'I want to be with you all the time, Yu-chan. To me, you are as charming as the author described the main characters in his love story. I can't imagine how I would have lived if I hadn't met you.'
Ryou said these words to her in late February, when they were walking together with everyone else on a winter snow-covered street near school.
'It seemed that towards the end of this month the snow did not dare to disappear at all. Exactly like my affection for my friends.'
Yumiko awoke early in the morning and with sleepy movements of her hands opened the curtains, welcoming the second Monday in March.
'This was the day I learned my friends' true wishes.'
After washing with warm water in the shower, she shook off her fatigue and began to prepare herself breakfast. Such a start to her day didn't seem like anything special to her, since this was a scenario she had repeated numerous times in her life as a high school student.
'It's only a week until exams... I wonder how things are going with Attyan and Tomoyuki-kun? Are they ready to endure all the influx of tension and crumpled emotions in the days to come?'
Yumiko sat down in her chair, and after praying, began to eat her breakfast, which consisted of vegetable salad and scrambled eggs along with a cup of coffee.
'Will they make it...?'
***
"You seem to have a weakness for the opposite sex, Glenn-kun."
Three teenagers were headed to the street vending machine during a short break. Glenn, hearing Tomoyuki's statement, was slightly surprised and turned his misunderstood gaze toward him, not stopping to walk the path ahead.
"Expecting an explanation? Then you don't really understand it yourself. You're too sensitive when it comes to your girlfriend. Only there's a pattern here — it works strictly with the girls you have a relationship with, and that's not how you deal with Yumiko-chan, for example. Aki-chan has become your favorite."
"What do you mean? It's okay to treat your girlfriend in a special way, isn't it?"
"You're making it too special, Glenn-kun."
"What Tomoyuki-kun probably means is that you get too attached to Akiko-chan, which doesn't seem quite normal to him."
"I don't think so at all! God, don't take me for an idiot jealous of Glenn's relationship."
"I'll ask Akiko-chan about it. Don't worry about me, Tomoyuki-kun. It's not a bad habit if it's even present in me, is it?"
"No. It's just a peculiarity of yours, I suppose."
"You guys don't seem to know what you're talking about at all."
"Put your grudges away, Ryou-kun, and join us!"
Glenn chuckled, and Tomoyuki laughed afterward, not holding back.
"What are you laughing so hard at? I don't understand."
"Ha ha! Did you see his face, Glenn-kun? What are we laughing at!"
***
"I want to see you happy..."
'I really want that. So much so that I'm burning with impatience to save you.'
The next day, Yumiko woke up in a depressed state. Looking at her palm, she realized that it was trembling incessantly for some unknown reason. Looking at her face through the mirror, the girl was dumbfounded by her frightened look that came out of nowhere. Then she ran to the kitchen and swallowed some small pills that were in a bottle of painkillers.
'My friends are more interested in the life in which we will all be together. Certainly I support them, but really...they think differently. There is more than mere affection in our friendly relationship. It has appeared recently, but in a short time it has managed to take over our thoughts completely. In layman's terms, it's called addiction, but I would call it... predisposition. Adoration. We can't do without each other, and we can't think of anything else but us. This disposition...violates all the principles for acquiring a happy life. All the principles of human disposition cannot be of this nature... It is not normal.'
Soon she made herself a breakfast of the same salad and scrambled eggs and tea. It seemed to her that this morning would never change again.
'I compulsively invented for myself the reality that I desired and feared the most. That reality, too, was predisposed to friends. I unselfishly revere them, and there is no reason in my desires to part with them. I want only... another. Normal... Ordinary companionship."
After finishing her breakfast, she headed back toward her room, where she lay on her bed and stared thoughtlessly at the clear ceiling. She began to feel the pills working.
'I used to long for a quicker graduation from high school, and with the knowledge put together, to get into the best university for me, after which I could move away from my hated mother. In this house I was kept on chains, like an animal that was originally unwanted. What can I say, even now I am moved by this desire to free myself from the chains that stopped me on my way to a happy future. Back then, the world that seemed ideal to me was one in which I could meet my loving family every day in good health.'
'Ever since I was a little girl, I've wanted to know if my lost, happy life was out there in the black hole,' she confessed to Ryou during the fireworks festival. 'If I knew for sure that I could be reborn with a family whose smile never fades from their faces, I would certainly sacrifice my life. I would have agreed to be sucked in there.'
There was no lie in those words. She even now wished for a full family and parents with whom she could live under the same roof. Maybe that's why she was inspired by Glenn then and decided to help Yoshiro, a child whose family circumstances were on the verge of collapse.
'Maybe I hoped then that this was my calling...?'
