That Wraps It Up (Part 2)

A brutal sight. A devastating sight.

I stood frozen in the center of Mikoko-chan's room. It was all I could bear to do.

I feel sick. I feel sick. I feel sick.

I feel sick. I feel sick. I feel sick.

I feel sick. I feel sick. I feel sick.

Eiffelzick.

I clutched my chest.

I was nauseous.

It was like I had accidentally choked down some absolutely undigestible object. My eyes fell on the bed. Mikoko-chan was there, lying down.

Sleeping.

Could you call it sleeping?

Even supposing her body had ceased to function.

Supposing she had no pulse.

Supposing the hideous marks left by fabric remained etched into her neck.

Supposing her eyes were never to open again.

Even then, there was no other term I cared to use.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. I feel sick. I'm dizzy. I'm dizzy. I'm dizzy. It's spinning. It's spinning. This is crazycrazycrazycrazy.

Or was it I who was crazy?

Right here, right now, I thought I might collapse.

My pulse was going wild.

It was hard to breathe.

It was hard to live.

I thought I might die.

The insides of my eyes were burning.

The inside of my heart was freezing.

I tried swallowing to calm myself but to no avail. This was agony. Agony. Agony.

"Aoii Mikoko was..." I said as if making the announcement to myself, "murdered."

Whump.

I really did collapse, right there where I stood, right on my rear end.

I was used to people dying.

I was even used to people close to me dying.

Death was something close to me.

And still, this was agonizing. It hurt. It hurt too much.

It was excruciating.

I would probably never be able to forget this. To forget Mikoko-chan's "death itself" burning into my retinas the instant I had entered the room. I would never forget her lifeless, mindless corpse.

Somehow I managed to maintain consciousness. I shifted my gaze back to Mikoko-chan's body once more. She lay faceup on the bed, her bloated, violet-hued face wrenched in agony. Having known what her smile was like made this all the more terrible.

She was no longer dressed in yesterday's overalls. Now she wore a snow-white bare shoulder top with a striking pants skirt of the same white, but with more of a milky quality. I stopped myself from thinking it looked like a burial outfit.

And then I remembered. This was one of the many outfits Mikoko-chan bought during yesterday's outing. It was the last one she bought. She had tried it on and said, "How do I look?"

Finally tired of giving made-up answers, I looked at her and said, "It's a good match."

It was that outfit.

When I had brought her home the previous night, naturally I hadn't made her change clothes. I just tossed her on the bed with what she was wearing. This must have meant that she had woken up later on and changed.

And then...

What had possessed her to put on this outfit? And who was she waiting for? The power of my imagination was already completely exhausted.

And then there were the red letters, right by her head.

x/y.

It was the exact same formula as the one we had found in Tomoe-chan's place.

"This has nonsense written all over it."

I pulled out my cellular phone. I entered a number from memory and sent it. She picked up on the first ring.

"Sasa here."

"Hello..."

"Oh, it's you," Sasaki-san said before I had a chance to announce my name. Apparently, she could remember people just by their voices. And we had only spoken once. If circumstances hadn't been what they were, I would've been impressed.

"What's wrong? Did you remember something?"

She was cool and calm. This was somehow offensive. It was objectionable. Objectionable.

"Sasaki-san, um, right, well... Aoii-san..."

"What's that? I'm sorry, I can't hear you. Could you please speak up a bit? What's that about Aoii-san?"

"Well... She's been murdered."

Something changed on the other end of the receiver. "Where are you now?"

"In Aoii-san's apartment."

"We'll be there soon."

Click. The phone cut off as abruptly as human life. I stood there with the phone held to my ear. Mikoko-chan remained there in front of me.

"Christ..." I said to her still body. It was a pointless act. It was pointless and despicable. "What was I really planning to tell you?"

Mikoko-chan.

There was no prospect of me getting rid of that nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Not a chance.

The police burst into the apartment in less than ten minutes.

"Are you okay?" Sasaki-san embraced me. I must have looked pretty damn miserable because she seemed genuinely concerned for me "Are you okay?" she repeated. Unable to form a verbal answer, I simply raised an arm instead. She saw this and gave a firm nod.

"Let's get you out of her for now. Come on, hurry."

