The Purple Mirror (Part 2)

Her story was simple. Mikoko-chan and I were classmates. Not only were we taking the same core subjects, but we were also in the same foreign-language class. We had met face-to-face a number of times and were in the same group for the class training camp before Golden Week. We had even been paired up before in English class.

"Man... From this conversation alone, I must seem like a total nut for not remembering you."

"I think you are a total nut!" She laughed lightheartedly. To be able to laugh so cheerfully after someone had entirely forgotten her existence took a special kind of vacuousness. I figured she was probably a pretty nice girl after all.

"Normally, I'd find it pretty disturbing that you forgot me like that. Or rather, I'd be pissed. But that's just how you are, right? Like, you don't forget the stuff that's 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 important, but you forget normal stuff," she said.

"Well, I can't argue with that."

She was exactly right. One time I had even forgotten if I was right- or left-handed, and found myself in quite a bind when I actually tried to sit down and have a meal. To top it all off, when all was said and done, I turned out to be ambidextrous.

"Okay, and what's happening with you?" I asked. "Why aren't you in class?"

"Class? Well, the thing about that is..."

For some reason, she seemed abnormally happy. But I got the feeling that "abnormally happy" was her default setting. To be honest, even though I'd seen her before, I still could not remember what she was like normally. But either way, it was hard to be put off by this smiley-faced girl.

"I'm playing hooky."

"Freshmen really ought to go to class," I said.

"Aw, come on, it's boring. Totally boring. What was it again? Oh, yeah, my economics class. It's just a nonstop stream of jargon. And it's like a math class. I'm a humanities person! And 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 skipping class too!"

"I don't have a class right now."

"Really?"

"Yep. Fridays I only have a first period and a fifth period." She flung her hands wildly in the air again. "Doesn't that kind of suck? That's like six hours of boredom."

"Boredom isn't necessarily a bad thing."

"Hm, I thought boredom was practically the definition of 'a bad thing.' Different strokes, I guess." She began winding the spaghetti around her fork as she spoke. Unable to successfully get it all on the utensil, it soon became a matter of trial and error. I reckoned it would be a while before the food actually reached her mouth. Before I knew it, she had put the fork down and switched to chopsticks. So much for stick-to-itiveness.

"Say..." I said.

"Hm? What-what?"

"There are tons of open seats."

"Yeah, for real. I think this place will fill up pretty soon, though," she said.

"But it's empty now, right?"

"You said it. Something wrong with that?"

"I wanna eat alone, so let's move along now, honey," I wanted to say. But then I saw her smile — a vulnerable smile that showed she couldn't possibly have imagined she was about to be completely rejected — even I had to take pity.

"Nah... It's nothing."

"Hmm? You're a weird guy." She gave me the pouty lips. "Ah, but I guess if you weren't weird, you wouldn't be you. Weirdness is like your identity, right?"

I couldn't help but feel like I was being inadvertently insulted. But then again, it wasn't as bad as completely forgetting someone you had been regularly interacting with for a whole month. So I swept the notion aside and switched my focus back to the kimchee.

"Ikkun, you're a kimchee fan?"

"Nah, not particularly."

"But that's a ton of kimchee. Not even Koreans eat that much in one sitting."

"Well, I have my reasons," I said as I crammed some kimchee into my mouth. More than half of it still remained in my bowl. "Not very interesting ones, but still."

"Reasons?"

"Try to figure it out yourself first."

"Huh? Oh, right... Okay." Mikoko-chan crossed her arms and began to contemplate my rationale. Of course, figuring what circumstances could possibly require my eating an entire bowl of kimchee wasn't exactly easy. After just a few moments of pondering, she let her arms drop back down apathetically. She really was quick to throw in the towel.

"Oh, yeah, by the way, I had a question for you. I thought this was a good opportunity to ask you. May I?"

"Uh, sure."

Wasn't the phrase "a good opportunity" usually used for something that came up by chance? As far as I knew, Mikoko-chan had come here and sat down in front of me of her own volition.

Or maybe that was beside the point.

She was wearing the same smile when she posed her question. "Ikkun, you know how you didn't come to school for a while at the beginning of April? Why was that?"

"Uh... " My chopsticks stopped moving. The bits of kimchee they held plopped back into the bowl. "Uh, well..."

