"Can we play another one?" I said, as if I were in a hurry.
My mood deteriorated as I played, as I saw that I was unable to sink more than three balls, while she beat me every time.
Deep down, I was grateful that she wasn't making it easy for me; I would feel awful if I were so childish and useless that Aitsuki had to let herself win just to make me feel good.
She noticed this change too, trying to calm me down, since it was just a game after all. We had come here to have fun, to disconnect for a while, not for me to be like this.
" Are you sure? I think that's enough for today—"
"I can pay for the time we're here, it's just one more game. Please."
"Okay. One more. But this is the last one, otherwise we'll be having a late dinner."
I was pretty sure it was a flimsy excuse; it was clear she didn't want to see me like that. Or maybe not, maybe she didn't care and what she said was literal. I didn't understand her at all.
At the beginning of the get-together, she seemed less expressive than when I first met her. Is it because she's upset that she couldn't go play with her friends and has to make do with a kid?
Clack!
By breaking the triangle, I managed to put a flat ball in one of the corners.
"See? Then you say you don't put anything in. You're improving."
Now, however, she had that same attitude. She wasn't at all energetic, but she certainly seemed more open, less cold.
"It was just luck."
I approached the cue ball with the cue, and with a new way of holding the tip that I had invented, believing that Aitsuki's was hindering me, I struck it. I didn't sink any flat balls.
"Tsk…"
It was her turn now. It's worth noting that the atmosphere wasn't like before, when I was learning and having fun with billiards; it felt more tense, and I was holding back. Before I took my turn, she spoke to me.
"Riku, you can't expect to sink a ball every time. Not even I can do that." He didn't manage to sink any of his own balls.
"It's not about sinking a ball every time, it's about sinking one once in a while, it's at least getting to the black hole. I know I can't win against you."
"You can do it perfectly well; just because he's played more doesn't mean he's better than you." I hit the black ball.
"It's clear you're better than me."
"That might change with time, I told you before, you have to get used to it."
"I'm sure that even if I get used to it, I won't improve at all."
While we talked, we continued playing. She pocketed one ball and left another near a hole with her extra turn.
" You don't know that. And besides, it's impossible not to improve once you get used to it. You'll find it much easier; the same thing happened to me when I first played."
"But that's for you. You're already a smart person—you even have the highest average in your class! It's normal that it's not difficult for you."
I hit one of my balls, but I didn't put it in. Aitsuki didn't know where she'd gotten that information at first, but her imagination saved her from making a serious mistake. She remained calm, though she added a little more emotion to her voice.
"Grades have nothing to do with it. Getting nines or tens doesn't mean I'm going to be better or worse at this."
She made the hole with the ball she left near a hole. She didn't make another one in the extra inning.
"Of course it's related! A stupid person isn't going to get a high grade. If you're not capable of getting a good grade, you'll probably end up with a bad job, and that's what you'll do your whole life. And a stupid person doesn't know how to play pool either."
I was getting carried away in the conversation, saying whatever came to mind. Everything except what I really didn't want to say. I tried to bring the topic back to the forefront in a rather brazen way.
However, she focused on what I said first. I didn't make a single mistake.
"Even if you get bad grades, you can still get into a lot of places. The important thing isn't having a doctorate or something extravagant like that, it's trying to pursue what you're passionate about and what's within your reach. Not everyone is good at studying; some people find it harder." He didn't get a single ball in the net.
She doesn't understand me at all . I took it a little personally that she thought I got bad grades. Even though I don't study much, I worry about grades and exams.
"I'm not saying this because I got a bad grade, although they're not as good as the ones you're talking about, but I mean that it's crucial. You said it yourself, 'within reach,' there are people who may not have any passion within reach, and all because of who they are, because of their shortcomings."
I stopped playing for a moment to clear my head. I was thinking, how can you be someone if you can't even get a basic education? If you can't even offer anything of value to people?
Continuing the game, I managed to score another one of my shots. I stopped to talk.
" That's why it's so important to fix them. I can't be happy with a low-paying job that I don't like. It's the same here. I can't be happy if I'm losing all the time…"
I missed the shot I was going for, and I didn't hit anything.
" You don't have to win to enjoy playing with someone. And we're not playing seriously, I won't say anything if you don't win. Before, you didn't know how to play and you were having fun."
Aitsuki didn't go to hit the cue ball, and she looked at me while she spoke, unlike what she always did when it was her turn. It made me uncomfortable.
"But that's not how real life works. If you make a mistake, if you do something wrong, if you lose, people aren't going to pat you on the back and tell you to do better next time. Mistakes have consequences; there's nothing good to be gained from them."
He said it as if it made perfect sense, incredulous that anyone could contradict him. And contradict him they did.
"Life isn't so bad."
Aitsuki softened her tone deliberately, and her face twisted with a certain pain, a feeling of revulsion mixed with pity for seeing me like this. Of everything she said, that was the only thing that truly resonated with me.
"Everything may seem unfair or difficult, and that you have many things against you, even more so for you, right now."
"And it is! No matter how hard I try..."
"You won't notice it now, but all that effort will take you somewhere, somewhere that might be the best place for you."
