Zaregoto

Chapter 5


ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3
My world is the coolest.
Rok.u.meikan Private University, located in Kinugasa, in Kita
Ward of Kyoto, has a total of three dining halls. Of the three,
the Zonshinkan Chika Dining Hall (lovingly abbreviated to
“Zonchi”) was thought to be the most lively. This was
probably because it had an extensive menu, and it was right
next door to the co-op bookstore.
That day, since I had no cla.s.s during second period, I went
straight to the Zonshinkan Chika after first period. I’d had no
breakfast that morning—I’d accidentally overslept by a whole
hour—so I thought I might grab an early lunch.
“Man, it’s empty at this hour. Risky business,” I mumbled
to myself, doubting all the while that I was using the phrase
“risky business” correctly. I picked up a tray.
Now, what to eat?
I’m no foodie, so usually I just eat whatever without much
of a fuss. Be it spicy or sweet, I say bring it on. But lately
things had been just a little different.
It was only a month ago that I’d spent a h.e.l.l of a week in a
place where I’d been served three gourmet meals a day.
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Now, as an aftereffect, my tongue was still stuck in Snootyville.
It had been a whole month since anything had made me
say, “Wow, this is good.” Every time I ate some-thing, it
always felt like something was missing, like some key ingredient
was lacking.
It wasn’t enough of a problem to merit being called a problem,
but I sure was sick of feeling that way. As far as solutions,
I had already thought of two.
The first was fairly simple: Just eat tasty food.
“Can’t hope for that to happen in a school dining hall.”
But that first suggestion was impossible to follow. Not, anyway,
without heading back to that strange, isolated little island.
I won’t say I was totally against the idea, but I certainly
had my reservations.
“So that’s no good.”
Yes, I was talking to myself.
This left one other possible measure, and it was a strongarm
tactic. It was the “beat the child who doesn’t listen” tactic.
Most problems in the world are solved by either giving or
taking.
I made my way to the donburi corner and placed an order.
“Excuse me. Large kimchee bowl, please. No rice.”
The lunch lady gave me a quizzical expression and said,
“That’s just kimchee, son,” but she dished it out all the same.
As if it were nothing, she plopped it in front of me, displaying
an admirable degree of professionalism.
A big, heaping, mountainous bowl of kimchee. I doubt
there was a single tongue in this world tough enough to chow
all that down and still preserve its sense of taste. I nodded 
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5
with satisfaction, placed the bowl on my tray, and settled the
bill.
The dining hall was so empty that I could hardly decide
where to sit. In another hour, the place would be filled up
with students who had cut out of second period early. I was
never a fan of crowds, so I considered myself under a time
limit. I took a seat in the corner.
“Down the hatch,” I muttered, and took the first bite. . . .
This. Was. Awful.
I really had to eat a whole bowl of this stuff? Wasn’t this
what was commonly known as suicidal behavior? What cruel
fate had brought me to this pa.s.s? What had I done?
“Is this divine retribution?”
I guess they also say reap what you sow.
From then on, I wielded my chopsticks in silence. If I kept
on talking to myself, people would start thinking I was a
weirdo. And besides, it’s poor table manners to talk while
you’re eating.
And then, just as I hit my limit—my entire head had gone
numb from the tip of the tongue up, I didn’t know what the
h.e.l.l I was doing, or, for that matter, who I was, or what the
word who meant, and even what the word meant meant . . .
“Yo.”
She sat in the chair across from me.
“Pull that tray back a little, will you?” she said. Then she
pushed my tray toward me and placed her own tray in the
newly opened s.p.a.ce. Her tray was laden with a plate of
spaghetti carbonara, some tuna-and-kelp salad, and a bonus
fruit dessert for a grand total of three courses.
Oh, how bourgeois.
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I looked to my right, then to my left. The dining hall was
empty as ever. You could practically call it deserted. So why
had she decided to eat her spaghetti directly across from me?
Probably some kind of dare.
“Oh my G.o.d, what is that?! It’s all kimchee!” she exclaimed
at the shocking sight of my lunch. “Wow! You’re
eating a whole entire bowl of kimchee!”
She was wide-eyed, her hands up in the air like she was doing
a banzai cheer. Maybe that was what she was doing, or maybe
she was surrendering. There was also the possibility that she
was just Muslim. Any of these was fine by me, but in reality,
she was probably just surprised.
Her shoulder-length hair had a reddish tint and was done
up in a sort of bob. Her clothes were nothing out of the
ordinary. They were ultra-plain, following the style of so
much of the Rok.u.meikan student body. All of a sudden, when
she sat down, she seemed much shorter—but then I realized
most of her height had come from her extra-tall London
boots.
She had a young face, so I couldn’t tell if she was my senior
or a peer. Judging by her demeanor alone, it would have
seemed plausible that she was my junior, except that being
that I was a freshman, that was pretty much impossible.
“Hey. Y’know, if you don’t respond, I’ll get lonely and
stuff.” She stared at me with puppy-dog eyes.
“Right,” I finally said. “Who are you?”
I was pretty sure this was our first encounter. But I’d
learned one thing in the past month: This weird little pocket 
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 7
of s.p.a.ce known as a “university” had an unusually large
number of people who were friendly and genuine. These
strange people would strike up conversations with you like
you had been their close friend for the past ten years—even if
you had never seen them before in your life. For a guy like me
who’s bad at even remembering personal encounters, this made
things difficult from time to time.
And surely this girl was another one of those types. Fearing
the ha.s.sle of having to deal with a club invitation or,
worse, some religious thing, I went ahead and posed the above
question.
Doing so launched her into an over-the-top shocked pose.
"Hwa?!” she said. “Oh my G.o.d! You mean you forgot? You’ve
forgotten? You freaking forgot?! Ikkun, that’s so cold!”
Huh.
Judging from her reaction, it seemed this was not our first
encounter.
“Ohhh. I am shocked. But what are you gonna do, right?
Yeah, nothing, I guess. You’ve just got a bad memory after all,
right? Well, might as well introduce myself again.” She flashed
both hands at me and gave a full-faced grin. “I’m Aoii
Mikoko!”
