COTE : Parasite in Love.

Chapter 8 : Museum

Hiyori was waiting for him on the stairs by the front door of the library. As usual, she was dressed in a way that seemed to leave her legs cold, and she was in fact shivering slightly, but she seemed to consider this shaking natural. When she saw Ayanokouji, she took off her headphones and raised her hand a little.

“What did you want to try?”, Ayanokouji asked.

“I can’t answer that right now. I’ll tell you in a little bit.”

Hiyori stood up. They walked together.

On the walk to the apartment, Ayanokouji kept stealing glances at Hiyori’s face. He hadn’t thought anything of it before, but after Tsukishiro’s unfair suspicions, he was acutely aware of Hiyori today.

He tried asking himself: Could I see this parasite-loving, scopophobic girl in a romantic way? Soon, an answer came back. “Not a chance.” Indeed, it was the undeniable truth that I felt no special feelings toward her. But I did have a perfectly natural fondness for her simply as someone dealing with similar worries, which was out somewhere very far from romance.

Ayanokouji laughed off his unease - idiotic. She was still a kid in her teens. Tsukishiro couldn’t have been speaking seriously, either. Just making extra, extra sure, no doubt.

Suddenly, he noticed Hiyori was looking right at him. He was worried that the things on his mind were showing on his face, but it didn’t seem that was it.

“Hey, Mr. Ayanokouji. If I asked you to stroke my head again right now, what would you do?”

For a moment, Ayanokouji couldn’t respond to the unexpected question.

“You want me to do that?”

“Just hypothetically. Could you? Couldn’t you?”

He mentally evaluated the hypothesis.

“If I tried, I don’t think it would be impossible.”

“Yeah, right?”

“…And?”

“When I’m walking with you like this, I’m fine without headphones.”

Now that she mentioned it, she’d taken her headphones off at some point and put them in her bag.

“It looks like when you’re here, my scopophobia gets a little better. Maybe it could be relief from having someone who properly understands my symptoms around. What about you, Mr. Ayanokouji?”

Ayanokouji suddenly put his hand to his mouth. And it hit him. That was more or less why he’d removed his face mask before leaving the room. There must have been a sense of relief knowing he was meeting up with Hiyori, so he felt more at ease than usual.

“Yeah, I guess when I’m with you, my phobia is a little less intense, too.”

“I knew it,” Hiyori said proudly. “I don’t really get how, but we can’t not make use of this.”

“Make use of it for what?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Training ourselves to get used to the outside world. A three-legged race of rehabilitation, so we can walk around outside without gloves or headphones.”

“…I see. That’s not a bad idea,” Ayanokouji affirmed.

“And so I did some thinking…”

Hiyori quickly began to outline her plan.

December 17th, Saturday.

Thinking about it, it was the first time Hiyori came to the room before noon.