Leaning on Sasaki-san's shoulder, I was taken out of the hallway. Police were filing in one after another from the elevator. Hey, now. No Kazuhito-san. Hadn't he come? Maybe he was somewhere else, doing something else. Maybe, maybe not.

"Ughhh..." My chest hurts. My chest hurts. My chest hurts. "Ughhhh..."

I feel sick. I feel sick.

I really feel like I feel sick.

A discomfort, as if my chest were burning, like my insides were being demolished like something was raging inside my guts, seeped into my blood and traveled throughout my whole body.

It burns it burns it burns it burns.

The anguish was maddening.

Sasaki-san took me out of the building and helped me into the rear seat of her Toyota Crown. She sat in the driver's seat.

"Have you settled down a bit?" she said, looking back at me.

I shook my head in silence.

"I see." She eyed me suspiciously. "I thought you were the kind of person who didn't mind seeing a dead body. Even if it belonged to a friend." She'd abandoned her courteous manner. "I guess you're more sensitive than I thought. You looked like you were dying back there."

"Yeah, thanks. I'll take that as a compli—"

Just as I was about to get the "ment" syllable out, I felt the urge to vomit. I clamped my hand over my mouth. There was no way I could just toss my cookies in Sasaki-san's car. Somehow I managed to keep control of my internal organs. Dammit. I couldn't even mouth off.

"Hmm." Sasaki-san nodded with a slight look of disappointment. "You're awfully spineless. I'm surprised Jun-san is so fond of you."

Ah, come to think of it, hadn't Aikawa-san said something about being old friends with Sasaki-san? Recalling this completely irrelevant detail helped distract me a bit. I sat up from my hunched position and rested my weight against the back of the seat. I breathed in deep.

"Yeah, I'm surprisingly fragile. Of course, I can't tell if it's brittleness, frailty, or if I'm just delicate . . ."

"What in the world are you talking about? You're not making a lick of sense."

"Well, please wait until next time. Next time, 'kay? I'm in a very irregular state right now, so let's wait till next time before you judge what kind of human being I am. I'm not doing so hot right now."

"Guaahhh," I groaned and shut my eyes.

Sasaki-san was silent for a moment. "From here, we're going to have to question you about the circumstances of this case. This means I've got to take you to the police station. Can you handle this?"

"As long as you drive carefully, I think I'll be all right."

"Okay. I'll try not to make the ride too bumpy."

She faced forward and began to drive. Mikoko-chan's apartment disappeared from the window view in no time at all. I couldn't make out the speedometer from where I was sitting, but judging by my body's response to the car's movement, there was no way Sasaki-san's driving style could be defined as "careful."

"Sasaki-san, is it okay for you to be away from the crime scene?"

"My job is more about intellectual labor than about that stuff."

"That sounds like, well..." I wanted to say it sounded like we'd get along, but I stopped myself. No matter how you looked at it, there was no way we would get along. "Um, Sasaki-san?"

"Yeah, what is it?"

"How do you know Aikawa-san?"

She was silent for a moment—though it was plenty easy to imagine the look on her face—and then said, "Sometimes I go to her for help with work. Yeah, that's all. Do you ever watch detective TV shows and the like?"

"I know a thing or two about them."

"Yes, well, you know how oftentimes the detective goes to an informant to gather the information that isn't quite legal? Well, it's like that. We have a businesslike relationship."

It was an awfully crude explanation. Or rather, she didn't seem to want to explain it at all. Then again, Aikawa was a pretty inexplicable woman, so maybe there wasn't much of a choice.

"No, I don't mean something that specific," I said. "Can you give me something more abstract? I mean, what kind of person is she to you?"

"Do we absolutely have to talk about this right now?"

"It might take my mind off things." I really meant this. If I didn't get something to distract me quickly, my stomach was going to burst. "Please, I'm begging you. Just talk about something."

"You pose a difficult question, you know," she said, after a while. "For example, would you believe a story about a person who took a point-blank shot to the gut from a sawed-off shotgun and survived? How about the one about someone who can walk around in the midst of a storm of rifle fire with a normal, straight face? How about someone who leaped from the fortieth floor of a burning building a walked away without a scratch? You wouldn't believe it, would you? Whenever I talk about Jun-san, people think I'm lying. So it's a tough subject to discuss."

"..."

I understood exactly how she felt, so I didn't dare press any further.

In another ten minutes, we had arrived at the police station. She took me inside the building.