I must've had a troubled look on my face, because Mikoko-chan was quick to start waving her hands around frantically and say, "Oh, if it's hard to talk about it, don't worry. I was just wondering, that's all. It's like, Unsolved Mysteries featuring Mikoko-chan."

"No, it's not hard to talk about. It's a simple story, really. I was just on a vacation. For about a week."

"Vacation?" She blinked at me like a little forest animal. Her expressions were also easy to read.

It made it easy for me to talk to her — she was a great listener.

"Vacation? Where'd you go?" she asked again.

"Out to some deserted island in the Sea of Japan, kind of by an accident."

"By an accident?"

"Yeah. A big accident. Anyway, that's how I got myself into this kimchee-eating situation."

She scratched her head, which was probably a natural response. But I am a fundamentally lazy person, so I couldn't be bothered to explain all the details. Or rather, just how the hell would I?

"Anyway, just a vacation. Nothing particularly deep."

"Huh. You don't say."

"What did you think it was?"

"Oh, nothing..." She blushed a bit. "I just thought maybe, uh, like you hurt yourself somehow and had an extended stay at the hospital or something."

How and why such an idea would occur to her was a mystery to me, but then again, for someone to suddenly take a week off just after entering a university, there weren't really any other plausible explanations that came to mind. At the very least, it was a more likely explanation than "I was just on a vacation."

"I see. Sort of like a delayed graduation trip."

"Yeah, something like that. I couldn't get a reservation, so it ended up eating into April," I said with a shrug, but of course, the real facts were totally different. The very idea that I had "graduated from school" was something I hadn't experienced since elementary school. I'd certainly never been on a "graduation trip." But all of the circumstances surrounding what had happened would have required a pointlessly long explanation, and it wasn't exactly the kind of thing I wanted to talk about at length anyway, so I just went with her interpretation.

"Hmm..." She gave a sort of half-convinced expression. "So did you go alone?"

"Yeah."

"Gotcha." And then, just like that, the cheerful smile was back. It was as if all confusion had been cleared. It was like she really didn't put on any façades. She was so straightforward with her emotions that I almost envied her.

Well...

Not really.

"So, Mikoko-chan... Why are you really here?"

"Huh?"

"You have something to say, I assume? I mean, considering you came and sat right here when there's a whole roomful of empty chairs."

"Huh." She narrowed her eyes and lowered her gaze a bit, down to my chest. "So I can't sit with you unless I've got something specific to say to you?"

"Huh?" This time it was my turn to scratch my head.

She continued talking in the meantime. "I mean... Am I bothering you? I just saw you when I was walking by, so I thought maybe we could eat together."

"Ah, gotcha."

So she'd just wanted someone to eat with. I was the type who preferred doing personal things, like eating, alone, but there were plenty of people who viewed mealtime and talk time as one and the same. Surely, Mikoko-chan was one of them. But having unexpectedly decided to skip class, she couldn't find a friend to eat with, so she went ahead and struck up a conversation with the first acquaintance she happened to see — me.

"Well, if that's all it is, it's fine by me," I assured her.

"Thanks. That's a relief. I don't know what I would've done if you had said no."

"You don't?"

"Hmm? Yeah. Maybe something like this," she said, pretending to hold the edges of her tray in both hands. Then she twisted her wrists in a sudden cracking motion. "Like that."

"I see..." Even if she was just joking, I was a little relieved I had refrained from saying no. I wouldn't have put such a reaction past her, in reality. Someone who expressed happiness so freely might express anger just as freely.

"Well, I guess I'm free anyway. As long as you just want to talk," I said.

"Thanks."

"So what are we talking about?"

"Oh, umm..."

As I prompted her onward, she began anxiously scraping her chopsticks together. She was probably trying to think of a topic.

I may have forgotten who she was, but surely in the past month, it seemed like she'd at least managed to grasp the surface of my personality. So just what kind of topic would she broach with me? Me, who was so ignorant, and so lacking in common sense, that I used to think soccer was baseball played with your feet? I was strangely interested to find out as if I were watching it happen to someone else.

She clapped her hands as if she had suddenly thought of something. "Don't you think the world's gone crazy?" she asked.

"Huh? In what way?"

"I mean... Er, you know, the prowler. Even you must know about it."

Even me.

