← The Studious Boy and the Secret Account Girl
Volume 3
Chapter 30: Matsurika's Proposal He Can't Simply Agree To
Chapter 30: Matsurika’s Proposal He Can’t Simply Agree To
“Ugh…”
Just as they finally made it to the station, Matsurika let out a groan.
It was the kind of voice a beautiful girl should never let slip, but he had no intention of scolding her.
Tsutomu felt exactly the same way, and wanted to clutch his head too.
The station was overflowing with people in the most literal sense.
Under a downpour that rendered umbrellas useless, drenched people stood frozen in place everywhere he looked.
To put it mildly, it was a miserable sight.
“Kariya-kun, look at this.”
What Matsurika held out was her smartphone.
On the screen was displayed the trains’ operational status.
For Tsutomu, who walked to school, it was a page he rarely had any use for.
“…So we were too late, huh.”
The website showed “Suspended” in red. The scheduled time for resumption—undecided.
Judging by how rough the weather ahead looked on the Meteorological Agency’s site he’d checked earlier, it seemed hopeless that service would resume today.
From inside the station to the street outside, angry shouts and curses mingled. More than one person was pressing in on the station staff.
“Everyone’s screaming in despair.”
Searching Twitter turned up line after line of comments from people stranded just like Matsurika.
The rainy-season front was cutting straight across the Japanese archipelago. Which was why similar scenes were playing out all over the country. Merely imagining it was exhausting.
Complaining wouldn’t fix anything, as far as he could tell, but he supposed people simply couldn’t help venting a gripe or two. He understood the feeling.
“If trains are out… how about having your family come pick you up?”
The suggestion that left Tsutomu’s mouth was perfectly sensible. There should have been nothing odd about it… and yet.
The students who had stayed behind at school had all been waiting for their families, after all.
It struck him as strange, even to himself, that he hadn’t asked her that from the start.
The impact of her “request” had been so overwhelming that his brain hadn’t been rotating properly… that was the story he was going with.
He wanted to heave a sigh, but there was no point bringing it up now.
Contrary to his hopes, however, Matsurika’s reaction was not favorable.
“Nope. There’s no way they’d come get me.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. They’re both busy.”
Her tone didn’t blame her parents.
But neither did it carry any hint of defending them.
If anything—it sounded like something close to resignation.
“Then… a taxi, maybe?”
Looking around, he saw taxis clustered all around the station.
He wouldn’t go so far as to say other people’s misfortune tastes like honey, but for the drivers, this was prime moneymaking time.
Customers who’d learned the trains weren’t running were jostling one another to board.
“I don’t have that kind of money on me.”
“I don’t know where your house is, Tachibana, but is it far from here?”
Matsurika gave a little nod. A droplet sliding from her bangs fell to her chest.
Tracing the water drop with his eyes, Tsutomu unconsciously pressed a hand to the pocket where his wallet sat.
He thought maybe lending her money would solve things, but unfortunately he had none on him.
Tsutomu didn’t exactly carry large sums to school either. There’d be no use for it, and it would be dangerous if something happened.
“If trains, parents, and taxis are all no good… then what do we do?”
“What should we do?”
She tilted her head at him, and he found himself at a loss for an answer.
Because in all his life, he had rarely run into a situation like this.
His brain held no stock of appropriate responses whatsoever.
“What about asking a friend?”
When he voiced the first thing that came to mind, the school’s idol quietly shook her head.
Her waterlogged hair didn’t so much as float; it clung, heavy.
“I don’t have friends like that.”
“Your social circle’s pretty wide, isn’t it, Tachibana?”
“I’m never short of people to chat about nothing with at school, but when money changes hands… well, you know.”
“Hmm…”
Many friends, but not a single one she could depend on. An unexpected thing to hear.
He didn’t think she was lying in this situation, but precisely because he knew the Matsurika of the classroom, it sounded all the lonelier for it.
Well, then again… he often heard stories of friendships falling apart over money, so he could well understand the urge to hold back.
“Then how about staying over at someone’s place for the night?”
“Like I keep saying, I don’t have friends like that.”
“Really?”
“That is indeed the case.”
Matsurika frowned and puffed out her cheeks. On this point, Tsutomu couldn’t exactly talk big himself.
Suppose he went somewhere and couldn’t get home, and someone told him, “Why not stay at Shiro’s place?”—he’d shake his head all the same.
Even calling each other friends in the loosest sense, he and Shiro weren’t that close. Presumably the same went for Matsurika and her other classmates.