"Looks like it's exactly twelve o'clock—lunchtime. Would you like something to eat?" she asked.

"Could we get katsu-don or something like that?"

"I don't see why not. They'll bill you for it later, though."

The government was anal.

"Eh, never mind," I said, shaking my head. If I tried to eat anything now, I would just throw it up anyway. That I could say with a fair degree of certainty.

"Hmm, well, then go on into that room and wait for me. I've just gone to make a quick report. I'll be back in two minutes."

She led me into a small conference room and made her way back down the hall alone. Well, at least it wasn't an interrogation room, I thought as I sunk myself into a chair.

I want to smoke, I thought for an instant.

I had never smoked a cigarette in my life.

Was I bored?

Was I trying to escape reality?

Or was I just suicidal?

Any one of those was of equal worth if you asked me.

These were pointless thoughts.

This was starting to get pretty bad.

One more push and this existence is known as "me," this state of being known as "myself," was going to be over.

"Sorry for the wait," Sasaki-san said upon returning. She was carrying some sort of item wrapped in pink. "Are you okay? You're looking worse and worse by the second. Even your hands are sweating."

"I'm sorry, could you show me where the bathroom is?"

"Down that hall, on the right. It's at the very end, so I don't think you'll miss it."

"Thanks," I said, and raced out of the room, clamping a hand back over my mouth. Suppressing nausea.

I found the bathroom right where she had said it would be, entered one of the stalls, and vomited everything that had built up in my stomach.

"Gwaaahhh... glllaaahhh..." Unpleasant noises that sounded very unlike they were coming from myself spilled from the depths of my throat.

An acid taste remained in my mouth. I had vomited so profusely I thought my guts might have flipped upside down. Slowly, I drew in a deep breath and rose to my feet, wiping my mouth with a handkerchief.

I flushed the toilet.

Phew...

I made my way over to the sink and washed my face. I scooped some water into my hands and rinsed out my mouth as well. I looked into my own reflection in the mirror. Okay, so I did look like I was at death's door, but at least I was feeling decidedly better than I had even moments ago.

"Okay," I said.

Revitalized, I muttered as I left the bathroom behind. I made my way back to the room, where Sasaki-san was still waiting for me. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

"I'm okay. I puked, and now I feel a lot better."

"I see. Here," she said, placing the packaged item from be-fore in front of me. "It's my lunch. Want it?"

"Is it okay?"

"I won't bill you for it, don't worry." She chose a chair and sat down across from me. I graciously accepted her lunch. It was a fairly generic bento lunch, but my stomach was now empty. I scarfed it down pretty fast.

"Okay, then," she said once I was finished. "So what's going on here?"

"That's what I want to know."

"..."

Seemingly a bit offended by my phrasing, she grew silent and gave me the death stare. I recoiled and diverted my gaze. "Well, then please give me the facts, in simple terms."

"Er, to do that, I'll have to back up to last night, so it'll be a little long."

"Go right ahead. Until we solve this case, you and I will be spending a lot of time together." She was smiling a little. Her eyes, however, weren't smiling, which was frightening. I decided to quit with the mouthing off for a while and be straight with her.

"Yesterday, Aoii-san and I went out. We were in the Shinkyôgoku area. Then, well, she drank a little too much."

"Oh, really? ...And then?"

She sharpened her gaze on me as if she had been waiting for this opening. Surely she wasn't going to get on my case about underage drinking. I realized I couldn't let my guard down.

"Yeah, so then I took her back to her apartment. I went ahead and took the key out of her bag and put her to bed. Then I took the bus back to my place." I went ahead and skipped the part about running into Aikawa-san, figuring it wasn't necessary to recount. "After that, I just went to bed like I always do."

"Did you lock up before you left?"

"I did. Her Vespa was still parked in my apartment parking lot, so I was planning to bring the key and Vespa back together tomo—today. So then today, I went to her place on the Vespa. When I opened the door and went inside, well, things were as you saw them."

"Hmm... How about the door? Was it locked?"

"Huh?"

I looked up at her as if the question had taken me by surprise. I made an expression as though I were searching through my memory for as long as five seconds.

"No, it wasn't locked. I don't have any recollection of using the key."

"I see." She wore a suspicious look on her face but nodded along anyway.

"That place has a lot of surveillance cameras, right. I think they should be able to corroborate my story if you take a look at those tapes."