Even me — the phrase was pretty enraging. Except that it happened that I had no idea who the hell "the prowler" was. "Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot! Of course, I know!" An angry outburst like that would have been fairly justified, but "Shut up! How the hell am I supposed to know what that is, idiot?!" just didn't have the same ring of validity to it.

"Hmm? What's wrong, Ikkun?" she asked.

"Ah, nothing. What's 'the prowler'?"

Obviously, I wasn't looking for the dictionary definition — one who prowls. She gawked at me in amazement.

"You're kidding, right? Is this a joke? Ikkun, it's been all over the news. There's no way you could have missed this if you live in Kyoto."

"There's no TV in my house, and I don't get the paper either."

"What about the Internet?"

"Oh, I don't have a computer. Don't really use the ones on campus much either."

"Oh my God, Ikkun is a caveman!" she said, sounding almost impressed in a way. "Is it some sort of ethical policy?"

"Maybe it is, in a sense. How do I put it... I don't like having possessions."

"Cooool! You're like an ancient philosopher! Wow!" She clapped her hands with joy. I seriously doubted I would have gotten the same reaction if she knew it was actually for a practical — and completely lame — reason: My room was just too small.

I mean, newspapers take up a lot of space.

"When you say 'if you live in Kyoto,' do you mean this 'prowler' thing is going on here?"

"Yeah, that's right. It's made a pretty big splash. 'Panic in the Old Capital!' Some places have even called off-field trips."

"Wow... Too bad for them."

"Six people have been murdered! And it's still going on right now! With no known suspects!" She had become all riled up, and there was a hint of excitement in her voice. "He stabs them with a knife and then flings their guts all around and stuff! Freaky, huh?"

"..."

Let's set aside the fact that we were in the middle of eating. After all, I was partly responsible for the fact that the conversation had veered in this direction. But what did it say of this girl that she was able to discuss the murder of others with such absolute glee?

It's scary how detached people can become.

"Six people, huh? Is that a lot?"

"Yeah, it's a lot! It's a hell of a lot!" She almost sounded boastful in a way, as if she were the one doing the killing. "Maybe not overseas, but serial killings are rare in Japan! It's become quite a sensation, you know."

"Huh. So that's why there are patrol cars circling around all over the place."

"Yeah. There are people from the mobile police force in Shinkyôgoku. Makes me think of the Gion Festival." She chuckled to herself for some reason.

"Wow, go figure. I didn't know anything about this."

As I nodded along with her explanation, somehow I knew Kunagisa would definitely get a kick out of this.

Kunagisa, for those new to my story, is the short version of Kunagisa Tomo, one of my few friends. That is to say, my only friend. Kunagisa Tomo was a nineteen-year-old electronic and mechanical engineering professional shut-in of the mysterious variety, with blue hair and a passionate interest in collecting information on just these types of incidents. Unlike me, she wasn't constantly in the dark about what was going on in the world. In fact, she was essentially an information-collecting expert, and she was probably already well aware of this prowler case without me having to say anything about it. In fact, she was probably already taking action.

"So when did it start?"

"Around the beginning of May, maybe? I think that's right. Why?"

"Oh, I was just asking."

I put the last piece of kimchee in my mouth. My tongue, or rather the entire inside of my mouth, was completely mangled. I would probably never take food for granted or say "this tastes bad" again. If you thought about it, the fact that a single bowl of kimchee could so easily destroy all my principles didn't say much for my taste buds. Or maybe, it was more of a stomach issue.

"Well, I'm done. See you again sometime." I put down my chopsticks and began to get up from my seat.

"Ah! Hold on! Hold on, will you?! Where are you going?!" Mikoko scrambled to stop me. "Wait a minute, Ikkun!"

"What do you mean by 'Where are you going'? I'm finished eating so I figured maybe I'd drop by the bookstore."

"I'm not done!" I took a look at her tray. Indeed, more than half of her food was left.

"But I am."

"Don't make me sad. Stay with me till I'm finished."

"Why should I have to do a pointless thing like that?" ...Is exactly the kind of thing I'm not tough enough to say. I'm more of the go-with-the-flow type.

"Okay. I'm free now anyway." I didn't have anything urgent to do, and it wasn't like I was full yet, either.

I figured I might as well eat some real food while I was there. "Wait a minute. I'm gonna go buy something."

