When Karuizawa Kei was in fifth grade, she finally understood this. After that, she was no longer willing to apologize so readily for things that weren't her fault. If it was useless anyway, there was no point in making such a futile show of appeasement. This only brought her even worse bullying. But now that she was actually getting hurt, Karuizawa Kei was even less willing to seek help from her parents.
Kitagawa Ryo and Karuizawa Kei hadn't gone to the same elementary school. In fact, the elementary school Kitagawa Ryo attended looked much fancier than the one Karuizawa Kei went to. But that didn't affect their relationship. They were all eleven- or twelve-year-old children, wearing the same uniforms and carrying similar-looking schoolbags. When school let out, several streets filled with children who all looked alike, chatting and playing together. Who could tell them apart?
But after listening to Karuizawa Kei, Kitagawa Ryo suddenly felt a small sense of purpose. So he said to her:
"I'm transferring to your school."
Karuizawa Kei was so stunned by this that she felt a little dizzy. Of course she agreed. She nodded and said yes.
She didn't know what those words meant, or whether it would be easy to make them come true. But she was sure of one thing: she really wanted to be in the same class as Kitagawa Ryo. People were social creatures, after all. Even if Kitagawa Ryo was the only one, that was enough. At least she could prove she had a friend. A child with friends wouldn't be the pitiful one who had no one to team up with in P.E. or share lunch with.
And so, the very next day, Kitagawa Ryo really did transfer to Karuizawa Kei's school and class.
As Karuizawa Kei watched Kitagawa Ryo neatly write his name on the blackboard and introduce himself, an overwhelming sense of security and calm enveloped her. It was as if a castle had fallen from the sky, its magnificent walls protecting her—she was the princess inside.
Within a week of transferring, Kitagawa Ryo got into a fight with several boys in the class. He faced four at once and beat them all. In full view of the class, he went and stood beside Karuizawa Kei. He'd controlled his strength well. The four boys were groaning in pain on the ground, but none of them seemed seriously hurt. As Kitagawa Ryo put it:
"Teachers and schools like nothing better than avoiding trouble. Any incident can be brushed off as 'horseplay' or 'kids being kids.' So all I did was have a friendly tussle with these boys. I was just being a kid, too."
With Kitagawa Ryo protecting her, Karuizawa Kei made it through the last year and a half of elementary school. In the graduation photo, she stood to his left in their black-and-white uniforms, secretly holding his hand where no one could see. Even long afterward, the subtle thrill and excitement of that moment would sometimes make her heart skip a beat.
Karuizawa Kei enlarged the part of the graduation photo showing the two of them and had it made into a portrait. She put it in a frame and set it neatly on her desk.
But once elementary school was over, Karuizawa Kei had no choice but to accept that she wouldn't be able to attend the same middle school as Kitagawa Ryo. What made her even more anxious and uneasy was that his parents were going to take him overseas for his education. Not only middle school, but even high school and university might be somewhere outside Tokyo.
Worse still, within half a month of being separated, they lost the only way they had to contact each other.
As soon as Karuizawa Kei started middle school, she became the center of attention in her class. The boys and girls, now thirteen or fourteen, were beginning to feel the stirrings of attraction. They were gradually becoming aware of the differences between them, so the cute Karuizawa Kei was actually quite popular when she first arrived.
"Doesn't Karuizawa feel like the boys in our class are all so annoying?"
When one of the girls in the group spoke to her, Karuizawa Kei nodded along.
"Ah... yeah."
As though they'd found a topic they all had in common, several girls clustered together and started discussing the boys in their class, who were stupid and had such glaring eyes. To girls who were a little more mature, boys that age were like monkeys desperate to show off, constantly jumping around and making far too much noise.
"But Tomoda from the class next door seems really nice. He's polite, and he's good-looking, too."
One girl chimed in with a giggle.
"Wow, I can't believe Sayu likes that kind of boy. Tomoda looks like the wind could blow him away. If he and Sayu got into trouble, he'd probably have to be carried out by her."
The girls discussed what they liked and exchanged information. It was a way of building their social circle: they first stuck labels on each other based on what they said, and only got familiar with one another later. Remembering everyone's traits came first.
"What kind of boys does Karuizawa like?"
At that question, everyone turned to look at Karuizawa Kei in her seat. She felt awkward, but then another girl beside her answered for her.
"Karuizawa had a really close childhood friend back in elementary school. I heard he even got into a fight with someone for her."