She hit the white ball, and didn't pocket any other ball.
" But I don't know if that will be the case in the future. I don't know what it will be like. I don't even know what I want to do when I grow up."
Without meaning to, I ended up saying too much. That made me realize I had to be more defensive, that I couldn't be spoiling everything right here and now.
"You're still in middle school, you don't need to worry about those things. The teachers at the high school you go to will nag you about it more than enough, but they'll do it for your own good."
I didn't hit a single ball. All this talking was making me not want to play. She kept talking.
"Besides, it's not the end of the world if you make a mistake; that way, you can learn from what you did wrong and do it right next time. And if there's something you're bad at, there will always be plenty of other things you're good at."
In both of her turns, she didn't sink a single ball.
Learn? What am I going to learn from something that shouldn't have happened in the first place? Knowing what led me to that mistake doesn't mean there aren't other ways to make mistakes. Do I have to go through every possible mistake just to do one thing perfectly, or do I have to take my chances and hope I don't mess anything up?
"I'm not going to learn from mistakes; there are things I should know beforehand. And is it worth learning from a mistake if you can't undo the damage it causes? There's nothing more to be gained from them. They're anomalies, failures, things that shouldn't have happened. What I have to do is improve and learn, and what better way to learn than by doing things right?"
I managed to get another one of my balls in, but in the extra turn, unintentionally, I ended up getting one of Aitsuki's balls in.
"Even if I do everything right, there's always going to be something wrong! If I get the ball in, I'll do it wrong later. If I don't get it in, I'll never reach the black ball. If I reach the black ball, I won't get it in; and if I win, I'll lose the next game."
"If things like this happen, it's just bad luck, and that's not your fault."
A hole the same size as the pockets on a pool table began to form in my chest. Of course it's bad luck , of course!
"What if it does depend on me? If that's precisely why I no longer have..." I stopped speaking mid-sentence, sighing in frustration at almost spilling my story to her.
I'm not going to get anywhere by saying whatever I want to her. What am I going to achieve? Mostly just making people feel sorry for me.
"But you want to tell him, don't you?"
A white place .
Riku still had the cue in his hands, he still had the pool table in front of him, but the one within his vision was not Aitsuki, but himself.
He wasn't a fan of him interrupting the moment when he was supposed to be having fun, but his appearance implied that Riku found it anything but funny.
I can't. If I tell her anything, she'll tell my father. Besides, Aitsuki is just an acquaintance. If I were to tell someone, I'd tell Otsuki, not her.
He looked away from him. He thought about Otsuki for a moment, the only person he felt he could trust, apart from maybe Haruka.
"But Otsuki was also an acquaintance."
The label Riku gave him. He said it with a wide smile on his face, as he climbed onto the pool table.
I know her better now! She's trusted me enough to talk about her father, and she's been so kind to me even after everything I've put her through. Anyone should hate me after something like that, but she doesn't! She's even called me her friend…
"But Otsuki is just an acquaintance."
It returned now like a curse.
Riku has always been so firm in his decision. From the moment he left home, he knew Otsuki couldn't be his friend. How would his classmates see him if he hung out with the same girl he'd hit for something he'd already forgiven?
Riku kept holding the taco with both hands, close to his body. Partly because he remembered the video.
That's the problem. I can't befriend Otsuki, not after that. She trusts me, and yet I can't even call her a friend. I can't trust her back.
He approached the edge of the table where Riku was sitting, moving two balls aside so he could sit down, and moved even closer to Riku.
"Tell me, isn't that what friends are for?"
Riku brought the cue closer to his chest, taking a step back. He thought about Kichiro, Naomi, and Daiki.
Friends are worthless. I can't fully trust them. It would hurt even more if I had told them something, if I had opened up like that. And nothing would have changed.
A memory.
"R-Riku… You understand me too, right?…"
It was too late. After he had trampled on me, after he had ignored me… At that moment, he was only focused on Daiki… Only… Only…
"He was only focusing on Daiki!"
I was able to speak for the first time while standing in front of him. He obviously didn't let the moment pass.
"Oh, you're even talking. Where did you have the rope hidden?"
And obviously I ignored his comment. I had too much on my mind to pay attention to him.
When I saw Kichiro calming Daiki down, I thought, I thought I wanted to join them, that I wanted to be with them. But at no point did he speak to me directly. He treated me like I was in the background. First there was Daiki, then Riku.
A couple of tears escaped my eyes, but I maintained a relatively stable composure, covering half of my face with the palm of my left hand, and gripping my hair tightly.
"…All that talk about us being friends, about not wanting to lose us… He was just talking to himself. I knew it, I knew Daiki was closer to them than I was. I knew it before, when Kichiro comforted him, and when Naomi came."
" It was obvious, you only know them because of him. He's always been the heart of the group; you never hung out with Kichiro or Naomi without him. Without him, there's no group. Without you…"
"They don't care about me."
He got off the table beside me and started walking as if he were on a tightrope, moving away from me, toward the horizon behind me. That didn't take away the hole in my chest.
"… I thought about it when he first approached me."