I approached the register from the opposite direction (which was against the rules) and took a look at the menu on the wall, pondering whether I should order the beef bowl. Geez, it was more expensive than Yoshinoya. Maybe something else was the way to go.

"Kimchee again?" the lady at the counter interrupted lightheartedly as I was trying to decide.

"Yes."

Oops.

I had up and said it.

"No use crying over spilt milk." Or wait, was this more of a "hindsight-is-always-twenty-twenty situation"?

A few dozen seconds later, I received another heaping bowl of kimchee (this time the lunch lady gave me a little extra) and sat back down in front of Mikoko-chan.

"What the hell? Am I supposed to be following along with something here?" she asked.

"Don't worry about it. So what were we talking about?"

"Hm? Uh, what was it? I forgot."

"Got it. Well, then, do you want to talk about the class?"

She shook her head firmly.

"Why? There were some things I didn't really get in the first period today, so I was thinking maybe we could go over it together. It's a required class for freshmen, so you must have gone, right? If you ask me, the professor's inability to explain things properly is to blame, but what do you think?"

"What do I think? I think that there isn't a boy alive who brings up something like this to a girl when there isn't even a test coming up!"

I was only kidding, but she seemed seriously put off by it. "What's the matter? You don't like studying?"

"Nobody likes studying."

"That sounds debatable to me. But if you hate studying, why did you go to college?"

"Ah, that's a forbidden question. If you ask that, it's all over. I mean... Everyone's like that, right?"

It seemed I had inadvertently touched a soft spot, and she suddenly seemed a bit melancholy. Come to think of it, it seemed to me that someone had once said Japanese universities weren't a place for people who wanted to study and that college was just a time to prepare for entering society.

"Heh, that's one way to put it."

"Do you like studying?" she asked.

I shrugged.

Of course not.

In fact, I hated it.

"But it's not bad for killing time. Or as an escape from reality, rather."

"Usually, studying is a reality." She gave a heavy sigh. Then, as if shifting her focus back to her meal, she picked at her salad for a while in silence.

Hmm. Was a plate of spaghetti, a large salad, and a dessert really a normal-size portion for a girl under the age of twenty? I didn't know anybody fit enough to use as a standard for comparison though. Everyone I knew was either incredibly finicky, ridiculously gluttonous, or always fasting or something — so I had no standards for judgment. But seeing as Mikoko-chan was neither too slim nor the opposite, perhaps it was, at the very least, an appropriate portion for her.

"Umm, it's hard to eat with you staring at me like that," she said.

"Oh, sorry."

"S'okay."

She resumed eating. When she was nearly done, she began looking my way in a sort of probing fashion. Really, she had been peeping up at me every so often the whole time, but now she had suddenly become obvious about it, making eyes at me like there was something she wanted to tell me.

And indeed, that proved to be accurate speculation.

As if she had, at last, made up her mind about something, she placed her chopsticks down without finishing her dessert. She gave a bit of a playful smile as she leaned her body forward, bringing her face close to mine.

"So, Ikkun," she said.

"Yeah...?"

"The truth is, I may or may not have a favor to ask you."

"You don't."

"I do." She leaned back again in her seat. "Are you the kind of guy who might be free tomorrow?"

"If you define free as not having any plans, then I suppose I'm more apt to say yes than no."

"Yeah, kind of hard to follow you."

"That's just how I am," I responded as I chewed my kimchee. "To put it more simply — I'm a free dude."

"Really? You're free? Oh, good!" She pressed her hands together in front of her chest with a look of true joy. To cause someone such teary-eyed happiness just by not having plans on a Saturday seemed a bit too much.

More importantly, this didn't look good. I had a distinct feeling I was about to get dragged into something.

"I see, I see, so if I'm free, something good happens to you, huh? One hand washes the other. It's also kind of like the food chain. A magnificent circuit, if you will," I said.

"Yeah. So anyway, if you're free tomorrow, I was hoping we could get together!" She wasn't even listening.

Her hands still pressed together, she tilted them to the side a bit as if to emphasize her request. It was such an earnest, imploring pose that it almost felt like foul play. There was scarcely a male life-form alive that wouldn't have surrendered to it. They would want to surrender.

Nevertheless, I refused without mercy.

