Precious Spring

“Takamatsu-san! I like you! Please go out with me!”

Tomori stood amid the drifting cherry blossoms, utterly dumbstruck.

On that mid-March morning, she’d found a letter slipped into her shoe locker, asking her to please wait somewhere in the school yard after class, saying that it’s important. She didn’t doubt that for a second when she read it. To her, a letter like this was a muffled cry from the heart. It couldn’t possibly even occur to her to ignore it.

It wasn’t signed. She didn’t recognize the handwriting, either. So Tomori began to think.

It couldn’t have been Saki-chan. The prose lacked the poised, regal air she had about her. And the penmanship was rough and sloppy in parts. Not that there was anything wrong with that - Tomori thought it was really pretty, the way the letters crooked, the way their shapes and sizes varied. But Saki-chan had the most beautiful, refined, elegant handwriting Tomori had ever seen. This wasn’t hers.

It couldn’t have been Ano-chan, either. Her handwriting was messy, yes, but not in the same way. It was curvier, bouncier. There wasn’t a single heart anywhere on the page, either, and the stationery wasn’t even pink, it was a bluish off-white. But more than that, it didn’t sound like her. It didn’t feel like her, either. She’d never known Anon to communicate through written words when she could have simply walked up and spoken them. She was the best at speaking out of anyone Tomori knew. Language simply flowed out of her, steadily and gracefully like water through a little creek deep in the forest right after the first ice of the year had melted. To Tomori, whose words stuttered and broke apart just as soon as they left her, it was amazing. Mesmerizing, even. It was so incredibly human, just like everything else about her.

Tomori ran down her mental list of Haneoka acquaintances, but she couldn’t narrow it down at all. She didn’t know anyone else at school all that well, after all. Mitake-senpai and the others were kind to her, of course, but she’d never shared more than a few short pleasantries with any of them. She was at a loss.

And so she waited, like the letter asked, in the small nook by the pond on the eastern side of the yard, where a small cherry tree grew and shed its petals onto the water.

Soon enough, she turned up. A girl with a short, messy bob of brown hair, wearing a round pair of glasses and a first-year necktie. Tomori didn’t recognize her. After some fidgeting with her hands, the girl began to speak.

“Takamatsu-…san. You… you probably don’t know me, but… I know you.” Her eyes darted nervously around the yard. “I’m… Mitsuzawa, from 1-C. Mitsuzawa Kaho.”

“…Mitsuzawa-san. Um, I’m… It’s a pleasure to… meet you.”
Tomori gave her a small, awkward bow. The girl didn’t respond. Tomori thought she seemed scared, though she didn’t know why that might be.

“Um. I’ll keep it short. I… I transferred in late in the year, you see. So you probably haven’t seen much of me. But we met once, a couple of months ago, because I tripped while I was carrying some papers to the staff office for day duty and you were there and you helped me pick them up. And. And…”

Mitsuzawa stopped herself short. She fiddled with the collar of her shirt.

“I-I-I… I couldn’t take my eyes off of you, I wasn’t sure why, and I thought your voice was really nice. And I was thinking about you all day that day and I asked my friends and they told me you’re in a band, so I… I went to listen to a couple of your songs and they were so, so good, I ended up buying both your albums and I’ve been to two of your concerts and, and the first time I saw you up on that stage, I knew, I really knew.”

“O-oh. Um… T-Thank you. That makes me really happy to hear,” Tomori said, unsure if it was the correct answer. She really was happy to hear it, though.

The two stood in silence for what felt like an eternity. Mitsuzawa’s breathing was ragged and audible. The cherry blossoms swirled in the wind around them like a gentle pink tornado.

“Um… what is it that you… ‘knew’?,” Tomori finally asked.

Mitsuzawa recoiled, then looked away. “…Do I really have to say it?”

“…I’m sorry, I just don’t know what you mean… It’s… it’s my fault, I’m sure,” Tomori said, her speech growing frantic.

