← The Studious Boy and the Secret Account Girl
Volume 3
Chapter 44: Sudden Turn
Chapter 44: Sudden Turn
After eating breakfast and finishing the cleanup, Tsutomu and Matsurika sat facing each other across the table.
Steam rose from the coffee cups set before them.
When he glanced at the window, sunlight was streaming in through the gap in the curtains. Though the clear sky made yesterday’s downpour seem like a lie, as far as he’d checked on his smartphone, the weather forecast was still not promising. Tsutomu understood that this sunny spell was only temporary and that he should urge Matsurika to go home.
Even knowing that, he couldn’t get the words out. He couldn’t help but realize he was reluctant to let this time alone together end.
Matsurika was a perceptive woman. She understood the situation. She had to know she should go home soon.
Yet she, too, said nothing.
She looked at Tsutomu, at the clock, out the window, at the coffee on the table. She’d been repeating the same cycle the whole time.
The time passed in a way that seemed peaceful yet was anything but composed.
“Tachibana, um…”
This wasn’t good. He steeled himself and broke the silence.
…But once he actually opened his mouth, the words wouldn’t continue. Even though he knew he had to say them, his body wouldn’t follow his brain’s orders.
“Mm… I know.”
In front of the hesitating Tsutomu, Matsurika brought the coffee cup to her lips and drank it dry. His eyes were riveted on her white throat bobbing as she gulped. The tongue that darted out to lick away the drop spilling from the corner of her lips as she pulled the cup away also drew his gaze. Each and every gesture looked bewitching, making Tsutomu’s mouth even heavier.
Matsurika, in turn, nodded with an “mm” and quietly stood up.
“…Are you going?”
“Yeah. Or… can I stay here forever?”
—There she goes again…
He started to nod, then shook his head instead. This dreamlike time was already over. Both Tsutomu and Matsurika had to face reality.
“You’re right. Well, then—thank you for having me.”
With those words, Matsurika left. The smile she’d shown at the very end was transparent, fleeting, hazy—so much so that he felt a flicker of unease, as if it had all been a dream or an illusion. He couldn’t begin to guess what she was thinking from that face. But… contrary to her seemingly about-to-disappear air, she had also seemed to be brimming with some powerful will beneath the surface. That expression—one that no words could accurately describe—burned itself deeply into Tsutomu’s mind as he remained speechless.
After Matsurika was gone, Tsutomu, left alone, looked around the room once more, and an indescribable chill welled up inside him.
“Was this house this big?”
Until now, he’d always been alone, so he’d never felt anything strange about it. But—having spent the night with Matsurika, having felt her body heat and her breathing, he was made to realize it anew.
—It’s lonely.
He returned to his room, sat down on the bed, and lay back. Though he’d slept on the sofa, the quality of his sleep hadn’t been great. He’d been stifling his yawns so Matsurika wouldn’t worry, but that had been nearing its limit. His part-time job was in the evening. He checked the clock… there was still plenty of time.
“I’ll take a nap.”
He was about to close his eyes when he noticed something.
“Yesterday, Tachibana was lying right here.”
He felt as if a sweet scent brushed past his nose. Matsurika’s scent—the one he’d savored when they’d closed to almost zero distance last night. The body heat he’d felt even without touching. The pale skin glimpsed through the daringly opened dress shirt. Realizing that everything he’d caught a glimpse of in that moment had been right here, Tsutomu felt a sudden surge of excitement. It would still be a while before he could fall into a peaceful sleep.
★
On Saturday, he woke from a second sleep and went to his part-time job. Before much time passed, he’d slipped back into his ordinary routine, and Sunday evening arrived.
Through his lenses, the clock ticked steadily on. Tomorrow was a school day. He had to go to school as usual.
“…What is this, exactly?”
He sat down on the bed in his room and muttered. Ever since Matsurika had gone home, he couldn’t put his heart into anything. Lacking focus, he’d nearly made mistakes at work several times. He’d done practically no studying at all. Having never experienced anything like this, he couldn’t even think of a way to deal with it.
As he sat there agonizing over what to do, his smartphone vibrated. His body jolted as if an electric current had run through it, and he hurriedly reached for it.
“Oh, it’s Amakusa.”
His heart sank at the name on the display. What exactly had he been expecting? It was so absurd he felt like laughing.
He sat there in a daze, not wanting to take the call, but the vibration showed no sign of stopping. It galled him to feel like he’d lost the battle of wills, but he reluctantly tapped the display and held it to his ear.
“Oh, you finally picked up, Tsutomu-san.”
