← The Studious Boy and the Secret Account Girl
Volume 3
Chapter 29: No Time for a Shared Umbrella—In the Midst of a Downpour
Chapter 29: No Time for a Shared Umbrella—In the Midst of a Downpour
The rain was growing heavier by the minute as Tsutomu and Matsurika made for the nearest station.
The folding umbrella he’d brought with him was built for one. It was barely enough to keep two people out of the rain.
I knew that much already, but there was no refusing.
Along the way, Tsutomu carried on this one-sided conversation inside his head.
Matsurika had caught him at the school entrance and asked him to walk her to the station. Careless creature that she was, she hadn’t brought an umbrella despite it being the rainy season. Heavy rain had been in the forecast, no less. When he pressed her on what exactly she’d been thinking, she reluctantly offered her reason.
“I stayed up way too late having fun with my friends last night.”
She’d overslept as a result, and apparently her morning had been complete chaos. By any reasonable account, Tsutomu was under no obligation to clean up after Matsurika’s mistake.
And yet here he was, plowing straight through the pouring rain at her side.
Well. We are friends, after all.
He thought back to the celebration for the midterm exams—the one the two of them had held alone together. In a dimly lit karaoke room, the two of them had become friends. Outwardly, nothing about their relationship had changed since, but something had most definitely changed that day. Of that much he was certain. What, exactly, and how, he could not for the life of him measure. That was where things stood.
In any case: a friend was in trouble, so helping her was only natural. Unable to refuse Matsurika’s request, Tsutomu had assembled that chain of logic in his head. Nobody had even asked him to justify himself, and yet some strange restlessness had driven him to do it anyway.
Now, Tsutomu had one other friend: Amakusa Shiro, the smooth-talking heartthrob who’d shared his class in both first and second year. If Shiro had ever tried pulling the same “Let me under your umbrella!” that Matsurika had, Tsutomu would have booted him outside in zero seconds flat. He wouldn’t have considered that cruelty the least bit unreasonable. He’d have accepted it as the natural order of things.
What even are friends, anyway?
He felt no contradiction in the gap between how Matsurika and Shiro figured in his mental simulations. He considered Shiro a friend. But Shiro and Matsurika were not equivalent.
And that Matsurika was walking beside him right now. In stark contrast to the fury of the rain, her step was light. A tune suddenly drifted over to him, and he nearly doubted his own ears. Humming. In this weather…
“You sound awfully cheerful.”
He clicked his tongue inwardly at how sour his own tone came out. It wasn’t as if he meant to take it out on the girl walking next to him. His emotional control just wasn’t cooperating. He had precious little experience with this sort of thing, and he couldn’t help feeling at sea.
“I am having fun. It’s been forever since I last walked home with you, Kariya-kun.”
She’d fired a blazing fastball right down the middle of the plate, and he found himself scrambling for an answer.
“Besides, we’re sharing an umbrella. Doesn’t that make it fun, Kariya-kun?”
“That’s not even a question of fun or not. Look at this weather.”
Holding down the flutter in his chest at being told we’re sharing an umbrella, he delivered the words with deliberate gravity.
Sharing an umbrella with a beautiful girl. That such an event should ever come his way was so far outside his expectations as to be absurd.
And yet the reality was not one bit romantic. The rain was out of control, and so was the wind. Rainwater bouncing up off the ground was a nuisance all its own. Mixed in with the roar of the raging wind and the clatter of signs swaying on their mounts, the occasional scream drifted past. It was less a romantic situation than a dangerous one.
Even so—Matsurika said she was having fun.
“It’s the other way around.”
“The other way around?”
Her words made no sense to him, and he echoed them back like a parrot. Matsurika nodded and spun her answer out from peach-colored lips.
“Sunny, rainy—why would the weather matter? Walking home with you is fun, Kariya-kun. To me, that’s the thing that matters most.”
There was no lie to be heard in her voice, and nothing unnatural in her expression. She believed it, from the bottom of her heart.
Understanding that much, Tsutomu’s chest gave a twinge.
His mouth moved on its own.
“It’s fun.”
“Huh?”
“Me too… walking home with you is fun. That’s what I said.”
We live in opposite directions, so the chance never comes up anyway.
When he added that, Matsurika let a small smile slip loose.
“Well, I’m definitely putting you out, though. You can tilt the umbrella more your way, Kariya-kun.”
“I’m fine, so you’re the one who should stay properly under it, Tachibana.”
“But I’m the one who forced my way in… Eek!”
“Gh—”
Water came flying in from the side, and he instinctively shielded Matsurika with his body.
The two of them were on the right-hand sidewalk. To their left ran the roadway, with cars streaming past without pause. He kept Matsurika on his right, guarding her from the spray thrown up by every car that roared by like the one just now. He’d tilted the umbrella to the right as well. Total defensive posture.
