What a tragically heroic heart that was.
The boy everyone called Ugly Nan was actually named Kitahara Nan. He had transferred into Seiran High as a new student. His face, as Mizuhara Sora once put it, looked like the peel of a rotten persimmon. His features seemed as if someone had thrown them into a blender and only fished them back out halfway through, twisted into something that barely counted as a face. Thankfully, he had been born with a basically kind look to him, so he was not quite frightening.
Most transfer students become famous for being brilliant, rich, or beautiful. Kitahara Nan shook the whole school simply by being ugly. There had once been another very ugly boy at Seiran High whom everyone nicknamed Monster, but after Nan arrived, Monster himself declared that if anyone ever called him ugly again, he'd drag them in front of Nan and let them compare. Sora used to say that if she looked like that, she would stay home every day and reflect on life in front of a wall instead of wandering around outside waiting to be shot by the police. But Kitahara Nan never felt ashamed of his looks. On the contrary, he was spectacularly restless, and because his family had a bit of money, the air of a spoiled rich delinquent clung to him even more strongly.
The moment he arrived at Seiran High, he began aggressively pursuing Mizuhara Sora. Later he got together with Karasawa Rin instead, and before long the two school legends were attending Sora's birthday party together, nearly engaged, as if the most absurd things in life had quietly become ordinary.
That birthday party was crowded with old classmates, university friends, and every stray friend Sora and I had gathered over the years. Tetsu came with his latest girlfriend. Chihiro came wearing her usual calm like armor. Kamiya Retsu dropped off an extravagant gift and vanished almost at once. I drank too much and moved through the room at Sora's side as if I were some glittering hostess from an old film, though in truth I was only trying very hard not to think.
Because everyone kept asking me the same thing: "Ori, where's Matsuda Ryo?"
I knew they meant well. But if I had told them then and there that Matsuda Ryo and I had already broken up, it would have entertained them more thoroughly than a full-length movie. So all I could do was keep lifting my glass and grinning, saying, "Come on, drink. What, are you afraid?"
At first I thought Sora simply had not invited him because she knew I would mind. Maybe she wanted to spare me the embarrassment. Halfway through the drinking, however, Tetsu got very drunk. Waving his glass around, he blurted out that Matsuda Ryo and Nagasawa Nao were off traveling together like newlyweds.
Even in that noisy room, the sentence struck my ears like thunder. My hand began shaking so badly the glass trembled. Sora had heard it too. Before I could move, she seized the cup of tea on the table and flung it in Tetsu's face. "You bastard, are you drunk out of your mind?" Someone nearby understood enough to drag him away at once.
Sora turned to me and said, "I didn't invite Matsuda Ryo. Don't listen to Tetsu's nonsense."
I shook my glass lightly and gave her a smiling slap on the shoulder. "Did you forget? We've already broken up."
But as I said it, the memory of that elopement back in our second year of high school floated helplessly up before me.
Back then Matsuda Ryo and I were secretly in love. We were scared even to hold hands at school, yet bold enough to plan an elopement. It was my idea, of course. Ryo would never have had the courage on his own. He laughed when I proposed it and said, "Hayashibara Ori, don't be so impatient. Sooner or later I'll all be yours."
I turned scarlet and smacked him over the head.
That elopement took up one whole weekend. I left my mother a note saying I was going away with friends and that if she didn't approve, she would simply have to. Ryo's mother ended up phoning my house trying to track him down, but by then the two of us were already in old Kamakura, gloriously free.
We had hardly any money, so we ate in tiny shops, shared instant noodles, laughed ourselves silly, and wandered through the old streets as if the whole world belonged to us. I adored dumplings but would only eat the skins, forcing poor Ryo to finish all the fillings for me. We even rode one of those tourist rickshaws, and when the puller joked that we looked like newlyweds, my face turned hot while Ryo only smiled and said, "We'd like to get married. We're just not old enough yet."
At the time, I believed every word.
Back in the present, Chihiro found me at the party and said one of those painfully literary things she liked: "Let the future come. Let the past go." That single sentence nearly shattered all the composure I had forced onto myself. I leaned against her shoulder and whispered, "Chihiro, I really don't think I can keep holding this together."
Then I looked up and saw him.
At the far end of the room, across layers of light and moving heads, stood Matsuda Ryo with Nagasawa Nao.
Before I had even finished realizing they were really there, Nagasawa Nao had already stepped forward all docility and charm, offered Sora a birthday present, and smiled as if she belonged in the room. Matsuda Ryo stood beside her in a white top that matched hers. Together they looked polished, easy, almost infuriatingly well matched.
