“I haven’t even started.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Probably not,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t think I’ve accepted it yet.”
“What do you mean? ‘Accepted’？”
“I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe I just don’t want to leave this place . . . I think about it all the time, but I’m really having a hard time coming to terms with everything. Though I know I don’t have time to be acting like this.”
Sayo wanted to tell him that thinking wasn’t going to help anything, but instead, she simply watched him. She felt strangely awkward. Rintaro was being vague as usual, but this time, what he was expressing felt like something besides mere indecision. He genuinely seemed to be trying to express all the mixed emotions pent up inside him. Sayo’s eyes widened slightly as if she’d suddenly had an epiphany. Behind this boy’s passiveness and unreliability, she’d just glimpsed something—someone totally earnest, honest to a fault.
Sayo’s thoughts were interrupted by the carefree laughter of a group of high school girls passing by the shop. She turned to Rintaro and perked her own voice up to match theirs.
“How about you give me some book recommendations!”
Rintaro looked a little worried.
“Sure, but the kind of books I like are kind of heavy.”
“Fine by me. It’s not like I’m going to go looking for a synopsis after all that’s happened.”
Rintaro laughed.
“Glad to hear it.”
He looked up at the shelves, his right hand on his glasses. Sayo was semishocked at how much his motionless profile reminded her of an old scholarly professor, filled with experience and good sense.
“Which one should we . . .”
Rintaro’s habitual hesitance seemed to vanish—it was now replaced by a confidence and energy that Sayo had never seen before. She squinted, watching his profile illuminated by the light from the door.
The Third Labyrinth
The Seller of Books
Okay. That’s the end of today’s lesson. See you tomorrow.”
At the sound of the teacher’s voice, all the students simultaneously pushed their chairs back and got noisily to their feet.
“Ugh, it’s finally over.”
“I’m starving.”
“Do you have club today?”
The classroom was filled with a cacophony of voices. Sayo Yuzuki also stood up, neatly packing her textbook, notebook, and pencil into her bag. She glanced in the direction of the window and clocked the one empty seat amid all the ruckus.
“Absent again . . .”
It was, of course, the seat belonging to Rintaro Natsuki.
His not being there didn’t make any difference to the atmosphere in the classroom; he wasn’t one to cast much of a shadow. Nobody was particularly bothered by his absence. And until a few days ago, Sayo had been the same as everyone else.
But now things were different.
She could tell herself that it was because she was the class rep, or that she lived near him and needed to deliver his homework, but she knew that wasn’t the real reason. The old image of Rintaro—that quiet boy with no presence and his nose perpetually in a book—floated into her mind. But now in the image he was accompanied by a ginger tabby cat.
“Hey, is Natsuki absent again?”
Sayo turned to see who had spoken. Just outside the door was a tall boy from the year above. Ryota Akiba, captain of the basketball team and brainiest student in the senior year, smiled at her. He was excessively cheery, attracting the ardent gaze of many of the female students.