What I Meant to Say

The days got warmer. The school grounds looked different in the warm weather, it seemed like people started moving through them slower, whilst taking up more space. Aki had a way of matching whatever the weather was doing with her energy. On warm days she was brighter. On gray days she was steadier. I had started noticing things like that without meaning to.

Like always Daiki wanted to go somewhere, which meant it was not optional. This time he wanted to go to an arcade. He told us about it on a Wednesday for the following Friday, and by Thursday he had confirmed it enough times that declining would have required an actual reason.

I didn't have an actual reason.

The place was loud, which is a specific kind of loud that comes from too many machines making noise in slightly different rhythms. Normally that kind of noise accumulates in my chest in a way that is hard to shake. That afternoon it was still loud. But Daiki was immediately absorbed in the basketball hoop game and Aki was pulling Rui toward the claw machines and I had something to look at and somewhere to stand and somehow that made the difference.

Daiki called me over to the basketball hoop and showed me the grip. He had a demonstration mode where he explained things very seriously for about thirty seconds and then immediately started losing on purpose to make you feel better, which I saw through immediately but didn't mention.

I missed the first four shots and made the fifth and Daiki reacted like it was something that needed to be remembered and documented. I even heared Aki cheer from two machines away. Like come on do I look so bad at basketball?

I made two more. The sound the ball made going through the hoop was satisfying in a very uncomplicated way. I liked that.

The claw machine was less straightforward. Aki handed me tokens and explained the physics of it, which she had clearly thought about more than most people. I spent four tokens getting the claw to close on a small stuffed bear and then watched it drop twice before finally landing in the pit on the third try.

Rui took a photo. I held the bear at an awkward angle because I did not know what to do with it.

"I can't believe you actually got it,"

Rui said.

"Beginner's luck,"

Daiki said, and looked genuinely delighted.

I kept the bear. I put it on the desk in my room that night, and then moved it to the windowsill, and then left it there. It was small and yellow and not very well made. I kept looking at it the next few days without fully understanding why.

Aki sat next to me under the tree one afternoon when the others had gone to the vending machines. The light was going golden. She was pulling at the edge of her sleeve the way she did when she was going to say something she had been carrying for a while.

"You're different from when you first got here."

I looked at the ground.

"How?"

"Less like you're waiting for something bad to happen."

I thought about that. It was not entirely accurate, but it was closer than I expected her to be.

"I am still waiting,"

I said.

"I know. But you're waiting differently."

I did not answer that. She did not seem to need me to. The others came back with cans and the conversation became something else.

The conversation under the stairs happened on a Thursday, late afternoon, the cherry blossoms already past their peak and going papery. Aki sat on the second step with her elbows on her knees. I was on the bottom step a little to the side.

She said my name first, which meant she had been working up to whatever came next.

"Would you want to be together? Officially. Not just as friends."

I looked at the pavement between my feet. My first reaction was something that I could not immediately categorize, a kind of opening and closing at the same time.

"I care about you,"

I said. Which was true and also a way of not answering, and I think we both knew that.

She looked at me steadily.

"You can say you need time. That's okay."

"I need time. I don't know how much."

"That's okay,"

she said again. She meant it. I could tell because she did not adjust her expression to show me she meant it. She just said it and left it there.

She touched my hand briefly. I did not pull back.

"Thank you,"

I said.

We sat there for another few minutes and then the gate opened and other students came through and the moment changed shape. We walked to the bus stop together without saying anything else about it. Daiki caught up to us somewhere along the way and started talking about something unrelated, which was either obliviousness or tact, and with Daiki I could never tell.

At home I sat on the floor with my notebook and did not write anything for a long time. I just sat with the pen in my hand.

I wanted to say yes. That was not complicated. What was complicated was that wanting to say yes and being ready to were not the same thing, and I had spent enough time pretending they were to know better.

She said she would wait. I kept sitting with that.

Eventually I wrote one line: Aki confessed to me unexpectedly.

Then I closed the notebook and lay down and looked at the ceiling. The stuffed bear was on the windowsill. The lamp from the hallway made a thin line of light under my door.

I fell asleep thinking about the way she just confessed her feelings to me. Twice. Like it was something she had already decided before I answered.