Chapter 17

AT FIRST, it wasn’t that I didn’t say anything. It was that I couldn’t.

Not because she was living far away when I first realized it, and that I didn’t want to put any pressure on her in that regard—but because I knew she just didn’t see me that way.

I didn’t want her to be disappointed in me when she found out I’d betrayed her friendship. I didn’t want her to know about the part of me who, when I saw her looking so vulnerable and alone as I took the train back home, wanted to wrap my arms around her and hold her close.

But that was before everything changed.

After a certain point, my feelings took on a will of their own. From then on, they had their own purpose and objective to fulfill.

Karin was the first person I ever talked to about it. To be honest, I didn’t really think he’d understand. But I knew him, and I had full faith that he was the type of person who didn’t judge people for having feelings he couldn’t understand.

“At least I know you’ll always be there for me, Hibiki, no matter how many guys break my heart.”

From the moment she said this to me, with her eyes swollen from crying, everything changed. Not the whole wide world around me, mind you—all that changed was how clearly I saw the very limited world visible to me, and to my eyes alone.

Ever since I was a kid, I’d had this thought—about how there was really no reason I had to be me, specifically. I could have been literally anyone else. There was no shortage of people out there who were good at helping around the house, or were considerate of their friends, or knew how to play the guitar pretty well. You could probably attribute this mindset to any number of plausible causes—my home environment, my relationship with my parents, me being influenced by the types of people I met—but to me, it felt like an inextricable symptom of my own personality. Try as I might, I couldn’t rub away the self-doubt that clouded my vision wherever I looked. It clung to my retinas like a cancer.

Then, in my mid-twenties, Chizuru cleared that all away.

For the first time, she showed me something only I could do.

That newfound clarity gave me the will to go on and make that my main purpose in living. Finally, I’d found a version of me I could accept—the one who could be a source of ever-present support for the friend he dearly loved. Chizuru needing me in this way made me feel genuinely proud of the person I was for the first time in my life.

Obviously, I knew someone might sense that I had feelings for her, somewhere along the road. And of course, I’d anticipated that person might be Karin. But it didn’t matter to me one bit, because I had no intention of letting it affect my new life mission. And more than anything, I knew Chizuru didn’t feel the same way about me. Delusional emotions were easy for me to discard. Reality was all that mattered.

When I first heard Chizuru would be getting married, I was so happy. And not just for her, but for both of us. Not only did this mean I could take pride in having stuck to my convictions, but also because it meant that I’d succeeded in keeping our friendship pure and genuine, to the point that I could feel happy for her engagement from the bottom of my heart.

I often thought back on our college days.

The moments with her that most often flashed through my mind were not from after I realized I had feelings for her, but from the period of our relationship when we both felt nothing but friendship toward each other, with no muddiness murking things up.

Alone in my room, on the night before her wedding, I indulged in this sort of reminiscing.

It wasn’t like I could remember entire conversations, or could clearly recall every little detail about each of the countless memories I’d piled up with her over the past twelve years. The only things I could still vividly recall were distinct words and phrases that meant a lot to me, or a few key scenes and set pieces my mind had captured and saved forever, like pictures or videos I could scroll back through on a phone.

From the very beginning of our freshman year, we’d often bump into each other in the music club room, or in class. From there, we became casual friends who often went to the same drinking parties together, and occasionally hung out. There were even a few times when I offered to help her practice guitar—but we didn’t actually play in the same band until our junior year. Until the end of our sophomore year, she’d been in an all-girls band that some of our upperclassmen had started, and I’d bounced between several different cover bands.

It happened right at the start of our junior year. A group of us were all drinking at my place one night, and Chizuru had nodded off while sitting upright in a chair in a corner of the room. She only woke up as the sun began to rise the next morning. Karin and Hanao were there too, and had only fallen asleep a little while before. I felt like I remembered us talking about how, after we’d graduated and entered the workforce, we wouldn’t be able to stay up drinking until such an ungodly hour like this anymore.

As Chizuru left to head home, I stepped out along with her to make a trip to the nearby mini-mart. Back then, the glare of the morning sun didn’t hurt my eyes like it did now. When we reached the convenience store, and we were about to part ways, she looked at me with her sleep-addled expression and made a proposition.

“Hey, I know,” she said. “Why don’t we just start a band together?”

“Well, well,” I responded. “It seems someone’s finally learned to appreciate my skill.”

This was mostly a joke, and yet Chizuru shook her head with no hesitation.

“No, I just think it’d be fun,” she replied.

