‘What a joke, eh? According to my parents I was being bullied, and kids who are bullied blame themselves and often consider suicide. They read books on the subject and were really worried about me. It’s so stupid, because I never thought I wanted to die. They’d cry and say, Haruka-chan, you’ll be OK.’

‘Haruka?’ Masamune exclaimed at the revelation of Ureshino’s first name, usually a girl’s name. The half of Ureshino’s face that wasn’t covered in gauze flinched, as though he instantly regretted it.

‘Who the hell is Haruka?’ Masamune said.

‘That’s me.’ Ureshino looked up. ‘And so what?’ he said cuttingly. ‘So my name’s Haruka. Just forget it.’

‘What a sweet name. Like a girl,’ Aki said. She didn’t seem to have any ulterior motive for saying this, but Ureshino’s face turned beetroot.

‘Anyway, it doesn’t suit me at all,’ he said.

That must explain it, Kokoro thought.

When they had introduced themselves, everyone gave their first names, except for Ureshino, who only told them his last name. He seemed not to want to reveal it. He must have been mercilessly teased about it for years.

‘So anyway, my parents were a real pain about it, my father saying I was pathetic for not going to school just because of that. The teachers at the School tried to convince them to give me a bit more time to sort things out, but Father said they had been too soft on me, so I’d have to go back to normal school in the second semester.’

‘What about your mum? Didn’t she stand up for you?’

It was only when Fuka spoke that Ureshino looked up. But then he quickly hung his head again.

‘She did, but in the end, she did what my father told her.’

‘Oh.’

‘But it wasn’t what I expected. I heard our homeroom teacher say the boys were worried I’d stopped going to school because of them, but then when I came back, they weren’t a bit sorry about what had happened. Which stressed me, so I tried to talk to them about it. My father must have said all kinds of things to their parents, I said, and I was sorry.’

‘I don’t think you needed to apologize for anything,’ Masamune said bluntly. He sounded a little angry himself. Ureshino didn’t respond.

He might say he and his classmates were still on good terms, but he’d had to apologize, and though he said they didn’t actually do anything to him, he was still expecting them to show some remorse. Ureshino’s story was riddled with contradictions, as if perfectly expressing his own confusion.

But he wasn’t lying.

The emotions he felt at each moment were, no doubt, just as he described.