After Chihiro Mizuhara said goodbye to Makoto Miyago and left, satisfied, Sakuraha Toyama quickly packed Chihiro Mizuhara’s cookies into a gift bag she had prepared beforehand and put it in her bag.
Sakuraha Toyama: Don’t eat! Don’t eat!
Makoto Miyago pointed at the cookies Sakuraha Toyama had made and asked,
“What about these? Not giving them anymore?”
“……” Sakuraha Toyama was silent for a moment, then smiled dryly. “Not giving them. Made this bad, how am I supposed to give them?”
Makoto Miyago rubbed his chin and thought aloud.
“Actually, this kind of gift is mainly about the feeling. Someone who likes you won’t lose all feeling for you just because the cookies taste bad, and someone who has no feeling for you won’t start liking you just because the cookies taste good. What matters is giving the right gift to the right person. If the feeling gets there, that’s enough.”
“Is… is that so?”
Sakuraha Toyama was a little shaken by the words.
“But if you send these cookies of yours out, the person who gets them will probably think they’re being pranked.”
Of course, Chihiro definitely wouldn’t think that. Because Chihiro saw that you really can’t make cookies.
Makoto Miyago added it silently in his heart.
The heart that had just loosened in Sakuraha Toyama was sealed again by a thousand years of frost. She clenched her fist and was about to flare up when she heard Makoto Miyago go on.
“But, Toyama, why do you have to make cookies?”
“What do you mean?”
Sakuraha Toyama was puzzled.
Makoto Miyago turned his head and looked straight into Sakuraha Toyama’s eyes, and said seriously,
“You play guitar so well. You could give that person a song. Your grades are so good. You could help that person with tutoring. You’re so serious and exact when you work. I think you’d also be very good at building models. You could build a handmade model and give it to that person…”
Makoto Miyago listed them off like family treasures.
Sakuraha Toyama’s eyes, though, gradually reddened and grew wet. Some gray-white memories surfaced.
In an unremarkable little room of a certain mansion, a young Sakuraha Toyama curled in a wardrobe, peeking out through the gap.
Outside the wardrobe, two maids were tidying the room.
“Hey, did you hear? This second young lady who showed up out of nowhere is actually the child of the mistress the master kept.”
Maid A said it mysteriously.
Maid B was not surprised at all.
“Never heard that, but it can only be that, right?”
A pleased smile crossed the corner of Maid A’s mouth.
“Then you don’t know this. I heard this second young lady isn’t even the master’s seed. Nobody knows whose wild bastard she is. The master only pitied her, so he barely gave her a name in the family.”
“Eh, so that’s how it is? Then the master is actually pretty kind.”
Maid B’s eyes widened in surprise, and then she nodded, thoughtful.
“No wonder. I thought it was strange before. The second young lady is about the same age as the young lady, but she’s so rude at meals, doesn’t keep a bit of aristocratic manners, can’t match the young lady in her studies either, and runs around all day hugging a guitar, not a bit of a lady about her. So she isn’t of the Tsukimi blood. Then it isn’t strange.”
Maid A nodded in agreement, saw the guitar lying quietly in the corner, and said, puzzled,
“Huh? Why didn’t the second young lady take this broken guitar today? She usually never leaves it.”
“It is not a broken guitar!!!”
A young voice suddenly rang out. The young Sakuraha Toyama angrily pushed the wardrobe door open, hugged the guitar that was nearly as tall as she was, and charged out of the room like a truck.
The two maids looked at each other.
Maid B was a little afraid after the fact.
“She heard what you said… will it reach the master?”
Maid A did not care.
“Hah, what would a useless wild bastard understand? Besides, the master only comes back once every few years. This house is Madam’s word. Do you think Madam will take her side?”
“True.”
Maid B nodded in agreement, and went on cleaning.
In the corridor, Sakuraha Toyama ran without a destination.
In this big house there was no place that belonged to her.
She could only use running to vent the anger in her heart.
Other people’s strange looks, the talk that cut her from behind. So long as she was here for one day, it would never end.
This was the first truth the young Sakuraha Toyama understood.
But where could someone like drifting duckweed run to?
As she ran, Sakuraha Toyama came face to face with a richly dressed noblewoman and a girl as expressionless as a porcelain doll.
The young Sakuraha Toyama knew they were the masters of this house, and that she was an outsider, a parasite.
The gaze of the porcelain doll in the wheelchair was drawn by Sakuraha Toyama.
The noblewoman did not look aside, as if she had not seen Sakuraha Toyama run past. She only said, light as cloud and wind,
“Yuki, do you remember how I taught you? As a noble, you must keep a noble’s manners at all times. When you walk, always look straight ahead. Do not let a useless lowborn ruin your manners. The lowborn are born lowborn. There is not a single virtue on them worth your learning.”
“I understand, Mother.”
…….
And now, these gray memories shattered like lenses, one after another, and turned to powder in the air.
“……What I’m saying is, Toyama, you clearly have so many strengths. Why not show them to that person? Why insist on choosing something you’re not good at…”
“Miyago!”
Sakuraha Toyama suddenly cut Makoto Miyago off. With extreme speed she bagged the cookies she had made, shoved them into Makoto Miyago’s hands, and pushed him out of the cooking classroom without another word, then shut the door.
Standing outside, Makoto Miyago looked at the cookies in his hands, full of question marks.
“Ah? No, what do you mean? Why are you giving these to me?”
“They can’t be given out anyway. You take them. If they’re in the way, just throw them away… You go back first. I’ll go back after I clean the classroom.”
Sakuraha Toyama’s voice was hoarse, strangely so, in a way that was hard to name.
Makoto Miyago only felt lost. He could not understand what was wrong with Sakuraha Toyama.
Women, as a species, really are hard to understand…
On the way back to the classroom, Makoto Miyago held that bag of cookies and sank into thought.
Would Rika like cookies with this weird taste?
Fine, this can’t even be called a weird taste anymore. It should be called an off smell. Don’t feed it to the cat at home and kill her.
Throwing them away… somehow doesn’t feel right. Better take them home and keep them carefully.
At the same time, in the cooking classroom.
Sakuraha Toyama lay on a table in a “big” shape, her eyes full of tears.
She suddenly remembered that on the day she lost the student council president election, Makoto Miyago had said to her on the rooftop, in a very strange tone, “When you can’t hold back the tears, do a handstand. That way the tears that were going to come out can’t come out.”
At that thought, Sakuraha Toyama came to the wall as if possessed. She lifted her long, beautiful legs and really did a handstand. For someone who had practiced taekwondo for years, the motion was effortless.
As expected, the unexpected still happened. Her tears slid along her upper lids, over her brows, her forehead, and her hair, and finally fell to the floor.
And Sakuraha Toyama suddenly burst out with a pfft.
“What kind of weird move is this. I look like an idiot.”
She sniffled, and sat down in the chair by the window that still held a little warmth. The flush on both cheeks was like two roses in full bloom.
She smiled softly, but the words in her mouth were a grumble.
“Idiot Miyago, always saying strange things that get to people.”