“N-No, no, no, I’m the one who called you here it’s fine just give me a second to prepare. Just one second.” Mitsuzawa took a deep, long breath, then exhaled, then inhaled again. And then she looked Tomori straight in the eyes for the first time.

Takamatsu-san, “I like you,” she said. “I really, really like you,” she added, now that Tomori remembered. “Please go out with me,” she asked.

Tomori didn’t even know where to start.

Should she say thank you? It seemed like she should, but… no. That wasn’t right.

It’s not as if she was unaware of the gravity of this situation, to be clear. She could tell this girl was trying so, so, so hard to force something from the recesses of her very being and out through her mouth. She knew what that looked like, and she knew how it felt. Of course she did.

But something about it just couldn’t reach her. Like a foreign language, or a garbled radio signal.

That was Tomori’s own fault, of course. She knew that much.

She heard Mitsuzawa’s words echo in her head.

“I like you.”

She thought she knew what that meant, definitionally speaking. It had taken her a long time to triangulate from all the ways people used it, but she’d managed it. To Tomori, it meant that stirring, tense-yet-soft feeling she got somewhere in her chest or in her stomach when she was around certain people, and she felt safe and warm and comfortable and infinitely thankful they were there but also terrified they might leave and never come back. That feeling, she was more than familiar with.

But… no one had ever told her they “liked” her. She couldn’t even conceive of the idea, in fact. What was there to “like”? She wasn’t like everyone else, like the people she herself “liked.” She didn’t have their presence, their sheer unbridled humanity. When those people walked into a room, the air itself changed. Like reality bent itself around them. Not Tomori. She felt more like a ghost than a flesh and blood person, a formless ghost trapped on the other side of a thick glass screen, trying desperately to break through to the other side. She couldn’t imagine someone finding enough of a shape to her being to think of her in that way. She couldn’t even feel that shape herself.

Still, she couldn’t deny the expression the girl in front of her wore, the way her lips trembled as she spoke. She was being offered something incredibly precious, something sacred, irreplaceable. What could she even say in response? What was that stock phrase—’thank you, but I’m not interested?’ Just thinking about speaking those words tasted like gritty, bitter ash in Tomori’s mouth. Did she even have the right to deny this budding flower its water and sunlight? Her? This pitiful creature, who couldn’t even so much as pretend to be human?

It didn’t make sense.

It just didn’t make sense. She couldn’t find an answer. So she stalled for time.

The next day, in the 1-A classroom——

“Wait. Wait, you got confessed to? Oh my gosh.” Anon leaned over Tomori’s desk as she sat backwards on her own chair. “Tell me more, tell me more! Is she cute?”

Tomori considered this question with the gravity it deserved.

“I… I think so. I like her glasses. They’re really big.”

“Hmmmm. What about her personality, huh? Is she the shy type, or a little more like me? Hmm?”

“She seems… nervous.” Tomori began to doodle something on her notebook, without looking down at it. “But I think she’s nice. I really don’t know her very well, though…”

“And? You tell her yes, or no? What’s the scoop?” Anon leaned even further forward, her eyes glittering.

“I told her that… that I needed time to think about it.”

“Eh? You told her what?!” Anon slumped backwards in defeat. “Tomori~in! That’s no good! You can’t play with a girl’s heart like that!”

Tomori recoiled. “Play…? I don’t… That’s not what I’m… doing…”

“That’s the last thing anyone wants to hear when they confess, you know!” Anon pointed a stern, wagging finger at Tomori, who averted her eyes towards the window, guilt welling up in her stomach.

At this sight, Anon let her expression soften. Her voice glided down into a kinder, softer tone.

“Well… I don’t not get how you feel. Kinda hard to just start dating someone if you just learned their name yesterday, right?”

“I don’t know, Ano-chan… I really am thinking about it.”

“You are? Hmmm… then what’s the hangup?”

“I just… don’t know if I could give her what she wants. If that’s even something I can give anyone.” The doodles on Tomori’s notebook grew more haphazard, and more intense.