"Oh, she's your sister... Does your sister have a boyfriend?"
This guy only wants me to sleep with my sister…
" Ah, now that I think about it, yes, it's me."
"Ew."
"You disgust me even more."
"Don't exaggerate."
This has ruined my day...
I was about to leave. I turned around and was going to go home, without my sister because she was embarrassed to see me talking to Daiki, and him talking to her.
"See you tomorrow," he told me with such enthusiasm.
And you'd believe it!
He stuck to me like glue from then on, and at first I didn't like him, but little by little, he started hanging around me just to hang around me. I started liking him more when he stopped trying to hit on my sister. It's not that he stopped completely, but he started using it to make jokes.
The more he hung out with me, the more he lost that idea that he urgently needed a girlfriend, that he wanted to be a hunk.
And I thought I was going to like him forever.
"The same person who gave me friends was the one who took them away… Haha, it's like I still have control of my life, even now."
I threw the cue I was holding in my right hand onto the pool table and turned around, walking in the same direction he had walked. I couldn't see him anywhere. That was because he was behind me.
"If they don't care about you, why did they send you messages? Why would they go to your house to see you?"
"I wasn't ready. At that moment, I didn't want to see anyone, not even them. But they didn't understand. In the end, I pretended I was ready to go to class before I'd mustered up the courage to talk to them. But it would have helped to talk to them, even if I wasn't ready, but they weren't there. Naomi was still suspended, Daiki ditched me because he decided it was his turn to shut himself away, and Kichiro was running away from me… Haha!"
I stood with my arms crossed, wandering aimlessly. He followed me, step by step, behind me.
"It's true… He said all that, and yet he still ignored me in class. I thought I'd never forget it, that I'd never forgive him. I wouldn't have cared if… he hadn't tried to calm me down."
"What a shameless guy. It's understandable that you wouldn't have accepted his words when you were with him; nobody would have. All your friends betrayed you, and then they tried to win you back? You're better off without people like that, trust me."
In the middle of my walk, he appeared next to me, walking at the same pace as me, with both hands resting on the back of his neck.
"… I could have accepted them."
"…?"
" I could have forgiven him, Daiki, Naomi… I don't know what would have happened… but…"
"Don't dwell on those people. If you'd stayed with them, they would have made everything worse."
He waved his right hand in the air, as if he wanted me to forget the idea. I let my arms hang naturally.
"Yes, I should forget about them. They're not my friends. I don't have any friends anymore. Nobody."
I clenched my hands, frustrated at having to think about it again, though now with less anger. I had accepted it. No one could deny that. I didn't want to see them anymore, not as friends, at least. Much less talk to them.
" But I don't understand. I feel bad for what I said to them, I feel bad for letting them go. I hate them, I couldn't hate them more, but there's a part of me that feels sorry for them. I feel guilty."
I clutched my chest, right above where the emptiness resided. I knew perfectly well where it came from.
"I had already decided that I hated them two weeks ago, why do I have to reaffirm it? Why do I have to feel this way?"
I stopped dead in my tracks, throwing questions into the air. I didn't think anyone would answer them, because that wasn't my intention. He stood in front of me.
"Because you miss them, Riku. That's something you can't deny either."
The mocking tone she usually had was gone, which didn't surprise me anymore, but what really shocked me was what she said. Not because I was outraged, but because I didn't know if she was right or wrong.
"No, no, no. What I miss is having friends, not them. I've been with Daiki for two years, with the others for one, but they feel like childhood friends. I miss having friends like that, not them as people. If I could, I'd forget about them. They're insignificant."
I lowered my gaze, dazzled by a white brighter than the horizon.
"They are irreplaceable. Why do you think you can't forget them? It seems you don't understand that they were and are ."your first friends. If they weren't, it wouldn't make sense for you to feel bad, to feel sorry for yourself, to feel guilty."
He placed his right hand on my shoulder, which made me look up like the head of a spring under pressure. He looked me in the eye, indifferent.
"Tell me, why are they known?"
Everything went dark.
I was in the arcade bathroom, locked inside. My face was a little damp, even though I'd dried it with my hoodie. I'd told Aitsuki I was going, but not why. It wasn't convenient.
She was worried, mostly because she knew what I was going to say before I cut myself. I didn't know how long I stayed in the bathroom, but I decided to get out as soon as possible.
She was alone in the corner with the pool tables, near the very table we were playing on. When she saw me arrive, she hesitated for a moment, but that didn't stop her from speaking.
"Are you alright? You took longer than I expected."
I tried to hide not only what had happened in the bathroom, but also to try to forget the number that had called me earlier, maintaining the same attitude as in the first game.
" Yes, I just splashed some water on my face, you know, to calm down."
"Oh. So, shall we continue?"
He didn't want to try to get a deeper answer out of me. I didn't bother to elaborate either. He probably already understood everything I wanted to say. And there was no need to bring it up again.
Aitsuki was right, it's just a game. I don't know why I was taking it so seriously anymore .
With that mindset, I took the cue from Aitsuki's hand, who offered to hold it for me until I returned, to hit the white ball, in the same way I had done dozens of times before.