88. Date.

The champion is Miss Sakura no Koji from Class 2-A! Congratulations!

My heart was pounding so loudly it was almost painful. Wind rushed past my ears, mixed with the cheers and applause of the crowd, and perhaps more than half of that applause was meant for me.

Saya and Emi were clapping with their faces flushed bright red. Honestly, what a fuss. I had said all along that I would rule the sports festival.

My legs trembled a little. The muscles in my calves tightened and quivered with a crackling tension, but I was not about to fall. What echoed in my chest was a familiar surge of elation.

I had once pursued that feeling with everything I had, in race after race, holding my breath and forcing my heartbeat higher, all for the sake of standing on a podium a step above everyone else.

But today was different. I stood on that podium because I wanted him to look at me, to see only me from beginning to end.

Yet more and more people gathered around me. They clapped and shouted like a cheering squad of friends and family, though many of them I could not even remember the names of.

Come to think of it, their applause was not really for me either, but for the youth each of them carried in their own hearts.

Swallowed by the crowd, I did not know what to do. My heartbeat slowly settled, and my body began to grow weary.

I still had not seen him.

The weekend after the sports festival brought the expected all-over soreness, as if wolves had been gnawing at my body, their jaws sinking straight into my calves.

Fortunately, Tsuki was not an ungrateful fellow, and he spent a full hour massaging me.

Even though he embarrassed me in front of Mother and Aunt Yuko, truthfully, I was glad.

Tsuki was gradually becoming the person I knew him to be. He no longer flirted with girls. Though his temperament had grown more negative and gloomy, no longer as bright and cheerful as before, I could clearly feel the change in him.

No matter the reason or the trigger, so long as he could return to being the Tsuki who belonged only to me, I did not care about the explanation.

No, that was nothing but a lie I told myself, nothing but stubbornness.

That was why I could not bear to look at that photograph, and secretly deleted it.

Whether they held hands or embraced, I had already resolved not to feel jealous.

I had even seen them kiss with my own eyes.

But it was all right. I could endure it.

Because I understood that I was the first for him, in every possible way.

The only thing I could not endure was how easily and happily he could smile.

Whenever he was with me, his gaze was always distant and lonely, and he treated me with such caution, as though I were some precious object made of glass.

Then I suddenly understood.

Had I, without realizing it, become the source of his pain?

It was not I who had changed him, but someone else. Yet if he could be restored to the childhood friend who belonged only to me, to the boy who had been my first love, I would harbor no resentment. On the contrary, I would be filled with gratitude.

And, on a more personal level, I did not wish to hate that person.

Or rather, I deeply admired such a resolute, upright woman.

Perhaps Sakurakoji Sakura could never become a girl like that.

In my heart, I deified that person, trying to place her on a level far beyond someone like me, as a way to console my own passivity. It was nothing more than a helpless measure.

And yet she had asked me to tell her things about Tsuki from the past. It was utterly baffling.

Only then did I realize that Hoshinomori-senpai was, after all, just an ordinary girl.

I had actually forgotten something so simple.

If I could not make him smile with ease and composure, if I could not drive away the loneliness clinging to him, then I no longer had any excuse.

Just as I was reaching the point where I could no longer bear staying beside him, he seemed to sense it and took my hand of his own accord.

"Could you go out with me this weekend?"

What a wicked boy.

He knew full well that I could not refuse him.

...

...

With feelings that I could not quite tell were excitement or nervous anticipation, the weekend arrived at an unhurried pace.

It was a cloudless, beautiful day. A rainy date may have its own romance, but I still wanted to walk with him openly beneath the sun. If we could hold hands, that would be nothing less than happiness.

I wore my favorite skirt, tied my ponytail with the cutest hair tie, and even spun once before the mirror in delight. Before I left, Mother teased me and said things that made me blush.

"Tsuki and I would never do anything like that!"

"Oh? Really? Well, in any case, spare your mother the trouble of a high school pregnancy. Be safe."

"Mm, be safe."

"You don't need to say it twice!" I could not stand Mother’s way of teasing, and fled the house with my face burning.