“Hmmm? I think you totally could, though. With those lyrics you write… Ooh, I bet you could write her some love poems! Romeo and Juliet-style! Yeah, yeah!” Anon’s eyes shone with youthful fantasy. “Ah, crap, now I’m jealous. Sure you don’t wanna date me instead? Sike. Haha.”

“…Eh?”

“Nothing! Don’t worry about it!!!”

“O-okay. But… you think I should write her… a poem?”

“It’s just an idea,” Anon said, rocking backwards in her chair. “You’re good at that stuff, y’know?”

Soyo sighed. “Yeah. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this story.”

On the same day, in the early afternoon, Tomori sat across from Soyo in a small cafe near Tsukinomori. Soyo had a cup of Earl Grey tea; Tomori, a glass of water. Tomori had asked her here, looking for advice.

Sunlight streamed in through a threadbare set of curtains and landed on the table, glimmering. Soyo’s face was hidden in a gentle shadow,

“…What do you think I should do, Soyo-chan?” Tomori gripped her glass, fidgeting with it, playing with the condensation.

“What do I think?” Soyo took a sip of her tea, then set it down, the clinking of ceramic punctuating her words. “I think that you should turn her down, of course. And that you should do it as soon as possible.”

“B-but—”

“You’re not seriously considering agreeing to this, are you?”

“I just can’t help but think… If I went out with her, maybe… maybe we could work something out. And then… I wouldn’t have to hurt her.”

“Even though you don’t know her?,” Soyo asked.

“…I… Maybe I could get to know her. It… it can’t hurt to try.”

“Oh, it certainly can.” Soyo caught a smirk in the corner of her mouth. “Is that something you’re prepared to do? It might take a lot of effort. It might even pull you away from the band.”

“N-no. No, I–”

“Tomori-chan.” Soyo spoke her name in a stern, cold tone, freezing her in place.

“Sooner or later you’re going to have to learn that you can’t have it all,” she added.

Tomori’s heart sank. She gripped her skirt in her hands and hung her head, with a pained, confused look on her face. “…I don’t… know what that means,” she whimpered. And she didn’t, but still the words struck a dissonant chord. “It’s not… like that.”

“Are you sure? Because I’ve noticed. You always try to find this happy middle to every situation you find yourself in. A solution where everyone gets what they want, no hard feelings, no lingering regrets.” She sounded like ice; she took another sip. “It’s a nice thought. But you have to be realistic. You and I both know it wouldn’t work out.”

“I know. …I know,” Tomori finally conceded. She felt nothing but dread at the responsibility it would entail, at the looming, dark cloud of unfamiliar rituals and expectations it would bring. “But it just… It doesn’t… feel right to just say no. Those feelings… they deserve more than that. Mitsuzawa-san, she was… crying out for something.”

Soyo sighed, her breath heavy with defeat. “Sure. I get that. It’s not like I can’t imagine how she feels,” she mused, now sounding just a little gentler. “Listen, Tomori-chan. You might not be able to make this all just work out. But if anyone can make her feel understood, it’s you.”

“Mm. Happens to me all the time,” Raana said, casually. She kept her eyes on the sky above and her hand on the tabby cat sleeping on her stomach.

“Eh? W-wait, really?” Tomori sat herself up and looked over at Raana. Blades of wet grass clung to the back of her white shirt.

Another day had passed. It was a Saturday, in the twilight of the early evening. The two were laying side by side on a stretch of greenery by the river, watching the pink-stained clouds pass by, drifting like wood through a river.

“Mhm. Kouhais come up to me and say that sorta thing.” Raana raised her other hand and used it to mimic a mouth opening and closing. “Kaname-senpai, I like you. You’re so cool, with your guitar. Go out with me,” she quoted, in a perfect monotone.

“A-and that happens a lot? How often?,” Tomori asked. Something unpleasant was welling up in her stomach, something knotted and ugly, though she wasn’t sure what it was.