"Most likely. We've already arranged with the management firm for a viewing," she said coolly. "Now, this is just to make sure, but—you didn't touch anything at the crime scene, did you?"

"No. As pathetic as it sounds, I was just too petrified. I couldn't even run over to Aoii-san."

"You took very appropriate action," she said. From there, she shut her eyes and thought to herself.

So "intellectual labor" was her major job responsibility. That was already more than clear enough from the time she had visited my apartment. That chess-game mindset of hers was unforgettable, even if you wanted to forget it.

"I didn't even touch Aoii-san's body, so I don't know, but was she really dead?"

"Yes. That I can confirm. She had likely been dead for around two to three hours. We'll have to wait for the autopsy results before we can confirm the specific details, but the incident is believed to have occurred between nine and ten a.m."

"This may be useless to you, but..."

"Go right ahead. Nothing in this world is useless."

That was a line I thought I might like to try saying once myself. But I doubted a guy like me would ever have the chance.

"When I put her to bed last night, Aoii-san was wearing overalls. But that wasn't what she had on today, was it? So I think that means she woke up at some point, either in the morning or the middle of the night. And I locked the door last night, so maybe Aoii-san let the killer in herself."

"I see..."

"Oh, and just for your information, that outfit she had on today was something she bought yesterday when we were out shopping."

"Really." Sasaki-san nodded. I noticed that she hadn't been taking any notes. Come to think of it, that was true during the time she visited my apartment as well. She was just listening to me talk without recording anything.

"You've got a pretty great memory, huh?"

"Sorry? Oh, well, it does the job," she replied as if it was nothing special. But to me, it was an extremely enviable trait.

"Also, as it happens, I was eating breakfast at my next-door neighbor's place during that nine o'clock to ten o'clock time frame, so I think I have an alibi, for what it's worth."

"Ah, I see," she nodded with an apparent lack of interest. It was as if to say she had more important things to think about than my damn alibi.

"You know, when you first called, I thought you were probably the killer."

"..."

This sudden declaration left me speechless. "You certainly are direct. Excuse me if I'm a little surprised."

"Yes, well, you would be. But it's true. The fact is that I did think that, and I'm certainly not trying to hide the facts. I thought you killed her and then tried to pretend you had discovered the body. But it seemed you were feeling genuinely ill, and time of death and such aside, there was no murder weapon at the scene of the crime. Which means it would have been physically impossible for you to have done it."

"..."

"That is, of course, unless you're hiding it somewhere in your clothes right now."

"Care to check?"

"No, that's fine," she said, but by no means could this be considered negligence of duty. Sasaki-san had already finished checking me out back when she took me out of Mikoko-chan's apartment. Unable to walk on my own, she had lent me a shoulder to lean on. It was kindness—injected with a touch of shrewdness.

I didn't particularly have a problem with that.

"Gee, thanks," I said.

"I'm sure your innocence will be proven beyond any doubt once an official time of death has been established and we take a look at those surveillance tapes. But only then."

She looked at me directly in the eye.

"Who do you suppose did it?" Sasaki-san asked. I'd already asked her the same question twice before on other occasions.

"Well... I don't know."

"Nobody comes to mind at all?"

"Nobody," I answered promptly. "I mean, Aoii-san and I weren't really all that close, to begin with. It was only very recently that we had started hanging out together and going out to eat and stuff."

"Allow me to be a bit direct," she said. "Were you and Aoii-san romantically involved?"

"The answer to that is no. A no and nothing more. Thinking about it now, I'm not even sure we were even friends."

"Ahh, I see. Come to think of it, Jun-san did say you were 'like that,' didn't she?" she muttered, seemingly satisfied with whatever explanation she had recalled.

"Aikawa-san? She said what about me?"

"Well, I can't tell you that." This tease of a statement was sure to bother me, but it occurred to me that this too could be part of Sasaki-san's strategy, so I was careful not to press any further. It was easy enough to imagine the kind of judgment Aikawa-san had passed in regard to me anyway.

From there, Sasaki-san posed several more detailed questions and ended with a simple, "I see."

"Now then, do you have any questions for me?" she added.

"No, nothing this time," I said after a moment's thought. "I'd rather just get home and rest as soon as possible."

"I see. Well, that should be enough for today. Allow me to take you back."