Yumiko's body was in a state of tension, and her mind, weary from long deliberation, went into benevolence mode, allowing her to prevent a surge of nervousness. Turning to the desk at which she usually did her schoolwork in the house, she slowly closed her eyes to hear the silence of her room.
'I am weak when it comes to problems related to me and in which I am directly involved. It's all my fault. I have fantasized the impossible for myself. Are there any excuses for my weakness? There are none, for it was all started by me.'
Her phone, which she held with both hands, vibrated sharply. A number had called her, but Yumiko didn't care at all-she wondered who could have called her at this early hour.
The tension from her shoulders vanished in a flash when she saw the caller's name, and she answered the phone.
"Hello? Did you call me at such an early hour that I got a little frightened, or was there an obvious reason?"
After a few seconds, her face took on an expression of vivid surprise, and the answer she heard confused her.
"What...? Dad was finally able to free himself from work!?"
***
Everyone in the club, except Yumiko, sat in the study, perplexed as to why Yumiko didn't come to school today and missed class. Tamotsu also attended the meeting.
"She doesn't say much about her personal life..." Tomoyuki said then, which got the attention of the others. "I can only assume what's going on in her house, but... Do any of you know about her life behind the scenes?"
"From what I know," Akiko said in the slow tone of her gentle voice, "she is the weak link in her family. The only one she appreciated of her parents was her father..."
"What...? But why did she keep this from us for a long time?"
"That's not at all what the girl prefers to talk about. To tell you the truth, I'm surprised she chose to tell me about it. You can be trusted with this information, so I don't have to worry. About her mother... they hate each other even though they live under the same roof."
"It must be a disgusting feeling..."
"She's been living like that since she was a little girl."
"If her family was abandoned by her father, why is he so important to her?" Ryou asked, puzzled as to what made Glenn go into a stupor.
Glenn, however, was the only one unaware of what was going on in Ryou's life before he moved to Tokyo, as he was not involved in the day when the young man decided to reveal his personal life to his friends.
"Most likely," Akiko retorted, "they had an earlier conversation that Yumiko was pinning her hopes on. I did not question her about the meeting. Perhaps this meeting is something special to her that we can't understand. It's strange that you don't know anything about it. But if you think about how interested I am in her personal life, and how I then forced her to reveal her life, she just couldn't stand my prying."
"It's only because you are her best friend, Akiko-chan. She considers you a pillar, and we're all sure here that she got used to the way you talk a long time ago."
"That may be true, but... Have you ever thought about how little we know about her personal life? It becomes even uncomfortable when you realize that, being her friends. I can only think that she has her reasons for not telling us about her private life."
On reflection, Ryou realized how much her words meant then, when they were alone during the fireworks festival, and what problems could be inherent in Yumiko and her personal life.
'Even then...she was looking for someone she could talk to about her problems, and I had unknowingly removed myself from her list of possible people. I grabbed her hands, thereby letting her know that I couldn't stand it. Yu-chan, why...'
"She also told me that there was a certain brother in her family who took over her upbringing, but she didn't tell me anything about him."
"An older brother, you mean?!" Ryou marveled, thereby startling Akiko slightly. "But she's the only child in her family!"
"Whether he's the eldest, I don't know, but... I found a discrepancy in her words, too, but after thinking about it, I can only assume that he's not really a sibling. Most likely, one of the family members has another family with whom Yuttian has some sort of relationship."
"Granted...but it's not certain. If her father means so much to her that she dared the sure thing for her to skip a school day... then her father may be a business person in the 'high life...'. Think about it — she's been expecting to meet him for so long."
Tamotsu only unemotionally glazed at them, in deep reflections, as if he tried to pipe his nervous state down.
"That, too, is an assumption," Akiko acted neutrally, which affected her soft tone of voice. "Her father might be someone that Yutian would feel comfortable with. I haven't asked about her mother, so I don't know what's going on in her family..."
Tomoyuki, who had an extremely thoughtful look, said in a low tone:
"What is her brother's name?"
"Hmmm? Ah, I believe his name is Akito Higashikuni... I googled him on the search engine just in case, but I couldn't find a biography about him or a page on LINE."
"That just means he's an ordinary man like the rest of us."
"I understand, of course, but... That last name... it's pretty popular when it comes to commerce and business."
"What, really? And who her 'brother' works for, didn't Yumiko-chan tell you about that? "
"Come on, Tomoyuki-kun. Aki-chan hardly knows about it, as well as it's uncertain that her 'brother' is older or younger than her."
"I know."
The girl's statement made the whole group perk up their ears, and they waited patiently for Akiko's speech to continue. They were all wondering who her brother was after all.
"Yuttyan, as I recall, told me that her brother used to work as a public safety detective."