Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume6 Chapter5

The Crimson Card

I let out a sigh for Valentines.

Alone, standing by the window.

I wonder what has become of the crimson card since then. It's probably still buried in the dark soil. Or else it's resting gently in the hands of its rightful owner.

If it's the former, then it would be better to reclaim it soon.

Or else let it stay forgotten, and let my past stay buried with it.

Since people's feelings are beyond their control.

The heart flutters, and the status-quo cannot be maintained.

Part 1.

That day.

"Mifuyu-san"

The austere voice called out to me.

It was lunch time, and I had been idly looking out the window and thinking about her when the person herself appeared before my very eyes and surprised me.

But the person in question didn't know this, and tilted her head slightly before quickly moving on to the matter at hand. As an important person she was always busy with work, and didn't have the free time to pay attention to her classmates' every minor concern.

"You and Tomoko-san are on duty today, aren't you?"

"Huh? … Yeah"

"Can you go to the science preparation room right now? Earlier I was stopped in the hallway by Oomori-sensei and asked to tell the people on duty that there were printouts that needed to be collected for the fifth period class."

"The science preparation room"

"Sorry, but I couldn't see Tomoko-san anywhere – "

"Ahhh..."

Today was Valentines Day, so my partner on duty, Tomoko-san, had gone to give her hand-made chocolates to her onee-sama. About now she would probably be at the intersection of the paths lined with ginkgo trees, in front of the statue of Maria-sama.

"Well, I'll head off by myself."

If she had time to come over here and tell me this, she could have gone to the science preparation room herself. As I was thinking this, I raised myself from the window frame I had been leaning against when she stopped me by saying, "That's not it."

"So should I help you? – Was how I was going to finish my sentence."

(…)

With her request, those few words spoken out of kindness, came the full power of my imagination. So, to me, it wasn't just a simple favor she was offering.

We had arrived at this point unexpectedly. But since we've come this far.

Sachiko-san had probably only said that because it was too much for one person to handle by themselves. That was all it was.

"Mifuyu-san?"

With a single glance, you can tell that she is a perfect lady. Someone who will soon take up a position as representative of the high school division of this academy. That wasn't the only thing she had going for her – she also had her looks, attitude and popularity.

But I think even that only scratches the surface.

"No, it's fine. If it's only some printouts, I should be able to do it myself."

When I politely declined she said 'Really?' and then walked away, like I thought she would.

Really?

Then I'll leave it to you.

– Fairly abrupt.

By no means cold. But having said that, definitely not affectionate.

There's no warmth between her and I.

That's not only with me. She's like that with almost everyone. It's like shaking hands with someone wearing silk gloves, so to speak.

"Sachiko-san"

Despite refusing the favor she had offered, leaving things as is was difficult. So I turned towards her, with her long, black hair quickly swinging from side to side across her uniform covered back, and called out.

"What?"

Slowly, she turned around.

"Umm … Thank-you. And good luck with today."

"Yeah"

The corners of her mouth were raised fractionally as she answered. Was she smiling, or grimacing? I hadn't seen her smile often, so I couldn't tell.

I, Uzawa Mifuyu, entered Lillian's Girls Academy at the start of high school. It's now the third semester of my second year, so I've already spent a little over half of my high-school time on these grounds, under the protection of Maria-sama.

Entrance exams tend to be the standard way to show that you possess the appropriate level of scholarly ability, and that's the case for people who knock on the door to Lillian's Girls Academy with no prior connection to the school.

In my case, the conditions were somewhat different. Strictly speaking, I wasn't a newcomer to this school. I had previously taken the entrance exam for Lillian's Girls Academy once already, managed to pass somehow, and secured myself a position. Kindergarten may have been a long time ago, but I'm still proud of it.

Back then, my mother was dancing with delight that her child had been accepted. My mother's mother, ie. my grandmother, is an alumna of Lillian's and her dream had been that her daughter would also attend. Although my mother was born and raised in the suburbs of Chiba City, she didn't give up on the idea of entering into Lillian's Girls Academy. To this day my mother maintains that there was no question of whether or not she would be able to make the commute, although I doubt that the school would accept someone who faced a two and a half hour commute each way, even if they did meet the academic standards. It may be different for a university student, but my mother wanted to do this as a middle school student.

Anyway, back to the story. Having entered into kindergarten, I had enjoyed half a year of life at Lillian's when struck by unexpected bad fortune. My father was transferred and, reluctantly, we left Tokyo, so I had to step outside of the pristine greenhouse. My mother lamented the situation, and I too received a considerable shock. But, as a young child, I had no means of expressing this, so when my mother came to pick me up on my final day at kindergarten I simply said my usual farewells to my classmates, took her hand and left the premises without shedding any tears. I only heard about it afterwards, but back then my mother pleaded with my father, asking to remain in Tokyo even though it would mean living apart. But my father said, "If we don't go together, we'll have to get a divorce," so she tearfully accompanied him. My father was right. If their daughter's kindergarten was reason enough for them to live apart, then divorce was the only option. But I don't think my father was truly being serious. It was only to get my mother to open her eyes. Even to this day, both my parents are embarrassingly close.