She went right home after that, without even waiting for me to give her an answer. I’d later learn, when I attempted to tell her I was in, that she hadn’t been making a suggestion, it had been a declaration. She seemed quite surprised to learn I hadn’t already agreed to it. I remembered teasing and laughing at her for being such a self-centered little kid.

Compared to back then, we were both much more grown up now, since we had successfully integrated ourselves into adult society. But Chizuru’s inner nature had never changed—she’d always been that little kid, deep down.

Or to put it more nicely, she had a childlike candor to her. She always spoke from the heart in a way that made even her offhand remarks resonate with people. Usually it was in a way that they found charming or that made them happy. But in truth, this was also one of her worst traits: She had no filter and often wouldn’t even remember the things she’d said. As her longtime friend, I knew how reassuring her words of encouragement could be, as well as how badly her candidness could hurt. Though I didn’t think that she was “literally the devil” for it like Karin did, by any means.

If she were the devil, then how would he describe me, I wondered, as the guy who still found her endlessly delightful to be around despite all that? I supposed I would never know. Even if I asked, he was far too nice to answer that question honestly.

When I first made eye contact with him in the hotel lobby, I got the sense that he was still worrying himself sick about my feelings. And in the waiting room before the ceremony, that suspicion turned to certainty. He was just that type of guy.

Once the ceremony began, and I first laid eyes on Chizuru in her wedding dress, I didn’t find myself thinking she looked so incredibly beautiful or anything like that, to be quite honest. I was just focused on rooting for her, and hoping everything would go off without a hitch. She’d probably get mad at me if I ever told her this, but I was on the edge of my seat praying she wouldn’t stumble over her words and screw up her vows.

Thankfully, everything seemed to have gone according to plan—though when she passed by us on her way out, amid a shower of flower petals, I did see a glimpse of the usual Chizuru shine through on her face. Expressive and easy to read, this was the version of her I found most endearing—not some feigned ladylike elegance.

When we sat down at our assigned seats in the reception hall, we found that there were name placards for each of us on the table. When I flipped mine open, I found a fairly standard handwritten thank-you message that was very Chizuru—optimistic and heartfelt. At this point, I simply smiled at the touching sentiment for a moment, then tucked the placard away in my chest pocket.

The slideshow of photos and videos that played while the bride and groom got changed was a big hit with the guests. I overheard Chizuru’s high school friends mention something about how she had to be “putting on a front” at work for her colleagues to be so surprised by her true nature, and exchanged a meaningful glance with Karin.

She looked quite striking in her bold blue dress, as she made her way around the room, eventually reaching our table. It was then that she introduced me to the groom by saying, “The two of us used to play in a band together.” At first, this struck me as a slight misstep on her part. It was pretty poor form, I thought, to use “the two of us” in reference to you and another man at your own wedding. I found it mildly disconcerting.

But eventually, I realized it was all an intentional part of her plan.

When she stood behind the microphone, with her hands folded at her waist, I immediately remembered the line in my name placard message about her “emceeing” and tried to piece together what the significance might be. Before I knew it, her speech had already begun, and I was hanging on every word for answers.

Why was she deliberately reusing words and phrases like “the two of us” between her speech and placard message? I knew her too well to think she’d ever recycle her own words like that out of mere laziness.

Then, as I was listening to her delivering a speech I could only assume was in reference to her and her husband, our eyes eventually met, and there was no need to wonder any longer. For a second or two, it felt like we were talking directly to each other.

And I realized if it was me she was talking about in her speech, it would explain everything. All the peculiar phrasing and subtle signals finally made sense.

I couldn’t help but wonder how long she’d known.

For a moment, I tried to retrace my memories to figure it out but quickly let it go, as it felt like a pointless question to dwell on, now that the cat was out of the bag.

God, that’s such a Chizuru thing to do, I remembered thinking.

She must have been pretty disoriented when she first learned how I really felt about her. Hell, maybe she was even a little upset with me.

But once her engagement was set in stone, she no doubt felt like she had to figure out something to do about that. And in the end, she’d decided to bet it all on one last-ditch gambit where she would look me straight in the eye, in a situation where neither of us had anywhere to hide, and tell me in no uncertain terms that she knew how I felt. And that she had no intention of pretending those feelings didn’t exist, but that they didn’t change anything for her at the end of the day. She wanted us to be friends for life, no matter what.

I couldn’t help but crack a little smirk at this. But thankfully, no one noticed. It blended in with the sea of smiles of everyone else in attendance, as they watched the lovely bride present her parents with a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

She was absolutely right. This day—this moment—was irreplaceable.

