The next morning, I sat across from Koyomi, the tea she had made between us.
The teacup had been set in its usual place. Right where I could pick it up just by reaching out, at its usual temperature. I have watched you for three years, after all—she always says.
I wrapped both hands around the teacup. The warmth seeped slowly into my palms.
I had to pick up where we left off yesterday. Last night, I'd fallen asleep without coming up with an answer. But if I kept running from it, we'd stay god and believer forever.
I'd thought about it all night. Just pushing her away and telling her to stop calling me god wouldn't work. That would be denying her three years. But leaving her kneeling like this wasn't right either. I had to find the right place in between.
Words that wouldn't hurt her. And that could, all the same, gently let her down from that single lifeline.
"About what we talked about yesterday."
When I said it, Koyomi's shoulders stiffened, just a little.
It was the face of someone bracing to be told, again, to stop calling me god.
"I'm not telling you to throw away your faith," I said slowly. "I don't want you to act like those three years of 12:02 a.m. never happened, either. ...Those are my treasure too. If it weren't for the one you held on to, I'd have quit writing a long time ago."
Koyomi listened in silence.
"It's just..."
I set the teacup down gently.
"God and believer, that means one's above and one's below, right? You're looking up at me. All the time, from below. ...I don't like that."
"You are someone who should be looked up to."
"No."
I said it clearly.
"I want to talk to you at the same height. As long as you're looking up at me, you can't make it through a night without me. If the god sinks, the believer sinks too. I don't want to keep going with that kind of relationship."
Koyomi's eyes wavered.
"Then... what do you want to be, with me?"
I searched for words for a moment.
I couldn't think of a good way to put it. I always get stuck for words at important moments like this. Even so, I said the most honest words I had, just as they were.
"Let's stop the god thing."
Koyomi caught her breath.
"Let's stop being god and believer. I don't want to be your god. ...I want to be something that lasts longer."
Outside the window was a clear, bright winter morning.
For a while, Koyomi said nothing.
She was chewing over my words one at a time, as if copying them into her scripture notebook. That was what her profile looked like.
"I," she said at last, quietly.
"I did not know any way to touch you, except by calling you my god."
"I know."
"To be ice, or to kneel. Those were the only two things I had. To be the perfect heiress, or to cling to a lifeline. ...No one ever taught me what it is to be equals."
Those words made my chest ache.
No one ever taught me what it is to be equals. That one line, said so lightly, held all seventeen years of her life. Being praised, being scolded, simply laughing side by side—she had come this far without ever really knowing any of it.
An heiress who was expected to be perfect and had no choice but to become ice. Her one and only refuge had been my stories. So she'd had no choice but to make their writer a god. She could only love by kneeling. Nobody had ever let her practice being loved as an equal.
That wasn't her fault.
"Then you can learn, from now on," I said.
"With me. ...Not how to look up, but how to stand beside someone. You can take it slow. You spent three years making me a god. It can take that long to undo it, too."
Koyomi looked at me.
For the first time, her eyes were neither kneeling nor frozen. She looked straight at me with the eyes of an ordinary seventeen-year-old girl.
Looking into those eyes, I thought: the Ice Princess, the hopeless superfan, the kneeling believer—they'd all been masks she'd worn. And under every one of them, there had only ever been one girl, who wanted someone beside her.
I wanted to talk to that girl. Not as a god. As one writer.
"May I stand beside you?"
Her voice sounded so unsure.
Quietly, I decided on the next thing I had to say.