This Warmth Of Yours

Chapter 23 - Gliding Waves on the Wind

"Sorry, you asked me to invite her to the cooking club, but she said no..."

The girl with a head of pink shook her head. "It – it's okay! That was her choice to make!"

I simply wanted her to realise that she had a choice.

...

"Welp, sports day is coming up. Who's gonna run the relay for our class?" asked the class president standing before the blackboard.

Nami slumped her head onto the table. Rika stared at her troubled face, a distant memory bubbling to the surface of her mind.

Haru watched the two of them in silence. A slight part of herself felt this inappropriate, but she spoke it out loud anyway. "I– I can try!"

Huh? Haru!? was the general reaction of everyone in class.

She turned to her two friends at the back with a smile. "Nami, Rika, let's do it together!"

Rika looked between Haru and Nami. Suddenly, a boy exclaimed his thoughts out loud. "Oh my god! Wasn't Nami a star runner during middle school!?"

Everyone audibly gasped, whispers fanned out of proportion. Haru's eyes widened upon hearing his words.

Nami slammed her hand onto the table, leaving class without a word, silencing the class. Rika followed right behind her. "What... happened?" Haru asked the boy calmly, hiding the conflicted feelings she had within her.

He shrunk in front of her, averting his eyes. She took a deep breath, running after her two friends. Just as she slid the door open, Kyoya grabbed her hand and shook his head. Haru stood still, not able to say anything.

...

They never came back to class.

Nami and Rika lied together in the nurse's office. There was no way this bed could fit two people, but they made it work anyway. Rika sat up and lightly poked Nami's knee. "Haru didn't know. All of them don't. I hope you're not angry at them."

Nami sat up, slapping Rika's hand away. "Yeah, I know."

"... You never told me what happened, either."

Nami looked away. She rubbed her knee and chuckled. "You know how Yuki was a huge troublemaker back then?"

"Yeah?"

"I overheard that a senior was going to "give him a taste of his own medicine". Regardless of what I thought of him personally, I hated violence." She paused in between her words. "So, like an idiot, I confronted him alone."

Rika gasped. That time you stopped coming to school for a couple months, those words never left her mouth.

"He recognised me as the girl who runs really quick, so he busted my knee and repeatedly drowned me in the toilet bowl. I don't even remember how I got home that night."

"My mom reported this and he got expelled, but the school wanted to sweep the incident under the rug, like it never happened. They told me not to say anything or they'd punish me too. Thinking back on it, that was messed up, huh?"

Rika held Nami's hand, her expression conflicted. Nami continued. "Well, I don't mind telling you now. We graduated from that school already anyway. What are they gonna do, expel me from a school I'm not even in anymore?"

She locked their fingers together, smiling. "I couldn't run anymore, and any kind of deep water's scared me ever since. Sorry I didn't tell you any of this, I didn't feel comfortable bringing it up."

She looked down, her short hair covering her face. "Because of that, I hated Yuki too. It wasn't really his fault, he didn't ask that asshole to do what he did, but a part of me hated that he was still fine when I wasn't anymore."