would be no running for either of them that night. “I…wanted to go to school with you too,” he said to the ground. “You were already making waves in junior high, winning races, always getting recognized for something at assemblies. Everyone loved you. You were the center of every room you walked in.”

He breathed deep, picking his next words. “I felt like I was losing you, so I was relieved when you asked for my help. And I was, well, ecstatic when you said you wanted to go to the same school as me.”

Mitsuki opened and closed his mouth several more times. He had more to say but didn’t know how to say it. Eventually, he stopped trying.

Lemon broke the silence. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that.”

“I was so caught up in the moment back then. There were so many emotions, and I just couldn’t pin down that the one that mattered most was…”

Mitsuki didn’t finish the sentence. He couldn’t. Not anymore. But he didn’t need to.

“I’ll say it for you.”

Mitsuki flinched. Lemon only smiled and, in the softest of voices, said the unsayable:

“You loved me.”

Silence louder than words. It was the only answer Mitsuki could hope to give.

Calmly, he started to speak again. “I never knew what that meant to me until…” Hesitation.

“You can say it,” Lemon urged.

“Until Chihaya. The things I felt for her, the way my heart flutters when we’re together—that was when I realized.” A realization eight years too late for Lemon. “That was when I learned that that’s how it feels to be in love.” And yet a realization eight years in the making for Asagumo Chihaya.

“I’m glad,” she said quietly. Their time together had had a purpose. She smiled at Mitsuki. “I really am.”

“But I…”

“I mean it. The person I love said they loved me back. I’m happy. As happy as I can be.”

As happy as I can be without being with you.

Lemon refused to give form to those thoughts. Their time was over before it had even begun. An undisclosed game of love, lost in the first round.

She forced herself to keep smiling. “So what made you fall for her?”

“Are you…sure you want me to say?”

“The genie’s out of the bottle, buddy.” Lemon laughed.

“I…” He spoke slowly. “I want to work with books in the future.”

“For real?” Lemon blurted. “Like, publishing, or are you gonna be an author?”

“It’s not really that specific yet. Just a dream I have.” Mitsuki looked down at his open hand. “I still have to take stock of the things I know I can do versus the things I specifically want to do. Either way, I’d like to go and study at a university in Tokyo. See what I can do with my four years there.”

Lemon lost herself in him for a while. In the future he looked to. She figured there was only one reason he was talking about this now. “And Asagumo-san’s the same?”

“Yeah. Same dream, more or less. Rather, she’s the one who set me on the path to begin with.”

“Wow. I could never do what you guys do.”

“Right back at you, Lemon.”

Fair enough, she thought.

She stared up at the sky with Mitsuki and pointed. “Hey, why’s that one so bright? Is that the North Star?”

“The North Star’s that way. My guess is you’re looking at the Summer Triangle. See the other two? Those are each of the points.”

“All I’m seein’ is one. It’s sorta red. Maybe it’s Mars?”

Mitsuki squinted and nodded. “Antares, I think. That’s the Scorpio constellation.”

“Scorpio. Neat.” It saddened Lemon a little, the way they saw different things in the same sky. She thought of Asagumo Chihaya. She would have seen the same stars. “You be good to her, y’hear? You need a girl like Asagumo-san to keep you in line.”

“I know.”

There was silence again. Neither had any more words to end it with. What needed to be said had been said, and now someone had to be left with the unfortunate task of wrapping it up all nice.

“Let’s go, Lemon.” Mitsuki stood, taking the role upon himself.

“I’m gonna stick around here a while longer. Could use some alone time.”

“You gonna be okay?”

Lemon nodded. She would be. In time. “Just taking five. I’ll be back to my old self before you know it. Just you wait.”

***

I’d been waiting for Yakishio to finish trespassing for about twenty minutes.

“Maybe I did find a cat today.” I squinted past the gate she’d vaulted over. I had a story all prepared for if anyone asked what we were doing here, and it involved a runaway feline. “She’ll be a tortoiseshell and her name will be Nyaruko.”

I imagined Nyaruko as an ex-stray who would only respond to or take food from me. She was, of course, a girl in the event that she polymorphed into a human one day. I started scrolling through images on my phone, just to be prepared.

That was when I noticed someone standing in front of me. “Uh, meow?!”

“What’re you doing here, Nukumizu?”

It was Ayano. I hadn’t even noticed him cross back over the gate.

“I’m the, uh, chauffeur,” I said.

“Mine?”

Dude.

I cleared my throat, finally switching gears into social mode. “I’m walking Yakishio back home.” I peered around him at the school. “She still there?”

“Yeah. She said she wanted some time to herself.” He picked up on my shuffling and read my mind. “Don’t worry. It was a good talk. Thanks for being here for her.”

I decided to trust the placid look on his face for once. “Least I can do is make sure she gets home okay.”

Ayano didn’t budge. I glanced at him, and our eyes met.

“Chihaya told me you don’t actually have a crush on Yanami-san,” he said.

