drawing loopholes (chihayafuru. chihaya, arata/chihaya, pg)
Guys, Chihayafuru. In two days it's ending and I don't know how to deal with that because it's not going to get a second season and I will never be able to see my precious babies play cards again! But I wrote fic (what else to do?).
drawing loopholes; chihayafuru. chihaya, arata/chihaya, shinobu/chihaya. 2,913 words. pg. general spoilers.
this is the truth: waiting is cruel, but it is also selfish.
The crash of the cards is what wakes her up.
When Chihaya fell asleep, it was daylight; when she opens her eyes, orange streaks the wooden floors and the mat where Taichi should have been, winning his match. Instead, she sees the pale faced boy with the glasses- she can’t really remember his name, it’s not important- shuffles his cards decently and bows down, clearly speaking the two words that are sometimes the words of victory, and the words of loss.
Respect is the greatest rule in Karuta; both Taichi and Chihaya know this. They have bruised their knees, strained their backs, and calloused their hands for this ultimate sign. When she sees Taichi bow down and repeat the same two words, none of those habits come to mind. Crushed, they’ll say later, whispering in the halls, and Taichi will give his usual pained smile and wave it off.
“It’s nothing,” he’ll say, grabbing Kana by the palms and laughing. “Really.”
But to Chihaya, that’s always been the difference between them. To her, the gap between where karuta ends for her, and where it begins for Taichi- it's as far as the gap that exists when Taichi tries to brush for her hand again when the competition ends.
(Oh, she knows. She sees it. She doesn't say anything, because it's Taichi and that's all he is to her, the boy with orange hair who grew up kicking her in the knees and prodding her with challenges.)
Taichi will never understand that there is more to karuta than just losing and winning, ranks A B and C. And it's that absence of knowing that keeps her apart; that keeps him on the line that she and Arata walk on.
Harada-sensei keeps her at it for three months and doesn’t allow her to play anyone else. Some days it’s exhausting, and the other days it’s refreshing. The challenge is always there, and Chihaya loses every time for two and a half consecutive months.
“You have to get used to losing,” he tells her, smoothing out his shirt. “You need to stop losing your cool.”
“I know,” she replies wearily. She rubs her forehead with the back of her hand. It’s late; she should go home before her parents get worried. She licks her lips and thinks about the days where things like this didn't matter. Awareness, to her, is a curse. It breaks bonds, it hides in the corner of her eyes when she sees Taichi looking at her in more ways than one. But most of all, it opens the doors she's always kept tightly closed. One of them leads to herself.
But lately, she's been able to deal with the idea of such a burden. Worry. The word rolls over in her tongue, and she instantly realizes the reaction; it’s the same feeling she gets when sometimes she blankly stares up at the sky, knowing Arata’s trying his best, but still wishing for him to come home. To come back. It's the squeezing feeling in her chest. The one where her heart tightens a bit and her stomach flutters as she presses her fingers against the strong layers of skin on her palms. The way her teeth run across her bottom lip and sink in, sometimes drawing blood.
“I’ll walk you home,” Harada-sensei says. Chihaya is still standing on her knees, her hands splayed out amongst the cards. She does not move.
“Do you think he’ll return?”
There's a pause somewhere in between, and Harada-sensei shifts and closes his eyes. Chihaya doesn't neet to mention who they're talking about. Arata is a ghost in every part of their lives; a heavy weight they drag around with the cards.
He takes his time to formulate the words. “I’m sure he will. You’re the one who brought him back to karuta, after all. You just have to wait a little longer. And in order to do that, you…….”
“I have to get stronger,” she finishes.
“That’s right.” Dr. Harada bites his lip and stretches with a loud yawn. Chihaya always forgets how old he really is. It's the sort of things she doesn't mean to forget- just like she doesn't mean to call her teammates by nicknames. It's habit. She's always been a creature of one, of innate abilities and talents, never really keeping track of crossing the line.
Until now. Until Karuta.
“Have you told Taichi, by the way?”
