Chapter 10: Hazuki's Resolve

It was as though the explanation had passed through my ears.

As usual, I had no idea what the mathematics teacher was talking about.

I'd be better off practicing my sword swings than wasting my time like this.

While I was thinking that, the bell signaling the end of class rang. I put down my pen and sighed.

Hibari, who was in the same class, approached me.

"Hazuki, did you understand what we just did?"

"Sorry. I didn't understand any of it."

"Right? Maybe I'll ask Raika-chan again."

Hibari gave a cheerful laugh before returning to her seat.

After watching her go, I flipped through my notebook.

Even when I reread the notes I had supposedly written to summarize the key points, I couldn't make sense of what I'd written.

I'll ask Raika or Mana when one of them is free.

I gave up on understanding it for now, closed my notebook, and began packing up.

Once homeroom ended, it was already after school.

I had promised to teach Shota swordsmanship again today.

That made me a little happy. It felt good to know that I was actually useful to someone.

With a slightly excited feeling in my chest, I was about to head toward the kendo dojo.

Then I noticed that, unusually, Raika had come all the way to my classroom.

When she spotted me, she walked over.

......Her expression was a little stiff. There was a slight darkness about her mood. Had she stayed up late again?

"Hazuki, how have things been lately?"

"Hm? Nothing much has changed. You should already know that."

Her words lacked their usual decisiveness. It wasn't like her.

"No, that's not what I mean. I was wondering if your sword training with him was going well."

Come to think of it, Raika stubbornly refused to call Shota by his name. I'd never seen her call him anything other than "you" or "that guy."

I didn't know why.

There were always aspects of her inner self that remained impossible to read.

"You have no reason to worry about me. Shota is working hard. At first, I thought he was just a timid, nervous man, but after spending time with him, I've realized he has more backbone than I expected."

"Oh? That's unusually straightforward praise coming from you, Hazuki."

Raika grinned.

There was a teasing tone in her voice, and her mood seemed to brighten a little.

"You've hardly had any opportunities to interact with a man since you came here, right? Don't you get a little nervous around him?"

"What?! ......N-no, nothing like that."

I hurriedly denied it, but Raika only widened her mischievous grin.

"Oh, that's quite the reaction for someone who supposedly isn't thinking about him. What do you like about him?"

"It's not as though I particularly like him or anything...... It's just that I'm a difficult person, you know. Someone who accepts me just as I am is rare."

If I think something is wrong, I can't rest until I say it's wrong.

If someone makes a mistake, I can't help correcting it.

Even I think I have an unpleasant personality.

But everyone in my family was like that, so I suppose I naturally came to regard it as common sense.

"Hazuki's personality isn't the problem. Society is."

Raika answered with pursed lips, wearing an unusually childish expression for her.

She was extremely stubborn whenever this subject came up.

"Someone who speaks their mind honestly, like you, is obviously in the right. The problem is the liars who can't accept that."

Whenever she said things like that, Raika really did seem like a child.

She normally carried herself like a thoughtful adult, yet every now and then she would reveal this side of herself.

Apparently, she hated lies.

Despite being a liar herself, something she openly acknowledged.

"You're such a stubborn person."

In the sense that we both disliked ourselves, Raika and I were alike.

"Then, Hazuki, were you saved by him?"

"Saved......? Why are you suddenly asking that? What are you talking about?"

At my words, Raika's face twisted for just an instant.

Surprise. Grief. And then resolve.

I was sure I'd seen all of them for that brief moment, but the next instant, they had disappeared from her face.

"I don't know what you're trying to say, but...... if you're asking whether I was saved, then I suppose I was saved by you. I became stubborn, bound myself down, and then fell into despair all on my own.──And then I met you, and my perspective broadened, if only a little."

I couldn't read her expression.

I didn't know whether my words were reaching her.

But I continued speaking.

Honestly. Without exaggeration. Just as things truly were.

"'The Way of the Warrior is found in death.' Those were the words that had possessed me back then. I was lost, wondering how I could become someone I myself could forgive. So I clung to those old words because they sounded so noble."

Perhaps I had been searching for a place to die.

The pressure of my family.

