Haruma-2

Whoa, how dark, I thought as I scrubbed the tiles.

Of course, I wasn’t talking about the coffee.

Johannes scared the s.h.i.t out of me. She knocked over her cup without a single ounce of hesitation, only letting out the tiniest of peeps.

The paper napkin I had been wiping the floor with was soiled brown, and I could definitely feel its heat. I would probably get a slight burn if I touched the liquid directly. Not only that, it had made a permanent stain on Anna-chan’s pure white blouse.

You’d think it would be normal to get angry when something like that happens to you, but Anna-chan was wobbling like jelly and kept apologising over and over. By the time I looked up, having finished tidying up the floor, Anna-chan was still hunched over in shame.

“So then I wondered if Shia had reached out to another loan shark.”

“—Another loan shark, you say?”

There was not a flicker of surprise on Chigusa’s face as she repeated those words. Her manner was exceedingly calm, but underneath the table, her hands were clenched tightly into fists. Maybe it was because she didn’t really have much muscle, but I could see her arms were trembling slightly as she channelled her strength into her fists.

As far as I was concerned, it was my first time hearing that a fellow student had a loan shark, but judging from the way the two of them were talking, there was probably more than one of them. That much was easy to guess.

Given how rarely I spoke with people face-to-face, I’ve gotten good at inferring things from conversations between strangers. If you want to know how good I am, I’m so good that I could tell that one of the loan sharks in question was none other than Chigusa Yuu.

…I mean, at the moment, Yuu-chan’s keen interest in the subject was saying it all!

That said, Chigusa herself did not seem to be aware of it, so I figured I should pretend I hadn’t heard a thing… If I didn’t, I might end up with coffee on me!

One should not ask questions the other party does not wish to answer.

There are two important aspects of a smooth conversation. Don’t talk about things you’re not asked about, and don’t ask about things the other person didn’t say. If you follow these two rules, arguments and conflicts are inevitably avoided. Why, there is even a possibility that conversations will never happen at all.

Feelings, perspectives and imaginary boundaries all belong to the domain of the individual. Treading upon them is nothing but infringing upon another person’s territory. It’s an act of war, I tell you!

This is an era in which individuals should strive for an isolationist policy for the sake of domestic expansion within their minds, I think. Yep. The principle of peace at any cost? Non non, this is plain old concern.

However, the girl named Chigusa Yuu did not seem to have that kind of concern on her mind. She was currently leaning forward, hounding Anna-chan for an answer. Her hand was reaching out towards her smart phone, which she had placed on the table. “Anna-san! Do tell me more!”

“R-Really! I have no idea! Stop, really…!”

Anna-chan stiffened, but Chigusa’s fingertip would not leave her smart phone. Her body language was pretty much screaming: you know what’ll happen to you if you don’t fess up.

“It’s okay. There are no scary people here.” Chigusa beamed, causing Anna-chan’s shoulders to jolt in alarm. Yep, that Johannes Smile just now was scary as h.e.l.l…

More than anything, it was scary how there was someone out there who could intimidate others with a cute smile and warm words. I’d seen the art of smiling to conceal anger on TV, but smiling to threaten others had to be a new art form…

Unfortunately, Chigusa’s art had left Anna-chan so frightened out of her wits that the conversation went nowhere fast.

“Who does that other loan shark happen to be? An acquaintance of yours?” I spoke up.

Anna-chan looked at me, relieved. This had to be that so-called Suspension Bridge Effect. Doesn’t this mean she’ll end up falling in love with me? Uh oh, spaghetti-o!

“Please tell us all the details.” In a flash, Chigusa motioned to lean forward, only for Anna-chan to stiffen once again.

If this was the tone of the discussion, then it was bound to go nowhere… I wanted to hurry up and go home already…

“You don’t have to tell us all the details,” I said, b.u.t.ting my way between Chigusa and Anna-chan. “Was there anything that particularly stuck out to you?”

Scrunching up her thoughts in recollection, Anna-chan began to speak slowly and falteringly. “About two weeks ago, you see, Shia and I were talking about what we’d do about summer swimsuits. Even though she said she was broke so there was no way she could buy any, she changed her mind altogether after school. That day, she was awfully generous with her money, and when I asked her about it, she said she got some special income…”

Oh man, I see how it is. Common sense declared that was when she got the money. The question was how she had managed to do it. That part of her story was impossible to overlook.

“How peculiar…” Chigusa spoke up suddenly, having been listening in silence. Or maybe she had been harbouring the same misgivings as I did. She was the same smiling girl as ever, but at that moment, there was a strange twinkle in her eyes. I could even see that she was angry, judging by the p.r.i.c.kly atmosphere that had suddenly come over the table.

Guessing that she must have hit a sore spot, Anna-chan hastily chimed in agreement. “Y-Yeah… There’s no one else who could have lent money to Shia, but—”

Chigusa interrupted her. “I think that, before treating someone else, she ought to return what she borrowed. There are other things that ought to take precedence in the mind of any good citizen. However, Shia-san is peculiar in the he—I mean, she might have the wrong idea about things. As a friend, I may need to have a long and thorough talk with her about this.”

Oh, so that’s what she meant…

But you know, Johannes. I think you’re really not one to talk, given how peculiar you are! Didn’t Chigusa spin the story just like one of those yazuka or shady businessmen?

“If this happened after school, then she must have gotten the money from inside the school,” I said. “That’s the weird part.”

“…Is that really so peculiar?”

“Sure it is… Don’t you know what a school is for?”

“It is a place that forces you to come into contact with people whom one would certainly never be involved with by one’s own volition. It is a regressive cancer against the proper order. However, when it comes to the exchange of money, the financial system still functions better than the shambles of hierarchy,” Chigusa said matter-of-factly, her face completely straight.

“Um, okay. Right… moving on.”

This should go without saying, but schools aren’t supposed to function like banks. It was perfectly respectable to wonder how someone could perform money dealings in spite of that. Plus, you don’t casually stumble across people who think s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g high school kids out of their money is a great thing to do. But the thing was that Chigusa wasn’t the only one… Seriously, I’m wondering what goes on in the heads of those wannabe loan sharks.

Well, it takes one to know one. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s. Let’s look at it from the gospel according to the loan shark Johannes-kun.

I mean, there’s no use harping on about this chick’s sense of morals. I can’t even understand a normal person’s point of view. That applies even more to people who lack common sense.

So I may as well enjoy talking to Anna-chan, who was supposedly the sane one!

“So, do you know where this Shia-chan person came from?”

“Indeed, it is as Haruma-san said. Do you happen to know where Shia-san went that day? If you know that as well as the amount she received and the interest, I would like to know in detail.” Chigusa had only meant to speak to Anna-chan like a normal person, but once again she barged her way forward.

Anna-chan flinched, as if taken aback by Chigusa’s intensity. “I don’t know the amount or interest, but I think she was in the student counselling room, maybe… When we were meeting up just before we went shopping, that’s the direction she was walking from…”

The student counselling room was in the first floor of the school building. It was a small room situated not far from the center entrance. Supposedly, it was used for providing guidance to students as the name suggested, but since many students at our school had impeccable grades, I didn’t usually see people coming in and out of that place.

Next to the student counselling room was the staffroom. The two rooms were connected in the middle, so I suppose it was the kind of arrangement where you could easily move from one room to the other.

When I was in my first year, a busybody teacher called me to the student counselling room and said, “Is anything weighing you down? You’re not getting bullied or anything?” The pa.s.sionate, heartwarming counselling I received from him left me with a very strong impression. Wait, wasn’t the teacher acting solely to cover his own a.s.s? Bad memories…

“The door over there wasn’t locked, though, was it?” Come to think of it, the teacher took his sweet time coming over that time when I was called over, so I remember having to wait around in the hallway for twenty minutes or so.

“I don’t think so… but I suppose maybe it kind of looked like she was coming from that direction or something…” replied Anna-chan in a less than confident tone. As she hummed in thought, her words progressively made less and less sense. Well, I did hear that eyewitness accounts of accidents are fairly unreliable…

“Most students can’t go in there. There’s a chance she came from some other place,” I said to Anna-chan, intended to nudge her thinking towards another approach.

At that moment, a voice came flying out of left field.

“No. If she had a key, that would invalidate the conditions of the closed room.”

“Huh?”

When I swung around at the sudden interjection, Chigusa had placed a finger to her lips, waggling it the way people did when unravelling a logic puzzle.

“Think about it. As long as you have a key, anyone can enter. If there is a door, then I don’t think you can call it a closed room at that point in time.”

I sighed. “You’re right.”

I found myself agreeing with that incredibly simple yet lucid response. It made sense. A real closed room was a box without any connecting points. If those conditions weren’t satisfied, then a way to enter the room had to exist.

The way Chigusa saw things made me wonder if she was from a different species. Just what you’d expect from someone lacking common sense… How did good ol’ Johannes manage to end up on the rooftop when it was off-limits anyway? That just proves my point.

Still, I was gripped by what Chigusa said: as long as you have a key.

The teachers were in charge of keys to the student counselling room, along with the year-level coordinators and the vice-princ.i.p.al. It was normal to see them going inside. Well, it wasn’t like someone couldn’t use a fake key, skeleton key or picklock, but that was a whole new can of worms. The first order of business was to lock onto a possibility and think about it. At this point in time, that was enough.

I’d asked what I wanted to ask, so I looked in Chigusa’s direction, channeling my desire to head home (“I wonder if I can go home now” “Wish I can go home” “I’m tired. Gonna yawn”) into my eyes. Chigusa was smiling brilliantly.

“Anna-san, thank you ever so much for telling us your story.”

All of a sudden, Chigusa bowed politely, leaving Anna-chan bewildered. “Er, um, uh, sure…”

From the way Chigusa was talking, she was totally wrapping things up. Awwright! I can go home! I thought, half-rising to my feet, only for Chigusa to yank my blazer sleeve.

“We’re only just getting started. I wonder how far the rumours about a black market in the student counselling room have spread. Given that it was not in my information network, it must not have been advertised through word of mouth, but in that case I wonder how the business could grow. Are they charging more per customer or relying on repeat clients? Just what kind of business model are they using?”

“I-I have no idea…”

“I cannot permit a lack of ideas! Anna-san, what do you think about offering to be a customer? This is a matter of responsibility!” Chigusa pressed Anna-chan, prompting the girl to start shaking all over again.

Her frenzied babbling was confusing, incoherent and served no use whatsoever. Not this s.h.i.t again… Even reading the notices on the tray’s sheet seemed like less of a waste of time.

“…I’m gonna get some coffee,” I announced, before crawling my way to the counter, dragging my feet every step of the way.