Time passed, and I'd almost finished my third year of middle school when my father was recalled to his company's main office in Tokyo. Simultaneously, mine and my mother's dreams of me once more attending Lillian's Girls Academy started to grow.

As a private school, they could be flexible about various matters. As someone who had received a position at Lillian's in the past, I was able to take the same test as the Lillian's middle school students rather than the test for students from other schools. Because of this, I was able to make the grade and was accepted into the high school. The timing was fortuitous and it probably worked to my advantage that one of my relatives is an alumna of Lillian's.

My mother probably wanted her daughter to be accepted into the school she loved wholeheartedly, but for me it was different. I had a reason for wanting to return that was unrelated to the prestige of the school.

I wanted to meet that person once more.

Barring some kind of accident, that person would still be at this academy. Because of this belief, I had wanted to return here for elementary school and middle school. At long last, my wish would finally be granted for high school.

The day of the high school entrance ceremony.

I was trembling as I read the class list. Her name was written directly beneath my name.

Ogasawara Sachiko.

The single name, out of all my classmates in kindergarten, that I had not forgotten.

Part 2.

Sachiko-san's existence was just as conspicuous in kindergarten as it is now.

For starters, even the way she arrived at school was different.

In the morning, a black car would pull up at the western gate, near the kindergarten. A beautiful little girl wearing a kindergarten uniform would emerge from the back seat. It wasn't her father or an older brother in the driver's seat. Nor was there anyone else in the back seat.

"I'll take my leave now."

She would seem displeased while saying this, and step away from the car. She would walk from the gate to the kindergarten in silence, without looking back. Eventually, the car would drive off. At the faint sound of the tires on the bitumen, she would take a single glance back over her shoulder. She would then sweep her gaze from side to side, before she once more resumed walking. It was as though she was surveying a battlefield. – That was Sachiko-san.

I saw that scene played out time and time again as I commuted to kindergarten.

Perhaps going to kindergarten itself was painful for her. There were plenty of children who wouldn't go to their classroom, and instead cling to their mothers when they first arrived at kindergarten.

As for my blessed self, since my earliest days my mother had been planting only a good image of school, so I looked forward to entering into kindergarten and adapted to it quickly.

You could say that kindergarten is when you first take part in society. You spend long periods of time separated from your parents, and there's probably an equivalent amount of stress. On top of that, it gathers together various children of the same age that each have their own personality. Even if you're not shy or meek, it's an environment that's hard to adapt to initially.

I was interested in Sachiko-san.

At first my interest was, naturally enough, in her overly conspicuous appearance. You could say that it was her innate ability, and it certainly was, but there was something about it that seemed to defy that phrase.

Something that made her difficult to get close to.

We learned about her family situation later, but I doubt more than a handful of kids truly understood. Back then I thought being driven to school was simply a matter of distance, like whether you walked to school or caught the bus. – Sachiko-san's house actually was a fair distance from the bus route, so that thought wasn't completely wrong.

It would be too far even for flattery to say that Sachiko-san fit in at kindergarten. Children can sense when others are different to themselves. In the beginning there were a lot of classmates who treated her as a curiosity and would watch her from a safe distance. Because Sachiko-san was Sachiko-san, she was able to sense this and her face, that looked displeased at the best of times, would scrunch up even further as she actively ignored them.

Sachiko-san was silently fighting.

Even if the kindergarten wasn't a happy place for her, she wasn't the type of child to scream and cry that she wanted to go home. Despite being such a young child, she probably had her own sense of pride.

Whether it was painting or handicrafts, Sachiko-san never lost to anyone. Particularly impressive was the time we were shown some basic dance steps by the teacher during playtime. As we all awkwardly followed the teacher's directions, she alone was extraordinary.

It was like the difference between heaven and hell. She was a jewel in the dunghill.

As we writhed on the ground like a squirming caterpillar, she danced like a graceful butterfly.

It was so beautiful, it was as though an angel had descended from heaven.

"I heard she takes ballet lessons."

Somebody muttered those words as some consolation, but it was just making excuses. Sachiko-san wasn't the only one in our class to take ballet lessons.

Then one day, because of a thoughtless remark from one of our classmates, she stopped coming to school by car.

It was a petty affront. Not something worth taking notice of.

Instead, she switched to catching the bus to school. She wasn't going to lose. Perhaps she had been thinking about it beforehand, but there's no doubt that the taunt had been the impetus to change. She would get driven, in the same black car, to the school bus stop closest to her house, and from there catch the bus the rest of the way to school. Because her house wasn't within walking distance of the bus stop, she had no choice but to get dropped off by car. But even then, she would get dropped off around the corner before the bus stop and walk the rest of the way.

