You Really Are Sick

Kushida Kikyo had wanted to say something, but she glanced at Horikita Suzune, then sighed silently and closed her mouth.

Forget it. She'd go along with it.

She couldn't get through to that stupid woman.

Listening to someone talk about their past, hearing them regret their choices—it was nothing unusual.

Horikita Suzune wasn't the first person she'd listened to.

She'd be a listener. Quiet and silent, keeping her mouth shut.

"So, whatever my brother says, whatever my brother does, I'll imitate him. I'll do my best."

"Studying, sports, and... long, raven-black hair." Horikita Suzune gently lifted a lock of her hair. It was deep black and impossibly smooth, carefully looked after for a long time. "It looks nice, doesn't it? I think so too."

Kushida Kikyo: "..." Why was this woman so full of herself?

Letting her hair fall, Horikita Suzune continued:

"I worked hard. I think I tried my best. I did everything I could and achieved the best results available to me."

"Even if I had another chance, I'd probably make the same choices."

"The choices I believed were right led to an outcome I never wanted." She paused, then took a deep breath. "I think I must have done something wrong."

"Something terribly wrong."

She slowly exhaled the stale breath lodged in her chest and lifted her head.

"I can't see the road ahead of me anymore, and I can't fully understand myself, either." Once again, she held out her hand to Kushida Kikyo. "I need a mirror. Please be my friend, and become a 'mirror' that can show me what my face looks like."

Kushida Kikyo: "..."

...What an unbelievably shameless request.

After all that, this was what it came down to?

Shameless, incoherent, and utterly absurd.

Stupid woman. Dumb woman. Annoying woman.

And yet...

She took Horikita Suzune's outstretched hand.

"Ahhh, I must have something wrong with my head, too." Kushida Kikyo couldn't help cursing. "Accepting that kind of nonsense as a reason? Being cooped up in my room this long has really done a number on my brain."

Their tightly clasped hands let her feel the warmth in the girl's palm. Looking up, she could clearly see the girl's eyes.

"You make me sick," she said.

Friend.

It was a very strange word.

Until today, Horikita Suzune had never had anyone she could call a friend.

But starting today, she would have her first friend.

The only problem was...

"What are friends supposed to do?" It suddenly occurred to her that she'd been overlooking this all along.

A friend. A mirror.

She wanted to piece together what she looked like through someone else's eyes, but... how exactly was she supposed to do that?

Just ask?

Don't grab someone and ask what kind of person they think you are. That's called asking for a fortune.

The thought surfaced, and Horikita Suzune remembered what Asakusa Toru had said that day.

After she'd gone back, she'd actually looked up what "asking for a fortune" meant.

...She hadn't quite understood it, but she had clearly remembered that she shouldn't just ask outright.

"Gossip about other people, talk about the latest rumors, decorate the place, tie the knot, hold hands, and go to the bathroom together." Sitting back down on her bed, Kushida Kikyo flopped down casually and stared up at the ceiling. "That's all it takes. Pointless, stupid things that somehow make you feel like you've got the other person."

"You really don't have any friends, do you?" She sat back up and sighed, exasperated.

Horikita Suzune's expression turned a little awkward.

"...So what if I don't?"

"Forget about that. I've said so much already, so what about you?" she asked, as if changing the subject. "Why do you want to be friends with everyone, anyway?"

She'd started talking of her own accord, sure, but she'd said so much. Kushida Kikyo ought to say something, too.

"...There's nothing much to say." Kushida Kikyo lay back down and raised a hand to shield her eyes from the bedroom light, which had only recently been switched back on.

"I just want to feel superior."

"The Diary said it long ago. I'm insecure, I crave superiority, and I'm exactly what you'd call a... defective product."

"That's what I am," she said.

It was a perfectly accurate description of the person called Kushida Kikyo, without a shred of pretense.

It couldn't have been more fitting.

"..."

Her words faded, and the room fell quiet for a moment.

Only the sound of breathing could be heard, as a profound, comforting stillness spread through the room.

"I'll go back to class tomorrow," Kushida Kikyo said suddenly. "Honestly, even if you hadn't come, I'd have gotten back to normal and returned to class in a couple of days."

"I'm actually better at calming myself down than you people think."

"You should worry less about me and take a look at yourself."

She raised a hand, yanked Horikita Suzune backward, and pulled her down onto the bed.

Then she turned around, grabbed the girl's pretty face, and tugged her smooth, pale skin into an ugly shape.

"You look like an idiot," she said.

"Mm—" Horikita Suzune's mind stalled for a moment when her face was suddenly pinched. Then the pain of having her cheeks pulled brought her around to the fact that she was being attacked by the other girl's hands.

"I hate that about you." Kushida Kikyo kept pinching her as she spoke.

"So stupid."

"So spacey."

"Your head's full of all kinds of nonsense."

"Your thought process isn't remotely normal."

"Why did you reveal the information?" she asked.

Horikita Suzune's voice came out muffled.

