‘At the beginning of the third semester when I saw you by the slipper cubbies, I really wanted to say something. But I couldn’t. I’m sorry. Things were a little sensitive then.’

‘Sensitive?’

She steeled herself, certain of something hurtful coming her way, when Tojo-san looked up and said, ‘Things were sensitive between me and Miori and her group.’

A yelp of surprise stuck in Kokoro’s throat.

Kokoro could well imagine what had happened. She sat mutely on the sofa, and Tojo-san smiled.

‘Miori and her group were starting to blank me. I was being left out. So if they found out you’d talked to me, I was worried Miori’s gang would find a reason to be mean to you.’

‘But why …’

Why had things turned out like that? At the start of the first semester Tojo-san was a new transfer student, cheerful and outgoing, a popular girl everyone wanted to be friends with.

She thought about it for a moment, and turned pale.

‘Was it – because of me?’ She could feel the blood drain from her face. ‘I heard from Ms Kitajima that it was you who’d told her what happened between me and Sanada-san. Is it because of that?’

Why hadn’t she thought of this? Whether he had any idea of what Miori Sanada had done or not, even Mr Ida knew something was going on. And Miori must have wanted to know who had told him. Kokoro could well imagine what sort of awful things Miori would do to anyone who betrayed her.

‘No, that’s not it,’ Tojo-san said, scraping at the ice cream again. She gave a faint smile. ‘That might have … been a small part of it, but I don’t think that was the real reason. They said I was stuck up, that I was making fun of them, and they wouldn’t put up with it.’

‘Making fun of them …’

A phrase Kokoro had heard quite recently. Being made fun of, making fun of.

‘A while before, Nakayama-san in their group accused me of stealing away her boyfriend, called me a man-stealer, and after that, I just didn’t care any more. Dad had told me he might be moving to a different university in April, and as I was going to leave, the whole thing just irritated me, and I gave up trying to make excuses for them.’

Gave up – she made it sound light, but there was also a hint of sadness in it. Tojo-san took a spoonful of ice cream. Kokoro did likewise. The sweetness slowly melted in her mouth.

‘I probably did … make fun of her.’ Kokoro understood. ‘And our teachers probably think that’s not a good thing to do. Ida called me in and said so. You’re pretty mature, he said, and perhaps you look down on the others a bit, but the other girls are trying their best to be friends with you, yada yada yada.’