Chapter 2 — Coming of age, a ceremony needed for emancipation. Part 17
"There is a point. I refuse to believe that there's no point in remembering someone you liked."
"It is pointless. Death is just that, death. And memories are memories. You're just trying to forcefully find a point where there is none."
"Sacchan." Her face clouded over, shrouded by a darkness so deep that it made the cheerful self she had been until now seem like a lie. A darkness that seemed to reflect my own.
And in addition, a dash of sorrow and pity was mixed in, something I didn't have.
"I'm really glad I met you, Sacchan. But if you tell me that remembering is completely worthless, then---"
The sheer amount of kindness in her pained me, as though piercing my heart.
"---that's just too sad."
I stood up.
"It is pointless. I don't care about your opinion, but it's pointless to me. I have no interest in you."
Then I spouted that as if pushing her away, and left the classroom.
She didn't stop me, nor did she grab my hair or call out to me.
I shouldn't have come to school—all my textbooks had been burnt to ashes alongwith my house after all. There was no meaning left in coming here.
When I left, I loudly slammed the door as a way of breaking ties with this place.
After that, it felt like a small thorn was lodged in my chest.
"Shiro," I called as I walked through the hallway.
But there was no answer.
I suspected that this could develop into something really annoying, so I headed to the infirmary only to find it completely empty. There, I took over one of the free beds to have a siesta…or more like a nap.
I curled up into a ball, covering myself with a blanket. Sleeping like a child in that position always felt good.
Still…the silver wolf wasn't beside me.
I missed his warmth and feral scent. Longing for it, I only then realized it was something I missed. If I didn't have anything—if I never had anything in the first place, everything might just have been better.
As I thought these things, I slowly started to doze off….
~~~
A cold chill bolted through my body.
Using all my strength, I leaped off the bed and landed on the floor.
A sharp knife pierced the pillow where my head had been resting just a moment before, and the impact it made bent the frame of the bed.
That kind of strength couldn't be human.
Something must have happened to her. I could see her solemnly standing like a flame, illuminated by the red sunlight that filtered through a gap in the curtains.
I had probably been asleep for a long time as it was already past the end of class according to the clock on the wall.
"You have quite the manners, attacking someone while they're asleep."
It was Budworm, whose real name I still didn't know.
Her right eye was blazing in stark contrast to her bandaged left eye, a knife was grasped in her hand, and she was still wearing the thin summer uniform with a short skirt and white knee socks.
And all I could sense from her was a resolute and sharp enmity.
That kind of enmity called for calmness. So I took out the knife I had been carrying for a long time, never using it, and unfolded the blade with a click from the lock being released.
Seeing it, she froze.
"Why…are you holding that? That is Aya's knife." She identified it with a single glance, and in turn, I replied with a low voice:
"I'm borrowing it for a bit."
At that very moment, she started laughing like a maniac.
Sounding somewhat broken, somewhat hurt, but also entirely insane.
The facial expression she pulled was one of sorrow, as though she had just let go of something, just like a broken person.
"Did you go mad?"
"Only as much as you did."
She pressed her bandaged eye with her empty left hand and bent her body backwards, making her short hair flutter without breaking her laughter for an instant.
"You know, I sold my soul to a sorcerer. Now I'm the same as you."
She loosened the scarf wrapped around her neck with her fingertips.
The red cloth fell to the floor, unveiling the white skin of her chest.
On it, a red wound had been carved out.