"No," I said.

"Wha?! Why?!" she shrieked. "You're free, right?"

"Well, yeah. But it's like I said, I don't dislike boredom. Sometimes people like to just spend the day doing nothing, right? Everyone feels like that sometimes. Everyone wants to escape the hustle and bustle of the world sometimes, to free themselves of the hassle of dealing with other people. Everybody has a right to time to contemplate their own lives. I just happen to have more."

"But-but-but! How can you just refuse without even hearing me out?! That's crazy! It's like a bunch of eighth-graders forming a band, but they all end up playing bass!"

It was a pretty great analogy.

On close inspection, it was apparent that she was about to cry. That is to say, tears were already brimming in the corners of her eyes. This was not a desirable situation.

I looked around. It was about time for the dining hall to start filling up, and students began trickling in, their numbers gradually increasing. At this point, I wanted to avoid standing out (by, say, making a relatively hot girl cry) as much as possible. But come on, who cries just from one little rejection?

"Okay, okay, just calm down. I'll hear you out. Come on, have some kimchee."

"Okay," she said, sniffling.

Doing as suggested, Mikoko-chan placed some kimchee in her mouth. "Uwa!" she peeped, and then the tears really started flowing. It seemed she wasn't much for surprises (which I kind of knew).

"Ahh, hot..." she cried out.

"Well, it is kimchee. It wouldn't be kimchee if it wasn't spicy."

They say there's also sugar-preserved kimchee, but I always went with spicy, so I had never seen it. I wouldn't mind if I never did, either.

"Ohh, you're terrible. You're so mean... Now, what were we talking about?"

"That prowling killer?"

"No! We were talking about tomorrow!"

Bam! She slammed her hand on the table. It looked like she was seriously a little mad now. Maybe I had gone too far, I reflected.

"Umm, do you know Emoto-san?"

"Whether I know her or not, I don't remember her."

"She's in our core subject classes. Her hair is like this." She stuck her fists to the sides of her ears, but even with this striking pose, "Emoto-san" and her hairstyle remained firmly beyond the grasp of my imagination.

"She's a pretty noticeable girl. She's always wearing shiny things."

"Huh. Well, I don't really look at people much. What's her full name?"

"Emoto Tomoe. That's the "tomo" from the wisdom and the "e" from blessing."

Interesting name. Sounded like it could do a headstand and start running around upside down. It felt like it rang a bell, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I didn't want to just toss out some answer like, "Oh yeah, yeah, I know that chick. She's the one with the contact lenses, right?" There was always the chance that Mikoko-chan would throw it right back in my face, like, "I tricked you! There's nobody like that in our class! Ahahaha, looks like the pants are on the other leg now! Nya-nya-nya!"

And then the egg would be on my face, my fraudulence exposed. Not that Mikoko-chan would do something like that.

"Her nickname is Tomo-chan."

"That's not gonna work for me."

"Huh? Why not?"

"No reason. Just my own personal thing." I shook my head. "Sorry. I don't remember at all."

"Figures," she said, laughing. "But if you didn't remember me, I guess it goes without saying that you wouldn't remember her. If you did remember her, I'd be a little shocked."

I didn't quite follow her reasoning, but as long as my lack of memory made her avoid feeling terrible, I guessed it wasn't totally worthless. Something definitely seemed off with the logic there, though.

"Well, okay. How about Atemiya-san? Atemiya Muimi-san? I call her Muimi-chan."

"Another classmate?"

She nodded. "Then there's Usami Akiharu-kun. Akiharu-kun is a guy, so you must remember him, right?"

"My memory functions in a gender-neutral environment."

She let out a big, unintentionally exaggerated sigh. It was like I had done something wrong. But it was my memory's fault, right?

"Anyway, so Tomo-chan, Muimi-chan, and Akiharu-kun. We're all going out tomorrow night for a little drinking."

"Huh. What's the occasion?"

"It's Tomo-chan's birthday!" For some reason, she seemed a tad boastful. It was hard to deny her adorableness as she sat there with her hands on her hips, her chest stuck out. "May fourteenth! Happy twentieth!"

If this Tomo-chan was a classmate, that meant she was a freshman. Maybe she had entered college a year late. Or maybe she was a returnee like me. It didn't really matter.

"I'm only nineteen, by the way. My birthday's April twentieth."