However, because I was too conscious of what she had said, I could not help remembering an embarrassing incident from middle school on the way to the station, and my heartbeat only quickened further.

By the time I reached the station, I failed to notice him at first. It was only when he pressed the back of his hand to my cheek and asked whether I was sick that I suddenly came to myself.

"What’s wrong?"

"...Nothing."

I answered with forced calm, utterly unable to admit that I had been thinking about our first intimate experience. That was probably one of the greatest stains upon our brief lives.

After gathering myself, I asked where we were going, while my eyes stayed fixed on his hand, hoping inwardly that he might suddenly take mine as he had after school that day.

As it turned out, I had been overthinking things.

Tsuki’s attitude was no different from usual, and his clothes were the most ordinary hoodie and trousers, the only thing luxurious and refined about him being his face.

Meanwhile, I was the one who had put on an unsuitable white dress, with an openwork cut in the back that revealed a sun-kissed mark and made me feel shy.

I knew it. Dresses like this were meant to look best on girls with fair skin.

Yes, like Senpai.

But even I was not so careless as to go out in a hoodie on a date with the boy I liked.

I had carefully treated my hair the night before, removed every last bit of fine hair from my arms and thighs, put on lip balm at the earliest opportunity, and sprayed Mother’s perfume on my neck.

And yet he offered no comment at all on my appearance, leaving me with the feeling of having sprinted all the way to the finish line, only for the track beneath my feet to vanish just as I crossed it.

"Let’s go," he said.

"Okay."

...

The train swayed all the way along, and I sat quietly beside him, my thigh occasionally brushing against the fabric of his trousers. I glanced at him cautiously, only to see the same thoughtful, preoccupied look on his face.

From Jiyugaoka Station we rode to Shibuya, transferred to the Fukutoshin Line, passed Kitasando, Shinjuku, Nishi-Waseda, Zoshigaya, and arrived at Ikebukuro.

I rarely came to Ikebukuro. After school, my main territory with my friends was Harajuku, and farther out was Shinjuku. Ikebukuro was simply too far away, the kind of place you would only decide to visit if you had planned in advance what you were going to do there.

On the train, he never once spoke to me, simply staring at his phone as if we were nothing more than strangers sitting a little too close together.

Once we left the station, he walked briskly on, paying no heed to my wandering thoughts as I grew distracted and almost got swept away by the crowd.

I was terribly hurt. He had been the one to invite me, so how could he be even colder than usual?

Because of what happened in the sports festival scavenger race between him and Senpai, I was not in a joking mood. He had better not provoke me. He had better not make me angry.

And then, in the very next instant, I dumbly bumped into his back, my nose aching, only for him to casually take my hand.

"Lots of people here. Don’t get separated."

He would have been better off without that line.

Even so, all the anger I had built up through the jostling train ride vanished at once, which only proved how easily I could be fooled.

"...Tsuki."

"Hm? What is it, need to use the restroom? Hold it a little longer."

"I’m not talking about that! Could you at least say something nice?"

"Yeah, yeah. I’ll say it later."

He led me to ZA, practically running so that we would make the start of the film.

No wonder he had been walking so fast and checking his phone the whole time.

"By the way, why a movie?" I asked.

Tsuki did not answer. He placed a finger to his lips, signaling that I should be quiet during the film.

He was acting strange today.

To be fair, the movie was fairly interesting. It was said to be adapted from a manga, though I did not really understand those things.

Or perhaps my mind simply was not on the movie at all.

How could it be, when for the two hours we sat in the theater, he never once let go of my hand?

By now, holding hands with him was the most ordinary thing in the world. We were the kind of pair who could suck on each other’s fingers before we even knew how to speak.

I remembered our first time going out to see a movie in middle school.

It seemed to have been our first date after we officially started going out. Thinking of it now, the memories from that time felt so terrible that I immediately severed my connection to the past.

"Hey, Tsuki..."

He only looked at me in silence. I did not know whether it was my imagination, but his eyes today were especially clear, bereft of the loneliness I had grown used to seeing. His grip on my hand was powerful, firm enough that I could not shake it off.

