by Yoru Sumino
Well, I was pure, anyway. “Don’t be dumb,” I said with a scowl.
I walked past the king-sized bed to sit on a couch at the edge of the Western-styled room. Then I told her the obvious.
“I’ll sleep here.”
“What? Come on, when else are you going to stay in a room as nice as this? You have to experience the bed, too.”
“I’ll try it out once—when you’re not using it.”
“Aren’t you happy to be able to share a bed with a girl?”
“I’d appreciate if you stopped maligning my character,” I said. “I’m a gentleman through and through. If you want to sleep with someone, find a boyfriend.”
“Right, you’re not my boyfriend—that’s what makes it fun. It’s like doing something we’re not supposed to do.”
She seemed to be struck by a thought, and she took Living with Dying from her backpack and wrote something in it. I’d often witnessed her doing that.
Then she went to the bathroom and shouted, “Wow! The tub has jets!”
I opened the sliding glass door to the balcony and stepped outside. Our room was on the fifteenth floor, and while it couldn’t quite be called a suite, the accommodations were more luxurious than two high schoolers should have been able to experience. The toilet and bathtub had separate rooms, and the balcony provided a magnificent panorama of the nighttime cityscape.
“What a view,” she said, having joined me outside without me noticing. Her long hair swayed in the whispering wind. “Looking out at the city at night, just the two of us—doesn’t it feel romantic?”
I said nothing and went back inside, where I sat on the sofa, picked up a TV remote from the round table in front of me, and turned on the TV, which was as oversized as the rest of the room. Most of the channels were playing local shows, different from those I was used to seeing. I found the local dialect and speech patterns of the TV personalities far more interesting than my companion’s nonsense.
She came back into the room, closed the sliding door, and crossed in front of me to sit on the bed. “Whoa!” she said. The bed looked plush and very comfortable. I decided trying it out for myself just once wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
She settled in on the bedsheets and watched TV with me.
She said, “It’s interesting how people talk differently here. They sound like old samurai. It’s funny ’cause this city is super modern. I wonder how some ways of talking persist like that.” That was certainly more thought-provoking than her usual comments. She added, “I think studying local dialects would be a fun job.”
“For once I agree with you,” I said. “I’ve considered doing that sort of research once I’m in college.”
With feeling and not in a jokey way, she said, “That sounds really nice. I wanted to go to college, too.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.”
I wished she’d stop saying such things. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel when she did.
She asked, “How about you tell me something cool about dialects? Got any trivia?”
“Let’s see… What we hear as the Kansai dialect,” I said, referring to the region surrounding Osaka and Kyoto, “might all sound the same to us, but there’s actually quite a number of variants. How many do you think there are?”
“Ten thousand!”
“That’s ridiculous. It’s annoying if you don’t even try to guess right. Anyway, there’s various opinions, but most people agree there are just under thirty.”
“Huh. Is that so.”
“You know, I wonder how many people you’ve hurt in your life.”
With how many acquaintances she kept, the true number was likely unfathomable. It was criminal, really. But since I didn’t keep any acquaintances myself, I never did anything that would hurt anyone. As for which was the better way to be, I supposed opinions would be divided.
She quietly watched the TV for a while, but then, apparently unable to tolerate being still any longer, she began rolling about on the bed, throwing the sheets into complete disarray. She loudly declared, “I’m taking a bath,” went into the bathroom, and began filling the tub with hot water.
With the sound of the rushing water providing background noise from the other side of the wall, she retrieved various small things from her backpack and carried them to the sink, which was located between the bath and toilet rooms. She started running the water there, too, maybe to wash off her makeup; not that I was curious.
When the bathtub had filled, she disappeared happily into the bathroom. She foolishly admonished me, “You’d better not peek,” but I didn’t even watch her walk out of the room. See, I was a gentleman.
I could hear her humming a vaguely familiar song, maybe from some commercial or something. How on earth did I get in this situation, being this close to a bathing female classmate? I reflected on the choices and actions that led me here, and whether or not they had been right. I looked up at the ceiling, and I could see the chandelier just in the edge of my view.
I’d made it up to where she punched me on the bullet train when she called my name.
“[Boy I’m Getting along With]-kun,” she said, her voice reverberating off the hard walls in the bathroom. “Could you grab me my face wash from my backpack?”
Obeying without thinking into it, I picked up the sky blue backpack from the bed and looked inside.
I wasn’t thinking anything at all.
That’s why, when I saw what I did, I was rocked as if by an earthquake.
The backpack itself was cheerful, like her.
What was inside shouldn’t have disturbed me at all, but my heart began pounding.
I thought I already knew; I thought I already understood. It was the very basis of her presence in my life. But what I saw stole my breath away.
Calm down, I told myself.
Inside the bag were a number of syringes, more pills than I’d ever seen in my life, and some kind of testing machine that I had no idea how to use.
My mind wanted to shut down, but I somehow forced myself to keep thinking.