This might prove to be a painful encounter.
Whether it was our first encounter or not, this was, to be
sure, my first impression of Aoii Mikoko.
Her story was simple. Mikoko-chan and I were cla.s.smates.
Not only were we taking the same core subjects, but we were
also in the same foreign-language cla.s.s. We had met face-to-
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 8
face a number of times, and were in the same group for the
cla.s.s training camp before Golden Week. We had even been
paired up before in English cla.s.s.
“Man . . . from this conversation alone, I must seem like a
total nut for not remembering you.”
“I think you are a total nut!” She laughed lightheartedly.
To be able to laugh so cheerfully after someone had entirely
forgotten her existence took a special kind of vacuousness. I
figured she was probably a pretty nice girl after all.
“Normally, I’d find it pretty disturbing that you forgot me
like that. Or rather, I’d be p.i.s.sed. But that’s just how you are,
right? Like, you don’t forget the stuff that’s really important,
but you forget normal stuff,” she said.
“Well, I can’t argue with that.”
She was exactly right. One time I had even forgotten if I
was right- or left-handed, and found myself in quite a bind
when I actually tried to sit down and have a meal. To top it all
off, when all was said and done, I turned out to be ambidextrous.
"Okay, and what’s happening with you?” I asked. “Why
aren’t you in cla.s.s?”
“Cla.s.s? Well, the thing about that is . . .”
For some reason she seemed abnormally happy. But I got
the feeling that “abnormally happy” was her default setting.
To be honest, even though I’d seen her before, I still could not
remember what she was like normally. But either way, it was
hard to be put off by this smiley-faced girl.
“I’m playing hooky.”
“Freshmen really ought to go to cla.s.s,” I said.
“Aw, come on, it’s boring. Totally boring. What was it
again? Oh, yeah, my economics cla.s.s. It’s just a nonstop 
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 9
stream of jargon. And it’s like a math cla.s.s. I’m a humanities
person! And you’re skipping cla.s.s too!”
“I don’t have a cla.s.s right now.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Fridays I only have a first period and a fifth period.”
She flung her hands wildly in the air again. “Doesn’t that kind
of suck? That’s like six hours of boredom.”
“Boredom isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
“Hm, I thought boredom was practically the definition of
‘a bad thing.’ Different strokes, I guess.” She began winding
the spaghetti around her fork as she spoke. Unable to successfully
get it all on the utensil, it soon became a matter of
trial and error. I reckoned it would be awhile before the food
actually reached her mouth. Before I knew it, she had put the
fork down and switched to chopsticks. So much for stick-toitiveness.
“Say . . .” I said.
“Hm? What-what?”
"There are tons of open seats.”
“Yeah, for real. I think this place will fill up pretty soon,
though,” she said.
“But it’s empty now, right?”
“You said it. Something wrong with that?"
“I wanna eat alone, so let’s move along now, honey,” I
wanted to say. But then I saw her smile—a vulnerable smile
that showed she couldn’t possibly have imagined she was
about to be completely rejected—even I had to take pity.
“Nah . . . it’s nothing.”
“Hm? You’re a weird guy.” She gave me the pouty lips.
“Ah, but I guess if you weren’t weird, you wouldn’t be you.
Weirdness is like your ident.i.ty, right?”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 0
I couldn’t help but feel like I was being inadvertently
insulted. But then again, it wasn’t as bad as completely
forgetting someone you had been regularly interacting with for
a whole month. So I swept the notion aside and switched my
focus back to the kimchee.
“Ikkun, you’re a kimchee fan?”
“Nah, not particularly.”
“But that’s a ton of kimchee. Not even Koreans eat that
much in one sitting.”
“Well, I have my reasons,” I said as I crammed some
kimchee into my mouth. More than half of it still remained in
my bowl. “Not very interesting ones, but still.”
“Reasons?”
“Try to figure it out yourself first.”
“Huh? Oh, right. . . okay.” Mikoko-chan crossed her arms
and began to contemplate my rationale. Of course, figuring
what circ.u.mstances could possibly require my eating an entire
bowl of kimchee wasn’t exactly easy. After just a few
moments of pondering, she let her arms drop back down
apathetically. She really was quick to throw in the towel.
“Oh, yeah, by the way, I had a question for you. I thought
this was a good opportunity to ask you. May I?”
“Uh, sure.”
Wasn’t the phrase “a good opportunity” usually used for
something that came up by chance? As far as I knew, Mikokochan
had come here and sat down in front of me of her own
volition.
Or maybe that was beside the point.
She was wearing the same smile when she posed her
question. “Ikkun, you know how you didn’t come to school
for a while in the beginning of April? Why was that?”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 1
“Uh . . .” My chopsticks stopped moving. The bits of kimchee
they held plopped back into the bowl. “Uh, well . . .”
I must have had a troubled look on my face, because
Mikoko-chan was quick to start waving her hands around
frantically and say, “Oh, if it’s hard to talk about it, don’t
worry. I was just wondering, that’s all. It’s like, Unsolved Mysteries
Featuring Mikoko-chan.”
“No, it’s not hard to talk about. It’s a simple story, really.
I was just on a vacation. For about a week.”
“Vacation?” She blinked at me like a little forest animal.
Her expressions were also easy to read. It made it easy for me
to talk to her—she was a great listener.
“Vacation? Where’d you go?" she asked again.
“Out to some deserted island in the Sea of j.a.pan, kind of
by accident.”
“By accident?”
“Yeah. A big accident. Anyway, that’s how I got myself
into this kimchee-eating situation.”
She scratched her head, which was probably a natural response.
But I am a fundamentally lazy person, so I couldn’t
be bothered to explain all the details. Or rather, just how the
h.e.l.l would I?
“Anyway, just a vacation. Nothing particularly deep.”
“Huh. You don’t say.”
“What did you think it was?”
“Oh, nothing . . .” She blushed a bit. “I just thought maybe,
uh, like you hurt yourself somehow and had an extended
stay at the hospital or something.”