For all their verbal back-and-forth, Tsutomu was the one holding the umbrella. On this matter, Matsurika’s wishes would not be adopted.
“Like I could just stand here and let the girl walking next to me get soaked.”
“Shouldn’t stuff like this have nothing to do with being a guy or a girl?”
“Even if you don’t care, Tachibana, I do.”
“Hmm~”
Her tone practically announced I am not convinced, but Tsutomu had absolutely no intention of yielding. Besides, he was already failing to cut off the water spraying up from the road—she was drenched either way, so shielding her only from the rain falling from above would’ve been pointless at this stage. Therefore, the best course was to shield Matsurika as much as possible—he built that excuse inside his own head. Matsurika wasn’t listening, so it meant nothing.
In actual fact… one sideways glance was enough to confirm that Matsurika was already a drowned rat from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. Rain does not fall straight down. The typhoon had the wind whipped up, and there was no keeping out the sideways-driven rain. Her damp, thin summer uniform clung to her skin, and her underwear showed through it. The wet see-through. A thing of male romance.
He caught himself staring—and his eyes met Matsurika’s. She beamed at him, and he hastily faced forward again. This girl was sensitive to gazes at the best of times. And the distance between them was close. And she already knew Tsutomu’s lecherous true nature. There was no glossing over any of it.
“Hey, Kariya-kun. Look over here.”
He could hear the mischief in her voice. She was plainly primed to tease him.
But letting that voice lead him around just because he’d been caught was galling.
“I refuse.”
“You don’t have to sneak glances, you know. You’re allowed to look openly.”
“Hearing you say that makes me want to look even less.”
“Ugh, what a pain.”
“How does that even follow?”
“Who knows~?”
The Matsurika walking beside him was the school’s idol, and at the same time RIKA—the secret account of no small renown in social media circles, poster of erotic selfies. Sexual talk that would’ve been jaw-dropping coming from any other girl, and gazes with their base intentions on full display: she had the composure to let all of it roll right off her. To men, she was a rare and precious existence—so welcome, in any number of senses, that one could almost worship her—but Tsutomu felt that even so, one ought to know the time and the place. At the very least, staring full-on in the middle of this downpour was beyond the pale. That was a problem as a man—or rather, one had to say, as a human being.
Knowing all of that and asking anyway was exactly where her quality fell short, but he was hardly in a position to complain. His newly made friend was a girl who refused to be handled by half measures. And yet he could not make himself dislike her.
“Hey, Kariya-kun.”
“What is it?”
“Is it fun?”
“Yeah. It is.”
The answer came instantly. And it was the truth.
His usual walk home was spent with his mouth pressed into a line, thinking of nothing but how quickly he could reach his front door. His heart never once danced like this, and his mouth never once loosened. For all the savagery of the conditions, his feet weren’t even heavy.
If this couldn’t be called fun, he rather suspected nothing in the world could.
“Mm-hm. Looks like you’re not lying.”
A transparent smile surfaced on Matsurika’s face.
A face that stayed beautiful even with rain and mud splattered across it.
That girl was his friend, and she was walking beside him.
Walking home together, just the two of them. Youth, in its purest form.
“You’re right. Walking home with you, Tachibana… feels good.”
“Ooh, when you say it that hard, I get all embarrassed.”
“Really? I’d have thought you were used to hearing it by now.”
The moment he asked, her mood went sour without warning. She puffed out her cheeks and wouldn’t even try to meet his eyes. The transformation was so abrupt and so utterly inexplicable that he found himself at a loss.
“Haaah… That’s not it. That’s not what I meant.”
“Not what? What’s not it?”
“It’s nooothing.”
“That’s not ‘nothing.’ Tachibana, you’re angry right now, aren’t you?”
“I am not angry. This is just how I always am.”
“You look angry from every possible angle.”
“Kariya-kun, is your glasses prescription maybe wrong?”
A pale finger reached out and pushed up the frames of Tsutomu’s glasses.
Blindsided by the sheer suddenness of it, his reaction came far too late. The lenses pressed against his rain-wet face, warping his view of the world.
“Tachibana, you… what do you think you’re doing!”
“I! Don’t! Knooow!”
Hehe… hehehe… ahaha…
Matsurika’s laughter rang out and echoed everywhere. A bright, clear voice that refused to lose to the ceaseless drumming of the rain.
Listening to it, the small grievances stopped mattering altogether.
This is exactly what’s so troublesome about her…
Before he knew it, he was being swept along at her pace.
It was always like this. And there was no fighting it.
“Did you say something?”
“…I didn’t say anything.”
That was all he barely managed to put into words.
While holding down the grin spreading across his face.