My inability to live up to my own expectations.

The threat of humanity's extinction.

It was the perfect stage for a tragic and meaningful death.

I wanted to give my own resolve some kind of prestige.

"And then I met you, and I abandoned it. You hate yourself for being a liar, but to me, a liar like you represented a new kind of righteousness. You taught me that there was a form of righteousness that wasn't rigid and inflexible. ......You used lies to make other people happy. All of your comrades, myself included."

She didn't raise her head.

"So I think you should be allowed to accept the part of yourself that's a liar. At the very least, I like that side of you."

"......And?"

She raised her head.

Her face was completely expressionless, almost as though the expression had been pasted onto it.

It was the face she made whenever she said something I couldn't tell was a lie or the truth.

"Have you been able to accept yourself, Hazuki?"

"More than before. I am not such a simple person that I could completely change in just a few months."

Ah, this was probably just embarrassment.

One of my bad habits.

A flaw born from my contrary personality.

The Raika I knew would normally have given a nihilistic grin and said something like, "I see, I see."

But this time, she merely gave a small nod in response to my words.

"Well, that was a strange thing to talk about. Sorry. I might have had a little too much to drink. I'm going back to my room to have some vodka straight."

"Hey, you're underage."

She turned her back to me and walked briskly back to her room.

I watched her leave in silence, finding the whole thing rather strange.

"As I thought...... a liar can't save anyone."

Those words never reached the ears of anyone else.

Today's training at the kendo dojo was over. I removed my protective gear and took a breath.

Then Hazuki, who had also removed her gear, approached me with an unusually serious expression.

She normally kept her distance from me whenever she was sweaty, yet this time she came unusually close.

Her actions gave off more intimidation than allure, so I instinctively took a small step back.

"Shota. I have a favor to ask of you today."

"Hazuki has a favor? ......That's really unusual."

For someone who was embarrassed to rely on other people, it really was unusual.

I watched her, wondering what she could possibly want.

Then she did something far beyond anything I could have imagined.

Hazuki grabbed my wrist and firmly pressed my hand against her head.

It was the first time I'd properly touched a girl's head.

Before I could even ask her why, something strange happened to my vision.

It felt as though my entire body were being sucked into Hazuki's head.

My vision was dyed black as I seemed to enter some unknown place.

And so, my consciousness was carried somewhere I had never been before.

〈TIPS〉When an Anchor touches the head of a Bluffer with whom they have built trust, they may see that Bluffer's past.

The first thing I saw was the interior of an old-fashioned Japanese house.

Elegant tatami mats were laid out in orderly rows beneath my feet.

I stood there as though I had become a ghost, and then I suddenly remembered something Raika had told me.

When an Anchor touches a Bluffer's head, they may see that Matoi's past──the important memories that became the foundation of their fiction.

A stern-looking man was sitting formally in seiza in the upper seat.

Deep wrinkles were carved into his face, and he stared at the girl before him with astonishingly cold eyes.

"Hazuki. What was that disgraceful display? Have you forgotten the teachings of this household?"

A little girl of about seven or eight years old──a young Hazuki──spoke in a trembling voice.

"S-sorry, Father...... I"

"Never apologize like that! You are a member of the Tatinami family!"

Hazuki's father slammed his hand against the floor.

"How many times must I tell you before you understand?! We are a proud family descended from the loyalists who brought about the Restoration! We are people who accomplish great things through righteousness! How can you ever hope to change the world if you lose to something as trivial as a sword match between elementary school children?!"

Hazuki's shoulders jolted every time she heard his booming voice.

"F-Father, even if you call it a sword match between elementary school children......"

"Don't make excuses! There is no way such a spineless display of swordsmanship could come from a member of the Tatinami family! How many times must I teach you, you good-for-nothing!"

Hazuki lowered her head. Seeing his daughter on the verge of tears, her father let out a deep sigh.

"Pathetic. With the blood of the warrior class fallen this far, I cannot possibly face our ancestors. Go sleep in the storage room and freeze to death."

"Kh......ah."

With his trembling daughter behind him, her father opened the door and left the room.

My vision went dark again.

