CH 52

When I opened the chest containing my loungewear, I saw Miyagi’s clothes.

It was a cut-and-sew that she gave me in place of the cider-covered uniform she gave me before spring break, which I tried to return once I was done.

In the end, Miyagi did not receive it and it belongs to me.

Well, I never wear it.

I touch it, which I can’t throw away and has nowhere to go.

There is no trace of Miyagi because I washed it to return it.

Once there, I closes my eyes, grabs a tank top and heads for the bathroom.

On Friday nights, families don’t go to bed early. Even now, around twenty-three o’clock, the lights are still on in the living room. I quietly walk down the hallway and take a bath. Choosing to leave early rather than take a leisurely soak in the hot water, I grabbed a plastic bottle from the refrigerator and headed back to my room.

I look at the phone on the desk.

I pour a bottle of tea into my stomach as I reply to a few messages that had come in. After half a drink, I lay down on the bed with my phone.

I wasn’t going to think about what happened today, but it comes to mind.

——Taking off my clothes in front of Miyagi and forcing Miyagi to take off her clothes.

I put my phone under my pillow and exhale heavily.

Seeing Miyagi three times a week is not a bad thing in itself.

I want to see my friends and go out with them on their days off. If you are close to them, it is only natural that you would think so. I can say that meeting Miyagi for a vacation is similar.

I have kissed her, but that is about as far as I am allowed to go. In any case, my lips have touched Miyagi’s body many times and so has she.

That’s why, it’s okay.

But it was against the rules to take off your clothes or have them taken off.

I think the choice of a rainy day was a mistake.

I should have shooed away Miyagi’s hand that tried to take off my uniform and kicked her out for being an idiot. Because of the accepted behavior that broke the rules, it has tailed off.

On the bed, looking at the ceiling, I sigh.

I pushed Miyagi down in this room and I cursed myself early on, and I continue to curse myself. And the curse is slowly overtaking my mind and twisting my emotions.

I take off Miyagi and touch it.

I almost thought of more than that and I dismissed it.

「It’s not good, is it?」

These imaginings should not be.

The only things that come to my mind since Miyagi came to this room are things that I would never tell anyone.

I should have just kissed her like that.

Or that I should have left her an indelible mark.

I keep thinking about such nonsense, and here I was.

This is not like me.

I’m a little more to the point, and I’m better with people. Since entering high school, I have been enjoying school life in a good position. I intend to continue these days until graduation, and my current feelings about Miyagi are a hindrance to achieving that.

It’s not that I don’t like Miyagi.

As I told her, there is no doubt that I like Miyagi.

Yes, it didn’t matter if it was to the extent that I liked it a little more than others. Actually, it doesn’t. I like Miyagi more than I thought I would and I can’t control my emotions towards her.

So today, I attempted to return myself to who I should be.

I sigh one big sigh.

If I reboot a phone that is not working well, it sometimes starts working as if nothing happened. I thought it would be good if I rebooted myself like that.

I act like it makes sense to take off my clothes, which makes for a weird atmosphere. Then act like it’s an everyday thing.

Let Miyagi order me to take off my clothes like it’s nothing, like getting dressed at school.

I deceive and mislead myself.

It may be difficult to change my mind one hundred and eighty degrees, but I can come to terms with it and sort it out that way.

Just like last year, I just need to get closer to the me who sold out a few hours of my week to Miyagi, with boring orders and orders I don’t like just to kill time.

Or so I thought.

Well, it didn’t work out.

You may undress me or order me to undress you.

There were two options available to me, and Miyagi ordered me to take off my clothes as she thought.

I am used to hiding my feelings. I am good at keeping a lid on my feelings and getting away with it.

So I could undress in front of Miyagi without changing color. But it wasn’t enough; I had to put reason aside and just let my emotions keep running. Thanks to this, I even had to undress Miyagi.

——Now that’s not the right way to put it.