Only then did I realize that compared with three years ago, his height, his voice, his hands—all of it had changed astonishingly.

Or rather, he had become even more like a boy.

For me, that seemed like something profoundly unbelievable, because as far as the person called Tsuki Shimonoji was concerned, before I had realized we were two separate individuals, his gender had actually been irrelevant.

Even if he had been a girl, I would have staged a forbidden yuri romance without hesitation.

"Sakura no Koji."

"Hm?"

"Any thoughts?"

"The movie? Well... honestly, I don’t really understand these things. It wasn’t boring, at least."

He lowered his head in thought, tightened his hand around mine, and pulled me elsewhere.

I was so unused to it.

Unused to such an active, forceful Tsuki. But being unused to it did not mean I disliked it. I was simply unfamiliar with the changes in him, or rather, in a state of bewilderment at the present situation.

But that did not matter.

What mattered was that our hands still had not parted.

I stopped thinking, emptied my mind, and followed closely beside him like a vine wrapped around a tree, never leaving him for even a moment.

After the movie theater came the aquarium. Speaking of aquariums in Ikebukuro, it had to be Sunshine Aquarium. This was my third time here.

The first time must have been in the upper grades of elementary school, accompanied by my parents and the four members of the Shimonoji family.

Yes, that was when Luria first came to the Shimonoji household and found me lost inside the aquarium.

The second time was after I started dating Tsuki, a pair of middle school lovers mingling among adults. Back then I thought that was what mature grown-ups did. Looking back now, it was childish, but full of joy.

Then I suddenly thought of something and looked up at Tsuki beside me. He was staring intently at the garden eels.

"Hey, Tsuki, could it be that you..."

"Hush."

This time he did not put his finger to his own lips, but to mine.

At that moment, he should have been looking only at me, and I tried to search his gaze for the loneliness and desolation that had once hurt me.

But in his eyes, I found only Sakura no Koji Sakura.

My heart, which had been running steadily all morning, suddenly shot into overdrive without warning.

He had not even spoken a single sweet word, and yet I felt as though I were soaked through in honey, with a bonfire burning in the distance and roasting marshmallows taller than a person.

After leaving the aquarium, we began strolling through the unfamiliar streets of Ikebukuro. He bought me a crepe, a matcha-and-strawberry half-and-half, smothered in chocolate sauce.

I really should have been watching my diet lately to maintain my weight, but since he had gone out of his way to buy it for me, I ignored such things.

"Let me have a bite."

"Sure, that’s fine. No need to buy another one, right?"

Without further ado, he bit off the outer edge of the crepe and two slices of strawberry.

"Too sweet."

I blinked at his words, staring at him for a long while before I finally understood what he was doing. The sudden realization made me tremble all over, and I nearly lost my balance, wanting nothing more than to melt bonelessly into his arms.

Three years ago, on that day, we were still middle school students on our first date.

To save our pocket money, we bought the earliest movie tickets and went to the aquarium to see penguins, though his imitation of them was not convincing at all.

Using what little allowance he had to buy me a crepe, he took only one bite, said it was too sweet, and then shoved it back to me with an air of disgust.

"What is this? Going to all that trouble—what does it mean? Did you learn that sort of move from chasing girls around all these years?" I said, trying to hide my embarrassment, my tone unknowingly edged with a hint of sting.

It was all because I was too shy.

But he seemed to see through my embarrassment and understand my true meaning. The way he tightened his hand around mine at that moment was the best proof.

Gradually, I was able to face myself, and the past, in peace.

"So Tsuki still remembers... what happened that day," I said softly.

"How could I forget? There’s no way I could."

"That’s true."

My voice was so faint it sounded almost like a mosquito’s buzz.

In my mind, countless fragments flickered and shone. Perhaps this experience ought to be called a stain, but if I were told to start over from the beginning, I would still choose that stain as one of the unforgettable memories of my life.

The words Mother had spoken to me that morning suddenly echoed in my ears, and I found it harder and harder to look into his dark, clear eyes.

Because on that day three years ago, the last stop of our first and final date was...

a love hotel.