It was true that no snowflake in an avalanche was innocent, but damn it, as the perpetrator, how could he say something like that with such righteous confidence?
And Teacher Takahashi...
Looking at Sogo Doma's utterly righteous expression, Teacher Takahashi even began to wonder whether her initial assumptions about him had been wrong.
Sogo Doma was simply too righteous about it!
"Cough, cough..." Fortunately, as a teacher, Shizuka Hiratsuka saw through Sogo Doma's scheme—at least, in Teacher Takahashi's eyes, it was a scheme!
"Takahashi-san, Doma... was the main person behind that nasty incident!"
"Huh?" Although Teacher Takahashi had vaguely sensed there was some hidden truth, she had never considered Sogo Doma the instigator. She had thought he might have been involved, but that clearly was not what Shizuka meant...
"Or rather..." After thinking for a while, Shizuka Hiratsuka added, "Doma was the one who started that incident..."
The others were fine upon hearing this. They knew the truth, but could their subsequent words possibly compare to those of someone who had personally been involved? It was like a battle that claimed tens of thousands of lives. Everyone else could only lament the cruelty of war, but only those who had truly experienced that battle knew what cruelty really meant!
That was a cruelty that could never be conveyed merely by writing that tens of thousands had died!
A comrade could die right beside you—perhaps ten minutes earlier, he had been discussing whether cookies should be eaten with milk. Only when that person died before your very eyes would you understand: did it really matter whether cookies went with milk?
Using war as an analogy was admittedly a little exaggerated, but what right did those who had not experienced that upheaval have to say they understood?
Hayato Hayama: "..."
Yukino Yukinoshita: