At seven in the evening, Kitagawa Ryo sat on his hotel bed, reading through the information Mr. Izaki had compiled for him on his laptop. It included details of Karuizawa Kei's school life over the past six months, as well as information about Emi Eura and the families and personal circumstances of the other bullies.
Frowning, he went over everything that had happened in those six months: how Karuizawa Kei had unexpectedly become the center of the girls in her class because of him, the incident where they cornered Wakata, Wakata's subsequent suicide, and finally the bullying Karuizawa Kei had suffered after being accused of being responsible for her death.
"First, Wakata."
Ryo pulled up the information on her and immediately saw that her father had fled to Hokkaido three months earlier to escape loan sharks after racking up massive gambling debts. For the month that followed, right up until the month before Wakata's suicide, she and her mother had been harassed by the loan sharks. They would pound on the door in the middle of the night, and when they opened it in the morning, they might find a dead dog hanging outside. The landlord of their apartment had finally terminated their lease for the sake of the other tenants, unable to put up with these relentless incidents any longer.
Then, on their final day before moving out, the desperate mother had taken her daughter with her and burned charcoal in the house, intending for them both to die. But she hadn't given Wakata enough sleeping pills. In the middle of the attempt, Wakata had woken up, dazed, and crawled to the front door, forcing it open.
It was only because Wakata had forced the door open that their suicide attempt was discovered right away. She had inhaled relatively little smoke and survived after receiving prompt treatment, though she remained in a vegetative state with brain death. Her father, who had fled, had only gone back to his hometown to raise money. In the end, he sold the family's old house and one of their heirloom swords before returning to Tokyo with the money.
The tragedy had happened because his pride had kept him from asking his wife for help. After paying off all the loan sharks, the father put the rest of his money toward his daughter's medical care.
"...So Wakata herself never died?"
Ryo tapped at the keyboard and searched for news reports from that day. Sure enough, he found a report about the incident.
"So the rumor that Wakata killed herself because of bullying was false."
After discovering this, Ryo even found a note from Mr. Izaki:
[According to the hospital, the patient is recovering well and may regain consciousness.]
"Then how did that rumor get started?"
Ryo opened the next file, and the name "Emi Eura" appeared before him.
He knew the girl for two reasons. First, they had attended the same elementary school. Second, Emi Eura had already shown a remarkably nasty streak back then. Ryo had once seen her peel the skin off a live frog with a toothpick, without the slightest hesitation. He could still picture it clearly.
Emi Eura was a girl who had little regard for life.
Ryo opened her detailed file:
"Resident of Toshima Ward, Tokyo. Fourteen years old. Father: Eura Tadashi, former employee of Toshima Chiba Heavy Industries, currently unemployed. Mother: Eura Yuko, homemaker. Household debt: exactly twenty-one million yen."
[The rumor about Wakata was most likely spread secretly by her.]
That was how Mr. Izaki had marked it.
During the six months he'd spent in the United Kingdom with his parents, Ryo had learned many things. When his father learned that, back in elementary school, he had transferred schools for a friend and fought a bully, he had told him, "Violence isn't always the best approach."
Ryo had been somewhat dissatisfied and had talked back:
"But it's the most direct and effective way. It's also the most satisfying."
His father had nodded, admitting that Ryo had a point. Then he continued:
"Maybe one day you'll run into a situation like that again, Ryo. You can use violence to stop and intimidate them, just like before, but they might only agree to stop for the moment. They might even back down and apologize. But they absolutely won't let it go. They'll resent you and keep finding people to take revenge."
"They'll bring in the class toughs, the school's big shots, or even someone from the underworld. They'll keep coming after you, one confrontation after another. Even if you win every time, they won't be afraid of you. At most, they'll just think you're good at fighting. And if you really hurt someone badly, they can turn the tables on you."
"And if they can't find a way to deal with you in the end, they can go after the person you're protecting. If that happens, no matter how you retaliate afterward, no matter how you give them a taste of their own medicine, you can't undo the fact that she was hurt—or worse."
Ryo nodded thoughtfully.
"Are you telling me to deal with the problem at its root?"
His father approvingly ruffled Ryo's hair.
"Ryo, remember this: you can step outside the rules set by the world of school."
"Because your surname is Kitagawa."
Violence was the rule humans knew best: my fists are bigger than yours, I'm better at fighting, so I can make you back down.