My eyes were continuously drawn to the minutia of Sachiko-san's everyday life. But my happiness wouldn't last long. My father's transfer had been decided.

My father and mother spent several days discussing matters related to the transfer, such as relocating and so forth, and I spent that time at kindergarten in somewhat of a daze.

Very soon, I would no longer be able to see Sachiko-san.

My feelings back then were somewhat strange; the nuance wasn't so much that it would be painful to part with Sachiko-san, more that it was a shame that I wouldn't be able to watch her. Right. My wish wasn't to play or chat with Sachiko-san.

On that day, during recess, I made a mistake and had a spectacular fall from the swings. At that time, the fad was to jump off the swing as it was still moving. The teachers had forbidden us from doing this, but we didn't pay them any heed. We younger children were trying to imitate our older sisters, and when the teacher wasn't looking we would practice jumping off the swing when it was swinging low.

I had been absent-minded all day, and when my friends called me over I joined them in line until, eventually, my turn arrived and I sat down on the swing. I was good at jumping off the swing because I practiced often at the park in my neighborhood.

Swish, swish.

I thought of the wind.

Perhaps I too would soon be gone from this place, just like the wind. What would it be like after I had left? I couldn't picture it in my mind, so I couldn't see whether it would be lonely or not.

I seized upon the solitary figure of a little girl in my shifting field of vision.

Ogasawara Sachiko.

It was then that I realized. Me leaving here would be exactly the same as if everyone other than me left.

Sachiko-san noticed my gaze and suddenly turned to face me. Her eyes seized upon my body and her beautiful face quickly frowned in displeasure. When I realized that I was the cause of the disgust on her face, the shock I felt was like I had been shot in the heart with a pistol. The subsequent shock was that my hands, which I had thought were firmly gripping the chains, had come loose.

It was only for a fraction of a second, but I had become the wind, flying through space. The sky spun around and for a moment I thought things looked different to normal, before I crashed into the ground.

"Mifuyu-chan!"

The friends I had been playing on the swings with hurriedly gathered around, and then when they saw the blood that was slowly trickling from my kneecap they all stepped back.

Luckily, the ground around the swings was covered with sand, so it was soft. It seems that I had flipped over completely and taken the impact with the ground on my hands and knees, preventing it from turning into a tragedy. It was a spectacular crash, but the only place I was bleeding was from my skinned knee.

With time came the pain, and with the blood came the tears.

"I'm going to get the teacher."

One of the braver girls ran off towards the school building, while the timid ones said 'Me too,' 'Me too,' and also ran off until no-one remained. I only learned the phrase 'to scatter like baby spiders' later on, but it applied here. The children who had been playing on the other pieces of playground equipment were too scared to get involved, so they maintained a distance of at least five metres from me.

Out of all these people, only one approached me. It was Sachiko-san.

"Are you okay?"

She chose the most pertinent question to start off with and, when I nodded vigorously while crying, she seemed relieved. Her next question was said in a shocked tone of voice.

"What on earth were you doing?"

Before my eyes, she produced a white handkerchief. I thought it was to wipe away my tears. Because it was of such a fine quality I hesitated to use the thin handkerchief as a gauze.

While I was still wondering what I should do, Sachiko-san squatted down beside me and applied the handkerchief to my knee without a moment's pause.

"Ahh"

"Does it hurt? You're being punished because you didn't listen to the teacher's orders."

I belatedly understood the reason for the look of disgust that had appeared on Sachiko-san's face before I fell from the swing. It wasn't that she hated me, it was just that she was opposed to people breaking the rules.

The teacher appeared, pulled from inside the building by children, and Sachiko-san stood up.

"Ahh, your handkerchief..."

"You can keep it. I have another one."

And with that overly blunt response, Sachiko-san took her leave. I wanted to chase after her, but my knee and my heart were hurting, and I didn't dare call out to tell her to stop.

While the teacher was washing my knee and drying the abrasion with absorbent cotton soaked with an antiseptic solution, I held tight to the lightly blood-stained handkerchief. It was the first time that I had talked one-on-one with Sachiko-san, and also the first time that she had given me something.

From this, I concluded that the reason Sachiko-san was cut off from the rest of the class was because she was more mentally mature than everyone else. Because she was more adult than the rest of the girls her age, they couldn't connect on the same level.

Before long, the day arrived when I had to leave Lillian's Girls Academy. Having finished saying my goodbyes in the classroom, I called out to Sachiko-san as she waited in the garden for the school bus.

There were two routes that the bus took. In order to service these routes with a single bus, they ran at different times. The white route and the red route. Sachiko-san's was the red route, which ran later. Incidentally, getting picked up by your parents was called the yellow route.