“…Um, Kariya-kun?”
“What?”
He asked out of mere formality, but he could more or less guess what words would come next.
No way to get home, no friends to stay with. Which left… few options for Tsutomu and Matsurika, who were nothing more than high school students.
That said, that was only his guess, and part of him insisted it was hardly a realistic idea. You could call it escapism.
“Let. Me. Stay! Please!”
It was a spectacularly lovely smile. The very image of the old saying about a beauty dripping with water—except this time, it was literal.
The sheer force of it nearly won his nod, but he held out at the last possible second.
Unless he clenched his teeth, he felt like he’d be carried away then and there.
“Weren’t we just discussing how you don’t have friends to stay with?”
“With the exception of Kariya-kun.”
Those were dangerously appealing words.
Among her countless friends, Tsutomu alone got special treatment.
Even knowing it was lip service, it tickled his sense of superiority.
All the more so when the one saying it was a girl as special as Matsurika.
Against a psychological attack of overwhelming power—Tsutomu endured. His reason was screaming, high and thin.
“…Just to be clear, I’m a boy and you’re a girl, Tachibana. You understand that, right?”
“Um… are you expecting something?”
“I’m expressing concern here!?”
“B-but you’re not the kind of guy who’d just dump me out in a downpour like this… right, Kariya-kun?”
Looking up at him, she struck right where it hurt.
Her words weren’t wrong. He did want to be that kind of good person.
At least, toward Matsurika. As for the rest of them, he couldn’t care less.
And that was exactly why he couldn’t readily nod to the proposal of welcoming her into his home and sharing a night under the same roof.
“Let’s head back to school.”
How about borrowing the night-duty room or something and seeing the night through there?
At the very least, it felt more proper than staying at the home of a boy of that delicate age.
“Don’t say that, even as a joke.”
Matsurika’s response came fast and hard, her face so dead serious it stole his words.
He could sense her ironclad resolve: absolutely no way was she spending a night at school, not on her precious weekend.
“Then, uh, a net café around here?”
“Isn’t that even more dangerous?”
He’d said it himself, and he agreed completely.
A soaked-through high school girl riding out the night alone in a manga café.
If something happened, nobody could call it strange.
Tsutomu’s lecher brain was ringing the alarm at full power.
“No, but… come on, isn’t that out of the question?”
“It’ll be fine because it’s you, Kariya-kun! I believe in you!”
“Honestly, I don’t trust myself.”
It was the honest truth, from the bottom of his heart.
Matsurika had to know all about adolescent boys’ below-the-belt maneuvers.
After all, Tsutomu was a follower of her erotic secret account.
He hadn’t revealed which account specifically, but he had told Matsurika that much.
If that Tsutomu invited Matsurika home and the two of them were left alone… he did not believe his reason would hold.
“Well, if something happens… we’ll just deal with it then, I guess?”
“Spare me…”
To dodge her smile, he pressed a hand to his forehead and looked up at the sky.
The heavy, thick black clouds showed no gaps; the rain came on and on without end.
Looking around, he saw a sea of people at their wits’ end. It was the evening rush, and the crowd only kept growing.
Everyone looked utterly spent, the light gone from their eyes.
—Like hell I could just leave her in a place like this.
Matsurika was a friend. Wanting to help a friend in trouble was only natural.
He heaved a long, long sigh. He took off his glasses, closed his eyelids, and pressed them lightly with his fingers.
When he opened his eyes again, his gaze met Matsurika’s. Tsutomu slowly opened his mouth.
“…You’re really okay with this?”
“Yeah. No matter what happens, I will absolutely never hold it against you, Kariya-kun. I swear it.”
Declared that boldly, there was no way he could refuse.
It wasn’t that he took her words at face value… but he didn’t want to betray the trust she placed in him.
Her body, drenched by the long rain, gave a shiver. She didn’t look like she had the luxury of dawdling any longer.
Once his mind was made up, all that remained was to act.
Standing around forever in front of a station in this rain would do no one any good.
“All right. We head back the way we came.”
“Thank you, Kariya-kun… oh.”
“Hm? What is it?”
“Can we stop at a convenience store on the way?”
“Ah—sure.”
The words that slipped from Matsurika’s lips were perfectly ordinary ones.
There was nothing strange about them… there shouldn’t have been, and yet they lodged stubbornly in his ears.
That dazzling smile was starting to look awfully suspicious. The ominous air was like the sky before a storm.