She looks up, confused. “About what?”
“About our secret practices,” he grinned. The sparkle flashes back into his eyes, and Chihaya knows that she’s sitting in front of her father figure again, not an opponent. It’s hard to separate the two in the game, and yet, with Harada-sensei, she’s able to tell so quickly.
“No, I don’t think….I don’t think he’d be happy with that. I told him I was laying it off karuta for a bit.” She twirls with her hair and pulls her skirt down a bit. “I don’t think he believed me though."
“Well, we all know you’re a terrible liar, especially Taichi.” He shuffles his cards and places them back into his back. “You should still keep it a secret, though…he probably knows already.”
“How?” Her eyes narrow in frustration. Harada-sensei seemed to have the uncanny knack of understanding people like he understood karuta. “I didn’t even say-“
“No, not that,” He waves her confusion off. “I think he knows that of all the people in our club, I’m betting on you, Chihaya.”
There is something warm about his voice, yet something serious at the same time. Chihaya knows; she has always been able to pick up the smallest of changes in the voices. Even if she doesn’t fully comprehend it, her body reacts. Something tingles in her eyes and she tries not to scratch at them and blink too hard. Harada-sensei notices too, and smiles.
“Come on, your parents will get mad if you’re home too late.” He pushes himself off the floor.
As he gets up to leave, her eye catches the last card underneath the on the floor. Chihaya’s thumb slides over the edge of the card before placing it back into the stack. She knows the lines to it just by looking at the back; it is the card that she has managed to win every time from Harada, despite losing so quickly. It is her silent trophy, the silent reminder of a 5 year promise. It will always be the last one she will pick up and assort into her deck.
Impassionate gods, she murmurs softly, before picking herself up and following her teacher out the room.
There are days when Chihaya's hands get weary of clashing against the floor and sweeping cards. She doesn't tell anyone about it. But sometimes, she'll close her eyes, her fingers tracing the edges of the pictures in her album. It's not as thick as her sister's, but sometimes, she'll open it up, and see her face- see Arata's face, and Taichi's. Her legs will be crossed and she will slump against the wardrobe, her hair draping over her shoulders.
The burden of a hundred poems can be seen in more ways than one, and Chihaya is reminded of it every day with those photos.
She meets him two years later.
It's not a competition this time. Instead, Chihaya bumps into him after grabbing the groceries for her team at the West Qualifiers. She had known that he would be there too, but-
"You've gotten taller," he notices. Chihaya tugs at her shirt and doesn't look at him. There is no preparation for seeing him, not like there is in karuta. Relationships aren't phrases, nor are they lines to be read and memorized. She sometimes mixes the ideas up: that people exist beyond first appearances, that there's something called reading between the lines. For Arata, it's different. It's always different. She's selfish and she looks around him, because there's nothing to read beyond his glasses and his love for karuta. She already knows him, she already sees him, and doesn't see him. The things she doesn't know about Arata don't matter to her. The parts that do seem to, more than she thought.
And it's horrifying.
It's selfish, people would say sometimes to her. You're selfish, Chihaya.
"And you've gotten sk-skinnier," she mumbles, the red blooming across her cheeks. She doesn't need to look up to know that he's smiling.
"Well, I have been eating, if that's what you're implying." He reaches over and takes a leaf out of her hair. His fingers barely brush her skin, but something is already triggered and she's trying to stand still, to not do anything. She can't speak. Her heart is hammering against her chest; she's sure even Arata can hear it. He's a karuta expert after all.
It's only in that brief moment of suffocation that some part of her realizes that all along, he had really never left them; that he had really never left her. There's a ghost in her lungs, a ghost in the way she moves her arm, and the whispers about her style, and how it's so similar to a past Master, they all run down through her fingertips every time she touches that card. A red beacon, Kana said. It had always been there with her, for her.
She doesn't know how to feel about it, about all of it. Her legs feel loose all of a sudden; she wants to run, stay rooted to the cement. Take a clean bath and wash out these new facts clouding up her life.