How and why such an idea would occur to her was a mystery
to me, but then again, for someone to suddenly take a
week off just after entering a university, there weren’t really 
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 2
any other plausible explanations that came to mind. At the
very least, it was a more likely explanation than “I was just on
a vacation.”
“I see. Sort of like a delayed graduation trip.”
“Yeah, something like that. I couldn’t get a reservation, so
it ended up eating into April,” I said with a shrug, but of
course the real facts were totally different. The very idea that I
had “graduated from school” was something I hadn’t
experienced since elementary school. I’d certainly never been
on a “graduation trip.” But all of the circ.u.mstances surrounding
what had happened would have required a pointlessly
long explanation, and it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing
I wanted to talk about at length anyway, so I just went with
her interpretation.
“Hmm . . .” She gave a sort of half-convinced expression.
“So did you go alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Gotcha.” And then, just like that, the cheerful smile was
back. It was as if all confusion had been cleared. It was like she
really didn’t put on any façades. She was so straightforward
with her emotions that I almost envied her.
Well . . .
Not really.
“So, Mikoko-chan . . . Why are you really here?”
“Huh?”
“You have something to say, I a.s.sume? I mean, considering
you came and sat right here when there’s a whole roomful
of empty chairs.”
“Huh.” She narrowed her eyes and lowered her gaze a bit,
down to my chest. “So I can’t sit with you unless I’ve got
something specific to say to you?”
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“Huh?” This time it was my turn to scratch my head.
She continued talking in the meantime. "I mean . . . am I
bothering you? I just saw you when I was walking by, so I
thought maybe we could eat together.”
“Ah, gotcha.”
So she’d just wanted someone to eat with. I was the type
who preferred doing personal things, like eating, alone, but
there were plenty of people who viewed mealtime and talk
time as one and the same. Surely Mikoko-chan was one of
them. But having unexpectedly decided to skip cla.s.s, she
couldn’t find a friend to eat with, so she went ahead and
struck up a conversation with the first acquaintance she
happened to see—me.
“Well, if that’s all it is, it’s fine by me,” I a.s.sured her.
“Thanks. That’s a relief. I don’t know what I would’ve
done if you had said no.”
“You don’t?”
“Hm? Yeah. Maybe something like this,” she said, pretending
to hold the edges of her tray in both hands. Then she
twisted her wrists in a sudden cracking motion. “Like that.”
“I see . . .” Even if she was just joking, I was a little relieved
I had refrained from saying no. I wouldn’t have put
such a reaction past her, in reality. Someone who expressed
happiness so freely might express anger just as freely.
“Well, I guess I’m free anyway. As long as you just want to
talk,” I said.
"Thanks.”
“So what are we talking about?”
“Oh, umm . . .”
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As I prompted her onward, she began anxiously sc.r.a.ping
her chopsticks together. She was probably trying to think of a
topic.
I may have forgotten who she was, but surely in the past
month it seemed like she’d at least managed to grasp the surface
of my personality. So just what kind of topic would she
broach with me? Me, who was so ignorant, and so lacking in
common sense, that I used to think soccer was baseball played
with your feet? I was strangely interested to find out, as if I
were watching it happen to someone else.
She clapped her hands as if she had suddenly thought of
something. “Don’t you think the world’s gone crazy?” she said.
“Huh? In what way?”
“I mean . . . er, you know, the prowler. Even you must
know about it.”
Even me.
Even me—the phrase was pretty enraging. Except that it
happened that I had no idea who the h.e.l.l “the prowler” was.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot! Of course I know!” An
angry outburst like that would have been fairly justified, but
"Shut up! How the h.e.l.l am I supposed to know what that is,
stupid?!” just didn’t have the same ring of validity to it.
“Hm? What’s wrong, Ikkun?” she asked.
“Ah, nothing. What’s ‘the prowler’?”
Obviously I wasn’t looking for the dictionary definition,
one who prowls. She gawked at me in amazement.
"You’re kidding, right? Is this a joke? Ikkun, it’s been all
over the news. There’s no way you could have missed this
if you live in Kyoto.”
“There’s no TV in my house, and I don’t get the paper
either.”
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"What about the Internet?”
“Oh, I don’t have a computer. Don’t really use the ones on
campus much either.”
"Oh my G.o.d, Ikkun is a caveman!” she said, sounding almost
impressed in a way. “Is it some sort of ethical policy?”
“Maybe it is, in a sense. How do I put it . . . I don’t like
having possessions.”
“Cooool! You’re like an ancient philosopher! Wow!” She
clapped her hands with joy. I seriously doubted I would have
gotten the same reaction if she knew it was actually for a
practical—and completely lame—reason: My room was just
too small.
I mean, newspapers take up a lot of s.p.a.ce.
“When you say ‘if you live in Kyoto,’ do you mean this
‘prowler’ thing is going on here?”
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s made a pretty big splash. ‘Panic in
the Old Capital!’ Some places have even called off field trips.”
“Wow . . . too bad for them.”
“Six people have been murdered! And it’s still going on
right now! With no known suspects!” She had become all riled
up, and there was a hint of excitement in her voice. “He stabs
them with a knife and then flings their guts all around and
stuff! Freaky, huh?”
“. . .”
Let’s set aside the fact that we were in the middle of
eating. After all, I was partly responsible for the fact that the
conversation had veered in this direction. But what did it say
of this girl that she was able to discuss the murder of others
with such absolute glee?
It’s scary how detached people can become.
“Six people, huh? Is that a lot?”
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“Yeah it’s a lot! It’s a h.e.l.l of a lot!” She almost sounded
boastful in a way, as if she were the one doing the killing.
“Maybe not overseas, but serial killings are rare in j.a.pan! It’s
become quite a sensation, you know.”
“Huh. So that’s why there are patrol cars circling around all
over the place.”
“Yeah. There are people from the mobile police force in
Shinkyôgoku. Makes me think of the Gion Festival.” She
chuckled to herself for some reason.
“Wow, go figure. I didn’t know anything about this.”
