"Kaede, I really am a bad woman, aren't I? Can someone like me join your class?"
He replied, "Half and half. Wanting to be accepted is only human. The right amount of acceptance can sometimes save someone's heart."
"But there's no doubt that your way of thinking in the past was extreme. You're still the same, Kushida—you completely misunderstand the boundary between 'trust' and 'acceptance.'"
"The boundary?" Kushida murmured, dazed.
In that moment, it was as if she had returned to the dark space on the roof of the School Building.
Kaede nodded. "I said before that I was willing to trust Kikyo. That was a kind of trust that reached the level of 'acceptance.'"
"But when ordinary people trust or spend time with each other, they need to follow certain rules and leave one another some breathing room."
"Only by opening up to others as your true self can you receive the same level of acceptance in return."
He continued, "In the past, when your classmates confided their secrets to you, they accepted your status as the most socially popular person in the class, not you as an individual!"
"So, subconsciously, they figured you'd keep their secrets. They didn't mind telling you private things because your status was so high."
"But you imagined all that as their sincere acceptance of you, and even took pride in it. You went around leaking their secrets, so of course everyone eventually turned on you."
Kushida Kikyo was left speechless by his criticism. Her lips moved silently, and it took her a long while to get a few words out.
She said, "Kaede... Could it be that you're... a psychologist?"
Kaede choked on a surge of frustration. "Ahem! What are you talking about? This is just the kind of lecture any normal adult