Calling out to Sachiko-san took strength that I didn't know I possessed until then, but I firmed my resolve thinking that returning her handkerchief was a just cause and that today was the last opportunity I had to do that.

My mother had washed and ironed it. She had even called my grandmother in Chiba City for advice on how to get rid of the bloodstains and, as reward for all her effort, no trace of the yellow stains from the dried blood remained.

"I said you could keep it, didn't I?"

As I held out the handkerchief, Sachiko-san looked at me with her usual disinterested expression.

"But my mother said I should return it."

Then I held out the small package that my mother had given me.

"What is it?"

"She told me it was chocolates."

"Chocolates?"

"She said it's to show our gratitude."

I was annoyed with myself that I could only express it as though I was acting as a proxy for my mother. But at the time, my young self was unable to convey what was in her heart, and I couldn't say, "I'm grateful to you."

"… I see."

After some thought, Sachiko-san accepted the handkerchief and the small package of chocolates.

"Convey my regards to your mother, Mifuyu-chan."

It was the first time that I heard Sachiko-san call me 'Mifuyu-chan.'

The school bus returned from the first route. Before Sachiko-san boarded the bus, she said 'See you later' to me.

See you later. I repeated it back to her.

See you later, Sachiko-chan.

I could see Sachiko-san smiling and waving through the bus window. Looking like that, she didn't appear any different to the rest of the five year olds.

See you later.

I waved back at her.

I kept facing towards the bus until my mother had completed the various formalities and came to collect me.

Even though Sachiko-san could no longer see me from where she was.

It wasn't goodbye.

Because of that, I thought that one day I would return here.

Part 3.

When I next met Sachiko-san, I had the strange impression that she was just like how I thought she would be, and also completely different to how I imagined her.

On the outside, she appeared just the same as in kindergarten. Although as she approached adulthood, her beauty seemed even more pronounced. Her personality didn't seem to have changed much either. She was still her usual anti-social self, not laughing along with the rest of the class, and her severity that easily kept everyone at bay was still there.

Given that, the cause of my surprise was entirely due to my own wrong assumptions.

While I was away, I had morphed my mental image of Sachiko-san into that of my ideal woman. I had expected that her sharp parts would soften, that her maturity would give birth to tenderness and that she would become a gentle and elegant lady like the Virgin Mary.

But people don't change that easily. Or maybe they do.

"Were we in the same class before?"

When I saw her in the classroom and called out to her, with a single sentence she shattered and blew away my ten years of imagination.

She didn't remember.

Of course, I didn't have the sort of physical appearance that you'd take one look at and never forget, and other than the swing incident I hadn't done anything to stand out during kindergarten. Nonetheless, I hadn't even considered that she would have forgotten me. I thought there must have been something that made my short, 140cm tall self stand out from the rest of the students.

At any rate, I had to start from scratch and once more build up a relationship with Sachiko-san. But because my initial attempt at a reunion was crushed, I found it hard to be proactive. Once more, it felt like there wasn't a single gap in her armor that would allow me to get close to her.

Pitifully, the only things I could say to her were formalities like 'Gokigenyou,' or 'Please pass the printouts to the back.'

Before long, the seating order was changed and the number of words we exchanged dropped dramatically. Then Sachiko-san was chosen to be Rosa Chinensis en bouton's petit soeur and she drifted further and further away.

We had come full circle.

I spent my time watching Sachiko-san.

The ties of our relationship from ten years ago weren't strong enough to build a new relationship on top of.

It had been an illusion.

That the Sachiko-san that waved to me from the bus had felt a spark of friendship was probably my imagination. I had thought that if I hadn't had to move away and had spent the next day with her, and then the next, that we would definitely have become good friends. But Sachiko-san probably didn't see it that way.

While I chased after the grown-up version of the kindergartener Sachiko-san, the days passed by. Because of my inconspicuous presence I was able to get along well with most of my classmates. There were interesting lessons and boring lessons, but overall it was enjoyable.

I didn't join any clubs, nor were there any older students I was particularly close with, so it was only natural that I didn't find an onee-sama. But, I didn't really want one either. My thoughts have never turned to the older students.

When we started the second semester in the new year, one of our classmates was no longer with us.

She didn't say goodbye, but when the winter break was over her desk was no longer in the classroom.

People's impression of her ranged from 'a conspicuous presence' to 'someone with no presence whatsoever.' I lent more to the latter and, because I hadn't been too interested in her, only learnt that she had been close with Rosa Gigantea en bouton after she had transferred.

Before my very eyes, someone had disappeared.

In the beginning she would come up in conversation, but as we were swept along by our busy everyday life it wasn't long until she was completely forgotten.

This time I was standing on the side of those left behind and I felt that keenly.

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