Chapter 11

“SO YOU THINK it’s a ‘lady doth protest too much’ situation?”

Flash back to our very first strategy meeting. Folding my arms and tilting my head, I tried to wrap my brain around this theory Chizuru was trying to sell me on.

“Exactly,” she said. “I mean, you know how Hibiki is—he pretty much never takes a strong stance for or against anything. Which is why you never hear him say a bad word about anyone without couching it in disclaimers, and why he always makes an effort to hear out both sides of a story and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. And when neither party is clearly, objectively in the right, he just refuses to take a side at all.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said.

“And yet, whenever the topic of a hypothetical romance with me comes up, even as a joke, he always shuts it down right out of the gate. First time I noticed it was probably around a year after I moved back to Tokyo. We’d made plans to go drinking that day, but then suddenly his sister showed up to stay at his place for some reason, so I ended up meeting her. And when she asked if we were going out, he was immediately like ‘No way, absolutely not.’ Which wouldn’t have stuck out to me as weird, except for the fact that immediately after that, she kept grilling him, asking if he was going out with Mai-san, or even you, Karin—and this time, he was like ‘Well, I guess there’s always a possibility…’ and just kind of laughed it off.”

Listening to this anecdote, I couldn’t help but get a few flashbacks of my own. Back in our college days, people used to tease that me and Hibiki should “just hurry up and date already,” and he’d always play along with these jokes in a way that only added fuel to the fire. Back then, he probably would have done the same thing with Chizuru as well.

“Yeah, it’s interesting,” I said. “Especially considering how much he seems to take pride in being a balanced person who treats everyone equally.”

“I mean, I think that’s exactly the issue,” said Chizuru. “Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t get the impression that he’s shutting down those jokes about me because he’s flustered or embarrassed or whatever. I think he’s quite literally trying to ‘balance out’ his inner feelings for me through his outward behavior.”

“What, you mean you think if he didn’t deny it so hard, it’d tip the scales too far in one direction and he’d fall so madly in love with you he couldn’t possibly contain it?”

Chizuru’s face went beet-red, and I could almost see steam coming from her ears.

“Do you see the problem here now?!” she shouted. Then, not two seconds later, she lowered her voice and added, “Oops, sorry… Didn’t mean to yell!”

Then she proceeded to clutch her head in her hands and start groaning to herself, as she said, “Man, what does he even see in me, anyway?” like some brooding teenager.

Ever since that day, I’d made several attempts to independently verify this theory, and came to the conclusion that Chizuru was right on the money. Hibiki absolutely went out of his way to thwart any suggestion about him and Chizuru having any sort of relationship other than the one they had now.

Once Chizuru and Mai-tan were done at the stationery store, I went ahead and took out my earbuds, as there was no need for them anymore. We hadn’t given Hibiki a wireless mic, since he obviously wasn’t in on the plan, so the next date of the day would be truly just between him and Chizuru alone.

We were leaving the rest entirely up to them. This was a promise the four of us had all made at the very start of planning this operation. We were not going to try to persuade or coerce them into any one outcome, even indirectly. All we wanted to do was present Chizuru with the possibility of choosing Hibiki, and give her a chance to consider a hypothetical future with him.

Taiga-san had left the café a little while ago to go for a walk. Hanao had already gone home—not just because she needed to pick up her kids, but also because she recognized that, depending on how things played out, she might not be able to control herself from trying to change Chizuru’s mind again or unconsciously communicate that she was displeased with the decision through her tone and facial expressions.

Hanao and I had come to the same conclusion as to how this would probably play out, and in the end decided that there was no need for both of us to stick around after we’d already played our part. I had no strong reason for choosing to stay behind—maybe just a desire to see things through to the end, or thinking maybe I could run in and lend a hand if something unexpected were to happen. But if I was right about where this was going, there probably wouldn’t be any need for that.

We weren’t expecting Chizuru to come to any sort of final decision today. Chances were she’d need to go home and sit with the question by herself for a while. Assuming she at least did that, one could argue our operation had been a success. Merely making her consider the possibility of dropping her engagement and getting together with Hibiki was all we were really aiming to accomplish. And while on the one hand, yes, this did seem once again like something no reasonable adult should be doing to their friends, it also simultaneously felt like something we could only pull off because we were adults.

I was sure Chizuru must have picked up on what her guide was trying to do by now. She had to recognize, just knowing Mai-tan’s personality, that there was simply no way we decided to throw together this whole event on a whim. And Chizuru didn’t strike me as the sort of person who’d spit in the face of those feelings.

With nothing to do now that my own role in this was over, I just sat around idly playing mobile games on my phone while I waited. Around the time I finished my cup, a notification pop-up slid down into the upper portion of my screen. When I glanced up to see what it said, I got so worked up that I accidentally pressed the wrong button in my game and screwed myself—but I couldn’t care less about that right now.

“Chizuru just called for me. Here goes nothing.”

It seemed the time had come at last. Dying to know how things had played out, I shamelessly scrambled to put my earbuds back in.