Snowball Fight

"It wasn't as important as you think."

Kazehara Tetsu shook his head. "I only said a few things. You were the one who truly changed yourself, through your own determination. If you hadn't wanted to step out of it yourself, no matter how much I said, it wouldn't have helped."

Yamamura Miki held her bottle of fruit tea, her fingers brushing over the condensation on its surface. For a moment, she said nothing.

A year ago, she had stood before a Vending Machine on the Cruise Ship, convinced that no one would be willing to speak to someone like her, convinced that she would spend all three years like that, lost in the gloom.

A year later, she stood at a Hot Spring Inn in Hokkaido, beside someone who had once pulled her out of the mire.

She had made friends, learned how to talk to people, and learned how to lift her head in a crowd.

Those changes might have seemed insignificant to others, but to her, they felt like being given a second life.

"No matter what, the fact that someone was willing to talk to me back then was already very important to me."

Kazehara Tetsu said nothing and fell silent for a while.

Yamamura Miki lowered her gaze to the fruit tea bottle in her hands, lightly turning it with her fingertips.

"Kazehara-kun." She suddenly spoke.

"Yeah?"

"Why did you... say those things to me back then?"

She had actually wanted to ask that for a long time.

Before that, they had barely interacted.

To him, she should have been nothing more than an ordinary classmate. He might not even have remembered her face clearly.

Yet that night, beside that Vending Machine, he had stopped and said all those things to her.

She had never been