But modern society didn't let anyone take that rule to its extreme. Causing serious injury or death was illegal. With that restriction in place, no matter how many times Ryo knocked the bullies down and made them kneel to apologize to their victims, he would still be acting within the rules the students understood. As long as he stayed within those rules, he might intimidate them for a while, but he couldn't make them give up bullying for good.
So he had to step outside those rules and use a higher set of rules to shatter the assumptions they had always relied on.
As Ryo recalled his father's words, he organized the people involved into groups.
About half an hour later, Ryo heard a knock at the door.
Only half an hour after they'd met that afternoon, Karuizawa Kei had fallen asleep in Ryo's arms. Perhaps she hadn't had a good night's sleep in the past two months, because she'd slept so deeply that he could only bring her to the hotel he'd booked and let her sleep in the other room. He'd left a note by her pillow telling her he was right next door.
Ryo opened the door. As expected, it was Karuizawa Kei. She seemed to have just woken up, and her hair was a mess, with stray locks sticking up everywhere. Unable to help himself, Ryo reached out and smoothed them down.
Kei lowered her head. Her lips parted, then closed. They parted again, then closed again. She fidgeted like a fish washed ashore by the waves, her eyes filled with thirst and hope.
"Ryo, are you going to leave again?"
Ryo's hand stopped moving.
### Chapter 10: Childhood Friends, Fiancée, and Pen Pal
"Are you going to leave again, Ryo?"
When Karuizawa Kei asked him that, she seemed like a frail old woman. She held on to Ryo's shoulder as if his answer would decide whether she lived or died. When she noticed his right hand stop where it rested against the ends of her hair, Kei even felt as if the air had frozen. Their movements seemed thick and sluggish, and even parting her lips to make a sound felt difficult.
"I'll take care of the problem for you, Kei. They shouldn't bother you again after this..."
Ryo tried to comfort her. He really had only come back for a short visit. His parents had already arranged a school and a schedule for his future in London. Maybe he could find a way to come back and see Kei as often as possible, or they could keep in touch using modern communications technology. But those words circled in his throat a few times and never came out.
Kei's face had gone pale. She seemed not to understand what Ryo was saying, and yet she also seemed to understand what he meant beneath the words.
"Ryo... When are you leaving?"
As soon as she asked, Ryo knew Kei was making one last attempt to hold on. He saw how unnatural her expression was and felt reluctant to say it, but he gave her the answer anyway.
"In about a week."
"Back to the United Kingdom?"
"Yeah."
Kei seemed to accept it. She looked at Ryo's face a few more times, then her body sagged as if all her strength had left her. It was as if the ice beneath her feet had suddenly broken, and she were about to sink straight into the ground.
Ryo could sense how she felt, but for now, all he could do was try to reassure her.
"I promise you won't have to go through anything like that again. I believe you can—"
"I don't believe it."
Kei suddenly cut him off. Even she didn't know why her voice had risen.
"I don't believe in myself, okay?"
For an instant, the thought came to Kei that if Ryo hadn't shown up in front of her again today, perhaps that would have been for the best. If he had only come back for a week, she couldn't accept it.
Compared to facing the truth now, she would almost rather have Ryo live forever in her memories and in the photograph by her bed. The Ryo from those days was the real Ryo—the one who would always stay by Karuizawa Kei's side and never leave.
"I don't want Ryo to leave. You can't go. I can't... I can't manage on my own."
But with reality staring her in the face, Kei's voice grew more and more desperate. It was as if she were speaking to Ryo through a thick pane of frosted glass. Her broken, barely coherent words sounded like a plea. She knew she was making things difficult for him, but she couldn't stop herself.
Still, Ryo didn't answer. More precisely, he couldn't answer just then. Should he make a promise to Kei? And if he did, how could he keep it?
Other people might have found it hard to understand the relationship between Ryo and Kei, but to Ryo, Kei was the friend who had been with him throughout his entire childhood, when he was all alone. Before he turned twelve, he had never seen his parents even once. Mr. Izaki had repeated over and over that when the time was right, his parents would come for him. But children couldn't believe an explanation like that. All they saw was that Kitagawa Ryo was a boy without parents.
Karuizawa Kei was the only child who had ever been close to Ryo.
It was possible they had only clung to each other because they were both outcasts, but Kei truly occupied a large part of Ryo's heart.
And so they remained silent for a long time. The silence sank lower and lower, then shattered against the ground.
"I..."