Raana held up two fingers in response.

“…Just twice?,” Tomori asked.

“Per week.”

“O-oh.” Her stomach churned a little more. “And… how… do you respond?”

“Don’t wanna. But thanks.”

Tomori finally laid back down on the grass and looked up at the clouds.

“…Have you… ever thought about saying yes to them?”

“Nope.”

“…How come?”

“Hmm.” Raana rubbed her chin and closed her eyes for a few seconds before coming up with an answer. “Just doesn’t feel right. Suffocating.”

“But… how can you just refuse? Isn’t it hard, when someone’s… offering you their heart? To just turn them down?”

Raana giggled, turned her head, and gave Tomori a smile. Tomori stared back at her, blinking in bemusement.

“If I don’t wanna, then I don’t.” Raana looked back up at the sky. “Can’t be helped.”

Tomori sighed weakly. “It’s just… seeing her in front of me, like that… It made me think, who am I to say no?”

“Tomori.”

“Eh?”

“You’re Tomori.”

“I–No, that’s not what I–”

“And Tomori is interesting. ‘Cos she does funny, interesting things. And she does them because she really wants to, and she always gives it her all.”

“O-oh…”

“Doing something just ‘cos someone asked you to… that’d be pretty boring,” Raana said. “I bet that girl would say so too. If she really likes you.”

“I… But, how do I know?”

“Mm?”

“If I really… want to do it or not. I don’t even know what that’s supposed to feel like.”

Raana looked up at the clouds. A second passed, then another.

“Home,” she finally said.

“Eh?”

“It has to feel like home,” Raana said.

“…And what… does ‘home’ feel like?”

“Mm. Like when we’re on the stage. With Rikki and the others. That’s home.”

“…Ah.”

“Tomori, look.” Raana pointed at the sky. “That cloud looks like Rikki.”

“Oh! I-I can… kinda see it…”

“…Taki-chan.” Tomori stopped in her tracks halfway down the pedestrian bridge. She walked over to the railing and gripped her hands around its top.

“Hm? What’s up, Tomori?”

“There’s something I want to ask you about.” Tomori looked up at the sky and took a deep breath. “Y-you see… there’s this girl, at school. She… asked me to go out with her.”

“…Oh.”

Even cloaked in the shadows of night, anyone other than Takamatsu Tomori would have noticed the life draining from Taki’s eyes. “That’s. Yeah,” she added, eloquently. “Mhm.”

Tomori turned to look at her and began. “I—”

“Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you should go for it.” Taki finally started to talk, and once she did, she didn’t stop. “You know, we’re young. It’s important to live our lives to their fullest, and all.”

Tomori tilted her head.

“Yeah! Ah, I’m really happy for you, Tomori,” Taki continued. “Oh, but if you’re worried about both of you being girls, I mean, that’s totally normal these days. It’s the Reiwa era, right?” Her voice began to fray, like it was coming apart at its seams.

“Taki-chan.” Tomori tried to interrupt, but her words didn’t reach her.

“Yeah, it’s normal. Actually, there’s two girls in my class who are dating. No one bats an eye at it, really. So you should follow your heart, do what makes you happy, and—”

“Taki-chan!”

Tomori finally raised her voice and pulled on Taki’s sleeve, as if to try and wake her from a dream.

“I’m not… going to do it.”

“…Huh?” Taki looked back at her like a deer in headlights.

“I’m not going to… go out with her, Taki-chan. I thought about it. But… it wouldn’t feel right.”

Something that sounded quite a lot like a sigh of relief began to slip out of Taki’s mouth, but she caught it midway and started conspicuously clearing her throat. This promptly sent her into a catastrophic coughing fit.

“…Taki-chan? Are you okay?”

“Y-yes. I’m okay.” Taki held her knees in her hands as she caught her breath, then wiped her mouth. “I’m okay. But… if you’re not, how come you’re bringing it up?”