As I nodded along with her explanation, somehow I knew
Kunagisa would definitely get a kick out of this. Kunagisa, for
those new to my story, is the short version of Kunagisa Tomo,
one of my few friends. That is to say, my only friend. Kunagisa
Tomo was a nineteen-year-old electronic and mechanical engineering
professional shut-in of the mysterious variety, with
blue hair and a pa.s.sionate interest in collecting information on
just these types of incidents.
Unlike me, she wasn’t constantly in the dark about what
was going on in the world. In fact, she was essentially an
information-collecting expert, and she was probably already
well aware of this prowler case without my having to say anything
about it. In fact, she was probably already taking action.
“So when did it start?”
“Around the beginning of May, maybe? I think that’s right.
Why?”
“Oh, I was just asking.”
I put the last piece of kimchee in my mouth. My tongue,
or rather the entire inside of my mouth, was completely
mangled. I would probably never take food for granted or say
"this tastes bad” again. If you thought about it, the fact that a 
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 7
single bowl of kimchee could so easily destroy all my principles
didn’t say much for my taste buds. Or maybe it was more
of a stomach issue.
“Well, I’m done. See you again sometime.” I put down my
chopsticks and began to get up from my seat.
"Ah! Hold on! Hold on, will you?! Where are you going?!”
Mikoko scrambled to stop me. “Wait a minute, Ikkun!”
“What do you mean, Where am I going’? I’m finished
eating so I figured maybe I’d drop by the bookstore.”
"I’m not done!” I took a look at her tray. Indeed, more than
half of her food was left.
"But I am.”
"Don’t make me sad. Stay with me till I’m finished.”
“Why should I have to do a pointless thing like that?” . . . is
exactly the kind of thing I’m not tough enough to say. I’m
more of the go-with-the-flow type.
“Okay. I’m free now anyway.” I didn’t have anything
urgent to do, and it wasn’t like I was full yet, either.
I figured I might as well eat some real food while I was
there. “Wait a minute. I’m gonna go buy something.”
I approached the register from the opposite direction
(which was against the rules) and took a look at the menu on
the wall, pondering whether I should order the beef bowl.
Geez, it was more expensive than Yoshinoya. Maybe something
else was the way to go.
“Kimchee again?” the lady at the counter interrupted
lightheartedly as I was trying to decide.
“Yes.”
Oops.
I had up and said it.
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“No use crying over spilt milk.” Or wait, was this more of a
“hindsight-is-always-twenty-twenty situation”?
A few dozen seconds later, I received another heaping
bowl of kimchee (this time the lunch lady gave me a little
extra) and sat back down in front of Mikoko-chan.
"What the h.e.l.l? Am I supposed to be following along with
something here?” she said.
“Don’t worry about it. So what were we talking about?”
“Hm? Uh, what was it? I forgot."
“Gotcha. Well, then you want to talk about cla.s.s?”
She shook her head firmly.
“Why? There were some things I didn’t really get in first
period today, so I was thinking maybe we could go over it
together. It’s a required cla.s.s for freshmen, so you must have
gone, right? If you ask me, the professor’s inability to explain
things properly is to blame, but what do you think?”
“What do I think?’ I think that there isn’t a boy alive who
brings up something like this to a girl when there isn’t even a
test coming up!”
I was only kidding, but she seemed seriously put off by it.
“What’s the matter? You don’t like studying?”
“n.o.body likes studying.”
“That sounds debatable to me. But if you hate studying,
why did you go to college?”
“Ah, that’s a forbidden question. If you ask that, it’s all
over. I mean . . . everyone’s like that, right?”
It seemed I had inadvertently touched a soft spot, and she
suddenly seemed a bit melancholy. Come to think of it, it
seemed to me that someone had once said j.a.panese universities
weren’t a place for people who wanted to study, and
that college was just a time to prepare for entering society.
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“Heh, that’s one way to put it.”
“Do you like studying?” she said.
I shrugged.
Of course not.
In fact, I hated it.
“But it’s not bad for killing time. Or as an escape from
reality, rather.”
“Usually studying is the reality.” She gave a heavy sigh.
Then, as if shifting her focus back to her meal, she picked at
her salad for a while in silence.
Hmm. Was a plate of spaghetti, a large salad, and a dessert
really a normal-size portion for a girl under the age of twenty?
I didn’t know anybody fit to use as a standard for comparison—everyone
I knew was either incredibly finicky, ridiculously
gluttonous, or always fasting or something—so I had no
standards for judgment. But seeing as Mikoko-chan was neither
too slim nor the opposite, perhaps it was, at the very
least, an appropriate portion for her.
“Umm, it’s hard to eat with you staring at me like that,”
she said.
"Oh, sorry.”
"S’okay.”
She resumed eating. When she was nearly done, she began
looking my way in a sort of probing fashion. Really, she had
been peeping up at me every so often the whole time, but
now she had suddenly become obvious about it, making eyes
at me like there was something she wanted to tell me.
And indeed, that proved to be an accurate speculation.
As if she had at last made up her mind about something,
she placed her chopsticks down without finishing her dessert. 
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She gave a bit of a playful smile as she leaned her body
forward, bringing her face close to mine.
"So, Ikkun,” she said.
“Yeah . . . ?"
“The truth is, I may or may not have a favor to ask you.”
"You don’t.”
“I do.” She leaned back again in her seat. “Are you the kind
of guy who might be free tomorrow?”
“If you define free as not having any plans, then I sup-pose
I’m more apt to say yes than no.”
“Yeah, kind of hard to follow you.”
“That’s just how I am,” I responded as I chewed my kimchee.
“To put it more simply—I’m a free dude.”
“Really? You’re free? Oh, good!” She pressed her hands
together in front of her chest with a look of true joy. To cause
someone such teary-eyed happiness just by not having plans
on a Sat.u.r.day seemed a bit much.
More important, this didn’t look good. I had the distinct
feeling I was about to get dragged into something.
“I see, I see, so if I’m free, something good happens to you,
huh? One hand washes the other. It’s also kind of like the
food chain. A magnificent circuit, if you will,” I said.