After a few strained moments, everyone went back to eating. Then, just as people were preparing to leave, Nagasawa Nao pulled Matsuda Ryo up to the small stage by the front, took the microphone, and announced brightly that the two of them had something to share. Matsuda Ryo, one hand in his pocket, finished the sentence for her in that quiet voice of his.
"We're getting engaged next month."
The room exploded.
Sora's face went green. She was on her feet at once, ready to storm the stage, when I grabbed her hand and begged her to stop. I could barely breathe, but I still knew this much: if Sora made a scene for me, I would never forgive myself.
Chihiro dragged me into the bathroom before I collapsed. Messages started flooding my phone from classmates who had already left: Ori, are you okay? Only a month earlier, when someone had asked about Matsuda Ryo and me in the group chat, I had boasted that I had him completely under control and that all we needed now was the right age for legal registration. And now everyone had seen the truth: some other girl standing on a stage and announcing that Matsuda Ryo belonged to her while I stood below in silence like a fool.
When Sora and Chihiro finally coaxed the whole story out of me, Sora cursed first and Chihiro analyzed after. Sora insisted Nagasawa Nao must have seduced him. Chihiro said coldly that it took two people to make a betrayal. I cried and said nothing, because at that point the old scene in the hospital had already begun replaying itself in my head.
On the first night of my trip, I had called Matsuda Ryo and learned he was sick, down with a fever. He sounded weak and said he was in the hospital. I told him over and over to take care of himself and wait for me to bring him a gift when I got back. But even as I said those words, I had already bought my return ticket. I remembered how carefully he had once cared for me when I was sick. He had said that when people are ill, they are at their weakest. I did not want Matsuda Ryo spending those hours alone.
I believed that a trip could always be taken again. The person you loved was the only one.
So that very night I turned around and came racing home. By the time I reached the city the next day, it was already noon. I no longer cared that my hair was a mess or that the circles under my eyes were blacker than a panda's. I ran straight to the hospital.
And then I stopped at his door.
There was a girl sitting beside his bed.
Their hands were clasped together. She had fallen asleep with her head resting on the side of the bed. Matsuda Ryo, receiving an IV, was scrolling through his phone.
I stood there while a thousand waves rose inside me. Then I slid down onto my suitcase in the corridor, took out my phone, and typed with shaking fingers: Feeling better?
Inside the room, Matsuda Ryo read the message, smiled to himself, and began typing back. Sunlight filtered through the white curtains, blurring the light over his face. He looked as clean and beautiful as ever.
Yes. Much better. Don't worry. I'm getting an IV. Have fun and come back soon.
My phone vibrated in my hand.
Don't get the IV alone. Drag Tetsu there with you, I wrote back after a moment.
Then came his last six words.
He's here with me.
My phone slipped from my fingers and hit the floor. It was the phone we had bought together.
I told no one. I stayed home for days and then appeared smiling in front of Matsuda Ryo as if nothing had happened. He opened his arms to hug me. I stood still and asked only one thing:
"Matsuda Ryo, do the things you say still count?"
"Which things?" he asked.
"You once said that if one day I met someone I liked more than I liked you, I had to tell you."
The happiness on his face drained away. If I had not already seen what I saw in that hospital room, perhaps I would have collapsed just from hurting him. But by then, remembering his fingers laced with another girl's, my heart had already become poisonous.
After a long silence he asked, almost with hope, "Are you telling me that now?"
"Yes," I said. "Let's break up."
What I wanted in that moment was not justice. I wanted him to hurt exactly as I did. I wanted him to know what being abandoned felt like. I never stopped to consider what that choice would cost later.
My friends never knew the real reason we had broken up. At first they all assumed it had to be my fault. Given Matsuda Ryo's endless patience, even if someday I had betrayed him first, he probably would have helped me arrange the time and place. Only later, when he started appearing openly with Nagasawa Nao, did their eyes slowly change from contempt to pity.
The truth was this: Matsuda Ryo had always been impossibly gentle with me. I took it for granted and used it badly. I tested him endlessly, dirtied the things he loved, tore up girls' letters in front of him, ordered him around in public, kept him waiting in the winter cold while I messed around with other people just to provoke his jealousy. No matter what I did, he would only lower his forehead to my hair and sigh, "Ori, I know you best. You're just a child who never feels safe. It's my fault. I haven't made you feel safe enough."
