He said it casually, but the hard edge in his voice made it clear that Ureshino was far from calm about it. If it’s painful to discuss, Kokoro thought, he doesn’t need to talk about it. But Ureshino seemed to want to get it out.

She had no idea what kind of people these classmates were, but if she thought about her own classmates, she had a vague idea. She’d known boys like that since elementary school, who’d talk about you behind your back, tease you, and sometimes go too far.

But as Ureshino said, Kokoro had never thought of that as bullying.

Ureshino might feel the same way. Things got a little weird, he’d said, but he might not consider that a case of bullying either.

‘When they’d come to my house, I’d give them drinks and ice cream and stuff, and I felt sorry for them since they didn’t get any spending money from their parents, so when we went out, I paid for their food. And after a while they just starting expecting it, for me to always pay, but the more I did it the more they respected me, the more they tried to please me. It wasn’t as if they were making me do it, was it? But the teacher at our juku found out and told my parents, and my father blew his top.’

Ureshino related all this matter-of-factly, and paused here for the first time. ‘Aren’t you ashamed, trying to buy friends like that? my father asked me.’ The hurt showed in Ureshino’s eyes.

He clutched the chopsticks into a fist. It seemed like he couldn’t hold them properly.

‘My mum got angry with my dad. Why be angry with him, she demanded, when it’s the other boys who are to blame for making him buy them drinks and suchlike? I felt the same way, but I hated to see them fight. I was sick of it, and when they talked about it with the other parents it seems they got shouted at, and then things got super awkward and it was too stressful to go to school.’

‘Yeah, must have been.’ A clear, bell-like voice spoke up. It was Fuka. She asked him to carry on. ‘Then what?’

‘And so Mother took me to the Free School and I enrolled. She took time off in the mornings. Honestly, it was so annoying. As though she was spying on me. It wasn’t as if I was going to die or anything.’

‘Die?’

It was Subaru who looked doubtful. Ureshino gave a small laugh.