Instead, she bites her lip and finally looks back at him. Her hand is still clenching the grocery bag. Her mouth opens and Arata raises an eyebrow, waiting for her to speak.
She does. "Let's play."
(It's the only words she's ever really known.)
This is the truth:
Waiting is cruel, but also selfish. Sometimes what scares her the most is the fact that the Arata that is real is not the one she remembers. His back is larger, his arms are no longer as scrawny. When he speaks, there's a shift in his voice tone. Chihaya looks for the cropped up hair at the base of his neck only to find it combed down neatly. And yet, there are incongruences; his tees are slightly crumpled, the way he mumbles his 'r' and 's' in sentences, and his crooked glasses. Her mind flashes back to the day he kicked the cards out of her hand; her fingers still tingle from that moment.
What Chihaya finds equally as terrifying is the fact that she remembers all of this, instead of the formulas written in the corner of her notebook. She does not tell anyone about it. She certainly does not tell Taichi- Taichi, who she sees every day and still forgets the fact that he has- no, had a girlfriend, that he has a dream of something other than karuta, that he will always end up walking a different route to a different school on the way.
It will be one more year until Taichi decides to leave for college. He blames it on his mother, but the way his eyes slant toward the floor, the way he lets his bangs shield the curves of his cheeks all signal something different to her.
He smells of guilt, like he always does. Chihaya closes her eyes when he embraces her. This- this isn't them. She doesn't know what it is, to be honest. All she can do is inhale him, and keep him in her lungs, never breathing out. She has lost one of them; she doesn't want to lose the other.
There are two years that pass by fleetingly; Taichi will send her texts asking her how she is doing. When she replies, she makes sure it is always about karuta.
She does not tell him about the night where she meets Arata after a competition (they both lose, of course, and she does not see Shinobu, so it doesn't matter much) and he presses her against the wall and moves his mouth up against the side of her neck. Flesh against burning flesh. We're grownups now, he will tell her as she gasps for breath.
Grownups. Arata's lips still burn across her throat as she clicks the send message and shuts her cell phone off.
Shinobu ends up going to the same university as her, just like Arata. Kana and the others are only one year under her, so she doesn't see them for a while, but Shinobu- they end a lot closer than what Chihaya would usually predict. One day, she will tell her mom as she looks at the phone bill in astonishment- I call Shinobu more than Arata. It's a fact.
So they sit after their third period class- Shinobu's majoring in Physics, Chihaya majoring in Business and Management- and talk. They are rivals, and they are best friends. They are sometimes both at the same time.
Chihaya finds that there is something real and natural about Shinobu, something she can't put her finger on. Her hand will slice through air as if it was never there, her eyes will burn with a cold fire that singes Chihaya's heart every time she looks at her. But she's quiet. It's refreshing to have someone like that and while she can't understand why (this is part of growing up, she'll remind herself) there is a gap between them that fits right in.
"So you're dating him," Shinobu will say, and Chihaya will pause for a second as she eats her sandwich and look at her with a wide expression. Dating. The word rolls off her tongue wrong, sticking to her teeth as she bites down on the nauseating feeling.
"I don't know." She shrugs nonchalantly and leans back. "I like him? I guess. I don't know. Arata is Arata."
"He kissed you," Shinobu points out, now taking out her soda. "I think that's enough to call an active relationship."
Her fingers tighten around the sandwich as she tries to think clearly. She doesn't see Arata too often, but every time she does it's like an instant reaction. They don't know how to stop. Just as a stanza is called from the poems, their hands instantly lock and Arata drags her away, not looking at her. And she always lets him.
She looks back at Shinobu, who has been staring at her intently. "You've got competition," she says quietly, her hand curving down her neck and sliding back her black hair. "And I don't mean Taichi."
"What do you mean?" She puts down her half eaten sandwich and looks at Shinobu curiously. "Do you think I've been doing the wrong thing?"
