At school, Koyomi Kisaragi didn't register me as a human being.
In the morning, the car to school drops me off just short of the school gate, and I walk into the classroom alone. Kisaragi arrives thirty minutes before me, in a different car. No one would think we came from under the same roof.
Before first period. We passed each other in the hallway.
"Morning, Kisaragi."
Someone from our class greeted her. Kisaragi didn't even stop walking; only her gaze shifted, very slightly.
"Good morning."
It was ice. A flawless pronunciation, a flawlessly distant greeting, without the slightest opening. Enough to make the student who'd spoken to her straighten up on the spot.
That Kisaragi passed right by me.
Our eyes didn't even meet.
At school, Koyomi Kisaragi is called "the Ice Princess."
Heiress to the mega-conglomerate the Kisaragi Group. Long, straight silver hair, porcelain skin, a figure standing with her back perfectly straight. No one can get near her. Speak to her, and all you get back is sub-zero politeness; there is no second time.
I had just seen that perfection up close this morning.
A few hours ago, the same person had put a glove on my hand and cooled the tea in my teacup to sixty degrees. She had called me "my god," and called herself by her plain, unguarded "I." With moist eyes, she had read a line I had written as though in prayer.
No one in this classroom knows that. That at home, the Ice Princess is so—it's hard to put into words, but warm. So warm it's a little frightening.
Here, she calls herself by the formal "I."
Just a different word for herself. That alone makes her a different person.
Somehow I felt like laughing, and bit it back. In this whole school building, I'm the only one who knows this secret.
This secret is heavy. But at the same time, it also made me just a little proud. I'm the only one who knows the real face of the Ice Princess, the one she shows no one. When I think of it that way, this tightrope walk doesn't seem so bad.
At lunch break, I was on the stair landing with bread from the school store.
Through the window, I could see the courtyard. Kisaragi was surrounded by several students. It seemed to be about some committee. Her expression unchanged, she was calmly giving instructions. An air that quietly rejected anyone who came near.
I watched her profile for a little while.
And then.
Kisaragi's gaze, from the far side of the circle around her, lifted lightly and caught the window over here—caught me.
It was an instant.
A few tenths of a second, unnoticed by anyone around her. But our eyes had definitely met.
Deep in her sub-zero eyes, something lit up. As if they went moist, as if light shone into them. The tiniest fragment of that expression she wore when she talked about my work.
I nearly dropped the bread in my hand.
My heart jumped. It wasn't the same as love. It was something colder, a special sense of being accomplices. In this vast school building, I'm the only one who knows what lies beneath her ice. That gaze had melted, for one instant, just for me.
The next moment, Kisaragi was no longer looking at me. As if nothing had happened, she had turned back to the students, and returned to ice.
It was a masterful switch. So masterful that I almost began to suspect the moment before had been an illusion I'd seen.
After school. The entrance hall.
As I was changing my shoes, silver hair passed behind me.
It was Kisaragi. Mixed in with the other students, walking with her eyes straight ahead. As though I didn't even enter her field of vision.
In the instant we passed each other.
Her lips moved slightly, in a shape that made no sound.
I could read it.
I will go home first.
Her face, still ice. No one could hear it. Words that reached only me.
Before I could reply, Kisaragi walked off toward the car that had come for her. Her silver hair drew farther away.
She had gone out of her way to tell me she was going home first. That was all it was. But that was all it took, for her, to be an act dangerous enough to break the ice. If anyone noticed, this perfect performance would crumble. Even so, she couldn't help telling me.
I let the meaning of that sink in.
Within this school building, there is not one single thing connecting her and me.
Only our gazes, a moment ago, had tangled, just for an instant.
What was left of that heat was still clinging somewhere around my cheeks.