And yet for all that tenderness, it was still him who gave me the largest shock of my life.
After Sora and Chihiro learned the real story, they became furious on my behalf. Sora wanted to tear Nagasawa Nao to pieces. Chihiro, as always, analyzed everything with that frightening calm of hers. I still said nothing.
Then, a little later, at work, my day took another turn. I handed in a piece of copywriting I had written and braced myself to be humiliated. Instead, Jiang Yan read it and said, "Very good. You have talent for this. Keep working." It was only a few formal words, but they made me absurdly happy. I rushed back to my desk and typed to the group that maybe this job really did suit me.
No one answered at first.
Eventually Kamiya Retsu typed back that praise from Jiang Yan was rare. Then he added that Chihiro had gone back to campus for some papers and that Sora, who had nothing to do that afternoon, was probably out dealing with Nagasawa Nao.
The sentence froze me.
Before I could even decide what to do, my phone rang. The ringtone alone turned my whole body rigid. It was the special one I had set only for Matsuda Ryo. Even now, even after everything, I had never changed it.
I answered. I had barely said hello before Matsuda Ryo's voice came through, tight with restrained anger.
"Hayashibara Ori, leave Nao alone. Stop chasing her."
"What are you talking about?"
He sounded like an animal pushed into a corner. "You used to test me because you felt insecure, and I put up with it. But this time, you don't need to test anything anymore. I know now that Nala is the one I love."
Then he hung up.
Thirty-two seconds.
That was all he had called to say: that things were over for good, that there was no road back.
And all at once I understood what Sora must have done.
I called her immediately. The moment she picked up, I heard fury in her voice.
"Where are you?" I asked.
"I've got people with me and we're chasing Nagasawa Nao."
"Why are you chasing her?"
"Because I dragged her into a karaoke room and hit her, and then I let her get away, so now she runs and I follow."
"Are you insane?" I shouted. "Do you still think this isn't enough trouble already?"
There was a long silence.
When she finally spoke, her voice had gone strangely calm. "Ori, this has nothing to do with you. I just can't stand the sight of her."
Then she hung up.
I stared at the phone, my eyes burning. From the day I met Sora, she had never spoken to me in that tone. I knew at once that the anger in my own voice had wounded her. Matsuda Ryo had hurt me, and I had turned around and shoved all of that pain into Sora instead.
But from the very beginning, Sora had been the innocent one. She only wanted revenge because she could not bear to watch me be humiliated.
I called Tetsu and begged him to stop her. He was already on the road. Matsuda Ryo had called him too, he said. Nagasawa Nao was prepared to go to the police, and he was trying to calm her down.
"You have to stop Sora," I said. "You have to."
The tears broke loose before I even realized they were coming. Tetsu heard it and kept trying to soothe me, telling me to rest and leave Sora to him. I told him to call me the instant he found her, then hung up and sat there with my thoughts in ruins.
Karasawa Rin passed my desk, noticed my face, and without asking too many questions made me a cup of green tea. I thanked her, leaned back in my chair, and shut my eyes.
Everything that had happened over those days flashed past me like a roller coaster I could not get off. The boy I had loved for four years, the one everyone believed I would one day marry, had taken another girl's hand. I had only just finished my first year of university and still believed I had time to dream, yet somehow I had already started work at a publishing house people usually had to beg or pay to enter. Karasawa Rin, once the very person I would have crossed the street to avoid, had somehow become a real friend. And at Sora's birthday, hearing the news of Matsuda Ryo's engagement had hurt more than if someone had simply slapped me in the face.
All of it seemed to lead back to that one afternoon outside the hospital.
After I left there with my suitcase, the whole sky had been covered in heavy clouds. The boy I had loved for years had someone else, and I had no idea where I was supposed to go with that knowledge.
Four years earlier, I had been fearless enough to hurt other people in order to protect our love. Four years later, I did not even have the strength to fight the sight of him with someone else. I thought of Nana, the manga we had once read together, and the line where Nana says through tears that she is not yet grown enough to forgive betrayal.
I am Hayashibara Ori.
I am twenty-one years old.
And I think twenty-one-year-old me still has not grown up enough to forgive betrayal either.
At home, holding that manga, I cried until there was nothing left in me.
Then the phone rang.
I answered, and my mother's voice came through, wet with panic and almost breaking.
"Ori," she said, "your father... your father's been in an accident."
Outside, beneath the oppressive sky, thunder rolled.