“What do you want at this hour, Amakusa?”
“Whoa, were you asleep by any chance?”
“No, I was awake.”
“Then that’s good. No—it’s not.”
“Which is it?”
He tried to jab at Shiro’s phrasing, which mixed denial with affirmation, but there was no reaction. What came back in its place was an abrupt question.
“Tsutomu… hey, have you looked at our class group chat?”
“No. Is there some announcement?”
The contact info for every last classmate was registered on social media. And social media had a function that let registered users chat with each other. He’d been told to check it from time to time because urgent messages occasionally came through, but since he’d enrolled, that had never happened even once. The group chat was currently open as a place for the students to mingle. You could also say it had been abandoned.
“It’s bad, man. Like, seriously bad.”
Shiro kept repeating “bad” over and over. Tsutomu had no idea what was bad. But for this man, who was usually so nonchalant, to be this rattled, something considerable must have happened. Since Shiro wasn’t touching on the substance at all, Tsutomu, on the listening end, found himself growing increasingly irritated.
“I get that it’s bad. So what happened?”
“O-oh. Hold on a sec. First, take a look at this.”
“?”
Before he could ask what, a message came through from Shiro. An image was attached.
“Th-this is…”
He was struck speechless.
White skin tracing soft curves, a crimson bikini. She wore nothing but the swimsuit, and most of her figure was laid bare. Glossy straight black hair that reached her waist. Her face was hidden, but—
“This is… Tachibana?”
The words slipped out before he could stop them. Even without seeing her face, it was clear at a glance. No matter how you looked at it, it was unmistakably Matsurika’s body. There was no way he could mistake it. Her secret account, “RIKA,” which he’d been following since last year, had many similar photos posted on it. Tsutomu was a man who had collected every last one of them. It wasn’t anything to be proud of, and he wasn’t about to mention it.
“Oh, you can tell, Tsutomu-san?”
“…I suppose. Anyway, where did this come from?”
“So, like, this image suddenly got dropped into the chat a little while ago.”
“Who did something like that?”
Anger seeped into the voice he fired back. Posting a half-naked photo of a girl from the same class into the chat—that could only be—
“Tachibana-san did.”
“So who—”
“Like I said, Tachibana-san did it.”
“Huh?”
He couldn’t understand what Shiro was saying.
“Tachibana-san attached this image—well, the original was deleted right away, but…”
“But?”
“Well… the other people who saw the image found some secret account or something on Twitter. Erotic images are getting pasted onto the timeline one after another, and nobody can stop it.”
The “RIKA” account—Matsurika’s secret account that had been discovered—was also in the middle of a massive blowup. Shiro added that some classmate, finding it amusing, had exposed Matsurika’s face photos and personal information, and things were an absolute mess.
The hand holding his smartphone trembled. Shock and anger. The emotions that had blown far past their limit couldn’t be named.
“…”
“So anyway, you two have been getting along lately, so I was like, is he okay~”
“…”
The one who had first dropped the image was Matsurika herself. Had she made a mistake when posting to her secret account? But—this was fatal. The image had already been deleted, but the existence of her secret account had been discovered by her classmates. And through them, Matsurika’s face and personal information had been exposed on the internet. This wasn’t a problem that could be dismissed as a silly prank. They were high schoolers—they had to know better.
Matsurika had reigned as the school’s idol, but perhaps she’d been earning various resentments and displeasures behind the scenes. Tsutomu had actually seen and heard signs that negative feelings toward her were on the verge of exploding, but…
—Even so, this was no joke!?
Once information leaked onto the internet, it was impossible to erase it completely. No joke—this was a mistake of the irrecoverable kind.
“Tsutomu-san? Hey~, are you listening?”
Shiro’s voice was already distant, failing to reach Tsutomu’s ears.
—Tachibana, what are you planning to do?
He looked down at the bed. At the bed she had lain on the other day. Then he turned his gaze to the window. A beautiful night sky with twinkling stars was visible. The stormy weather that had been forecast never came, but a great storm was raging on the internet.
He swallowed hard. His heartbeat pounded in an irregular rhythm. A chill ran down his spine.
“Tachibana…”
He’d thought her secret account might be discovered by someone someday. But it shouldn’t have happened like this.
Tomorrow was a school day. Would Matsurika come to school? What face am I supposed to make when that time comes? What faces will the other classmates make?
Up until yesterday, everything had been so peaceful and calm… He couldn’t understand why it had turned out like this.
He didn’t understand—but that smile Matsurika had shown him as she was leaving suddenly flashed through his mind.