On Danyu’s nineteenth birthday, Charlotte Ilse, who had been watching me watch Danyu run out in tears, had asked me the same question. Do you like that woman? Then and now. I found myself genuinely wondering what it was about me that made such a conclusion possible. But before I could even ask properly, the reason was already coming out of Astaire’s mouth.

“Miss Danyu said you were her first kiss. You’ve never left the women around you alone. So I thought maybe you held her a little more specially. On top of that, she’s the only person who has stayed around you this long, even after all of that.”

“What are you thinking? When I first met Danyu, she was barely eleven years old. It would be strange to have those kinds of thoughts. No matter how much someone grows up, the impression from when you first met them runs deeper than you’d think.”

“Then I’m glad.”

Astaire’s face gradually clouded as he watched me push back with a scoff. I hadn’t said I liked Danyu, so why was his face clouding over like this. Before the question could deepen, Astaire held out a small bag he had set down beside the piano. I took it in a daze and felt warmth in my hands. Looking inside, I found neatly packed soup. On one side, thoughtfully, a spoon had been tucked in as well.

“He said you haven’t been eating properly. When Danyu heard that, she told me to bring this for you. She said this potato soup is all you eat when you’re not feeling well. She said she’d come check later to make sure you actually ate it.”

What a truly kind Miss Danyu. A laugh slipped out before I could stop it.

No matter how hard I had tried to break her, she had not changed in the end. It wasn’t simply a bowl of warm soup that showed it. The beautiful confession she had given me when I tried to wound her to the last, and her music that had embraced even the shadows of her heart. Danyu Astrid was still the girl who had stood in the light on the day I first met her, eyes wide open.

They say that everyone who stands beside something black becomes stained black. So why didn’t you? How could you manage that?

I asked, but naturally, no answer came back.

“Tell her not to come. I don’t feel like dealing with her.”

I grumbled, but even so I took the bowl out of the bag and lifted a large spoonful of soup. The moment it entered my mouth, warmth spread through my entire body. The reason my body was growing so pleasantly warm was surely all because of this warm soup.

* * *

The heat rising all the way to my head drained the strength from me. It was unlike me for a single bowl of soup to warm my body like that. It seemed there had been a cold coming on after all. Sweat began to flow on its own from the heat filling my body. It was a thoroughly unpleasant feeling, but my body had no strength to spare for wiping away the sweat.

A summer cold, in a summer where people dropping dead from heatstroke was not uncommon. The absurdity of the situation drew out a laugh. It wasn’t really surprising, come to think of it. Since I was young, it had been a common occurrence for me to come down with a flu that had no business appearing at this time of year and spend days feeling wretched.

It didn’t take long to realize that being sick only hurt myself in the end. In the orphanage, no one paid any attention to another person’s pain. No one took notice of a person lying sick in bed, and no one reached out a warm hand. The other children would rather cheer that their share of food had grown larger that day. There were times when children who normally couldn’t even speak to me properly would seize the opportunity to pick a fight.

From then on, there were many days when I gritted my teeth and endured even when I was sick. If I held on like that, at some point my body would come right again. Buy medicine on my own, boil some warm water to drink, quietly slip under a warm blanket and sleep. By the time the next morning came, I could stand in front of people with a face that showed nothing.

First get up, take the medicine, and have a warm bath. After that, it would be good to make something simple, even just some soup. I quietly sorted through what I needed to do, but it was all only in my head, and my heavy body had no intention of moving. Instead, all that came out were a few dry coughs from a throat gone stale from breathing through my mouth.

“I want some water.”

I murmured quietly in a voice gone rough. I knew I could get up and go drink some water, but my body was slumped and screaming, and moving felt impossible.

“Water? You want some water? Just a moment.”

At that, an unexpected voice came from very close by. What surprised me was not that someone was nearby, but that the voice belonged to Danyu Astrid. My heavy eyelids flew open in an instant. I jolted upright and looked around, but the room was empty.

“Must have imagined it.”

I muttered blankly and looked around, and felt pathetic at myself.

There was no reason for anyone to be here, and yet this foolish mistake. And of all people, Danyu Astrid. Even if I was going to hear things, why did it have to be her voice?

“I brought water.”

While I was furrowing my brow and pressing my feverish forehead, the hallucination came again without warning. This one was realistic enough to come with the sound of footsteps as well. The fever has made you lose your mind. While that thought was forming, the footsteps drew closer and closer.

“Do I have to feed you too?”

A glass of water was thr*st into my blurry field of vision. Following the pale hand holding the glass, I turned my gaze and found Danyu looking at me with a sullen expression.

“Why are you here?”

A stupid question came out of my mouth. I regretted it the moment I said it, but Danyu only gave a slight frown and said nothing. She simply settled into the small chair beside the bed and pressed the glass of water firmly into my hand.

The cool sensation at my fingertips brought the fever-addled mind down a little. Danyu nodded as though urging me to drink quickly, and I mechanically took a sip of the water, and only then did a sense of reality wash over me. She must have seen my eyes slowly coming back into focus, because a sigh that mixed relief and worry soon escaped her lips.

“Peter said you’d been acting strange lately, so I had a feeling it would be something like this. You always get sick around this time of year. And you’re still as stubborn as ever about suffering through it alone. They say even dogs don’t catch summer colds, but why do you always end up like this at exactly this time of year? And you’re perfectly fine in winter.”

“Are you saying I’m worse than a dog right now?”

“It’s just a saying. The fact that you have the presence of mind to point that out means you’re feeling a little better. I got you medicine, so take it.”

“Later.”

“I know you’ll say that and then not take it. Take it where I can see you.”

Danyu held out the medicine from the nightstand. My throat was stale and I wasn’t particularly inclined, but she looked ready to nag me without end if I didn’t take it now, so I accepted the medicine without a fuss, and only then did the tension leave Danyu’s face. The moment she confirmed I had swallowed it completely, she took the glass of water from my hand, then reached out and laid me back down on the bed. When she proceeded to tuck the blanket around me with careful hands, a laugh came out at last.

“You’re treating me exactly like a child.”

“If you can’t take care of yourself, you are a child. Get a little more sleep now. When you wake up, there’s potato soup I made, so make sure you eat it. Don’t skip it just because you can’t be bothered.”

“Since when did you get so naggy? Have you no respect for your teacher?”

“When did we stop being teacher and student? A bit late to be saying that now.”

That was certainly true. Ever since Danyu had dismissed me, her teacher had been Astaire, not me. I had always found that strangely puzzling, in truth. If even the teacher and student relationship between us was gone, then weren’t we simply complete strangers in the end. For the few months after Danyu dismissed me, that had clearly been the case. Danyu had treated me the way you treat a complete stranger, and I had thought her attitude entirely reasonable.

But after the final confession, everything had changed. Danyu no longer wanted love from me, and yet she stayed by my side. Neither family nor someone seeking love, so why did she keep hovering near me like this? I had always wondered about the reason.

“Then what are we?”

“What do you mean?”

“What are we, I said. Not teacher and student, not lovers. Not even family or friends. We’re none of those things, so why are we still here looking at each other’s faces?”

It must have been an unexpected question, because Danyu blinked with a startled look. But it lasted only a moment. She soon returned to her usual expression and looked down at me.

“Is there a rule against it? Being family or friends.”

A hollow laugh came out at her matter-of-fact tone. Family or friends? There was no way Danyu Astrid and I could be something like that.

“How could we become something like that?”

“And why couldn’t we?”

But even at my pushback, Danyu remained composed. The hands that carefully lifted a cloth and wiped away the sweat were no different from usual.