"Mm don't know what you're talking about—"

"Answer." Kushida Kikyo spoke softly. "All you have to do is answer."

If she'd decided to use Kushida Kikyo as a mirror, she had to be prepared to answer the Magic Mirror's questions.

To explain her intentions. To see herself clearly.

Being pinched and toyed with like this was only a small "price" to pay.

"Mm—" Just as Kushida Kikyo looked at Horikita Suzune's stretched cheeks and smirked, Horikita Suzune suddenly pushed herself upright and hauled Kushida Kikyo up with her. Then she reached out and grabbed Kushida Kikyo's cheeks in return.

It was hard to get any leverage while lying on her side.

"Because I can't afford it." Under Kushida Kikyo's retaliation, Horikita Suzune answered her question.

She couldn't afford to confirm the Special Exam's exact rules on her own, so she needed the help of her classmates.

The Special Exam was conducted by class, and after Chabashira Sae had pointed that out to her, it was only natural that she'd want to ask her classmates for help.

Revealing the information had just been something she'd done along the way.

Kushida Kikyo increased the pressure of her fingers and spoke just as indistinctly:

"Charging you for an answer is an answer in itself—"

"The price you quote is an answer too—" She took a deep breath, then continued. "Did you find the Pseudo-human?"

The next day's Diary had set Horikita Suzune, the "younger sister," the Trial of finding the Pseudo-human in their class.

If Horikita Suzune hadn't blurted out so much, Kushida Kikyo might even have forgotten that the Diary had mentioned it.

But now that she thought about it, having a "Pseudo-human" in their class was pretty terrifying.

"I think it's Yamauchi Haruki, but that's not my brother's Trial. My brother doesn't know about it." Horikita Suzune had wanted to shake her head, but with her face pinched and her hands still pinching Kushida Kikyo in return, she could only keep answering indistinctly. "How long are we going to keep doing this?"

Her cheeks hurt so much from the pinching.

When Horikita Suzune finished speaking, Kushida Kikyo let go of her face.

She'd had enough of pinching her, too.

"Now." As Kushida Kikyo moved, Horikita Suzune let go as well.

Kushida Kikyo rubbed her own cheeks first, feeling the lingering pain there, before she continued.

"That idiot does look kind of like a Pseudo-human, but saying he doesn't know means your answer is wrong, doesn't it?" After casually mocking Yamauchi, Kushida Kikyo said, exasperated, "Okay, enough. You don't need to say anything else."

"I've figured out your fundamental problem."

"The Magic Mirror will tell you what kind of person 'Horikita Suzune' is."

Straightening her clothes, which had gotten a little rumpled from their roughhousing, Kushida Kikyo pointed her index finger at Horikita Suzune.

"You're just stupid," she said.

"I get it now. Chasing after your brother or not, completing your Trial or not, understanding the clues or not—it all comes down to you being stupid."

"Isn't being unable to see the road ahead or understand yourself just proof that you're stupid?" Kushida Kikyo let out a long breath. "What's with all this talk about mirrors? You think you're stupid, so you can't figure things out on your own and have to ask other people, right?"

Kushida Kikyo couldn't understand why she'd ever thought of Horikita Suzune as her greatest rival.

If she'd known the woman was this stupid, what had she been worrying about?

"You, I..." Horikita Suzune had suddenly been scolded, and it seemed she had no way to argue back. She rubbed her cheeks, feeling weirdly uncomfortable all over.

But she'd brought this on herself. She was the one who'd come to Kushida Kikyo to become friends. She was the one who'd said she wanted to use Kushida Kikyo to reflect her own image.

...So she could only listen obediently, and mutter in a thoroughly pathetic little voice:

"Then, then what am I supposed to do...?"

"I don't know." Kushida Kikyo shrugged. "I'm a mirror, not a lighthouse."

"If you want directions, don't ask me."

A few good insults were enough. Did Horikita Suzune honestly expect her to play a kind older sister and analyze everything for her?

No way.

She'd held people's hands and pretended to be a good person, pouring out a bunch of words about how she understood them, just to get closer to them. Why would she go to all that trouble for Horikita Suzune?

She didn't even know where to go herself.

"Okay, hurry up and get out." After giving Horikita Suzune a good scolding—and with Horikita Suzune seemingly unable to talk back—and tugging on that stupid face of hers, even if she'd had her own face tugged in return, Kushida Kikyo had still done it longer overall. Feeling considerably better, she bluntly started shooing her away. "You've made a friend, and you've looked in the mirror. So stop hanging around in my room."

"I'm not spending the night in the same bed as a woman."

She didn't want to make it look like she was into women or anything.

Her sexual orientation was perfectly normal.

"...It's getting pretty late." Horikita Suzune turned to glance at the light behind the curtains, which had gradually grown dim without her noticing, and sighed. "I understand."

"Then, see you tomorrow."

Horikita Suzune had just started to leave when she suddenly seemed to remember something and stopped.