Haruma-1

I’m not a gentleman or a feminist.

It’s just that, when Chigusa fell over, she promptly tried to use the cell phone in her hand to snap a photo of the person who had b.u.mped into her, so I figured I should intervene. She didn’t even bother to sniffle or wipe any tears; she just went straight to work. Was she a lawyer on the inside or what?

Since the pa.s.sersby were buzzing with interest, I promptly grabbed Chigusa’s arm and left the place p.r.o.nto.

…Chigusa’s arm was thin as a rake.

Still, it wasn’t particularly bony, and I could feel its softness through her clothing. If I kept holding onto Chigusa, my sweaty hand would draw a map of j.a.pan on her uniform, so I hastily let go after a few steps. Now that I had put some distance between us, I was at a loss about what to do, so I opened my mouth.

“Anyway, where are we headed?”

“We’re going to MOL Burger, Haruma-san.”

Why was this chick calling me by my first name? Because my points had gone up? In that case, I wondered if I should call her by the nickname I came up with: Johannes. However, there was not a single atom of desire in me to raise her Johannes points… In that case, calling her Chigusa was probably the best option, although ‘Chibusa’ kinda fit her, embarra.s.sing though it may be (1)! I’m your typical shy adolescent boy.

So, yeah. That was why I kept on talking without calling Chigusa by her name.

“If you’re talking about food, then I’ve already eaten.”

“I’m not. I’m going to listen to Anna-san’s story,” Chigusa said as if nothing was more obvious, despite the fact that I had no idea who the h.e.l.l Anna-san was. A hit song from Kai Band?

Anyway, it was kind of a bad call to make an appointment with this Anna-san before checking with my schedule. Not to mention Chigusa was acting under the a.s.sumption that I would follow her…

Was there a girl out there who could put up with an attractive, self-centered female like Chigusa? A chick like Chigusa would promptly get shunned and ignored in female society, and if she turned up to school her desk would be full of graffiti. Well, some of them had to find utility value in a pretty face alone. I wondered if this Anna-chan we were about to meet would fit that mold.

Lagging a few steps behind Chigusa, I walked through a town weighed down by the darkness of the night. Maybe it was because we were strung along by the rush hour crowd on their way home, but despite our physical proximity there was no conversation to be had between us, and a sort of restless feeling came over me.

Out of lack of anything better to do, I pulled out my smartphone. After I touched the screen a few times, my eyes fell upon Chigusa’s message for a second time.

However… the more I looked at it, the creepier it seemed. Wow. Just from reading the text casually, I could tell it was terrifying, awful and downright spine-chilling, like something straight from the horror genre. Thrill, shock, suspense. Every time I read it, a few more months were shaved off my lifespan.

From that horrifying message, one phrase in particular caught my eye: “Random Crossroad.” It was like something from The Twilight Zone.

“She got wrapped up in the Random Crossroad and disappeared, huh…” I muttered to myself, unable to restrain a snort at this completely implausible story.

I wasn’t too familiar with this Random Crossroad thing. It had something to do with an urban legend, but not only was no one around me spouting rumours, there was no one around me full stop. I must have a natural genius for Nen or something. How else could I have learned Zetsu out of the blue…? In fact, even the author of that manga is using Zetsu. He’s been nullifying his presence too much!

Well, anyway, if I didn’t sort out the problem at hand, I wouldn’t be able to go home. I would solve Chigusa’s dilemma if possible, and if that proved to be difficult, I would have to come up with a due response that she would be able to accept.

I coughed a few times. “Hey, Chigusa,” I called out to her. “Can I ask about the specifics of your problem?”

In response, Chigusa folded her arms behind her back and turned around. The hem of her skirt fluttered lightly, allowing me to catch a glimpse of her creamy white thighs.

“The specifics, you ask?” Chigusa tilted her head and hummed in thought. “Hmm… Shia-san was someone I got along really well with. She has a miniature Schnauzer and lives with her older brother and parents in an apartment building two stations away from school, and at school she was learning rhythmic gymnastics because of her mother’s influence, but she can’t handle chopsticks or rods, let alone a baton, and she couldn’t even catch the baton her mother gave her, and not to mention her grades are not exactly the best—she’s only slightly above average—and in the midst of all those problems, she started hanging out with bad cla.s.smates, so her grades have been falling even more, and recently she’s been gallivanting about as much as she can, so her parents and even her brother these days are worrying about whether she really has her heart set on her entrance exams, it seems.”