I already knew her disease was real. I already knew she was only alive through the efforts of medical science. But when I saw the reality with my own eyes, an indescribable terror flooded over me. All my cowardice I’d been keeping bottled up came rushing out.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
I looked over my shoulder and saw her wet arm sticking out from the cracked-open door and gesturing impatiently. She had no idea what I was feeling, and I didn’t want her to find out. Quickly, I located the tube of face wash and handed it over.
“Thanks,” she said. “Oh, and I’m totally naked right now.”
After a moment passed without my reply, she said, “Say something! You’re making me embarrassed!”
The door closed.
I walked over to “her” bed and tossed myself onto it; the mattress was as cushy as I had imagined it. The bed engulfed my body, and the white ceiling seemed like it could engulf my consciousness.
I was confused.
But why?
I thought I already knew. I thought I already understood. I thought I had already comprehended it.
But I’d been closing my eyes to her reality.
Just because I saw a few objects, misdirected emotions were trying to rule over me. They were a monster trying to eat at my chest.
Why?
My thoughts spun, trying to find an answer that never came. It was almost dizzying. I closed my eyes and fell asleep on the bed.
I woke to find her gently shaking my shoulders. Her hair was wet. The monster had gone.
She said, “So you did want to sleep on the bed.”
“I said I’d try it out once, and now I have.”
I got up and returned to the couch. Trying as best I could to keep my expression emotionless and the monster’s claw marks hidden from her sight, I turned my gaze to the TV. I felt relieved that I had regained enough presence of mind to even make the attempt.
She began drying her long hair with a wall-mounted hair dryer. “You should take a bath, too. The whirlpool jets are amazing.”
“I think I will,” I said. “No peeking. I remove my human skin whenever I take a bath.”
“Did you get sunburned?”
“Sure, call it that if you want.”
The clothes I bought with her money were still in the shopping bag, which I brought with me into the bathroom. A sweet scent lingered in the wet air. Ever prudent, I decided to believe it was just my imagination.
I locked the door—just in case—then removed my clothes and took a shower. I washed my hair and body, then got into the tub, turning on the whirlpool jets. My companion hadn’t oversold the bath; it felt exquisite. I could feel the monster’s footprints being washed away. It was amazing what a good bath could do. I relaxed in the tub for a long time—it would probably be ten or more years before I was ever in a hotel room as nice as this again.
When I emerged from the bath, the chandelier had been turned off and the room was dim. The girl sat on the couch where I was supposed to sleep. A few plastic bags from a convenience store were sitting on the round table in front of the couch.
She said, “I bought some snacks and things from the convenience store downstairs. Could you get us a couple cups from the shelf over there?”
I did as she asked and placed the two glass cups on the table. Since the sofa had been claimed, I sat in a tasteful chair on the opposite side of the table. Like the couch, it was comfy and relaxing.
As I sat there recuperating, she moved the plastic bags to the floor and produced a bottle of amber-colored liquid. She filled each glass about halfway, then topped them up—right to the brim—with a clear carbonated drink from another bottle. She stirred the drinks, completing this mysterious concoction.
I asked, “And this is…?”
“Plum liquor mixed with club soda. I hope I got the amounts right.”
“I almost said something at the motsunabe place, but you do know you’re still in high school, right?”
“I’m not trying to show off,” she said. “I like alcohol. Are you going to have some?”
“Well… I wouldn’t want to make you drink alone.”
I brought the glass to my lips, careful not to spill. It had been a while since I tasted alcohol. It smelled refreshing but tasted sickly sweet. My drinking partner downed hers, seeming to enjoy every bit of it as much as she said.
She spread out some snacks on the table and asked, “What kind of potato chips do you like? I like them savory.”
“Anything but lightly salted is criminal,” I said.
“We really don’t have the same outlooks, do we? And here I only bought consommé flavor. Sucks for you.”
I looked at her enjoying herself and took another drink. It was still too sweet. I’d had a fairly large dinner, but snacks havd a way of summoning an appetite. I crunched on the heretical chips and tipped back my glass again.
After we both finished our drinks, she made us seconds and proposed the following.
“Let’s play a game.”
“A game? Like shogi?”
“I barely know how all the pieces move. I bet you’re good at it, though.”
“I like shogi puzzles where the pieces are laid out and you have to figure out the winning moves,” I said. “I can play those on my own.”
“Sounds lonely. I brought cards.”
She walked to the bed and retrieved a deck of cards from her backpack.
I said, “A card game with two people—that’s what I would call lonely. Tell me what game you’re thinking.”
“President?”
“With all the revolutions, there’ll be no citizens left to survive.”
She laughed, then hummed in thought and pulled the cards free from their plastic carton. She shuffled them, swaying her body side to side as if she was thinking about something. I didn’t interrupt her, instead choosing to eat a stick of Pocky from the table.
After she shuffled the deck about five times, she stopped. She seemed to have come up with an idea she liked, as she nodded to herself in approval and turned her glittering eyes to me.
