We walked down the corridor toward the auditorium. Kurokawa was two steps ahead of me. Her back was straight, as if she were carrying the weight of the world but refused to hunch even an inch. The distance between us wasn't just physical; it was a wide social chasm.
"Remember, Nakamura-san," she said without turning around. "Don't say a word. Let me handle the negotiations. Just use those 'bored sloth' eyes of yours to watch for any suspicious movements. Don't let your presence scare them more than the threat letters already have."
"Whatever you say, Boss," I muttered. I was used to being treated like the monster in other people's stories.
In the auditorium, the tension was thick. The drama club was trying to rehearse, but every few minutes, one of them would glance anxiously toward the wings of the stage. Their leader, Sagami Minami, looked like someone who hadn't slept in three days. The moment she saw Kurokawa enter, her expression turned complicated—a mix of intense relief and a dislike hidden behind a fake smile.
"Kurokawa-san... I didn't expect you to handle this personally," Sagami said, her voice trembling. She tried to sound friendly, but in this school, everyone knew that asking Kurokawa for help was an admission of weakness.
"The Student Council asked me. So, let's stop wasting time. Show me the letters," Kurokawa replied coldly. She had zero interest in small talk. To her, diplomacy was just a waste of oxygen.
As Kurokawa began cornering the club members with logical questions that felt more like a police interrogation, I drifted away. I don't like crowds. I prefer talking to inanimate objects; they're more honest.
I walked backstage, stepping into the darkness behind the dusty velvet curtains. There, among piles of drama props—wooden swords, rickety cardboard trees, and old chairs—I found a hidden trash can.
Inside were plenty of torn scripts. Standard stuff for a production. However, one thing caught my eye. Among the standard school-issued white paper, there was a single sheet with a smoother texture and a slightly different color.
I picked it up. It was the same stationery as the threat letter the Student Council had shown us earlier. But this wasn't a threat. It was a script for the lead role, but every single line had been scratched out with blue ink so hard the paper was nearly punctured. On the margin, there was a tiny, shaky note: "This should have been mine."
A chill crawled up my spine. This wasn't just bullying. This was shattered obsession.
"Did you find something useful, or are you just enjoying the smell of trash?" Kurokawa's voice emerged suddenly from the darkness behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin, my heart racing.
"Look at this," I said, showing her the paper and ignoring her jab. "The threat letters didn't come from the outside. There's no intruder. It was written by someone who knows this script inside and out. Someone who feels their role was stolen, or that the script was unfairly changed."
Kurokawa took the paper with her fingertips, reading it under the dim glow of the stage lights. Her eyes flashed. "So you think the culprit is a member of the club? How cliché. Just like the cheap drama they're rehearsing."
"The world is cliché, Kurokawa. You're the one who expects some elegant, dignified drama," I shot back bitterly. "In reality, humans are shallow. The culprit is that girl standing in the corner. The one who's been holding a water bottle for Sagami as if she's her loyal servant."
Kurokawa narrowed her eyes, looking at the small girl with short hair who seemed completely unremarkable in the corner of the stage. "On what basis are you accusing her? She looks like the one most affected by all of this."
"That's the point," I said, leaning my back against the cold wall. "She's the only person who didn't dare look at you when you arrived. Everyone else here was staring—some with admiration, most with hate because you're so perfect—but her? She was staring at the floor. Her hands aren't shaking because she's afraid of the threat letters; they're shaking because she feels guilty yet satisfied. She wants to see Sagami fall apart, but she wasn't ready for an 'executioner' like you to show up."
Kurokawa fell silent for quite a while. She looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time—or maybe, she was seeing a reflection of herself in my dull eyes.
Without a single word, she walked toward the stage. But she didn't start with soft questions. She immediately launched her signature verbal assault—cold, accurate, and devastating.
"This stationery with the lily motif... it's only sold at that small bookstore near the station where you live, isn't it?" Kurokawa asked in a tone so calm it was terrifying.
Her words felt like a hammer blow to my chest. "We can never be friends. Not then, and not now. We're just two strangers who happen to be in the same room."
We entered the office and sat in our respective corners. Far apart. Separated by empty desks and a sense of pride that was far too high to be torn down. Two people connected by a history of failure and rejection, now forced to work together within a system they both despise—all while secretly hoping that one day, one of them will have the courage to say, "I know what it feels like to be you."
But for today, there was only silence. A silence colder than any winter I had ever experienced.
The girl, who had been giving Sagami a drink earlier, flinched. The water bottle in her hand nearly dropped. "E-eh? I don't know what you're talking about, Kurokawa-san..."
"And this blue ink... it has a very specific lavender scent. Exactly like the pen tucked into your uniform pocket right now," Kurokawa continued, stepping forward until the girl was backed into a light pole. "Stop wasting my time with this amateur acting. You hate Sagami because she took your lead role after getting close to the club advisor, didn't you? You felt betrayed by a friend you considered a sister."
The auditorium went dead silent. Sagami took a step back, her face pale. The girl began to sob, and then her crying broke into a heartbreaking wail. All the hatred, jealousy, and pain spilled out onto the stage that was supposed to be the place where they shined. Her secret was exposed in less than five minutes.
The truth had been upheld, but it felt like not a single person in that room felt like a winner.
After handing the final report to the Student Council and leaving the teachers to deal with the emotional wreckage in the drama club, we walked back to our office. The sun was beginning to set, drenching the school corridors in an orange hue that looked like fading blood.
"You were too harsh, Kurokawa," I said, breaking the silence. "You could have made her faint with those words. There were... more humane ways to put it."
"The truth is painful. Aren't you the one who always says you hate lies?" she shot back sharply without looking back. "You should know that better than anyone, Nakamura-san. Especially after what happened to you back in middle school."
I stopped walking. It felt as if my feet were glued to the corridor floor. That incident... the old wound I had tried so hard to cover with layers of cynicism was suddenly ripped open again.
"Why do you keep bringing up the past?" I asked, my voice trembling slightly with suppressed anger. "Do you enjoy seeing me fail that much? Does reminding me of the lowest point in my life make you feel superior?"
Kurokawa stopped, too. She stood still for a moment, then slowly turned around. For the first time since we met in that room, her eyes didn't look cold or condescending. There, behind the crystal fortress she had built, her eyes looked... lonely. Deeply, incredibly lonely.
"That's not it," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "I'm just... I'm just frustrated. I'm frustrated because after all the pain you went through in middle school, you haven't changed a bit. You're still using the same methods. You're still offering yourself up as a sacrificial lamb for others; you still choose to be the villain just so everyone else can remain the 'pure victim.' You still choose to watch from the shadows and refuse to step forward."
"The light is blinding, Kurokawa," I replied bitterly. "People like me only get burned if we stand there. I tried once, and you know how that turned out? I ended up as the school's laughingstock. So, just leave me here. In the dark, where no one can hurt me anymore."
I walked past her, intentionally brushing against her shoulder. "Besides, we're not here to be friends or to heal each other's traumas. We're only here because of the Student Council's forced agenda. Never forget that."
Kurokawa looked down. Her long black hair fell over her face, hiding whatever expression she might have been making.
"Yeah. You're right," she said softly, but her words felt like a hammer blow to my chest.
"We can never be friends. Not then, and not now. We're just two strangers who happen to be in the same room."
We went back into the office and sat in our respective corners. Far apart. Separated by empty desks and a sense of pride that was far too high to be torn down.
Two people connected by a history of failure and rejection, now forced to work together in a system they both despise, while secretly hoping that one day, one of them will have the courage to say, "I know what it feels like to be you."
But for today, there was only silence. A silence colder than any winter I had ever experienced.