She wasn’t even listening. "Yeah. So anyway, if you’re free
tomorrow, I was hoping we could get together!”
Her hands still pressed together, she tilted them to the side
a bit as if to emphasize her request. It was such an earnest,
imploring pose that it almost felt like foul play. There was
scarcely a male life-form alive that wouldn’t have surrendered
to it. They would want to surrender.
Nevertheless, I refused without mercy.
“No,” I said.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 1
“Wha?! Why?!” she shrieked. “You’re free, right?”
“Well, yeah. But it’s like I said, I don’t dislike boredom.
Sometimes people like to just spend the day doing nothing,
right? Everyone feels like that sometimes. Everyone wants to
escape the hustle and bustle of the world sometimes, to free
themselves of the ha.s.sle of dealing with other people.
Everybody has a right to time to contemplate their own lives.
I just happen to have more.”
“But-but-but! How can you just refuse without even
hearing me out?! That’s crazy! It’s like a bunch of eighth
graders forming a band, but they all end up playing ba.s.s!”
It was a pretty great a.n.a.logy.
On close inspection, it was apparent that she was about to
cry. That is to say tears were already br.i.m.m.i.n.g in the corners
of her eyes. This was not a desirable situation.
I looked around. It was about time for the dining hall to
start filling up, and students began trickling in, their numbers
gradually increasing. At this point, I wanted to avoid standing
out (by, say, making a relatively hot girl cry) as much as possible.
But come on, who cries just from one little rejection?
“Okay, okay, just calm down. I’ll hear you out. Come on,
have some kimchee.”
“Okay,” she said, sniffling.
Doing as suggested, Mikoko-chan placed some kimchee in
her mouth. “Uwa!” she peeped, and then the tears really
started flowing. It seemed she wasn’t much for surprises
(which I kind of knew).
“Ahh, hot . . .” she cried out.
“Well, it is kimchee. It wouldn’t be kimchee if it wasn’t
spicy.”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 2
They say there’s also sugar-preserved kimchee, but I always
went with spicy, so I had never seen it. I wouldn’t mind if I
never did, either.
“Ohh, you’re terrible. You’re so mean. . . . Now, what
were we talking about?”
“That prowling killer?”
“No! We were talking about tomorrow!”
Bam! She slammed her hand on the table. It looked like she
was seriously a little mad now. Maybe I had gone too far, I
reflected.
“Umm, do you know Emoto-san?”
“Whether I know her or not, I don’t remember her.”
“She’s in our core subject cla.s.ses. Her hair is like this.” She
stuck her fists to the sides of her ears, but even with this
striking pose, “Emoto-san” and her hairstyle remained firmly
beyond the grasp of my imagination.
“She’s a pretty noticeable girl. She’s always wearing shiny
things.”
“Huh. Well, I don’t really look at people much. What’s her
full name?”
“Emoto Tomoe. That’s the tomo from wisdom and the e
from blessing."
Interesting name. Sounded like it could do a headstand and
start running around upside down. It felt like it rang a bell, but
I couldn’t put my finger on it. I didn’t want to just toss out
some answer like, “Oh yeah, yeah, I know that chick. She’s
the one with the contact lenses, right?” There was always the
chance that Mikoko-chan would throw it right back in my
face, like, “I tricked you! There’s n.o.body like that in our cla.s.s!
Ahahaha, looks like the pants are on the other leg now! Nyanya-nya!”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 3
And then the egg would be on my face, my fraudulence
exposed. Not that Mikoko-chan would do something like that.
“Her nickname is Tomo-chan.”
“That’s not gonna work for me.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“No reason. Just my own personal thing.” I shook my head.
“Sorry. I don’t remember at all.”
“Figures,” she said, laughing. “But if you didn’t remember
me, I guess it goes without saying that you wouldn’t remember
her. If you did remember her, I’d be a little shocked.”
I didn’t quite follow her reasoning, but as long as my lack
of memory made her avoid feeling terrible, I guessed it wasn’t
totally worthless. Something definitely seemed off with the
logic there, though.
“Well, okay. How about Atemiya-san? Atemiya Muimisan?
I call her Muimi-chan.”
“Another cla.s.smate?”
She nodded. "Then there’s Usami Akiharu-kun. Akiharukun
is a guy, so you must remember him, right?”
“My memory functions in a gender-neutral environment.”
“But you sure don’t seem like a feminist.”
She let out a big, unintentionally exaggerated sigh. It was
like I had done something wrong. But it was my memory’s
fault, right?
“Anyway, so Tomo-chan, Muimi-chan, and Akiharu-kun.
We’re all going out tomorrow night for a little drinking.”
“Huh. What’s the occasion?”
“It’s Tomo-chan’s birthday!” For some reason she seemed a
tad boastful. It was hard to deny her adorableness as she sat
there with her hands on her hips, chest stuck out. “May fourteenth!
Happy twentieth!”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 4
If this Tomo-chan was a cla.s.smate, that meant she was a
freshman. Maybe she had entered college a year late. Or
maybe she was a returnee like me. It didn’t really matter.
“I’m only nineteen, by the way. My birthday’s April twentieth.”
“Huh,” I said.
I didn’t really care.
She continued. “Umm, so anyway, tomorrow’s Tomochan’s
birthday, so we figured we’d throw a really light, casual
kind of party.”
“Huh. Seems like an awfully intimate group for a party.”
“Yeah, well. We all like the rowdy atmosphere thing, but
n.o.body wanted there to be a ton of people, so what are you
gonna do?”
“Ah. Then four people is pretty appropriate, huh.”
“Huh?” She looked surprised.
“A fifth person would throw off the balance.”
“Huh? What?”
“Well, say hi to everyone for me. And happy birthday to
you.”
“It’s not my birthday! Hey, wait, I mean don’t just get up
and leave! You don’t know the other half of the story yet!”
“Well, they say knowing is only half the battle,” I said.
“That’s not what that means!”
She grabbed me by the sleeve as I started to leave and
forced me to sit back down. But even if the conversation was
only half-over, I could more or less tell what was coming next.