I wondered, then: What would she have done if I hadn’t picked up on it?

The mere thought scared me quite a bit, actually.

Because beyond that knowing smile we shared as friends awaited a far deeper sense of satisfaction—the joy of finally being able to share with each other how we truly felt. It surprised me, actually, just how gratifying it felt to be known in this way, after treating my own feelings like a closely guarded secret to be ashamed of for so long.

Obviously, it wasn’t like she could possibly know exactly how I truly felt. I couldn’t imagine Karin revealing to her what I’d told him in confidence. So while the inner truths we held fast were no doubt largely similar, they were also probably somewhat at odds. But all that really mattered was they had pointed us both to the same conclusion. So reaching this mutual understanding now, when there could no longer be any turning back, felt like basically the most ideal outcome I could ask for. I was very happy about that.

And I was right there with her. I wanted to stay her friend forever, to keep being the safe harbor she could run away to when life was just too much to handle, like I’d been for over a decade now. I wanted to see us build that future together, like she said—one that was even brighter than either of us could ever imagine.

But maybe that wasn’t all Chizuru wanted. She definitely had some pretty childish tendencies at times, so maybe she was envisioning even more than I could imagine. Like a future in which she and her family could also maintain a good relationship forever, and she could keep going out and having a blast with her friends well into old age, and she and her colleagues could build strong bonds that allowed them to strive for even greater heights of success at work. That sort of idealistic future in which anyone and everyone gets along in perfect harmony. It was exactly the sort of dream I could see Chizuru having.

Me, I didn’t feel like it was my place to want all of that, really. In my opinion, happiness was something each person had to claim for themselves, in a way that felt satisfying to them on a personal level. And it wasn’t like those people didn’t have their own families and friends to support them. They didn’t need Chizuru to be their savior.

And yes, I realize this is coming from the same guy who said all he ever wanted was to be the one alleviating her sorrows. The contradiction there is not lost on me.

Looking back on everything in hindsight, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe I’d actually realized she knew, on some subconscious level, prior to reading the message on my name placard, or listening carefully to her speech. Like, for instance, maybe a part of me had figured it out when we were sitting on that sofa at the home goods store, when she revealed to me she was getting married.

But if that was the case, then it had to have been my subconscious will that suppressed that realization—like a defense mechanism to ensure my vision remained unclouded leading up to the wedding, and that I didn’t make any stupid emotional decisions. The way Chizuru and the others always described it was that I had a tendency to keep myself “balanced” like that. It was an ability that came with its own fair share of pros and cons, but at least in this case, I was grateful to have it. Thanks to that, I was able to maintain my pure, untarnished “friends only” persona for the last few months leading up to her wedding, and celebrate with her properly when the day finally arrived.

Really, this felt like the best possible way things could have played out. Having experienced the immense joy of realizing we’d both arrived at the same conclusion as I read through the message on my placard yet again, I could only nod profusely in agreement when Karin mumbled something about it being a “pretty nice reception” beside me at the table. If anything, that was an understatement.

And yet at the same time, I couldn’t shake that contradiction from my mind. It was becoming harder and harder to ignore the more I thought about it. Because how could I sit here with a smile on my face and claim to be nothing but happy for her, when I knew deep down that my own source of happiness—that simple wish I’d been carrying in my chest for so long—was only going to keep growing further and further out of reach, now that this new chapter in her life had begun? What did that even say about me?

It felt like I was watching a puzzle cube in my head unravel in real time. With each successive piece that got removed, the answer enclosed within slowly grew clearer and clearer. And as I watched this transition play out inside of me—first in shock, but then with a calm sort of acceptance—I realized it was always Chizuru who’d been the one affecting changes in my heart like this, for better or for worse. Unfortunately, in this case, it felt like a change for the worse. At least in terms of my own self-respect.

She’d said all she wanted in life was “for the two of us to keep on growing, side by side, as we walk this road together.” But this wasn’t something she wanted just for her and me: She wished—and would continue to wish—for this statement to hold true for her and every single person in attendance that day, as well as the ones who couldn’t make it.

Regardless of what their friendship looked like, or any past grudges they might have had, or how long they’d been together—or indeed, any feelings of love—she wanted to walk that road alongside each and every one of us. But just like when she “asked” me to be in a band with her, this was not merely a proposal. It was a declaration. And all we could do, as her friends, was chuckle in mild disbelief at how quintessentially Chizuru this was—as we all lined up to stand beside her.

