The next morning Akiko was able to wake up sober, for she had managed to shake off her insomnia by taking on a lot of housework yesterday and ended up falling asleep from overexertion. After taking off her home clothes in the bathroom, she took a shower. Her slender body, slightly shorter than Yumiko in height, barely shone through the partition with an abundance of steam. Turning off the water, she touched the ends of her long pink hair, which was slowly losing color.
The girl remembered that she had decided to grow her hair out and dye it just to boost her school idol image. Her thoughts shifted to worrying about Yumiko, and, in her mind, through the pile of piled-up difficulties Yumiko kept climbing up. Akiko longed to have the same resilience as the brown-eyed girl she couldn't call a friend for some unknown reason. The girl began to wonder about the rightness of her views, not noticing how she had long since forgotten about her troubles with Yumiko.
After tidying up her room, Akiko, dressed in a long tank top and shorts, opened an empty private chat with Yumiko.
[Attyan: "Hi. Can I drop by your house?"]
Bringing her phone up to her small breasts, the fragile girl wondered what she had decided to text the previously hated Yumiko for. Eventually, she found a pop-up message on her phone screen.
[Yumi-kun: "Okay. Sending the coordinates."]
With a sigh, she relaxed, and a sense of slight joy awakened in her that she hadn't felt before toward Yumiko, who had literally become her best friend. Unfortunately, Akiko herself did not notice this feeling and how dear the brown-eyed girl had become to her.
After taking a minibus to the nearest stop to Yumiko's house, she found herself in a residential neighborhood with one-story private houses and clean roads, where she could not hear the annoying cry of the endless city traffic. As she approached the house in question, she noticed how it was barely different from the others: the roof was brownish, and there was only withered soil in place of the sunken lawn.
It looked to her as if the owners had long since abandoned the yard, or else the tools and untidy wood scattered across the earthly concrete would have come from where? Akiko touched the door, gently jerked the handle and opened the door, which made her dumbfounded. Both the front gate and the door to the house were open, and there was no sense of family or human presence in the house itself.
"Sorry for the intrusion," she quietly entered the hallway, and taking off her sneakers, she walked down the empty hallway. Immediately finding herself in the hall, the girl took notice of the cleanliness of the house, and walked to the sleeping room, where a girl was lying on the floor in a semi-recumbent state. Yumiko's school uniform was scattered about her. From the corner of her eye, Akiko realized: she had passed out, in an attempt to get out of bed.
"Yumiko-chan!" rushed Akiko with all her might, lifting the light girl up at least enough for her to sit up, for despite her small weight, Akiko was unable to cope. "Wake up!" she complemented, grabbing both of her hands.
"Ah…" barely opened Yumiko's wistful eyes, "Hi. I was trying to change, but I didn't pay attention to my weakened legs."
Yumiko was dressed in her open clothes. Looking closely, Akiko couldn't think how slender Yumiko's legs were, and she discerned a slight, careless shaking in them.
"Why, you're overworked…"
Akiko, who was able to lift the slovenly girl, laid her down on the bed, and touching her low forehead, immediately wrapped a blanket around her pretty body. "You have a fever," Akiko said, and springing up from her seat, she cleared the floor and followed her away to the kitchen in search of medicine.
The brown-eyed schoolgirl, without taking her eyes off Akiko, thanked her friend affectionately. The friend never in her life would have thought she would receive appreciation from Yumiko.
"I'll get the medicine. Lie here until I come."
Yumiko softened in affection, making Akiko uncomfortable. Pressing her palm against her chest, she felt warmth unaccustomed to her.
Entering the kitchen, the first thing she saw was a whole bag of empty beer cans, and without thinking long, she began to search through the medicines in the cabinets, dressers, and countertops. Much to Yumiko's dismay, she found nothing: not a hint of fever pills except painkillers and small cans of antidepressants. As she approached Yumiko, the girl did not lie about the lack of medication.
"I see," she replied painfully, "I'm not surprised. Other medications we don't need at all."
"Are your parents very busy? I haven't heard you talk about them ever."
"Yes," replied Yumiko, not hiding anything personal from her friend. "I don't have parents."
"How so? And that mountain of beer cans in the trash can?"
"Oh, that's…my mother. I didn't lie to you, because at least I don't think of her as my mother. She's… shall we say, mentally ill. Answer me, Akiko-chan, have I lied to you by assuring you that my parents are absent?"
"I think… you speak from the heart. And father?"
"You can forget about him. To me, my father is a fickle character, akin to an invisible man. Do you think I'm as sick as my mother, too, because I say such nonsense?"
"I'm sorry," Akiko couldn't hide her sadness under a guise of calm. "I couldn't imagine the life you have behind the shroud of school and outings. It's amazing how you've been able to survive such family circumstances."
Sitting down on the bed, she involuntarily dismissed her negative thoughts and took a closer look at Yumiko. In response, the brown-eyed girl took hold of her delicate palm and intertwined their fingers in a lock.
"From the looks of things, your family is in a perfect relationship… that makes me happy. Don't get discouraged, Akiko-chan! I'm not sorry at all, for there's always a way out of any situation."
"At least you'll lie in bed today!" almost cried Akiko, exclaiming.
"But it's a school day, after all."
"If you go to school today, you'll feel even worse. I won't be able to watch over you forever and keep track of your movements!"
"Come on, if I don't go to school, my competence…"
"No one needs that competence. Ryou-kun over there is trying his best to skip school so he can experience the whole process from adolescent pleasure."
"Adolescent pleasure…?"
"Didn't you previously have friends that you went out for walks or play in the playground with as a kid? Keep it simple, everyone has had those occasions in life!"
"No," she surprised Akiko with an answer, "I didn't actually bother to relive that time."
"Ah, but from you, I'd say you're more than pleasant to people when communicating. What does that have to do with you unknowingly attracting people to you?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's about—" Yumiko coughed heavily, agitating her friend. Rising from the bed, she reluctantly weaved their hands away.
"I'll go get the medicine, or you'll continue to be sick. Please, just take care of the pain until I get back."
"Thank you," Yumiko replied, "Akiko-chan. I'll rely on you," and smiling, she said with pleasure: "You're my best friend after all, how can I not trust you with my life?"
Confused, Akiko barely stepped back. She went over her thoughts, which had blurred into mush due to shyness. "I-I'll be right back!" she shouted, and in her haste she withdrew.
Akiko completely lost the remnants of her dislike for the brown-eyed girl and began to think of her as a bright and pure schoolgirl, perpetually apathetic because of her loner syndrome. Fortunately, the club members were able to overcome the effects of loneliness on her, which changed Yumiko into a more open-minded person who had friends who she considered friendlier than anyone else in the world. Akiko, accepting these facts, stopped holding back her sympathy for her.
The girl also changed Akiko's views on many things, including those concerning Ryou, whom she loved as a high school idol because of his immense popularity among other female peers. Seized by a thirst to have only the best in herself, Akiko set her sights on getting Ryou from day one. Now she began to question whether she even wanted anyone other than members of the literary club. Her views jumbled, not forming into a clear picture, making Akiko aware of her fickleness and the foolish judgments she had been subjected to before and to which she thought the weary Tomoyuki was still subjected.