She stood up from her chair and exited the room. I followed close behind, and together we exited the building. After getting into her Crown, I sat in the same seat in the back. Sasaki started the car and accelerated even more aggressively than before.

"Nakadachiuri, was it? Off Senbon?"

"Yeah."

"How are you feeling?"

"Okay. Throwing up was surprisingly refreshing."

"You know," she said while driving. Her voice was stripped of all emotion. "I can't help but feel like you're still hiding something."

"Hiding? Me?"

"That's what I said."

"No, nothing in particular. As you can see, I'm just an honest, harmless, and well-behaved young man."

"Wow, really?" she said in a rare display of sarcasm. "You sure don't look that way to me, but I guess if you say so yourself, it must be true."

"You sound like you mean something by that."

"No, not especially. If it sounds that way to you, it's probably because you've got a guilty conscience. Although I do doubt that an honest, well-behaved young man would go around breaking into crime scenes illegally."

"Oh."

Open bag, withdraw cat.

Naturally, I'd been prepared for this risk from the very beginning, but Sasaki-san had certainly caught me off guard. There hadn't been a single word about this in those documents from Kunagisa, so it had never been clear if I had been found out or not.

She continued staring straight ahead at the road as she spoke. "At any rate, please just relax," she said as if she could see right through me. "That information hasn't gone beyond me yet."

"You?"

"That's what I said." Her voice lacked intonation. And yet there was a meanness to it. Yeah, somehow it was very reminiscent of mankind's greatest private contractor.

"I don't know what possessed you to break into Emoto-san's room, but I suggest you exercise a bit more discretion in your actions. Consider this a piece of advice."

"Not a warning?"

"No, no, just advice."

But there was something very offensive about her wording. Granted, my actions had been totally rash, and her attitude was entirely justified, but still.

"Sasaki-san, I'm just asking, but... Why hasn't that information gone beyond you 'yet'?"

"Well, I have my ways. I won't go into detail, but I just want you to realize that I have that advantage over you. That's all. But please be sure not to forget it."

All I could do was sigh. My shoulders slumped and the energy drained out of my body. This damn pattern again? Why were these the only kinds of people I ever met?

"Everybody I know is either extremely smart or has a terrible personality. They all had that same damn character. Just once I'd like to meet somebody who's nice. I don't even care if they're stupid."

"Well," Sasaki-san said without even cracking a smirk. "I'm sorry to hear that. But I have no intention of forfeiting my position."

And we arrived at the Senbon Nakadachiuri intersection.

"Would you like to come inside?" I asked.

"I'm working," she said. I didn't find this particularly unfortunate, nor did I think the opposite.

As a final thought, she opened her window. "What do you suppose x over y means?" she asked.

"Search me," I said after a moment's contemplation. I knew she'd never been satisfied with this answer. But she simply nodded, closed the window, and took off in her car once again.

I stood there a while, unmoving, then felt the sheer pointlessness of my inaction. I returned to the building, walked down the second-floor hall, and entered my room.

This quiet space.

Not a single sound.

Not a single person.

A room Aoii Mikoko had twice visited.

Once I had set out yatsuhashi; once she had come with handmade sweet potatoes.

I wasn't much for sentimentality. I was no pessimist, either. Nor was I a romanticist. Rather, I was a misguided trivialist.

"I guess I can't say this was a complete surprise," I muttered. "I won't say that. No, no I won't."

I recalled my conversation with Mikoko-chan from the previous day. A conversation we would never have again.

"It was all nonsense, huh?"

Let us hypothesize as to Mikoko-chan's feelings towards her killer. She probably wasn't resentful. Accusing, maybe, but that's it. That was the kind of girl I took her for.

There must have been something.

Something I should have said to her.

What was I really supposed to say to her yesterday?

"This is like crying over spilled milk," I said to myself.

My terribly lukewarm soliloquy. I realized that this was probably the kind of situation that usually makes people cry. The person over my shoulder sure thought so.

Night fell.

Miiko-san visited my room looking concerned. "Eat this," she said, thrusting a bowl of rice porridge at me. She wore an innocent expression, but her eyes were serious. Knowing her gesture had come straight from the heart, I started to feel guilty.

Christ. Just how many people had I caused extra grief by now?