“We’re drinking,” she said, “so let’s run with it. How about truth or dare?”
I squinted. I didn’t recognize the name. “What’s that?” I asked. “Sounds philosophical.”
“You’ve never heard of it? I’ll teach you the rules as we go. The first rule is the most important: You can’t quit the game early. All right?”
“If I agree to that, it’s like agreeing not to flip over the board while playing shogi, right? All right, I won’t quit the game. I wouldn’t be so uncivilized anyway.”
“Okay, you said it,” she said with a mischievous grin.
She moved the snacks from the table to the carpet and deftly spread out the cards face down in the shape of a ring on the table. She was obviously making a show of force, an attempt to intimidate me using our gap in experience—I could see it plain on her face. That gave me all the fire I needed to knock her down a peg or two. This was going to be fine. Card games almost always came down to thinking and luck. As long as I could follow the rules, experience wouldn’t matter.
She said, “We’ll use these cards since they’re handy, but rock-paper-scissors would work just the same.”
“I’ll take my fire back.”
“I already ate it. Okay, let’s start. Pick one card and flip it over in the middle of the circle. The bigger number wins. The winner gets privileges.”
“What kind of privileges?”
“They get to ask truth or dare. Oh, and we should set the number of rounds. Let’s go with ten. Now, pick a card.”
I picked a card and turned it over: It was the eight of spades.
I asked, “What if we draw the same number of a different suit?”
“Don’t overthink it. We’ll just draw again. Just to be clear, I’m making this part up. It doesn’t have much to do with the actual game.”
She took another drink and flipped a card: jack of hearts. I didn’t know what was going on, but losing the draw surely put me at a disadvantage. I remained on my guard.
“Yay,” she said. “I get to ask. I’m going to say, ‘Truth or dare?’ and you say, ‘Truth.’ Okay. Truth or dare?”
Hesitantly, I said, “Truth… Now what?”
“We’ll start with… Who do you think is the cutest girl in our class?”
The question was so out of the blue it took me a moment to react. “What are you talking about?”
“Aren’t you following? It’s called truth or dare. If you don’t want to answer, you can choose dare instead. Then I’ll dare you to do something. You have to do one or the other—the truth or the dare—no matter what.”
“That’s awful. Who came up with this?”
“Don’t forget, you can’t quit before we’re finished, either. You agreed. You wouldn’t want to be uncivilized, would you?”
She gave me an awful smirk and took another drink. I kept my expression neutral. I wouldn’t give her the pleasure of seeing that she was annoying me.
No, I told myself, don’t give in so fast. There must be something I can say to get out of this.
I tried, “Is this an actual game? Or did you just invent it right now? I said I wouldn’t quit the game—if it’s not a real one, then it doesn’t count.”
“Do you really think I’d leave you with such an easy way out?”
“I do.”
“I’m sorry to tell you that it’s a real, legit game. I saw it in a movie once, and I looked it up. It’s been in a lot of movies, actually. But I appreciate you giving me your word a second time now—that you won’t quit.”
Her laugh belonged to a devil, and her eyes glimmered with wicked intentions.
She had ensnared me again. How many times did this make now?
“Let’s keep this clean, all right?” she teased. “When it’s your turn to ask me truth or dare, you’d better keep
that mind out of the gutter.”
“Shuddup,” I said.
“Jerk!” she said.
She downed the rest of her glass and began making herself a third. Judging by the half-grin she now wore, the booze must have been taking effect. For my part, my cheeks already felt hot.
“Back to the game,” she said. “My question was: Who do you think is the cutest girl in our class?”
“I don’t judge people by their looks.”
“I’m not asking you to judge them as people. I was just wondering whose face you find the prettiest.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Let me add,” she said, “if you choose a dare instead, I won’t go easy on you.”
I didn’t see anything good coming from that.
I tried to think of the best way to get through this with minimal damage, and I saw only one choice: to answer the truth.
“You know the one who’s good at math? I think she’s pretty.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “That’s Hina. She’s one-eighth German, you know. Huh, so that’s your type. She’s pretty, but I don’t think she has a boyfriend or anything. If I were a guy, I might pick her, too. You’ve got good taste!”
“Egotistical much? Just because I agree with you doesn’t mean I have good taste.”
I took another drink. It was beginning to not taste so good.
On command, I drew another card. Nine more rounds, and it would be over. I didn’t see myself getting out of this earlier than that, so I prayed I would get the high card from now on. But my luck didn’t cooperate.
I drew the two of hearts, and she drew the six of diamonds.
She said, “The gods would favor the kind-hearted girl, after all.”
“I think I might be an atheist now.”
“Truth or dare?”
I thought for a moment, but my position remained the same as before. “Truth.”
“If Hina is the cutest in our class, then what place am I? Just by looks.”
I took a drink from my glass in search of liquid courage. She raised her own glass to her lips and took an even bigger drink than I had.
I said, “My answer is limited to the girls whose faces I remember, but you’re number three.”
