Chapter 7: The Flower, in the Eye of the Beholder (II)

The guidance office smelled like anxiety. Or maybe that was just me. I'm surrounded by books, trophies, and violation records that I would be soon part of.

While my party with Morita and Hirose were like sheep, the argument that ensued didn't.

As expected, they'll put the blame on me because 'I started the fight' and was a 'crybaby' just because I didn't like the way they described Kousaka-san. It was filled with sugarcoating, a classic delinquent power move, and it only made me more upset in the end.

There's no maneuver out of it. While it's true that I called them out first, my justification is a harmless confrontation. They're still the one that threw arms first, but that's unless our coach gets on my side.

Well, he did.

It's a one sided beatdown after all. My busted lips and nose and the footprint on my PE shirt is enough of a testimony.

And the disciplinary actions started on a droning voice of the female guidance counselor speaking false politeness that she wore like a cologne. I kept my mouth shut, yet the three punks beside me weren't. They're still pressing the issue that they were righteous for beating me up, because it meant saving their honor, or for me, their ego.

I just let the teachers talk. Let them remind us of “appropriate behavior” and “fighting isn’t the answer.”

Yeah, I knew.

I’d heard similar lectures before—when the news broke out that my parents abandoned me in middle school, when my classmates started bullying me and started to fight back, when the teachers realized I was on autopilot till now. They talked like I was a broken vending machine spitting out stupidly self-deprecating behavior, and counseled me every single day.

They said that I should live a better version of myself and leave everything to yesterday.

When someone isn't walking in your shoes, they rely on sophism to 'lighten' the weight.

While it taught me how to deal with the pain, it never answered the questions I longed for.

It's just simple: Why did they choose to leave me?

After a fifteen minute moral lecture, they let me go with a 3-day suspension and four letters to write: one to the school, one for the three delinquents.

Apologize to the people who hit you. That’s how this works.

The door creaked behind me as I stepped out into the hallway.

And then I stopped. Not because I wanted to breathe some fresh air, but to make sure that what am I seeing is real.

She was here.

Kousaka Akari-san, leaning against the wall like a misplaced painting. Arms crossed, brown blazer hanging loose from one shoulder. And her eyes—not on her sketchbook, not drifting like usual—but on me.

The light from the hallway window lit her golden hair in a way that made her seem unreal, like she’d been drawn in pencil and then colored in with care.

"Bonjour. Have you waited for me?" I greeted.

She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she scanned my face with knit brows as if searching for flaws.

There is none, except for the two bandages on top of my cut lip and busted nose.

“What does it look like?”

“You could’ve been just drawing,” I muttered.

She always sat in weird places to sketch. The room, the rooftop, and of course, the bench. This particular ugly hallway would have inspired her artistic expression.

“I was, but I stopped halfway.”

"Because?"

She blinked, and turned away.

"I heard what happened."

“Yeah,” I said, scratching the back of my head. “It turns out fists are stronger than sarcasm.”

Silence stretched between us again.

Then, she turned back to me. Her eyes weren't sharp anymore. If I could describe it without a sugarcoat, they were disappointed at my existence.

“You shouldn’t have helped me.”

I smiled. That was the first thing that came to mind when I'm in the middle of their beatdown. Letting yourself decked by three people wasn't courage, it was euthanasia.

“I didn’t help you,” I argued. “I heard men speaking trash about you, and I just got punched.”

“That’s not the point.”

I frowned. “Care to emphasize?”

She looked at me, like she was choosing her words carefully. Like they might cut if she didn’t.

But that face betrayed her actions for the next second.

Her fist shot out faster than my reflexes, and the next heartbeat, I found myself falling to one knee and clutching my stomach and throwing a coughing fit.

Her strength was…unbelievable.

If this was her way to emphasize her point, then I should practice wits and read between the lines.

“You think people like me want to be saved?" she spat. "That if someone’s suffering, someone else should just come in and fix it? You don’t know anything about what I’ve lived through, and you decided you knew what was best. That’s not heroic. That’s just arrogant.”

Her words hit harder than her fist did.

I tried to swallow them, but they scratched going down.

"You also don't know what I've lived through, so you cannot judge the course of my actions. I didn’t think I was saving you. I just didn’t want to stand there and watch them.”

“Why then?”

Her voice wasn’t angry anymore. It was something else.

Wiping the rusty red on my lips, I wobbled up and looked at her.

“…Because,” I rasped, “when my parents left me, nobody did anything. They saw me drowning and didn’t even blink. Not the teachers, not the neighbors, not even my relatives. I lived through days in constant anxiety and caution, because every time I relaxed, I became another victim.”

Her blue eyes met mine.

"I didn't care if you're used to it. I didn't care if you always let them. So I figured someone else should do something for once. Call this action barbaric, but to me, it's justice."

“Mon dieu…that’s not your job.”

Giving her the umbrella in that rain wasn’t my job. Letting her in and cook into my poverty shack isn’t my job. Looking for her in the crowd and fighting for her isn’t my job.

I don’t know what drove me to do these stunts and yet…

I still did it.

“I am proud that I didn't inherit my parents’ negligence.”

Her expression shifted—barely. But I caught it.

Call it a hairline fracture, but it seems that something inside her cracked.

“…You’re still a crétin,” she said.

I blinked. “Sorry?”

She stared at me for a while longer.

"You're an idiot."

"You're welcome."

Then she reached into her bag, pulled out something, and tossed it at my chest.

It was a canned french vanilla iced coffee. I could barely register any signs of coldness, and she might have bought it sometime earlier and decided to hand it to me after hearing what happened.

“…Don’t think this means anything.”

“I never do. Just like you, I have no expectations.”

We fell into an impasse, and I walked forward to lean on the same wall as hers with a fair distance between us. I expected her to move two steps away, but she didn't.

“They gave me three days,” I said eventually.

“Vacation?”

“Suspension.”

She smirked. “Even more pathetic.”

“And I was ordered to write apology letters," I added. “Two pages each.”

Kousaka-san snorted.

“Let me guess—’I solemnly swear I won’t rescue girls who clearly don’t need rescuing ever again’?”

“More like ‘I acknowledge I disrupted the moral fabric of second-year locker rooms.’”

She leaned her head back against the wall. “Putain de système scolaire.”

“That…sounded mean.”

“It was.” Her voice softened. “It was for them. Not for you.”

I looked at her.

She didn’t return the glance, but her mouth was curved slightly upward.

“…You know, I never know if you’re complimenting me or hexing me.”

“Keep guessing,” she said with a shrug. “It keeps things fun.”

And just like that, her philosophical edge dulled into something warmer.

I can say that we’d slipped into a rhythm neither of us knew how to play, but still kept doing so.

I felt it in the way her shoulder brushed mine, just once, when she shifted her weight.

In the way her voice, usually so acidic, sounded almost...gentle.

She turned around, walking away.

Then stopped, halfway down the hall.

Without looking back, she muttered:

“Next time, try not to lose.”

And then she was gone.

I stood there in the hallway, holding a slightly warm can of coffee in my bruised hand, not sure whether I’d just lost something or started gaining it.