“Okay then. So now you’re going to tell me to partake in
this drinking party . . . or birthday party, rather. Right?”
“Gah! Wow, that’s exactly right.” She flung up her hands
in surprise, but this time it reeked of phoniness. Maybe it 
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 5
wasn’t that she didn’t put on any façades; she was just a lousy
actress. “Amazing, it’s like you’ve got ESP or something,
Ikkun.”
“Let’s not go there. Not a good subject.” I let out a light
sigh. “How did all this come about? I don’t even know these
people, right?”
“Yeah you do. They’re your cla.s.smates.”
Ah, right.
Maybe I had amnesia. I was never good at remembering
people, but lately it had gotten particularly bad. These three
cla.s.smates aside, there wasn’t a single person in all of Rok.u.meikan
University whom I had a clear picture of.
But there was a more likely explanation: that it was simply
the result of my apathy toward other human beings. It had
nothing to do with my mind’s functionality. It wasn’t a defect.
It wasn’t that some essential part was missing, either.
It was just that I was, from the very start, a broken thing.
“Could it be that I’ve just forgotten, and that I’m actually
good friends with these three people? Even I wouldn’t forget
something like who my friends are, I think.”
Mikoko-chan’s expression grew a little sad. “I don’t think
that’s the case,” she said. "You probably haven’t spoken much.
I mean, you’ve always got this narrow-eyed scowl as if you’re
thinking really hard about something or filled with contempt.
Even now. It makes you kind of hard to approach. It’s like
you’ve got a wall in front of you. Or your AT field is fully
operational. And in spite of all that, you always sit directly in
the middle of the cla.s.sroom.”
I wanted her to leave me the h.e.l.l alone. I wanted to tell
her not to bother talking to me if that was how she felt. But I
didn’t.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 6
I finished my kimchee. As it turned out, two bowls ended
up being pretty excessive, and I felt dreadful fullness in my
stomach. I probably wouldn’t be having kimchee again for a
long time.
“But you and I are friends, right?” she asked.
“Are we?”
"Yes!” She slammed both hands on the table again. It
seemed she had a habit of hitting nearby things when she got
emotional. I’d have to remember to stay out of range of those
slender arms if I was going to make fun of her. That is to say,
I’d have to stay out of range when I made fun of her. Maybe it
was better to pick on her over the phone.
Er, I mean, why was I planning ways to hara.s.s her?
“And, so, naturally, I tell my friends about you sometimes,
right?”
“I guess.”
"And then my friends think, ‘Man, for a guy who’s always
got such a crummy face, he seems kind of cool,’ right?”
“I guess it’s possible.”
“So it’s not so strange that they would want to try being
friends with someone who seems kind of cool, even if he is a
weirdo. Right?”
“Yeah, I guess we all have temptations.”
“So that’s what I’m saying,” she said.
“What is?”
“That.”
She peered up at me with eager, expectant eyes. I pretended
I was drinking tea in order to escape her gaze. But a single
cup of tea sure wasn’t going to be enough to revive my
paralyzed mouth.
"Huh. I understand,” I said.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 7
“You do?”
“It’s a good opportunity and all, so I think I’ll go spend the
night at my parents’ place tomorrow.”
“Don’t make plans’ You didn’t even go home during
Golden Week!”
She slammed the table again. I was a little disturbed that
she knew what I had been doing during Golden Week, but
then again, maybe I had told her and forgotten.
“But you know . . . it’s almost Mother’s Day and stuff.”
“That was last week! And besides, you’re not the kind of
guy who would go out of his way to show devotion to his
parents!”
That was rather harsh. And even if she was right, did she
believe that a seventeen-year-old guy who wouldn’t even go
out of his way for his parents would be any nicer to someone
who was just a cla.s.smate? Maybe she was so worked up she
didn’t realize what she was saying anymore.
“Come on, I’m begging you. I already told them I’d bring
you. I’ll lose face.”
“It seems like there’s a misunderstanding here, so let me
clear things up—I’m not the kind of guy you can have fun
talking to. They say I’ve got about as much pep as a storm
cloud.”
“Wow, that’s as disappointing as hearing about two budding
young authors, only one’s poison ivy and the other got
eaten by tent caterpillars." She looked a little somber as she
chewed her lip. “Come on, Ikkun. Do it as a favor to me. I
know it’s selfish of me, but hey, I’ll even pay for drinks.”
“Sorry, I’m not a drinker.”
This was true.
“Why not?”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 8
“I once drank a whole bottle of vodka in one go.” I didn’t
dare tell her how things ended up after that, but at any rate,
ever since then I had sworn off alcohol. I may not be such a
smart guy, but I’m not so dumb that I don’t learn from my
experiences either.
“Wow, not even the Russians do that.” She was truly surprised.
“I see. . . . So you can’t drink. Hm, now what?”
She immersed herself in thought once again. It seemed she
had a firm understanding of what it was like for a non-drinker
to show up at a drinking party. Perhaps she was a lightweight
herself at least to some extent.
Nevertheless . . .
I wasn’t so cold-blooded that I felt nothing for this girl sitting
before me, looking so deeply troubled.
Dammit . . . I get dragged into things so easily. Going along
with something out of pity was one thing. But getting dragged
in just because the situation presented itself was totally lame.
“Okay, okay. As long as you’re okay with me just sitting in
the middle of the room scowling.”
“Hmm, I guess that would be an awful bother for you, but
you know, I think . . . Wait, you mean you’ll go?” she said.
She shot her body forward. Maybe it’s a rude a.n.a.logy, but
she was like a dog who had just had food tossed in front of it.
A cat would have approached it with some caution, suspecting
the possibility of a trap, but Mikoko-chan was completely unguarded.
She may have physically resembled a cat, but she
was definitely more like a dog in personality.
“Is it really okay? Will you really come?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m free anyway.”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 9
Even I was a little appalled by my own bluntness and
wondered if I couldn’t have put it a little more nicely. All the
same, she shrieked with joy.
“Waaah! Thank you!” She smiled innocently.
