The fluorescent light was buzzing faintly.
I had just said we were even. I kept her alive, and she kept me alive. For three years, on both sides of 12:02 a.m. Thinking that, my chest had been full.
And yet Koyomi stayed as she was, fingertips pressed to the floor, not moving.
She didn't lift her face.
"...Koyomi?"
"We are not even," Koyomi let fall, toward the tatami.
"I do not have the right to be told that. ...I have not been able to tell you, all this time."
Koyomi slowly lifted her face.
Her eyes were looking straight at me. Neither ice, nor the softer voice. Just the eyes of someone who had steeled herself.
"The park, that day."
"...The park?"
"The day we first spoke. It was a rainy evening."
I nodded. I had gone back over that day many times. Because it had been a day like a dream.
An expensive umbrella. A rain-wet screen. Trembling fingers.
"That was..."
Koyomi's lips trembled, slightly.
"It was not a coincidence. That day, I was looking for you."
It felt as if the temperature in the room had dropped a degree.
"...Looking for me?"
Only when she said it did the strangeness of that day take shape.
Why had the school's top heiress been in a place like that, at a time like that? No attendant, no car. I had thought it didn't quite add up. I had thought so, but that was all.
It was a neighborhood park. Anyone might pass by. That was how I had filed it away.
Because there was no way I could have imagined that she had been standing in the rain, looking for me.
"Ren Akizuki."
Koyomi said my name without hesitation.
"...I knew your name."
A chill went down my spine.
"Since when?"
"Since about two years ago. ...Just before you started high school."
The sound of the fluorescent light seemed awfully loud.
"The Kisaragi Group has a small investment in the company that runs Story Tree," Koyomi went on, matter-of-factly. "Only a very small one. Not enough to move the rankings. The fact that your numbers stayed in the single digits for those three years is proof of that."
"...You looked at the author information? I only registered a pen name. I never put in any personal information."
"It was the list of entrants for the new writers' award."
My heart thudded.
The new writers' award. I had entered it. Just once, the winter of my third year of middle school. It was the official award Story Tree ran itself. All you had to do was submit a serial you'd posted, through the entry form. But there had been fields for your real name, address, age, and phone number. I knew I'd be rejected anyway, and I filled them in all the same. Just in case, one in ten thousand, a call came saying I'd won.
I was still living at my family home then. In that town, two hours by train from here.
I passed the first round.
My pen name appeared near the bottom of a list of hundreds of works. That was all. No one came to read it. The PVs stayed at one.
I was cut in the second round. After that, I forgot all about it.
"It was the March before you started high school. The works that had passed the first round were announced," Koyomi said.
"At the very bottom of hundreds of works, there it was. Fuyuno Yui."
"............"
"I had not known. That you had entered an award. Even though I was reading you every night."
I found it, she said. As if it had been an accident.
"I could not hold back, and that same night, I used the name of the heiress to have them show me the list. It was a violation of the terms. Something I absolutely should not have done."
"...I saw all of it."
Koyomi's voice dropped.
"............"
"...Your name was there."
Koyomi lowered her eyes.
"Akizuki. Ren."
She said it terribly, terribly slowly.
"Your age was there too. ...It was the same as mine."
"Your phone number and address were there as well. If I had wanted to call, I could have called. If I had wanted to go to your home, I could have gone."
The fingers on her knees were still white.
"I never once did. A stranger turning up would only have confused you. And besides, there was no need for me to meet you and speak with you. What I wanted was the update at midnight every day."
"It was one month after that."
Koyomi's voice grew hoarse.
"The high school entrance ceremony. On the class list posted in the classroom, there it was: Ren Akizuki. I could not believe my own eyes."
It felt as if the air had gone out of the room.
Me. In the same classroom, she had been looking at me every morning.
—No. Wait.
The address she had was my family home's. That town, two hours by train. She didn't know I had moved to this city for high school.
In that case.
"...It could've been someone with the same name, right?"
Koyomi spoke with her eyes still lowered.
"...Yes. And so, for the year leading up to that day... I was watching you."