I knew I’d done something bad to Sendai-san.

         I felt guilty about it.

         But even so, it seemed a little strange that she was still wearing a bandage on her finger even though it had already been a week.

         「How long are you planning to keep that on?」

         I asked as I stared at her finger, then took a bite of the toast she’d made for us today. I’d spread butter and jam on it—it had the perfect balance of sweet and salty, and it was quickly becoming a breakfast staple.

         「The bandage, you mean?」

         Back when we were in high school, Sendai-san once asked me to cut a cabbage while she was making karaage, and I ended up cutting my finger instead. She wrapped it with a bandage—a plain one, not cute at all. And now, she had one wrapped around her finger in the exact same way.

         「Yeah.」

         「Hmm…」

         She murmured, then took a sip of orange juice.

         That night she made Hamburg steaks, I’d bitten her finger hard enough to leave a mark. I figured it would, but it couldn’t have lasted this long.

         「The mark’s already gone, isn’t it?」

         「Hmm, who knows.」

         Sendai-san replied in her usual tone, but she wouldn’t look at me.

         It was one of those days.

         And even though I knew that, I still found myself irritated. Then I got annoyed at myself for being irritated over something so small.

         「Take the bandage off.」

         I really wanted to grab her hand and tear it off myself, but instead, I kept chewing my toast.

         Just because she wasn’t mad at me didn’t mean I could do whatever I wanted. There were things you could and couldn’t do. Grabbing her and forcing it off would be crossing the line.

         「That’d be a waste. I just put it on.」

         「Are you trying to send a message with it or something?」

         「A message? Why would you think that?」

         She looked puzzled.

         「You’re wearing it because you’re mad I bit you, right?」

         My tone sharpened, so I stuffed some scrambled eggs in my mouth to cover it up.

         Sendai-san was the only person I couldn’t deal with properly.

         I wanted to act normal around her, but I couldn’t.

         We were going to be living together until we graduated, so I wanted to stay calm around her—like I always did with Maika—but it never worked out that way.

         Even knowing it wasn’t right, I kept doing things to her that were cruel.

         And whenever she was around, my emotions got harder to control.

         I wasn’t great at getting along with people to begin with, but I’d never bitten or kicked anyone before. Yet for some reason, I kept doing that sort of thing to her.

         「You do that kind of stuff all the time. I wouldn’t get mad about it now.」

         「Liar.」

         I’d bitten her as hard as I could, and I knew she wouldn’t get mad.

         But every time I saw the bandage, I remembered what I did—remembered the things I’d said that I shouldn’t have—and it hurt.

         I shouldn’t have bitten her that hard.

         I shouldn’t have told her to quit her job.

         That’s all I kept thinking about.

         I already knew she wouldn’t quit just because I asked, and as expected, she refused.

         She still worked as a private tutor, and sometimes, she’d even tell me about her student.

         Sometimes she listened to me, and sometimes she didn’t.

         I wasn’t sure where the line was—what she would and wouldn’t do—but there were definitely some things she’d never obey.

         She wouldn’t let me pierce her ears.

         She wouldn’t quit her job.

         Even if I asked, she’d turn me down. Sendai-san wasn’t going to change just because I told her to.

         「Miyagi. Don’t start your morning in such a bad mood.」

         She said in a flat voice, chewing on her toast.

         「I’m not in a bad mood.」

         「Okay, fine, you’re not in a bad mood. Then what’s wrong?」

         There was nothing wrong with me.

         If anything was wrong, it was her job.

         I really wish she hadn’t become a private tutor.

         Any other job would’ve been fine.

         「Nothing. It’s just the way I talk. Honestly, I think it’s rude of you to be so nitpicky.」

         I said, covering up how I really felt, and downed half my orange juice before setting the glass back down.

         「I see. Well, I’m sure you know this already, but I’ve got work today. I’ll be home late again. Eat dinner without me.」

         「Okay.」

         Sendai-san had mentioned that she tutored her student twice a week. But knowing she still planned on going today left me feeling a little depressed.

         Every time I heard the words “private tutor,” my mind went back to last summer, to the days when she helped me study.

         I didn’t actually think Sendai-san would do anything like that at her job. But every time I heard the word “tutoring”—a word I’d always associate with what happened over summer break—it brought to mind all kinds of questions I wanted to ask her.

         Did she sit beside her like she used to with me?

         Did she ever try to hold her hand?

         — Even though Sendai-san told me she wasn’t the type to kiss her friends, would she ever try to kiss her student?

         There were so many things I wanted to know, and a few I couldn’t stop thinking about. One of them was the fact that we went to different schools. That much, at least, I could chalk up to circumstance. It was something I could accept. I could imagine what her school life was like by drawing from my own experiences, past and present. It had taken me time, but I could handle that now.

         Tutoring, though, was a different story.

         It was so strongly tied to our past that I couldn’t bring myself to accept the most obvious truth. Some part of me couldn’t help but compare it to the time we used to spend together after school and during summer vacation.

         Getting a part-time job was normal. It wasn’t something I should’ve been so hung up on. I knew that. I’d assumed I’d be able to come to terms with it once she actually started working, but I was wrong.

         Whenever I pictured her as a tutor, my thoughts drifted back to the past.

         The Sendai-san who had taught me, and the Sendai-san currently tutoring someone else, felt like different people. I knew they weren’t the same—but I still wanted to confirm that somehow. And at the same time, I didn’t want to know.

         I was acting strange.

         Even if I did ask her about it, her answers would probably be normal, nothing out of the ordinary. I knew how weird it was to be comparing how she treated her student with how she used to treat me.

         I knew that.

         But it still bothered me. I couldn’t calm down.

         I wanted to swallow and digest these feelings the way I did the Hamburg steak she made. But they refused to go down and sat heavy in my stomach, making me feel sick.

         「I have to go soon, Miyagi.」

         Sendai-san said, finishing her breakfast and downing the last of her orange juice.

         「Wait. Take the bandage off before you go.」

         「You’re still going on about that?」

         The truth was, I didn’t care about the bandage anymore.

         I just wanted to keep her here. I just couldn’t come up with a reason that would make her stay.

         「I just want to see what your finger looks like now.」

         「It looks like any other finger.」

         She let out a small sigh, clearly annoyed, but peeled the bandage off anyway. Her finger was slightly swollen, but clean—fair, with no marks left behind.

         There’d never been any need for her to wear a bandage at all.

         「The mark’s already gone.」

         「Maybe it healed under the bandage.」

         She said, like it was nothing, as she rubbed her finger. And then, unlike earlier, she looked straight at me and smiled.

         She’d been smiling at me like that a lot lately.

         But that smile wasn’t the real Sendai-san. It reminded me too much of the smile she’d worn when we saw that movie together during summer break—something forced, something pasted on. Maybe that’s why her smiles now made me feel so uneasy.

         I touched my earring.

         If I could, I wanted to make her swear on my earrings that she’d quit her part-time job. But they were just earrings. They couldn’t turn pumpkins into carriages or grant wishes like a genie. They were just decorations, holding onto promises that only comforted me.

         Even if I made Sendai-san promise me something, there was no guarantee she’d actually keep it.

         「Can you do the dishes after you’re done eating, Miyagi?」

         「Okay.」

         「Thanks. I want to head to campus a bit early today.」

         She stood up and went back to her room. I took another bite of my toast.

         It was sweet, and a little salty—but it didn’t taste good.

         And once I got home later, I’d be eating another lazy dinner all by myself. Just thinking about it made my stomach churn. I had a feeling the rest of my day was already ruined.

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