The girl named Emi Eura looked rather similar to Karuizawa Kei. She waited until everyone's attention was on her before smiling and speaking.
"Looks like none of you went to the same elementary school as Karuizawa. That incident caused quite a stir back then."
"Wow, that really happened?"
"What was the boy like? Was he handsome?"
"It sounds kind of cool to get into a fight for a friend."
For these energetic girls, there was no doubt the topic had them excited. They all started firing questions at Karuizawa Kei.
"Um, Ryo's studying overseas now."
Karuizawa Kei awkwardly told them the truth about Kitagawa Ryo, but the word "overseas," with all its possibilities, only made them more curious.
"But Ryo might transfer here someday. Back in elementary school, he transferred to my class just for me."
She hadn't been able to get in touch with Kitagawa Ryo for nearly two months, but Karuizawa Kei forced herself to say it anyway. Now she even regretted that Emi Eura had brought it up. Faced with the girls' eager anticipation, she had no choice but to gradually sketch out Kitagawa Ryo's image for them.
And so, from the first day of school onward, almost everyone in the class knew that Karuizawa Kei had an incredibly handsome boyfriend studying overseas who might transfer back for her at any moment. This shocking revelation made her classmates treat her with a kind of awe. Beneath that strange respect lurked a curiosity that grew wilder by the day. The girls, consumed by that bloodthirsty curiosity, wished they could turn into insects and crawl into Karuizawa Kei's veins to uncover her darker, deeper secrets.
That attitude in turn created a strange aura. Karuizawa Kei felt as though her classmates had pushed her onto some elevated pedestal. Every story about her was embellished as it spread. Everything from her childhood became a legend in their telling, full of twists and turns. In the midst of her bewilderment, she couldn't help feeling a little pleased with herself.
And so, within a week of starting middle school, Karuizawa Kei became the center of the girls' social circle. Even without Kitagawa Ryo by her side, she seemed to have escaped the risk of being bullied.
Karuizawa Kei was enjoying all of it.
A Preview of the Storyline: The Return of an Old Friend (Part 2)
Karuizawa Kei started paying more and more attention to her appearance. She was only thirteen, and until then, her impression of makeup and the like had been limited to the bottles and jars her mother kept in the bathroom cabinet. She'd used simple skincare products such as sunscreen before, but now she'd truly entered the girls' social circle and had, without anyone quite realizing it, been "crowned" the class's center. She had to learn about these things and get used to the latest fashions.
"Karuizawa, do you want to go to Ginza together this weekend? The mall there just got a new batch of this season's most fashionable hair ties and clips."
During breaks, she often received invitations like this from her classmates. Karuizawa Kei could only force herself to go along with them. She didn't know the brands they chattered about, names made up of English and even Latin letters, but she could tell the items sounded expensive.
"Karuizawa, your skin is so nice. What brand of skincare products do you usually use?"
If that was all the other girl asked, Karuizawa Kei could still manage a smile. She had just been about to say that she didn't use skincare products much when the girl continued:
"The brand I use is actually pretty good, too. It's just not great value for money. I go through a bottle in less than a week or two."
After hearing that, Karuizawa Kei couldn't bring herself to give the answer she'd been about to. It would sound as though she were mocking the other girl for having worse skin despite using expensive brands. She could only try to remember a highly praised skincare product she'd seen in a TV commercial and tentatively stammer out its awkward English name, even leaving out a letter.
But that didn't stop the girl from looking at Karuizawa Kei with near admiration in an instant. Perhaps, in her eyes, Karuizawa Kei really was a wealthy young lady. It was as if her dressing table were always stocked with an endless supply of expensive cosmetics, which she used one by one like a princess, lifting her long, swanlike neck toward the mirror and smiling with confidence.
"Karuizawa, don't you think our school uniforms look so old-fashioned?"
One day, not long after school started, Emi Eura seemed to bring it up in passing during a chat between classes.
"I used to think the black-and-white uniforms in elementary school were ugly, but compared to this one, they were practically a work of design genius."
As if to make her point more convincing, she pointed to the old-fashioned blue ribbon on her chest.
"We're not little kids anymore, but we don't even get to choose our own outfits."
Kitagawa Ryo had once told Karuizawa Kei about three conflicts everyone had to face in life. One of them was the conflict between a person's individuality and the social nature that forced them to belong to a group. Perhaps for these girls, who had just entered the bloom of adolescence, having their best features confined within identical uniforms really was hard to accept.