"No," she answers, now closing her eyes. Her hands brush Chihaya's, as if trying to hold something, but losing control and flinching back. "But if there's one thing I know about you....you don't like to lose." Her eyes flash cold and Chihaya feels the shiver run down her back. This time however, it's not out of anger. Her heart races a little quicker as the words come out of Shinobu's mouth.
"And neither do I."
And with that, she gets up and leaves.
Usually, they meet afterwards practice, in the dark lit wooden rooms, where the panels and the floor are bare and smooth. Chihaya laughs and they both blush; it's part of their rhythm now. Sometimes he'll quiz her on the Hundred Poems and if she gets it right he'll kiss her on the neck. If it's two, it's on the mouth. She'll watch him as he tries to kiss her with his glasses on straight (which he never does, and they'll end up falling and laughing and god, it's a wonder that he hasn't broken them already!).
They don't talk about sex, but it's not like they don't don't talk about sex. Taichi still is there in there between them, despite the distance. Arata hasn't said anything either.
But it comes. It has to. There is only one ending to this game. In karuta, there is a winner and a loser. They never really forgot, even after university.
"When will we tell him?" He'll ask her later, as they sit back and look at the blank ceiling. "I think- I think Harada-sensei knows."
"There's no way," she gasps. "No way."
"Oh, I think he knows," and she can feel the curve of his smile against her cheek. "Shinobu does, for certain."
"Shinobu is different. I told her. That doesn't count."
He props himself up and looks at her seriously now, his fingers tracing the back of her arm. "We need to tell him. He's our friend. We can't just go and sneak out like this, Chihaya. He doesn't deserve it."
She looks away from him, the nauseating feeling rising up in her stomach again. It's ugly and Chihaya isn't used to it. She's not used to any of this. But still, Arata was right. He always was in the end.
This time, she grabs his arm and drags him out the room.
It's Monday. Chihaya opens up her cell phone in class. She looks across and sees Arata and frowns. Arata closes his eyes and nods his head.
The three words she types in are so simple. But she bites her lip, and presses send. The mail flickers open and shut, open and shut.
Arata's thumbs are on hers when the reply comes back.
fin.
drawing loopholes; chihayafuru. chihaya, arata/chihaya, shinobu/chihaya. 2,913 words. pg. general spoilers.
this is the truth: waiting is cruel, but it is also selfish.
The crash of the cards is what wakes her up.
When Chihaya fell asleep, it was daylight; when she opens her eyes, orange streaks the wooden floors and the mat where Taichi should have been, winning his match. Instead, she sees the pale faced boy with the glasses- she can’t really remember his name, it’s not important- shuffles his cards decently and bows down, clearly speaking the two words that are sometimes the words of victory, and the words of loss.
Respect is the greatest rule in Karuta; both Taichi and Chihaya know this. They have bruised their knees, strained their backs, and calloused their hands for this ultimate sign. When she sees Taichi bow down and repeat the same two words, none of those habits come to mind. Crushed, they’ll say later, whispering in the halls, and Taichi will give his usual pained smile and wave it off.
“It’s nothing,” he’ll say, grabbing Kana by the palms and laughing. “Really.”
But to Chihaya, that’s always been the difference between them. To her, the gap between where karuta ends for her, and where it begins for Taichi- it's as far as the gap that exists when Taichi tries to brush for her hand again when the competition ends.
(Oh, she knows. She sees it. She doesn't say anything, because it's Taichi and that's all he is to her, the boy with orange hair who grew up kicking her in the knees and prodding her with challenges.)
Taichi will never understand that there is more to karuta than just losing and winning, ranks A B and C. And it's that absence of knowing that keeps her apart; that keeps him on the line that she and Arata walk on.
Harada-sensei keeps her at it for three months and doesn’t allow her to play anyone else. Some days it’s exhausting, and the other days it’s refreshing. The challenge is always there, and Chihaya loses every time for two and a half consecutive months.
“You have to get used to losing,” he tells her, smoothing out his shirt. “You need to stop losing your cool.”