“Well, uh…” That whole story had slipped my mind entirely.

He considered me for a while. “You’re a good guy, Nukumizu.”

“No idea what gave you that idea.”

“Just something I’ve learned recently. Apparently, it’s a pretty rare thing to have a friend who’s willing to stick their neck out for you.”

Friend? Who was he talking about? “I’m not her friend, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“What? You’re joking, right?”

“I mean, neither of us have actually said that we’re friends. Like, officially and all,” I rambled. “I mean, if she thinks we’re friends, great, but like, I mean, we’ve never really established it, so how can I assume, y’know?”

The last day of the semester before summer break came back to me. My friendship with Yanami had apparently begun under my nose, without my knowledge. World-shattering as that knowledge was to me at the time, I did consider myself capable of growth as a human being.

“Not that you absolutely need a verbal confirmation to be friends, that is,” I corrected myself. “I know that.”

“Good. You had me worried there.”

“What I was trying to say is, you could potentially assume you’re closer than you actually are, and you can think you’re friends when they don’t actually think the same. Imagine how embarrassing that would be.”

“Honestly, I think you’ve gotten a bit stuck in your own head, Nukumizu.” Ayano started to laugh it off but turned serious all of a sudden. “No. No, you may have a point in a certain sense.”

Finally, someone understood. I nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly. The confirmation process has merit.”

“I see where you’re coming from, but you’re overthinking the kind of person Lemon is. Also, we’re friends, aren’t we? And we never had to spell it out explicitly.”

“We’re friends?”

Ayano recoiled. “Ouch. You’re killing me here.”

He was serious? Wait. I had to think about this. Maybe it was fine? I didn’t actively hate the guy or anything.

“All right, well, uh, better late than never,” I said. “Here’s to our future together?”

“I’m not proposing to you, dude,” Ayano cackled. I laughed with him.

Last time, I was the proposer. This time, the proposee. That was a pretty funny coincidence, I had to admit.

Amidst our hearty laughter appeared a tawny girl on the other side of the school gate, and she did not look amused. “Well, I was feeling sentimental,” she said, cheery, nonetheless. She hopped over the gate. “What’re you two dorks up to?”

“Guy stuff.” Ayano nudged me with his elbow.

I clumsily nudged him back. “Yeah, uh, what he said.”

Was I doing this right? Did that look natural? I might have been overselling it.

Ayano put his hand on my shoulder. “Your chauffeur awaits, Lemon.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hold in those tears on your way home, princess, ’cause I’m not coming to save you,” Yakishio said.

Was Ayano leaving her? Just like that? I supposed he couldn’t put Asagumo-san through any more unspecified outings after all this.

Yakishio came up and smacked me on the back. “Sorry for the wait, Nukkun. Let’s get going.”

“Yeah. Sure.” I watched Ayano turn to leave. My brain buzzed with a thousand conflicting thoughts best acknowledged. I ignored all of them. “Actually, just a sec. Sorry.”

“Huh?”

I snatched Ayano’s arm and dragged him somewhere Yakishio couldn’t overhear. “What’re you doing, Nukumizu?”

“Why not walk with her? One last time?”

He stiffened. “We had our talk. I don’t want to do that to Chihaya.”

“I get that, but don’t overthink it. What’s a few more minutes together?”

“I don’t know about this.”

He and I looked back at Yakishio. She was peering at us curiously a ways away.

“You’re just walking her home,” I pressed. “Is that so wrong?”

“I told Chihaya we were going to have a talk, but anything more than that…”

“Might make you a cheater. Yeah.”

Ayano thought about that for a while before grinning in surrender. “Don’t tell her.”

“Don’t do anything that’ll make me have to.” I shoved him toward Yakishio. “She’s all yours.”

“Nukkun? What’s going on?” she asked.

“I’ve got an errand to run, so Ayano’s gonna sub in for me.”

Yakishio jolted upright like she’d been struck by a lightning bolt.

Ayano shuffled up to her, awkwardly scratching at his head. “It’s late, so, uh, you mind if I walk you home?”

Yakishio nodded meekly. “Sure.”

As I watched them go, I noticed Ayano wasn’t wearing that bracelet his girlfriend had given him. I shrugged it off. “He’s as ditzy as they come.”

It was a special night. The sort that turns sweet girls just a little bit sour. Regardless of the fact that Asagumo-san probably would have been on my side in this, they deserved this one secret between themselves.

I started on my way home alone.

“Hey, Mitsuki.”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“Lemon…”

“What?”

“Nothing. Thanks. It means a lot to hear that.”

“Heh… Hey, can I say something I probably shouldn’t?”

“What kind of something?”

“The kind that Asagumo-san doesn’t have to know about, and then I’ll never ask for anything ever again.”

Mitsuki saw himself reflected in Lemon’s bright brown eyes. He nodded. Just one secret.

Yakishio Lemon parted her lips. They told all.