“O-Okay…”

As extremely delighted as I was with the long-winded explanation, who the h.e.l.l was Shia-chan? Some kind of b.u.t.ter? What? (Hey, if she was made of b.u.t.ter, her skin would be moist.)

Anyway, I didn’t want to know the specifics about this Shia-chan—I wanted to ask about the Random Crossroad… And seriously, that was too much information.

I gave Chigusa a nonplussed look, but she only sighed and went on talking, her voice faint yet fervent.

“…Shia-san is a trusted friend who shares something very important with me. That is why I absolutely must bring her back,” Chigusa said with a straight face. Her feverish eyes were filled with undeniable sorrow.

“Well, yeah, it’d be kinda worrying if she never came back…”

“Indeed. The thought of it left me worried sick… She wasn’t there when I rang her doorbell, and she never answered my calls at all yesterday even though I phoned her all night…”

Chigusa sniffed and dabbed the corner of her eyes. When viewed in a vacuum, that gesture of hers was adorable as h.e.l.l and stirred up protective feelings in me, but the stuff in her message from before combined with what she was actually saying now sounded far more harrowing…

Even Chigusa, however, had it in her to show concern. “If it comes to pa.s.s that she never returns, it will be a crushing loss for me,” she said with even more vehemence. “Just imagining that she was wrapped up in an incident caused by some organisation behind the scenes fills my heart with agony.”

As I watched Chigusa clench the ribbon on her chest, looking as if the end of the world was coming, I couldn’t help but think that, her bizarre actions aside, I wouldn’t mind helping her with this particular problem.

“Well, you know…” I struggled to find what to say. “Anyway, I just wanted to know about the Random Crossroad.”

Chigusa tilted her head in confusion and pulled a face as if she was having a date with an armadillo.

“…Random Crossroad?”

“Um, from your message, you know.”

Huh? It wasn’t the Random Crossroad? Maybe it was the Gundam X-road? Name-wise, it was pretty SD Gundam-ish.

“Ah, that?” Chigusa said with a strange giggle, at which point she launched into a tentative-sounding explanation filled with “ums” and “uhs”. Er, wasn’t she the one who approached me about it in the first place…?

The Random Crossroad.

It is said that if you walk down the residential area at midnight holding hands with your lover, a fourth road appear at the end of the crossroad. There is no way of knowing which path is the right way. If you choose the wrong path at that point, you may never return—or something like that.

…Was she an idiot? It sounded like something a brain-dead middle schooler would come up with. If you choose the wrong path, you may never return… What the h.e.l.l, man?

What was that—a metaphor for life? Did it represent the adolescent maiden heart, torn between choices and agonising over where to go? There must be countless people who have picked the wrong path and found themselves unable to turn back no matter how much they regretted it.

That was me in a nutsh.e.l.l. Right now, I was itching to turn back and head home.

In my opinion, people who are good at socialising have never found the right occasion to go home. The ability to impose on others is probably an essential feature of communication, the heart of human relations. Alternatively, you could say that the dark side of human relations, sociability, communication, etc. involves removing the very existence of other people.

Just like what Chigusa Yuu did.

“Haruma-san, come this way.”

Even now, Chigusa was power-walking ahead of me, completely oblivious to my thoughts. Pa.s.sersby looked over their shoulders at her from time to time, but it seemed that even the city bustle failed to reach her ears. She ploughed through the stream of people pouring out of the station and eventually reached a building at the front. As she got on the elevator there, Chigusa heaved a sigh. After pressing the b.u.t.ton to go to the second floor, Chigusa took a step back and stood with her legs pressed together like a proper lady, glaring at the door as if expecting it to open any second.

Only Chigusa and I were inside that tiny box. Naturally, the two of us were physically closer than we had ever been.

…It was somehow nerve-wracking.

Now that I thought about it, it had been an awfully long time since I had last spoken to a girl from my school. Also, if we were meeting up outside of school hours, did that mean this was a date? If I inhabited the same s.p.a.ce as a girl, then it was no exaggeration to say that, in a broad sense, we were cohabitating…