I replied by downing the rest of my tea. At some point she
had finished her dessert as well, so it was time I really should
start to leave.
“Ah, wait a sec. Let me know your phone number. I’ll call
you.”
“Hm? Ah . . .” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket.
“Okay, it’s . . . uh, I forgot.”
“Figures. Okay, then I’ll give you mine, so dial me.”
I entered her number as told and sent it. A ringtone
emerged from her little bag. David Bowie. She had surprisingly
great taste.
“Okay, got it. Hey, Ikkun, your phone doesn’t have a
strap.”
“Ah, yeah. I don’t like that girly stuff.”
“Are straps girly?”
“Well, I’m no expert or anything, but they’re definitely not
very manly.”
“Mmm, guess not,” she said with consternation.
“Well then,” I said, stepping away from my seat with my
tray. “See you tomorrow, Mikoko-chan.”
“Yep! Don’t you forget about me again!”
She gave me a big wave, to which I responded with a small
one as I made my way out of the dining hall. After returning
my tray and silverware, I headed straight to the co-op bookstore.
Of course, being a university bookstore, its main selection
consisted of academic texts, and its recreational reading
selection was fairly limited. But on the plus side there was a 
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 0
10 percent discount on everything, and for some reason (I
wonder why) this particular bookstore had an unusually large
selection of magazines, so it got fairly crowded.
I made my way to the novels section and picked one out.
Wait. Huh? Something had occurred to me.
"Wait a minute. Did Mikoko-chan call me ‘Ikkun’?”
Now that I looked back on our encounter, that nickname
she used seemed to stand out. I hadn’t even noticed when
she’d used the nickname—but I didn’t think anyone had ever
addressed me with such an overly familiar nickname in the
past. I thought about it for a moment, but I couldn’t remember.
I had no specific memory of her calling me that before,
but then again, I didn’t remember her not calling me that,
either. After all, I hardly have any memory of Mikoko-chan
herself, much less a trivial thing like what name she called me.
“Eh, whatever.”
Either way was fine by me. Satisfied with that notion, I
began reading the novel inside the store.
Yup.
No big deal.
Hardly a life or death situation.
All was well with the world.
Even if Heaven was empty.
What is a fatal wound?
Cutting off someone’s head.
Yeah, obviously that’s one.
Crushing someone’s heart.
Again, obvious.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 1
Destroying someone’s brain.
Naturally.
Stopping their breathing.
That’s another good method. Pretty final, too.
But when I say "fatal wound,” I’m not referring to these
trivial sorts of things.
I’m thinking of something else. A fatal wound is an impact
so intense, so devastating, that you fall into a state where
you’re no longer a human—even though you are. You’re no
longer able to lead a life even though you’re living. It means
being ground to bits after falling victim to a relative paradox
created by reason itself.
That is a fatal wound.
In other words, failure.
The key here is the fact that even after a profound failure,
we go on.
The world is brutally tepid.
It’s so kind that it’s cruel. It’s a devil’s Heaven.
To put it plainly, you don’t die by making a big mistake.
Or maybe I should say you can’t die.
Yeah, you don’t die.
You just suffer.
You simply suffer in agony.
And you go on. Forever, wherever.
Meaninglessly, you just go on.
Life isn’t a video game, not because there’s no reset b.u.t.ton,
but because there’s no Game Over. Even though it was
"over” long ago, tomorrow shows up anyway. Even when night
falls, morning comes again after it. When winter ends, spring
rolls in. Life is wonderful.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 2
It’s an absolute paradox—even though you’ve taken a fatal
blow, you can’t die. It’s like asking what a person sees when
he looks backward while traveling faster than the speed of
light. An unthinkable question.
Even though the potential to be you has long since been
cut off, you go on. You do it all over, again and again. You
redo your life again and again.
But it’s like making a million c.r.a.ppy copies, and each time
you make one, your “self” gets a little bit shoddier.
And eventually you get to thinking . . .
Am I really me, or . . .
. . . did I become something else
long ago?
Have I devolved?
Just as the central figure in an incident can’t all of a sudden
become just a disinterested bystander, you can’t become your
own spectator.
And that, my friends, is what’s truly fatal.
“In other words, it’s like mind over matter . . .” I muttered.
As I pondered these fruitless ponderings, I was trying the new
McDonald’s burger. The five hundred twenty-five yen value
combo.
The kimchee must have worked, because my sense of taste
had returned to normal. A McDonald’s hamburger tasted
pretty luscious again. After all, as a j.a.panese person, there was
no way I could have gone on with my life if unable to enjoy
McDonald’s.
The time was 7:30 in the evening.
The place: Shijôkawara-machi, Shinkyôgoku Street.
After fifth period had ended, I decided I wanted to see
those mobile police Mikoko-chan was talking about for 
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 3
myself, and my feet had taken me this far in an effort to kill
time.
Next to the tray with the hamburger on it was a single
magazine. What they call a “weekly infozine.” I had bought it
at the co-op, and on the cover it said, “Feature Story: Jack the
Ripper Resurrected in the Devil’s City!”
“Pretty tasteless.”
The ridiculously apocalyptic feel of the magazine was
actually the second reason I had bought it. The first was that it
featured a big story on the “prowler” incidents Mikoko-chan
had been telling me about.
I shoved two fries in my mouth, added a straw as well, and
sucked down some cola. I started flipping through the weekly.
The first page was set with an all too vivid picture of a corpse
as the background, and in big, Gothic letters, it read: “The
Homicidal Monster Who Shook Kyoto!”
Ominous indeed.
“So they let you show photos like this . . .” I muttered as I
flipped through the pages. I had already scanned through the
details of the articles, so I at least knew something about the
incidents now, if not everything.
The media had dubbed the crime spree the “Kyoto Prowler
Serial Killings.” Not the most imaginative name in the world,
but then again, maybe a case like this didn’t need one. Still,
the word prowler hardly seemed to be an accurate description
of the criminal. I always thought of as a prowler as a sort of
stalker, someone who stalks people on the street and causes
them harm. But in this case the culprit was luring the victims
into desolate areas, killing them with a sharp blade, and finally
dismembering the corpses. It seemed like maybe “serial killer” 
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 4
was a better description than prowler. And you could definitely
make an a.n.a.logy with the Jack the Ripper murders.