“I know,” she replies wearily. She rubs her forehead with the back of her hand. It’s late; she should go home before her parents get worried. She licks her lips and thinks about the days where things like this didn't matter. Awareness, to her, is a curse. It breaks bonds, it hides in the corner of her eyes when she sees Taichi looking at her in more ways than one. But most of all, it opens the doors she's always kept tightly closed. One of them leads to herself.
But lately, she's been able to deal with the idea of such a burden. Worry. The word rolls over in her tongue, and she instantly realizes the reaction; it’s the same feeling she gets when sometimes she blankly stares up at the sky, knowing Arata’s trying his best, but still wishing for him to come home. To come back. It's the squeezing feeling in her chest. The one where her heart tightens a bit and her stomach flutters as she presses her fingers against the strong layers of skin on her palms. The way her teeth run across her bottom lip and sink in, sometimes drawing blood.
“I’ll walk you home,” Harada-sensei says. Chihaya is still standing on her knees, her hands splayed out amongst the cards. She does not move.
“Do you think he’ll return?”
There's a pause somewhere in between, and Harada-sensei shifts and closes his eyes. Chihaya doesn't neet to mention who they're talking about. Arata is a ghost in every part of their lives; a heavy weight they drag around with the cards.
He takes his time to formulate the words. “I’m sure he will. You’re the one who brought him back to karuta, after all. You just have to wait a little longer. And in order to do that, you…….”
“I have to get stronger,” she finishes.
“That’s right.” Dr. Harada bites his lip and stretches with a loud yawn. Chihaya always forgets how old he really is. It's the sort of things she doesn't mean to forget- just like she doesn't mean to call her teammates by nicknames. It's habit. She's always been a creature of one, of innate abilities and talents, never really keeping track of crossing the line.
Until now. Until Karuta.
“Have you told Taichi, by the way?”
She looks up, confused. “About what?”
“About our secret practices,” he grinned. The sparkle flashes back into his eyes, and Chihaya knows that she’s sitting in front of her father figure again, not an opponent. It’s hard to separate the two in the game, and yet, with Harada-sensei, she’s able to tell so quickly.
“No, I don’t think….I don’t think he’d be happy with that. I told him I was laying it off karuta for a bit.” She twirls with her hair and pulls her skirt down a bit. “I don’t think he believed me though."
“Well, we all know you’re a terrible liar, especially Taichi.” He shuffles his cards and places them back into his back. “You should still keep it a secret, though…he probably knows already.”
“How?” Her eyes narrow in frustration. Harada-sensei seemed to have the uncanny knack of understanding people like he understood karuta. “I didn’t even say-“
“No, not that,” He waves her confusion off. “I think he knows that of all the people in our club, I’m betting on you, Chihaya.”
There is something warm about his voice, yet something serious at the same time. Chihaya knows; she has always been able to pick up the smallest of changes in the voices. Even if she doesn’t fully comprehend it, her body reacts. Something tingles in her eyes and she tries not to scratch at them and blink too hard. Harada-sensei notices too, and smiles.
“Come on, your parents will get mad if you’re home too late.” He pushes himself off the floor.
As he gets up to leave, her eye catches the last card underneath the on the floor. Chihaya’s thumb slides over the edge of the card before placing it back into the stack. She knows the lines to it just by looking at the back; it is the card that she has managed to win every time from Harada, despite losing so quickly. It is her silent trophy, the silent reminder of a 5 year promise. It will always be the last one she will pick up and assort into her deck.
Impassionate gods, she murmurs softly, before picking herself up and following her teacher out the room.
There are days when Chihaya's hands get weary of clashing against the floor and sweeping cards. She doesn't tell anyone about it. But sometimes, she'll close her eyes, her fingers tracing the edges of the pictures in her album. It's not as thick as her sister's, but sometimes, she'll open it up, and see her face- see Arata's face, and Taichi's. Her legs will be crossed and she will slump against the wardrobe, her hair draping over her shoulders.