“Because… I don’t know what to do.” Tomori looked down at the cars passing underneath. “I don’t know how to turn her down. Without… trampling over her feelings. But I don’t… understand them. I don’t even know… why she would like me enough to ask.”

“You don’t?,” Taki asked. She finally joined her side at the bridge railing. Tomori shook her head.

“There’s… lots to like about you, Tomori.”

“E-eh?”

“Like your singing. And the lyrics you write. The… the way you put those feelings into words. Your voice, the way it sounds.” She swallowed something down and averted her gaze. “The first time I heard you sing, I really felt like I’d been saved. I thought, ah, she gets it. She understands. And… I’m sure I’m not the only one.”

“A-ah.” Tomori’s eyes widened.

“B-but it’s not just that. I mean, you work so hard… for the band. You tried so hard just to keep us together when we were starting out, and you’re always writing new songs. It… makes me want to work hard, too. It really keeps me going.”

Tomori lifted her hand and held it against her own cheek. It was a little warm, and she wasn’t sure why. It was fairly chilly out that evening, after all.

“And, plus,” Taki continued, though her words turned quieter, denser with hesitation. “You’re… um, pretty cute. I think. I mean, you look good. Your face, it’s. Uh. Satisfactory.” She cleared her throat again, quite loudly this time.

Finally, Tomori broke into a smile.

“…Sorry. That was silly. It wasn’t much help, right?” Taki rubbed her temples. “You can… Just forget about it.”

Tomori shook her head. “Not at all. Thanks, Taki-chan. I think I know what to do.”

(Once she got home that night, Shiina Taki collapsed onto her bed screamed into her pillow for an hour straight, until she finally fell asleep where she lay.)

The air in the schoolyard was dead still that Monday afternoon, right after class, as the last few members of the go-home club streamed out of the front gates.

By now, the pond by the cherry tree was covered in so many fallen petals, one could hardly see the water beneath. The sun had just ducked behind the main school building, casting a dark, despondent shadow over the nook. Only a group of sparrows

Tomori stood below the tree, holding a crumpled-up piece of paper in her hands, its left edge frayed with broken perforations. She waited, controlling her breath into even inhales and exhales. She had spent all of last night preparing for this, scribbling and erasing, practicing.

By the time Mitsuzawa Kaho found the note in her locker calling her over, sprinted back into the yard and around the school building, and rounded the corner and met her eyes, Tomori’s hair and shoulders were mottled with the tree’s shed blossoms.

“…T-Takamatsu-san.” Mitsuzawa steeled herself and approached, stepping gingerly past the pond, her hands clutched tightly toward her chest. Her face mixed dread, excitement, fear, and limerence all into one contorted, indecipherable shape. “Um. Hi. I’m… I’m ready.”

“Kaho-chan.” Apparently, just the five days she spent occupying her thoughts was enough to turn her from ‘Mitsuzawa-san’ to ‘Kaho-chan’ in Tomori’s head. Hearing her own name, Kaho-chan made some strange kind of noise and recoiled as though an arrow had shot clean through her heart and out the other end.

“Please listen,” Tomori continued. She lifted the paper up to her eyes and breathed in. And Kaho listened as Tomori’s voice shifted registers, down into the pitch and timbre she used on stage, and began to read aloud.

In a field of crimson flowers
and of shards of broken glass
Precious spring burst from your soul
And blossomed from your heart

I stumbled on its roots and I was
Dazzled by its light, pure white
Out of sight and snow blind
Freezing cold and burning bright

I held it in my hands
Small and fragile, kind and warm, and yet
It hurt to touch, my skin is much
Too slight to see this sun

This blurry, distant outline
Can’t hold your trembling hand
Can’t calm your breath, can’t quench the thirst
That seizes up your nerves

The haze clouding its shape would only
Smother you with doubt and leave you
Wanting and adrift amid an ocean
Of regret

But after it saw the radiance
Of that precious, budding spring
That outline felt itself turn clear
Below its gentle rays

So don’t let it turn to cinders
Let the smoldering embers linger
Until it finds a place to bloom
In some distant elsewhere

Tomori caught her breath, then let go of the piece of paper and let it drift slowly down. She watched as tears streamed silently down the face of the girl in front of her, as her nose ran with a clear, sticky liquid. She’d kept herself quiet until now, her vocal chords stopped up by equal parts shock and reverence. But now she dropped to the ground, let her knees kiss the grass and her calves soak in the dirt, and started bawling. She covered her eyes and sobbed and sobbed, Tomori’s first name slipping out half-formed through her cries.