The next thing I saw was a wooden floor and a large building. It appeared to be a kendo dojo.

"Pathetic!"

BANG!

A shinai struck the floor.

The voice, which reminded me of that father, belonged to Hazuki, now grown to around middle-school age.

"How do you expect to win the national tournament looking like that?! We're here to win, aren't we?!"

Silence descended.

The members in their kendo uniforms exchanged uneasy glances.

"But you can't just say that......"

"We're not as strong as you, Tatinami-san."

"We're doing our best in our own way......"

Seeing that, Hazuki let out a deep sigh.

Her attitude expressed her disappointment far more clearly than words could, causing the club members to shrink back.

Hazuki looked around coldly before leaving.

It happened to be at an angle where I could see her face.

"Hah.──So I was just like Father after all."

She spat out the words, her voice steeped in deep self-loathing, and lowered her head slightly.

Her expression was so severe that it looked as though she were staring at the person she hated most in the world.

My vision changed completely.

This seemed to be a memory from after Hazuki became a Matoi.

The sight of a devastated city center.

The destruction caused by the "Fictional invaders" was already something I was accustomed to seeing.

The sun was just beginning to rise.

Sunlight emerging from behind the ruins of the buildings illuminated from behind the white-haired person gazing at her.

A light appeared in eyes that were usually dark and clouded.

The corners of her mouth, so often twisted into a cynical smile, curved into a gentle smile instead.

Raika, dressed in a pantsuit, spoke gently to Hazuki.

──She looked almost like an angel surrounded by a halo.

"──There's nothing wrong with that. You're honest, and you're strict with both yourself and others. An ordinary student would be ostracized for that, but what we're doing is a fight for survival. That's why you're right. You can believe in your own sense of right and wrong."

"But if my behavior makes it impossible for us to work together......"

"No. There's nothing right about an exceptional person making themselves mediocre just to fit in with everyone else. It's better for an honest person to be able to live honestly. So, let me handle some of it. I can't do the things you're good at, but I can do the things you're bad at."

"The things I'm bad at?"

"Let's see...... Drinking black coffee, dancing, folding origami cranes......"

"T-that has nothing to do with this!"

"──And deceiving people."

She smiled.

Her eyes, however, were as empty as a hollow hall.

"If I gather people with egos and personalities strong enough that they won't lose to you, we'll have a team."

"That sounds like we'd end up with a group completely incapable of functioning together......"

"I'll hold the reins. You lot can have the pleasure of being deceived by my lies. Here's the first lie. Hazuki. That feeling you have of perhaps dying in battle, if the opportunity arises......"

Hazuki caught her breath.

Raika had hit the feeling buried deep inside her perfectly.

"While you're with me, it'll gradually become something you don't care about anymore."

That smile truly looked as though she were telling the truth.

The flashback ended.

Hazuki's face was bright red as she spoke to me.

"I had a reason for enduring the embarrassment...... for enduring enough shame to last me a lifetime just to show you this."

"You really don't have to be embarrassed about it......"

It was a good memory, wasn't it?

Hazuki was usually shy, but I'd never seen her face this red before.

There were even tears welling up slightly in her eyes.

"I want you to save Raika, who saved me. This time, I want you to save her. ......I can't do it."

"Huh?"

The weakness in her voice was so unlike Hazuki that I couldn't help asking again.

"Raika is planning something. It's another one of her usual lies."

"......I suppose that's nothing unusual for her, but is there something going on?"

"It's a premonition. I have a feeling she's trying to hurt herself with her own lies. Perhaps you could call it the intuition of someone who hates herself just as much as she does."

A little while ago, I might not have understood what she was so anxious about.

But now I could.

After seeing Liar Raika up close──a liar whose depths I could never see, yet who was strangely childish despite it all──I understood Hazuki's concern.

"She always tries to help other people as though it's nothing. Just like she helped me. All of us in the Fox Squad have been helped by her little by little in exactly that way. But right now, I sense something dangerous about Raika, as though she's about to do something far more serious. I can't understand her. Not when I can't even lie myself. That's why I'm asking you. You can see through people's lies. I want you to uncover what Raika is really thinking."