The burden of a hundred poems can be seen in more ways than one, and Chihaya is reminded of it every day with those photos.
She meets him two years later.
It's not a competition this time. Instead, Chihaya bumps into him after grabbing the groceries for her team at the West Qualifiers. She had known that he would be there too, but-
"You've gotten taller," he notices. Chihaya tugs at her shirt and doesn't look at him. There is no preparation for seeing him, not like there is in karuta. Relationships aren't phrases, nor are they lines to be read and memorized. She sometimes mixes the ideas up: that people exist beyond first appearances, that there's something called reading between the lines. For Arata, it's different. It's always different. She's selfish and she looks around him, because there's nothing to read beyond his glasses and his love for karuta. She already knows him, she already sees him, and doesn't see him. The things she doesn't know about Arata don't matter to her. The parts that do seem to, more than she thought.
And it's horrifying.
It's selfish, people would say sometimes to her. You're selfish, Chihaya.
"And you've gotten sk-skinnier," she mumbles, the red blooming across her cheeks. She doesn't need to look up to know that he's smiling.
"Well, I have been eating, if that's what you're implying." He reaches over and takes a leaf out of her hair. His fingers barely brush her skin, but something is already triggered and she's trying to stand still, to not do anything. She can't speak. Her heart is hammering against her chest; she's sure even Arata can hear it. He's a karuta expert after all.
It's only in that brief moment of suffocation that some part of her realizes that all along, he had really never left them; that he had really never left her. There's a ghost in her lungs, a ghost in the way she moves her arm, and the whispers about her style, and how it's so similar to a past Master, they all run down through her fingertips every time she touches that card. A red beacon, Kana said. It had always been there with her, for her.
She doesn't know how to feel about it, about all of it. Her legs feel loose all of a sudden; she wants to run, stay rooted to the cement. Take a clean bath and wash out these new facts clouding up her life.
Instead, she bites her lip and finally looks back at him. Her hand is still clenching the grocery bag. Her mouth opens and Arata raises an eyebrow, waiting for her to speak.
She does. "Let's play."
(It's the only words she's ever really known.)
This is the truth:
Waiting is cruel, but also selfish. Sometimes what scares her the most is the fact that the Arata that is real is not the one she remembers. His back is larger, his arms are no longer as scrawny. When he speaks, there's a shift in his voice tone. Chihaya looks for the cropped up hair at the base of his neck only to find it combed down neatly. And yet, there are incongruences; his tees are slightly crumpled, the way he mumbles his 'r' and 's' in sentences, and his crooked glasses. Her mind flashes back to the day he kicked the cards out of her hand; her fingers still tingle from that moment.
What Chihaya finds equally as terrifying is the fact that she remembers all of this, instead of the formulas written in the corner of her notebook. She does not tell anyone about it. She certainly does not tell Taichi- Taichi, who she sees every day and still forgets the fact that he has- no, had a girlfriend, that he has a dream of something other than karuta, that he will always end up walking a different route to a different school on the way.
It will be one more year until Taichi decides to leave for college. He blames it on his mother, but the way his eyes slant toward the floor, the way he lets his bangs shield the curves of his cheeks all signal something different to her.
He smells of guilt, like he always does. Chihaya closes her eyes when he embraces her. This- this isn't them. She doesn't know what it is, to be honest. All she can do is inhale him, and keep him in her lungs, never breathing out. She has lost one of them; she doesn't want to lose the other.
There are two years that pass by fleetingly; Taichi will send her texts asking her how she is doing. When she replies, she makes sure it is always about karuta.
She does not tell him about the night where she meets Arata after a competition (they both lose, of course, and she does not see Shinobu, so it doesn't matter much) and he presses her against the wall and moves his mouth up against the side of her neck. Flesh against burning flesh. We're grownups now, he will tell her as she gasps for breath.
Grownups. Arata's lips still burn across her throat as she clicks the send message and shuts her cell phone off.