Tomori watched, wondering if this really was the right thing to do, wondering if she’d ever even know. Something in the back of her head told her, though, that she definitely needed to leave this girl to herself.

She walked past her, but stopped short, and gave her her parting words.

“…Goodbye, Kaho-chan. I… I hope we can still… be friends.”

“Tomori looks sad.”

Raana looked across the RiNG cafe hall at Tomori, who sat by herself at a table tucked away in a remote, sequestered cranny. She was staring down at her cup of tea and clutching her thighs, and was blanketed by pall of regret and dejection so dense one could swear there was a dark little person-sized raincloud hanging over her head.

“…Yeah.” Taki set down a matcha parfait in front of Raana, her eyes also fixed on Tomori. “Must be because she turned that girl down.”

“Hmmm. I’ll cheer her up.” Raana took one bite of her parfait and started sitting up before Taki’s hand pushed her back into her chair.

“Like hell you will, stray. I’ll handle it.”

“Taki-chan. Raana-chan. Stay.” Soyo chided the two from behind her teacup of measured authority. “Let her process it. She’s writing something.”

“Guys, listennn!” Anon walked up to the group and hung her bookbag on a chair. “Tomorin, she… She rejected her with a poem! She gave that girl a one-on-one spoken word show to turn her down!” Her voice, usually bright as sunshine, was weighed down with consternation and disbelief.

“…Well, that does sound like her.” Soyo held her head in one hand. Raana tilted hers.

“So? That’s a sweet thing to do,” Taki said. “She ought to be grateful.”

“Oh, come on, Rikki! Put yourself in the girl’s shoes here. It can’t be that hard for you, right?”

“Ha? What are you trying to get at, punk?”

“Mm, I wonder,” Soyo interjected, before taking another sip.

“I mean, come on,” Anon resumed. “That’s just waa~ay too much for a pure-hearted maiden in the springtime of her youth to handle! They say she was crying like a newborn baby the whole way back home, and then the next day she started up again in the middle of class, and she wouldn’t stop so they had to send her home early. Apparently, she was clutching this little piece of paper the whole time…”

Raana looked over at Tomori and giggled. “…Funny girl,” she said.

Anon finally sat down with the others. “Her reputation’s done a total 180. Everyone’s whispering about how Tomori’s this mysterious, cool ladykiller type,” she went on. “No one calls her Haneoka’s guileless girl anymore. Now she’s the school’s silver-tongued heartbreaker.”

“Ha?” Taki slammed a hand on the table. “Who called her that? You know where they live?”

“No way. I don’t wanna get charged with aiding and abetting.”

“Mm. People call me that at school too,” Raana said, with a mouth full of parfait.

“Yeah, right. The only thing you’re breaking is my will to live, stray.”

Raana gave Taki a knowing smirk.

“Tomorin… I wonder if she’ll be okay.” Anon looked over at her longingly.

“She will,” Soyo said, with a defeated sigh. “Once the drama dies down, she will. She did what she thought she had to do, didn’t she?”

Mitsuzawa Kaho took a whole week to come back to school. If you believe the really out-there rumors, she was taken to the hospital after she started coughing up pink flower petals. But really, she just needed to spend a few days hugging her pillow in the dark.

Once she was back, she was her old self again, though she would always carry that faint trace of a scar on her heart. She would catch the occasional glimpse of Tomori and smile to herself. And that small, crumpled piece of paper would find a home on the corkboard above her bedroom desk.