To be precise, I could not stop myself from wanting to undress Miyagi. In the end, I know that my ulterior motive will not disappear when I put on a nonchalant face, and I am left with only the feeling of wanting to touch Miyagi more.

It doesn’t help that I still have regrets and think that Miyagi was soft or that the parts we touched felt good. The thought processes are so tangled that they cannot be untangled and continue to access parts that should not be connected.

All the time, I feel like I’m not me, and it’s weird.

I want to touch Miyagi, not through the cloth.

I don’t remember ever directing this kind of emotion at anyone before.

There are more and more things that I would not want to do for others, but would want to do for Miyagi. Though it is summer, feelings with no place to go are piling up like snow and not melting.

「I guess I’m glad it was Friday.」

My mood is too heavy right now to meet Miyagi right after a day open.

I am interested in Miyagi, but I want to keep it to the extent that I feel comfortable in that room. I have decided that after graduation I will leave this house and go to college outside of the prefecture, and I have no intention of changing my future.

But I don’t want to live a clean and righteous life, so I don’t mind having a little excitement in my life. If I don’t get involved with Miyagi any more deeply, I should at least be allowed to enjoy the upper hand of the time I spend in that room.

I think it’s outrageous and incoherent.

However, I can’t quite put my thoughts together about Miyagi. I still haven’t grasped Miyagi, and the more I think about it, the less I know what I should do.

So, I should be able to overlook just a few discrepancies.

Mostly, it’s bad enough that Miyagi keeps giving strange orders.

Moreover, she has been giving me strange attention lately, which made me feel uncomfortable.

Shifting the blame, I look at the wall separating this room from the one next door.

I haven’t thought about one person like this since that person in the next room. For a while after my parents became overtly protective of only my sister, she was all I could think about.

I am not the same person I was back then, but it is frustrating to see myself as I was back then.

「Ahh— enough. It’s summer vacation and I’m not excited.」

I pick up my phone.

I look at the clock, it was almost 1:00 A.M.

I think Umina would be a good choice.

She is a night owl and would be up at this hour if she was off. I call Umina to change my mood. It rings once, then twice, and on the fifth ring, a bright voice that doesn’t sound like it’s the middle of the night comes on.

「That’s unusual at this time of night.」

「I couldn’t sleep. Umina, can I talk to you now?」

「I was on the phone and my boyfriend fell asleep and I was just having some free time.」

I don’t have anything I really want to talk about with Umina.

I am sure that she would be fine with anyone as long as she can kill some time. It doesn’t matter who you are, but you must have the same desire to talk with someone who is reasonably pleasant to talk to, and we start talking about inconsequential things.

The voice, different from Miyagi’s, calms me down a bit.

She was just sloppily mouthing whatever comes to her mind without using her head, but the conversation rolls along and is more lively than talking with Miyagi.

But it’s not as if it’s fun.

I met with Umina last week, so our conversation is full of similarities, as if we were tracing the past.

「Hazuki, aren’t you bad at socializing this year? Is cram school that busy?」

Umina, who invariably refers to the prep school as a cram school, makes no secret of her dissatisfaction.

Last year we met twice as much as we do now, so it’s no wonder she complains.

「Who knows? My schedule is pretty packed.」

It is true that prep schools are busy, and they are almost taking away from the summer vacation schedule. There is also a plan to go to Miyagi’s house there, which makes it even busier.

Umina is on the other end of her phone telling me to clear my schedule by expressing her wish to go there and here. I reply that I understand whether or not I can actually clear my schedule. Then Umina, who had regained her good mood, said as if she remembered.

「Oh, right. Did you finish your homework?」

「It’s almost over.」

「Well, then, let me copy it.」

「All right. Shall we go tomorrow?」

「Ah, then, I have some places I’d like to go while I’m at it.」

Umina mentions a place where homework might be more incidental.

I don’t want to see her.

I think last year would have been a little more pleasant.

I’m not in the mood.

But it seemed more distracting to meet with someone else, so I made an appointment to meet with Umina.