I Hated Her First

Setting the Trap

He spent his lecture thinking about twins.

Identical twins. France. April. Overseas. He wrote the words in the margin of his notebook while the professor discussed narrative schema in cognitive linguistics, and the pen marks got heavier as the hour passed.

The rational ledger was not in her favour. She had said the name before he did — which meant the name was loaded in her mouth, ready, not the reflex of an innocent person. She knew details: the trouble, the people affected, the manner of it. A twin in France was unconfirmable in the short term. The story had the internal consistency of something rehearsed.

But nothing in his experience of Sakura Nishida had ever included that quality of fear.

He tapped his pen against the page and looked at the words: we scan, we catalogue, we assign. The professor had meant it as a description of cognitive architecture. Arthur had been running it as a survival strategy for two years.

The simplest explanation — the one he did not want — was that he had not known her at all.

He packed his bag at the end of the lecture and made his decision the way he made all his decisions at difficult junctures: not by feeling toward it but by identifying which outcome would give him the most information.

He found her in the library forty minutes later.

She was in the periodicals section near the window, cross-legged on a low bench, a textbook open across her knees and a pencil tucked behind her ear. Absorbed enough that she didn't notice him until he sat down in the chair directly across from her.

She looked up. Her whole body went still.

"I owe you an apology," Arthur said.

The stillness held for a moment. Then: "You don't have to."

Her voice was careful. The vowels slightly softened — tended, the way something is tended when it requires maintenance. He noted it.

"The way I reacted this morning," he said. "It was aggressive. You understand why. But you didn't deserve that."

She looked at him for a long moment. Not checking whether he meant it — he could tell she wasn't doing that. Checking something else. He couldn't determine what.

"What Sakura did," he continued, watching her face, "had an effect I don't think she fully understood." A pause. "Or maybe she did. I honestly don't know."

Her jaw moved. "She didn't," she said. The certainty arrived slightly too fast — personal rather than reported. "She talked about you more than anyone else from that year. She regretted it."

"For a long time," Arthur said.

She hesitated one beat before she caught it. "For a long time," she agreed.

He had just fed her his line back and she had taken it. He filed that too.

"You ended up at Kansai," he said. "She went to France."

"The literature programme." The pencil slipped from behind her ear. She caught it before it hit the floor — quick, deft — and when she straightened her composure had settled slightly. "It just worked out that way."

"Right." He stood, gathered his bag. "Would it be strange if we started again? Just as two people at the same university."

She looked at him. One beat too long, again — something behind her eyes that she chose not to let through.

"No," she said. "That wouldn't be strange."

"Good." He left.

∗ ∗ ∗

He did not plan to run into her at the convenience store. But when the door slid open three days later and she was standing at the onigiri section with the focused expression of someone making a real decision, he registered the coincidence and chose not to examine it.

She noticed him. Went still for a second — then arranged her face and said, "Oh."

"Hi," he said.

They moved through the small shop in the politely staggered way of two people trying not to walk in parallel. They failed at it, and ended up side by side at the drinks refrigerator. She chose cold tea. He chose coffee.

At the counter they stood in the same queue, and she turned to look at the shelf beside the register without particular intention — and reached past him, close enough that he felt the movement of air, and set something on the counter beside his coffee.

A carton of chocolate milk.

She picked it up with a shy, sideways smile — one shoulder lifting slightly, a reflex so grooved it had bypassed every layer of Asuka she had assembled.

"I always get one in the morning," she said. "Habit."

Arthur looked at the carton.

Then at her hand holding it.

Then at her face, which had already smoothed back into place.

He paid for his coffee. He walked out. And he stood on the pavement for a moment in the early heat with the can cold in his hand, understanding, very clearly, that the trap had been set.

What he had not anticipated was the direction it was pointing.