She had been watching me.
Observing me. For a year, in the same classroom, this person had been observing me.
"In first year and in second year, we were in the same classroom. That spring, for the odds of being placed in the same class twice in a row, I thanked God for the first time in my life."
"The writer's callus on the middle finger of your right hand. ...One that deep cannot come from simply copying notes off the board."
Koyomi laid them out, one by one.
"In first period, you always seem sleepy. It is the morning of someone who updates at midnight."
"During breaks, you write something in the margin of your notebook, and then erase it."
"...That was a habit of the author Fuyuno Yui."
I couldn't find any words.
"The outline of that author, which I had drawn over several years. The person in the same classroom matched it exactly."
"Then you were sure, weren't you?"
"Ninety percent sure."
Koyomi went on, matter-of-factly.
"It is true that you matched the Fuyuno Yui I had imagined, but that was nothing more than a guess. And, as I said before, even if I had been certain, I had no intention of speaking to you."
"Then why?"
I finally said it.
"Why did you come, that day?"
This was a person who hadn't left a single mark in three years. A person who had been in the same classroom for a year, ninety percent sure, and still hadn't checked.
Holding back was how she lived. Not touching was her rule.
That day, she had broken that rule herself.
"It was the update three nights before that day," Koyomi answered.
"Only the last line had a different rhythm."
"...Huh?"
"The placement of the commas was not that of my god as I knew him. The breaths were shallow. The sentences were too closed off."
Koyomi lowered her eyes.
"That was—the way someone writes when they are about to end things. I felt a sense of danger."
I stared at her with my mouth half open.
Three days before that day. The night of the downpour, when Yuna called me cringe. Even so, I had pressed the post button at midnight. I barely remembered what I'd posted. But it was true that, in a corner of my mind, I'd been thinking, maybe that's enough. If it was still single digits after three years, then maybe.
I hadn't told anyone. I hadn't written it anywhere.
"How could you," I said. "Even I didn't notice, and I'm the one who wrote it."
"I read you every night for three years," Koyomi said, as if it were obvious.
"I know the way you breathe."
"...So you came right away?"
"No."
Koyomi shook her head.
"I held back for two nights."
Her fingers were clasped tight on her knees.
"...If I could read the next night's update and laugh that I had misread it. That would have been enough."
"I did update. I did."
"Yes. It came," Koyomi said quietly.
"But it was the same. ...No. It had gotten worse."