"Thanks a lot." I scooped some up with the spoon Miiko-san had provided (there were only disposable chopsticks in my place) and helped myself to a mouthful. She wasn't an especially good cook, but this porridge was pretty tasty.

"Did something happen?" Miiko-san didn't ask. She never asked that type of question. She was just the neighbor who silently and protectively watched over me. A neighbor in the truest sense. This was probably something entirely different from true kindness, but she was a kind person all the same.

Come to think of it, hadn't Mikoko-chan given me the same compliment? That I was kind?

"Mikoko-chan... She died," I said without any introduction.

"I see," Miiko-san nodded. She sounded like she didn't particularly think much of it. "That night," she said, "by which I mean the night when the young girl stayed in my room, she was strangely grouchy when she woke up the next morning. At first, I thought it was probably due to a hangover, but that didn't seem to be it."

...

"I asked her, 'How do you feel?' She answered, 'this is the worst morning of my life.' ...That's the whole story."

"That's plenty," I said. "Thanks so much, Miiko-san."

"You really do lead a difficult life, don't you? The road you walk is not steep, but it is shaky and brittle. And yet you're able to go on without slipping. You have my honest admiration."

"I slipped and fell through the cracks long ago. But this path has a sort of strange gravitational pull, and I'm clinging to the bottom of it now."

"Whatever the case may be, you're entering a crucial phase now," she said, her voice deepening a bit. It almost sounded like a threat. "If you lose your grip now, you'll never make it. Everything you've endured and built up and worked for will spill right down the drain. You probably don't care either way, but just remember that your life isn't something you made all by yourself. Don't forget that there are those you have saved just by being alive."

"There are no such people." Perhaps there was too much self-loathing in my statement. Possibly as a result, Miiko-san gave me a pitying glance.

"You carry too much of a burden," she said. "Don't think you can really affect people so much. Only the weak turn red when they cross paths with scarlet. As long as you can exercise their own judgment, you're less easily influenced by others. Your existence isn't such an annoyance to others."

"Mmm, maybe not."

It was just extreme self-consciousness in the end.

Whether I was alive or not made no difference.

Even if there were a murderer in my midst, the world would go on.

"Still, I'm sure there are those who love you. There are those who have unconditional affection for you, that much is certain. That's part of the world's cycle. You may not understand it now, but remember what I say. There will come a time when you understand. At least stay alive that long."

Those with unconditional affection for me.

Today, one of them had died.

So then how many people were left?

"I won't tell you to cheer up. That's a problem for you to sort out on your own. Just know that that young girl's death wasn't your fault. I can guarantee you that. I don't have any basis for my belief, but I feel sure of it all the same... Those who die just die."

"But... It's like I killed her," I said.

"Did you?"

"Well, no, but if..."

If.

If I hadn't left her alone in her apartment, if I hadn't gone home, or if I had just brought her with me, things would have turned out differently.

"And I say you're taking on too much of a burden. Do you realize the pointlessness of such thoughts?"

"Yes. But Miiko-san, I still had something left to tell her."

That one last thing.

I hadn't yet told her that one last thing.

"It's useless to regret what's done and gone. That's all I can say." Her gaze wandered just a bit. "Also, I forgot to tell you this morning. Suzunashi sends a message. She told me to make sure I told you."

"It's from Suzunashi-san?"

She nodded. I sat up straight. It wasn't like Suzunashi-san was in the room or anything, so I knew there was no need to do so, but something about that name just made me reflexively fix my posture. Something about that Suzunashi Neon character.

Miiko-san opened her mouth. "There are two types of people—those who are frightening because you don't know what they'll do, and those who are frightening because you do know what they'll do. But you're not very frightening at all, so you don't need to worry about such things."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Make sure you do. She said she'll come to visit from Hiei next time, so let's all go out for lunch. I think she wants to give you a good lecture."

"Well, you had me up to the lecture. But I'm definitely okay with lunch. Just..."

"Hmm?"

"Oh, nothing. Thanks a lot for the food."

I returned the porridge bowl to her. She took it, said good night, and left my room. The word Impermanence was written on the back of her jinbei. It was the second time I had seen this one.

"Seriously..." I mumbled to myself. This was a troublesome existence. Maybe it was about time I had a day-long lecture from Suzunashi-san.

But.

"But I really don't want to go to that restaurant again for a while..."

When would this mind-over-matter business be over?

I didn't know.