So, following Emi Eura's lead, most of the girls complained about the uniform's flaws. The school had no consideration for them; the uniforms had no character and didn't look good. The conversation went around the circle, and in theory it was Karuizawa Kei's turn to wrap it up and sum up the topic. So she naturally chimed in:
"Exactly... I think so, too. I mean, maybe there are times when I don't really want to wear this kind of thing, but uniforms can be nice sometimes, too? Still, there's nothing wrong with wanting to dress up and look pretty, right?"
After giving a summary that even she didn't know what she was saying, Karuizawa Kei planned to bring up another topic. After all, girls mostly passed the time by chatting. Their lips moved up and down, and breaks and lunch periods slipped away like flowing water.
When the girls finally arranged their first outing, Karuizawa Kei once again fell into a fit of anxiety. She turned her wardrobe upside down. All kinds of shirts, skirts, sweatpants, and even underwear covered her bed. Her family wasn't exactly wealthy, but they could still provide her with suitable clothes for every season. And Kitagawa Ryo had bought her a few things back then, so she had a fairly decent wardrobe.
Clothes and makeup. For the first time in her life, Karuizawa Kei agonized over the two. She'd never had to worry about them before. No matter what she wore when she went out, Kitagawa Ryo never commented much on how she looked. Ryo was a little aloof, just like his name suggested. At first, Karuizawa Kei would ask him about it, and he'd politely say it suited her. As time went by, she stopped paying much attention to it.
A white shirt with blue trousers, or a blue sleeveless top with black jeans. Karuizawa Kei wavered between the two outfits. At school, everyone wore the same uniform, but for an outing in casual clothes, she suddenly remembered all the girls' conversations over the past two weeks. In a hurry, she dug out a light blue dress from the very back of her wardrobe—the one Kitagawa Ryo had given her before he left.
Kitagawa Ryo had given Karuizawa Kei the dress for her birthday, and she'd only worn it once, on the day of her birthday. Aside from her parents, only Kitagawa Ryo had seen her in it. Karuizawa Kei ran her hand over the collar and sighed. Perhaps she'd been influenced by some story she'd read, where the heroine had an outfit she wore only for the hero. She'd planned to stop wearing it once Ryo left. She'd washed it carefully, folded it neatly, and put it away. Then, maybe someday, when Ryo came back and she could still fit into it, she'd wear it to the airport to welcome him.
Then she'd hold the skirt, trimmed with all sorts of delicate patterns and lace, and wave to Kitagawa Ryo. At the end, she'd tell him proudly:
"This is only the second time I've worn this dress."
"The first time was for you, and the second time is because of you, too."
Unfortunately, things had moved too quickly. Karuizawa Kei didn't know anything about brands or fabrics, but she could tell that this dress was far better made and more comfortable than her own clothes. In other words, it was one of the few outfits worthy of the image of "Karuizawa Kei" she'd sketched out and built for herself.
After changing into the dress, Karuizawa Kei admired herself in the mirror. Biting her lip, she lifted the hem slightly and curtsied, mimicking the gesture. For a moment, she felt like a real princess, waiting for a prince at a ball to offer her his white-gloved left hand.
The next morning, she deliberately got up twenty minutes early. Karuizawa Kei opened her mother's makeup collection and carefully tried to identify everything. Nervously, she took out a lipstick. She still couldn't tell the shades apart. To her, they were all a bright red that drew everyone's attention, no different in essence from the red patch on the crown of a red-crowned crane's head.
Narrowing her eyes at the mirror, Karuizawa Kei applied makeup for the first time in her life. Perhaps because she was so nervous, she hadn't slept well the night before. After getting up and washing her face that morning, she'd noticed in the mirror that she looked a little pale. But she didn't care. She colored her lips with the lipstick. The thin red layer on her fair face looked like plum blossoms against snow, but it also carried a hint of an age beyond her years. As though trying to hide that immaturity, Karuizawa Kei pressed her lips together and dusted her cheeks lightly with foundation.
She couldn't leave out her eyebrows and eyeshadow, either. Karuizawa Kei blinked her blue eyes. Her eyelashes were long, fluttering like the wings of butterflies. She carefully shaped her eyebrows. She'd spent the past two weeks secretly trying to learn the technique, so the result turned out fairly well.
At the end, she brushed her honey-colored hair. Karuizawa Kei was almost patient enough to arrange every strand one by one, until the bangs across her forehead had the perfect amount of volume. Once everything was ready, she raised a hand in front of the mirror and gave herself a pep talk.