"Huh," I said.

I didn't really care.

She continued. "Umm, so anyway, tomorrow's Tomo-chan's birthday, so we figured we'd throw a really light, casual kind of party."

"Huh. Seems like an awfully intimate group for a party."

"Yeah, well... We all like the rowdy atmosphere thing, but nobody wanted there to be a ton of people. So, what are you gonna do?"

"Ah. Then four people is pretty appropriate, huh."

"Huh?" She looked surprised.

"A fifth person would throw off the balance."

"Huh? What?"

"Well, say hi to everyone for me. And happy birthday to you."

"It's not my birthday! Hey, wait, I mean don't just get up and leave! You don't know the other half of the story yet!"

"Well, they say knowing only half is the battle," I said.

"That's not what that means!"

She grabbed me by the sleeve as I started to leave and forced me to sit back down. But even if the conversation was only half-over, I could more or less tell what was coming next.

"Okay, then. So now, you're going to tell me to partake in this drinking party... Or a birthday party, rather. Right?"

"Gah! Wow, that's exactly right." She flung up her hands in surprise, but this time it reeked of phoniness. Maybe it wasn't that she didn't put on any façades; she was just a lousy actress. "Amazing, it's like you've got ESP or something, Ikkun."

"Let's not go there. Not a good subject." I let out a light sigh. "How did all this come about? I don't even know these people, right?"

"Yeah, you do. They're your classmates."

Ah, right.

Maybe I had amnesia. I was never good at remembering people, but lately, it had gotten particularly bad. These three classmates aside, there wasn't a single person in all of Rokumeikan University whom I had a clear picture of.

But there was a more likely explanation: that it was simply the result of my apathy toward other human beings. It had nothing to do with my mind's functionality. It wasn't a defect. It wasn't that some essential part was missing, either.

It was just that I was, from the very start, a broken thing.

"Could it be that I've just forgotten and that I'm actually good friends with these three people? Even I wouldn't forget something like who my friends are, I think."

Mikoko-chan's expression grew a little sad. "I don't think that's the case," she said. "You probably haven't spoken much. I mean, you've always got this narrow-eyed scowl as if you're thinking really hard about something or filled with contempt. Even now. It makes you kind of hard to approach. It's like you've got a wall in front of you. Or your AT field is fully operational. And in spite of all that, you always sit directly in the middle of the classroom."

I wanted her to leave me the hell alone. I wanted to tell her not to bother talking to me if that was how she felt. But I didn't.

I finished my kimchee. As it turned out, two bowls ended up being pretty excessive, and I felt dreadful fullness in my stomach. I probably wouldn't be having kimchee again for a long time.

"But you and I are friends, right?" she asked.

"Are we?"

"Yes!" She slammed both hands on the table again. It seemed she had a habit of hitting nearby things when she got emotional. I'd have to remember to stay out of range of those slender arms if I was going to make fun of her. That is to say, I'd have to stay out of range when I made fun of her. Maybe it was better to pick on her over the phone.

Er, I mean, why was I planning ways to harass her?

"And, so, naturally, I tell my friends about you sometimes, right?"

"I guess."

"And then my friends think, 'Man, for a guy who's always got such a crummy face, he seems kind of cool,' right?"

"I guess it's possible."

"So it's not so strange that they would want to try being friends with someone who seems kind of cool, even if he is a weirdo. Right?"

"Yeah, I guess we all have temptations."

"So that's what I'm saying," she said.

"What is?"

"That."

She peered up at me with eager, expectant eyes. I pretended I was drinking tea in order to escape her gaze. But a single cup of tea sure wasn't going to be enough to revive my paralyzed mouth.

"Huh. I understand," I said.

"You do?"

"It's a good opportunity and all, so I think I'll go spend the night at my parents' place tomorrow."

"Don't make plans like that! You didn't even go home during Golden Week!"

She slammed the table again. I was a little disturbed that she knew what I had been doing during Golden Week, but then again, maybe I had told her and forgotten.

"But you know... It's almost Mother's Day and stuff."

"That was last week! And besides, you're not the kind of guy who would go out of his way to show devotion to his parents!"

That was rather harsh. And even if she was right, did she believe that a nineteen-year-old guy who wouldn't even go out of his way for his parents would be any nicer to someone who was just a classmate? Maybe she was so worked up, she didn't realize what she was saying anymore.