But I was the odd man out in that regard. Because I realized now that although we were walking the same path, I’d been moving in the total opposite direction. And I wasn’t just talking about today. Ever since I decided being her safe harbor was my purpose in life, I’d been walking toward a different future entirely: One that actively required Chizuru to continue experiencing heartbreaking sorrows—just so I could alleviate them.

I’d made my whole reason for existing predicated on the assumption she would never fully reach that happy future she so desired. And yet here I was, smiling and laughing along with everybody else at her wedding reception. What a disgusting, pathetic excuse for a friend I was. Where the hell did I get off, acting like I was “being the bigger person” for “setting my own feelings aside” to “celebrate my best friend’s special day”?

I wondered if Chizuru had picked up on my sudden feelings of guilt at any point throughout the night. I was a little worried at first, but ultimately concluded, based on the way she interacted with me after this, that I’d probably only let them slip a tiny bit, if at all. Yet another case in which my ability to maintain balance had come to my rescue.

She seemed pretty happy when we spoke during social hour at the after-party. Her expression seemed to me like a woman whose eyes were already looking single-mindedly toward her ideal future—one where there’d be no need for any sorrow or heartbreak. It was all I could do to conduct myself in a way that didn’t give away my inner turmoil.

I could feel our entire history beginning to be overwritten in my head. Everything from the moment I decided to devote myself to shouldering her sorrows and heartbreaks up until now—that whole time, a part of me had been subconsciously hoping this friend of mine, whom I claimed to love, would stay at least somewhat miserable for my sake.

Should I have distanced myself from her once I noticed I was developing feelings, and tried my best to just forget about them? Should I have just tried to talk some sense into her and send her back home whenever she came to me in tears, rather than giving her a shoulder to cry on? At least in those cases, I probably would have been able to attend this wedding ceremony without making the harrowing realization that I’d placed my entire self-worth on my ability to play a role that, by rights, should be totally obsolete from here on out—unless I was placing my bets on her and her husband getting in a ton of fights or filing for divorce, that is. Was that really the person I wanted to be?

Once the after-party was in full swing, I excused myself from the table to go to the restroom, where I reread the message on my name card over and over again and wondered to myself in futility about all the other paths I could have taken that weren’t this one. When I bumped into Karin after that, on his way back from a smoke break, I assumed he didn’t sense anything amiss with me—but having him greet me in such a lighthearted and friendly way almost felt like he was being overly nice to me on purpose. It only made me feel that much more ashamed of myself.

I hesitated when Chizuru’s high school friend had asked for my contact info, because I felt this intense revulsion at the idea of me potentially violating someone else’s trust in me again. I didn’t really feel like I was emotionally ready to even think about having a relationship with anyone, at least for the time being. And then I stressed myself out about that after the fact, worried I might have come across as a bit of a jerk.

I knew this had been uncharacteristic behavior for me. But none of the others called me out on it at all. And as I sat there in the sports bar, tracing my finger along the condensation on my glass, I asked myself how I’d even managed to make it this far into adulthood without pushing them all away from me—and came up empty.

But of course I did. There were still things I’d been carrying with me, deep down, that I refused to show to anyone. Not even myself.

Right around the time we were getting ready to leave the bar to go pick up Mai-san, by pure accident, my name placard from the reception slipped out from my chest pocket and fell onto the floor. And wouldn’t you know, when my kind and caring friend reached down to pick it up for me, I freaked out and shouted at him. Karin looked totally taken aback by this—and I was just as startled as he was. Both by the frantic sound of my own voice, and by the conclusion it implied.

I didn’t want anyone else to read Chizuru’s message to me, because by this point, it felt like it had become a physical representation of all my worst mistakes.

But my violent overreaction revealed something else to me as well. Something deeper. A simple truth, which I’d hidden away at the very bottom of my heart.

I’d been asking myself what I could have done differently. What choices I could have made that would have allowed me to make it here, to Chizuru’s wedding day, and be able to genuinely wish for her lifelong happiness without any reservations or misgivings. And the answer I’d just unearthed was so painfully simple, it made me wince.

All I had to do was say I wanted us to build a future together in which she never had to cry about getting her heart broken again—for both of us.

I had to hand it to Karin and Chizuru for seeing right through my lame intentions and excuses, and cutting right to the core of the issue.

I hadn’t even been trying to consider what I really wanted in life.

At the end of the day, I was still that self-conscious little kid.

Too scared to admit to his parents he was lonely.