Karuizawa Kei's lie was easy enough to see through. During all those breaks between classes, Emi Eura had noticed something unnatural about her. Unlike the image of Karuizawa Kei that Karuizawa Kei herself had built, in Emi Eura's eyes, she looked like someone with a panic disorder, desperately using all sorts of things to build walls around herself, as though some terrible disaster could happen at any moment. During that time, Emi Eura had even watched the class's so-called "core" girls with an amused interest.
But the one thing she could never quite figure out was Kitagawa Ryo. As someone who'd gone to the same elementary school as Karuizawa Kei, she'd naturally heard about Kitagawa Ryo and Karuizawa Kei back then. She'd even run into him a few times at school. Among all the little boys, he'd stood out like a crane among chickens, and he'd left a deep impression on her even then. That was the only reason she hadn't completely shattered Karuizawa Kei's illusion.
After all, whenever Karuizawa Kei talked about him, she always sounded a little offhand, yet clearly confident.
Emi Eura didn't want to end up like the boys who'd been watched by the students as they rolled around on the ground in the schoolyard, begging for mercy.
"Hey, you're here early, Kei."
By the time she came back to herself, the other girls had already cheered and gone to greet her. Emi Eura put her thoughts aside for the moment and quietly followed along.
"Not at all. Didn't Sayu get here even earlier than me?"
Karuizawa Kei wore her usual natural smile. Just like at school, she instantly became the focus of every girl's attention. Especially today, the dreamy light blue dress even outshone her bright lipstick, catching everyone's eye first.
"Wow... Kei, that dress is so pretty."
"Seriously. Standing in the sun like this, you look like you're glowing."
"The stitching on the hem is so delicate. It looks handmade."
Seven or eight girls crowded around Karuizawa Kei at once, showering her with compliments as if they were free.
One girl pouted, looking both envious and a little jealous.
"No wonder Kei said the uniforms were nice at school. When everyone's wearing the same uniform, you can't really tell. But put on a casual outfit like this, and you're impossible to look away from."
Another girl agreed.
"You really do look like a princess. You're so pretty."
Karuizawa Kei finally let out a sigh of relief. She quickly thanked them all for their compliments.
"You're all pretty, too. Isn't Sayu's dress lovely?"
She successfully drew everyone's attention back to Sayu's skirt, which was a little too short, then hurriedly tidied her hair, which the wind had mussed.
"Wow, I didn't notice until you said that. Sayu's skirt is so short."
Emi Eura looked at the black skirt, whose hem fell a good two centimeters above the knee, and sidled up with a giggle.
"Are you wearing safety shorts underneath?"
Over the past two weeks, she'd mainly cultivated the image of someone competitive and assertive, with a slightly boyish streak. So her gesture didn't provoke any resentment. Sayu gave her shoulder an exaggeratedly annoyed shove.
"Of course I am."
Then, as though announcing something—or as though it had simply slipped out—she added:
"Tomoda likes me in this one, that's all."
Romance was always a topic that united girls, and someone quickly asked:
"Sayu, are you really going out with Tomoda?"
"Heh heh. I was the one who confessed first. I just asked him to come outside, and he said yes."
Sayu made a V sign and lowered her voice.
"Actually, I only realized after we started dating that some boys might look all cold and distant, but if you hold their hand while wearing a shorter skirt, their faces turn bright red. So dressing up is important."
"But wouldn't your legs get cold wearing that? It's spring already, but the temperature can still drop sometimes."
Another girl beside her asked with concern.
"It's fine. If I do get cold, I'll just call it the 'price of beauty.'"
After saying that, Sayu turned to Karuizawa Kei.
"Kei, you look so cute today. If Kitagawa were here, he definitely wouldn't be able to take his eyes off you."
Seeing the conversation circle back to this, Karuizawa Kei could only answer:
"Well, Ryo gave me this dress for my birthday, so it makes sense that it looks nice."
"Whoa, Kei and Kitagawa's romance has blinded me again."
The girls beside them covered their eyes and joked around. Then the group headed toward the mall.
Just then, a cold wind blew fiercely down the road. The spring weather in late April could still be briskly cold at times. Sayu suddenly sneezed, and everyone laughed together, saying it was the "price of beauty."
Walking in the middle of the crowd, Karuizawa Kei suddenly remembered what Kitagawa Ryo had said when he gave her this dress for her birthday on March 8.
"I asked the tailor to make this one a little thicker and longer. It's supposed to cover your knees."
"Spring can be cold, too. Don't catch a chill when you're on your own."
Before you continue