Ryo shook his head, feeling a little at a loss. His eyes wandered as he searched for another topic. When he looked down, he saw the hem of Kei's skirt. Although Ryo had pulled her away in time that afternoon, some coffee had still splashed onto her. Little spots of coffee stained the pure white dress.
"You're still wearing this dress, Kei."
His attempt to change the subject was so clumsy that even Ryo thought it was a way of avoiding the issue. But to his surprise, Kei's attention was drawn to it at once. She hurriedly lowered her head and nervously rubbed at the coffee stains.
"Too bad it got dirty."
"It's fine. I think it's a little too small for you now anyway."
Ryo held his hand out beside Kei to compare their heights.
"You're several centimeters taller than you were this time last year. At least three or four, I'd say."
"R-really?"
"Yeah. How about I take you to buy a new dress for the summer?"
Ryo took her hand and led her, a little firmly, into the elevator. He pressed the button for the first floor.
Kei seemed a little afraid of the confined space. Whenever people got on or off along the way, she clung to Ryo's arm and hid behind him. He could feel her body trembling slightly. The tremor traveled through the point where they touched, like some strange yearning.
For the next two hours, Ryo and Kei wandered into all kinds of clothing stores like a real student couple, trying on one outfit after another. But Kei never settled on anything she wanted, so Ryo had no choice but to follow her into yet another store.
Kei let her hair down and stood in front of Ryo in a blood-red dress.
She tied her hair into a ponytail and stood in front of Ryo in a snow-white dress.
Her hair was long, and she seemed to look good with either a high ponytail or a low one. Whenever Kei stood beside Ryo in front of a fitting-room mirror, her honey-colored hair carried a faint fragrance that seemed to curl around his nose.
"I think this one looks pretty good."
Ryo brought his thoughts back to the present and gave his opinion of the long, blue dress with a floral pattern Kei was wearing.
"Really?"
Kei stretched languidly, showing off her lovely figure.
"But there might be something better."
She shook her head at the mirror and started back toward the changing room to change out of the dress.
"It's almost ten."
Ryo checked the time on his phone and reminded her. He knew girls were talented when it came to shopping, but spending more than two hours just trying to buy one dress and still not deciding on anything was beginning to seem strange.
"Then you can help me pick one tomorrow, Ryo."
Rustling came from inside the changing room. Kei's voice passed through the door, making him smile.
"If you can't decide, we'll just buy them all."
"No way."
Kei sounded suddenly flustered. As she quickly changed, she pressed herself against the door and objected.
"I have to find the one that suits me best."
"..."
Ryo sighed and leaned against the wall. He had a pretty good idea what she was trying to do.
He walked Kei back to the apartment building. Ryo was going to watch her climb the stairs and go inside before turning back, but just as she reached the entrance on the first floor, she suddenly came running back down.
Kei said to Ryo:
"Let's take a picture together."
Ryo didn't quite understand why she wanted to. If they were going to take a picture, the brightly lit street had been the obvious choice. Here beneath the apartment building, there was only an old, yellowish streetlamp. The rest was almost pitch-black.
"Okay."
But he wouldn't refuse Kei. He always felt that he owed her something, especially when she looked him in the eyes.
So they found a patch of open ground beneath the streetlamp where the light was reasonably bright. Only when they got close did they notice two moths fluttering around the bulb, buzzing as they kept flying into it. Ryo stretched out his right hand with the phone as far as he could. But his arm wasn't a selfie stick that could extend as far as he wanted. Even at full reach, the camera only captured a small area, and it kept cutting off half of one of their faces.
"Just move closer."
Kei leaned her head toward him. Her face was pressed tightly against Ryo's, so close that their breaths and the air from their noses mingled. He even had the strange sensation that he and Kei were breathing the same breath of air.
"Cheese!"
Ryo secretly glanced at Kei out of the corner of his eye. She was looking earnestly at the camera.
He gently pressed the shutter button with his right thumb. Beneath the somewhat dazzling flash, their second photo together was born.
"This kind of looks like one of those photo booths on the street, doesn't it?"
Kei looked at their photo and made the comment. Seemingly satisfied, she started up the stairs. After climbing a few steps, she turned around with her hands behind her back and looked down at Ryo, who was still standing where he'd been.
"Ryo, do you remember our picture from the elementary school graduation ceremony?"
"Back then, we held hands in secret, using the crowd in front of us to cover it up."
She suddenly flashed a playful smile, her voice calm and cheerful.
"I'm glad you came back to find me, Ryo."
Before you continue