MTLNOVEL Chapter 46
In the morning, I woke up at the usual time. As usual, Hayashi was still sound asleep in bed. Trying not to wake her, I quietly started cleaning up.
After a while, Hayashi stirred and sat up.
“Good morning.”
“Mmm…”
Rubbing her sleepy eyes, she responded. She was never good in the mornings. Perhaps due to poor eyesight, her eyes were always squinting, and her face was pale, maybe because she was prone to feeling cold.
For about ten minutes, Hayashi just sat on the bed, spacing out. Finally, she got out of bed.
“Good morning.”
Hayashi looked at my face and greeted me.
Recently, she hadn’t been looking at me much, but after returning from her parents’ house, she started looking at my face again and talking to me. Probably, I had managed to gain a certain amount of trust from her.
“Yeah.”
I responded with a smile.
Hayashi began preparing breakfast. I washed my hands and watched TV while waiting for her to finish preparing.
“Sorry for the wait.”
“I wasn’t waiting.”
“Shut up.”
We carried the food she made to the table and began eating.
It was a usual, ordinary morning.
“You have classes until fifth period today, right?”
“Yeah.”
“From first to fifth period, engineering sure is tough, huh.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you make any friends? You can’t get much done studying for exams alone, right?”
“Yeah.”
“…You’re not listening to me, are you?”
“Yeah.”
Huh?
I was so absorbed in the TV that I was giving Hayashi half-hearted responses, and it felt like I’d given an incorrect response.
Looking at Hayashi, she had a shadow on her face.
My face turned pale. In high school, she was called a queen due to her assertiveness, but since I started harboring her in this room, I couldn’t see her as such. Looking at her face now, which looked like she could cry at any moment, I felt that even more strongly.
“Um… Sorry.”
I thought about making an excuse, but decided to just bow my head in apology.
“…It’s, it’s not…”
“Not what?”
“There’s no way I’d be upset just because you didn’t listen to me.”
“Say that after looking at your face.”
Damn. I didn’t mean to provoke her, but I ended up saying something strange, being baited by this contrary girl.
Hayashi’s veins were popping out.
“I was just worried about you, you know?”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“What do you mean, ‘Yeah’? You were just focusing on the TV. If you love TV so much, why don’t you marry it?”
“Hey, hey. It’s not like I love TV. It’s just, you know, it comes up in conversation with my friends at school.”
“That’s not really common.”
“Eh?”
So what did you talk about with your friends when you were a student?
Did you chant Buddhist sutras together or something?
Like, ‘Wow, your sutra chant was vibrato, it was great,’ and teasing each other?
“Not really.”
“I didn’t say anything, though.”
“It was written all over your face.”
“…Is that so?”
“…You know what?”
Hayashi was sighing.
“You don’t have any friends, do you?”
And then, Hayashi hit me with that shocking truth.
Normally, I would tell Hayashi that I didn’t have many friends. Her comment now was a big challenge to that statement.
“Well, yeah, that’s true.”
With complete composure, that’s how I responded.
To be honest, although I feel bad for saying that I don’t have many friends, I honestly thought what Hayashi said was true.
Maybe I really don’t have any friends?
I didn’t explicitly say that because, well, I thought it would be better if I didn’t have to say it.
It was exactly like covering up a smelly spot.
“I’m surprised. Knowing you, I thought you’d define what a friend is, or say you have some, you definitely have some, wait and see, I’ll bring them by tomorrow or something like that.”
“What kind of person do you think I am?”
I’m not that obstinate, am I?
…
“Well, I’ve never had any trouble because I didn’t have friends.”
“How do you handle exams and such?”
“I hate to brag, but I’m smart.”
“Ah, that’s right. That’s probably why everyone is annoyed with you.”
“In the past, when I got perfect scores on tests and said it wasn’t a big deal, I was told to stop being modest, it’s annoying.”
“Ah, I can see why people might want to hit you.”
So, neither approach works then.
Just live my life in silence, then?
Ah, that’s not much different from now.
So, the way I live my life is the optimal solution, huh. What a situation.
Great news. Genius me, living the optimal solution without even realizing it.
“…Don’t you want friends?”
“Well, I don’t feel inconvenienced without them.”
“…I see.”
Hayashi seemed a bit down for some reason. I wonder why. Even though she has somewhat revised her opinion of me, she used to dislike me. I feel like this is rather a scene to cry and rejoice.
Well, she’s probably not doing that out of her conscience. She really is a good person.
“Come to think of it, I forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
“I do have a friend.”
“Eh, who?”
“You. Ugh.”
After I spoke, Hayashi pushed my cheek and twisted my neck. A strange sound escaped from my mouth.
“Stop it with that kind of thing…”
Hayashi’s voice was, for some reason, shaking.