ange for you to suddenly use the word abandon. If I had to choose, I’d say it was the Manga Society that chased her away, and yet, why did you choose that word to describe it all of a sudden?”

I took a breath.

“If I’m wrong, just tell me.”

I prefaced it with that.

“Isn’t it that you felt Chitanda was trying telling you to abandon your own ‘friend’ in that conversation?”

ōhinata looked up at me weakly.

“How can you say for sure that that’s not what she was getting at?”

Even as she said that, I could tell that she herself didn’t believe the words coming out of her own mouth. No one whose voice resonated in such a weak, raspy manner could think something like that.

“...Hey. Can you think of the reason why Chitanda thinks you’re quitting?”

She had a confused look in her eyes, but she didn’t respond.

“She thinks it was because she touched your cellphone without asking you that you got angry at her and wanted to quit the club.”

“What?”

“Can you believe it? Someone who just became a second-year on the verge of tears as she told me she honestly thought that that was the reason. That girl told me she was planning on going to see you after reaching the finish line to apologize for touching your cellphone yesterday.”

ōhinata’s eyes became wide and her mouth looked as if it were poised to laugh. The only thing that escaped from her throat, however, was something that sounded like a strange, choked sob.

ōhinata lowered her head. Her shoulders started to shake.

They shook because she was silently laughing; that’s what I wanted to believe.