“Six people now, huh? Not bad,” I muttered as I stuffed
the magazine back into my bag.
Yeah, six people. Just as Mikoko-chan had said, six people
in less than two weeks’ time was quite a death toll. It was
probably unprecedented. By the third murder, the police force
had been dispatched all over the region for surveillance. Even
the riot police had been dispatched, and yet the murders went
on, as if the killer were laughing at them.
The victims had no apparent connections. They were
young and old, male and female: The killer showed no mercy
to anyone. The police (and everyone else, for that matter) had
deemed these incidents merely a series of acts of random
violence.
Therefore the sixth victim probably wouldn’t be the last.
The killings would go on. As long as this monster remained on
the loose—or until he decided to stop of his own volition—
there would be more murders. Perhaps even tonight. Perhaps
even right now.
“It’s all nonsense in the end, huh?” I stared out at Shinkyô-
goku Street from the entrance of McDonald’s.
It was the same scenery as always. Fewer tourists and students
on field trips, but it was still pretty crowded—a lot of
kids with dyed hair were milling around. I suppose you could
say that this was when they came out to mark their territory.
n.o.body, absolutely n.o.body walking along this street right
now was seriously considering the notion that they could be
the next victim.
Of course, everyone was still being a little cautious. Some
were visibly unsettled by the mobile police units scattered 
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 5
here and there. “What a mess,” they might think, but that
about covers it. At most, they would go home a little earlier
than usual.
But deep in their hearts, everyone believed they would be
going home.
That’s how it is with these things. There are very few
people who can accept as a hard reality the possibility that
they might be the next to die.
It was true that the probability of becoming the next
victim was negligibly low: “Those victims must’ve had been
really unlucky.” A terrible thought, but what else could
people think?
Anyway . . . perhaps I should go ahead and mingle in with
this unguarded crowd? With that in mind, I got up from my
seat only to feel my phone vibrating in my right pocket. I
wasn’t familiar with the number on the display. But I didn’t
want to just ignore it. I went ahead and pushed send.
“Ciao! Mikoko-chan here!”
Hyper from the get-go. It was easy to imagine her giving
me the thumbs-up on the other end, even though I guess she
probably wasn’t actually doing that. But without even knowing
who she was talking to, she was so bubbly and friendly.
What would she have done if this was the wrong number? A
small fire ignited in my inquiring mind.
“Eh? Hey, it’s Mikoko-chan. What’s wrong?”
I didn’t reply.
"Uhh . . . This is Ikkun, right?”
Again, I was silent.
“h.e.l.looo? This is Ikkun, right?”
I persisted in not replying.
“Did I mess up? Huh? I messed up!”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 6
I kept up the silent treatment.
“Gahhh! It’s like getting all prepped for the next radio
calisthenics session—you know, that exercise show broadcast
over the radio—only to have them go ‘We’re outta time, so
just do the chicken dance’! I’m sorry, I dialed the wrong
number!”
At that, I finally said something: “No, this is right. What’s
up?”
“Uwa!” she shrieked in surprise when I spoke. “Huh?
Wha?” she sputtered, confused. Eventually, she let out a sigh,
so I figured she had calmed down a bit. I also figured that it
was only a matter of seconds before her relief turned to anger.
"For crying out loud! It’s the phone! You have to say something!
I’ll freak out if you don’t! Ikkun, you jerk! You snake!
You . . . you monster!”
I didn’t think I’d done anything that bad.
"Sorry, sorry, I was just kidding around.”
I hadn’t meant to stay quiet for so long, but I also had
never expected she’d provide such a hilarious response either.
Before I knew it, my timing had been thrown off.
“G.o.d . . . It’s fine, I guess. Since it’s you and all.”
She let out a moan. It was hard not to feel a little sorry for
her. “Umm,” she started again, back to her normal self. “This
is a business call! Regarding tomorrow’s business!”
“You know, you don’t have to yell. It’s quiet here.”
“Hm? Where are you now?" she asked.
“Ah, uh, I’m at home. At the boarding lodge.”
“Oh. I’m still at school. I had to talk to Inokawa-sensei
about something, so I just got out of the research room. Isn’t
that place incredible?! Books everywhere!”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 7
Inokawa-sensei led the general-education cla.s.s. A slightly
eccentric a.s.sistant professor, he was popular enough with his
students if you were willing to set aside the fact that he was
way too strict about punctuality. (If you weren’t in your seat
by the time the bell started ringing—even if you were in the
cla.s.sroom and were in the act of sitting down while it was
ringing—he marked you absent).
“Umm, right, so about tomorrow. Will you be home tomorrow?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Are we meeting somewhere?” I asked.
“Uh-uh. If we set a meeting place, we might miss each other,
right? That’s no good, so I’ll come meet you at your boarding
lodge. I bought a scooter and I kinda wanna take it for a spin.
So, let’s say four o’clock. Can I go to your place at four?”
“Yeah, it’s fine, but . . . you know where the boarding
lodge is?”
“Huh? Oh, no problem there.” She seemed fl.u.s.tered. “I
mean, because we made that address list when cla.s.ses first
started, so I know it.”
“Is just the address enough?”
"I know Kyoto well, so we’re a-okay. You’re at Senbon
Nakadachiuri, right?”
“Huh?” I asked. There was something suspicious about the
way she was acting, but if she said she knew it, I figured there
was no problem.
“Fine by me,” I replied.
“Okay. That settles that, then. Hmm, I’d like to talk more
since I went to the trouble of calling, but I’ve got to go to
driving school from here. I made an appointment, and if I
don’t go now I’ll be late.”
“Huh. You’re going to driving school.”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 8
“Yep. How about you? Got a license?”
“I do. Just for automatic, though.”
If it wasn’t such a big ha.s.sle to get a license, I could
actually drive anything, but that was a secret.
“I see,” she said. “I’m going for a manual.
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