"Come on, I'm begging you. I already told them I'd bring you. I'll lose face."

"It seems like there's a misunderstanding here, so let me clear things up — I'm not the kind of guy you can have fun talking to. They say I've got about as much pep as a storm cloud."

"Wow, that's as disappointing as hearing about two budding young authors, only one's a poison ivy and the other got eaten by tent caterpillars." She looked a little somber as she chewed her lip. "Come on, Ikkun. Do it as a favor to me. I know it's selfish of me, but hey, I'll even pay for the drinks."

"Sorry, I'm not a drinker."

This was true.

"Why not?"

"I once drank a whole bottle of vodka in one go." I didn't dare tell her how things ended up after that, but at any rate, ever since then I had sworn off of alcohol. I may not be such a smart guy, but I'm not so dumb that I don't learn from my experiences either.

"Wow, not even the Russians do that." She was truly surprised. "I see... So you can't drink. Hmm, now what?"

She immersed herself in thought once again. It seemed she had a firm understanding of what it was like for a non-drinker to show up at a drinking party. Perhaps she was a lightweight herself, at least to some extent.

Nevertheless...

I wasn't so cold-blooded that I felt nothing for this girl sitting before me, looking so deeply troubled.

Dammit... I get dragged into things so easily. Going along with something out of pity was one thing, but getting dragged in just because the situation presented itself was totally lame.

"Okay, okay. As long as you're okay with me just sitting in the middle of the room, scowling."

"Hmm, I guess that would be an awful bother for you, but you know, I think... Wait, you mean you'll go?" she said, surprised.

She shot her body forward. Maybe it's a rude analogy, but she was like a dog who had just had food tossed in front of it. A cat would have approached it with some caution, suspecting the possibility of a trap, but Mikoko-chan was completely unguarded. She may have physically resembled a cat, but she was definitely more like a dog in personality.

"Is it really okay? Will you really come?"

"Yeah, it's fine. I'm free anyway."

Even I was a little appalled by my own bluntness and wondered if I couldn't have put it a little more nicely. All the same, she shrieked with joy.

"Waaah! Thank you!" She smiled innocently.

I replied by downing the rest of my tea.

At some point, she had finished her dessert as well, so it was time I really should start to leave.

"Ah, wait a sec. Let me know your phone number. I'll call you."

"Hmm? Ah..." I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. "Okay, it's... Uh, I forgot."

"Figures. Okay, then I'll give you mine, so dial me."

I entered her number as told and sent it. A ringtone emerged from her little bag. David Bowie. She had surprisingly great taste.

"Okay, got it. Hey, Ikkun, your phone doesn't have a strap."

"Ah, yeah. I don't like that girly stuff."

"Are straps girly?"

"Well, I'm no expert or anything, but they're definitely not very manly."

"Mmm, guess not," she said with consternation.

"Well then," I said, stepping away from my seat with my tray. "See you tomorrow, Mikoko-chan."

"Yep! Don't you forget about me again!"

She gave me a big wave, to which I responded with a small one as I made my way out of the dining hall. After returning my tray and silverware, I headed straight to the co-op book-store. Of course, being a university bookstore, its main selection consisted of academic texts, and its recreational reading selection was fairly limited. But on the plus side, there was a ten percent discount on everything, and for some reason (I wonder why) this particular bookstore had an unusually large selection of magazines, so it got fairly crowded.

I made my way to the novels section and picked one out.

Wait. Huh? Something had occurred to me.

"Wait a minute. Did Mikoko-chan call me 'Ikkun'?"

Now that I looked back on our encounter, that nickname she used seemed to stand out. I hadn't even noticed when she'd used the nickname — but I didn't think anyone had ever addressed me with such an overly familiar nickname in the past. I thought about it for a moment, but I couldn't remember. I had no specific memory of her calling me that before, but then again, I didn't remember her not calling me that, either.

After all, I hardly have any memory of Mikoko-chan herself, much less a trivial thing like what name she called me.

"Eh, whatever."

Either way was fine by me. Satisfied with that notion, I began reading the novel inside the store.

Yup.

No big deal.

Hardly a life or death situation.

All was well with the world.

Even if Heaven was empty.