Shinobu ends up going to the same university as her, just like Arata. Kana and the others are only one year under her, so she doesn't see them for a while, but Shinobu- they end a lot closer than what Chihaya would usually predict. One day, she will tell her mom as she looks at the phone bill in astonishment- I call Shinobu more than Arata. It's a fact.
So they sit after their third period class- Shinobu's majoring in Physics, Chihaya majoring in Business and Management- and talk. They are rivals, and they are best friends. They are sometimes both at the same time.
Chihaya finds that there is something real and natural about Shinobu, something she can't put her finger on. Her hand will slice through air as if it was never there, her eyes will burn with a cold fire that singes Chihaya's heart every time she looks at her. But she's quiet. It's refreshing to have someone like that and while she can't understand why (this is part of growing up, she'll remind herself) there is a gap between them that fits right in.
"So you're dating him," Shinobu will say, and Chihaya will pause for a second as she eats her sandwich and look at her with a wide expression. Dating. The word rolls off her tongue wrong, sticking to her teeth as she bites down on the nauseating feeling.
"I don't know." She shrugs nonchalantly and leans back. "I like him? I guess. I don't know. Arata is Arata."
"He kissed you," Shinobu points out, now taking out her soda. "I think that's enough to call an active relationship."
Her fingers tighten around the sandwich as she tries to think clearly. She doesn't see Arata too often, but every time she does it's like an instant reaction. They don't know how to stop. Just as a stanza is called from the poems, their hands instantly lock and Arata drags her away, not looking at her. And she always lets him.
She looks back at Shinobu, who has been staring at her intently. "You've got competition," she says quietly, her hand curving down her neck and sliding back her black hair. "And I don't mean Taichi."
"What do you mean?" She puts down her half eaten sandwich and looks at Shinobu curiously. "Do you think I've been doing the wrong thing?"
"No," she answers, now closing her eyes. Her hands brush Chihaya's, as if trying to hold something, but losing control and flinching back. "But if there's one thing I know about you....you don't like to lose." Her eyes flash cold and Chihaya feels the shiver run down her back. This time however, it's not out of anger. Her heart races a little quicker as the words come out of Shinobu's mouth.
"And neither do I."
And with that, she gets up and leaves.
Usually, they meet afterwards practice, in the dark lit wooden rooms, where the panels and the floor are bare and smooth. Chihaya laughs and they both blush; it's part of their rhythm now. Sometimes he'll quiz her on the Hundred Poems and if she gets it right he'll kiss her on the neck. If it's two, it's on the mouth. She'll watch him as he tries to kiss her with his glasses on straight (which he never does, and they'll end up falling and laughing and god, it's a wonder that he hasn't broken them already!).
They don't talk about sex, but it's not like they don't don't talk about sex. Taichi still is there in there between them, despite the distance. Arata hasn't said anything either.
But it comes. It has to. There is only one ending to this game. In karuta, there is a winner and a loser. They never really forgot, even after university.
"When will we tell him?" He'll ask her later, as they sit back and look at the blank ceiling. "I think- I think Harada-sensei knows."
"There's no way," she gasps. "No way."
"Oh, I think he knows," and she can feel the curve of his smile against her cheek. "Shinobu does, for certain."
"Shinobu is different. I told her. That doesn't count."
He props himself up and looks at her seriously now, his fingers tracing the back of her arm. "We need to tell him. He's our friend. We can't just go and sneak out like this, Chihaya. He doesn't deserve it."
She looks away from him, the nauseating feeling rising up in her stomach again. It's ugly and Chihaya isn't used to it. She's not used to any of this. But still, Arata was right. He always was in the end.
This time, she grabs his arm and drags him out the room.
It's Monday. Chihaya opens up her cell phone in class. She looks across and sees Arata and frowns. Arata closes his eyes and nods his head.
The three words she types in are so simple. But she bites her lip, and presses send. The mail flickers open and shut, open and shut.
Arata's thumbs are on hers when the reply comes back.
fin.