My Childhood Friend And Prim And Proper

According to my childhood friend:

“The impression you hold of another person can only ever be formed within the range of what you yourself happen to know.”

…Or so it goes.

Isn’t that just stating the obvious… or so I thought, except that I’m the only one who knows Ayu is a reincarnator. Factor that in and the impression I hold of Ayu and the impression everyone else holds have to be a full one-eighty apart. In that sense, maybe there’s something more behind this remark of hers too… something more… no, then again, maybe not. This is Ayu we’re talking about.

“Live Debate Till Fifth Period!”
“Da-da-da-daaa~♪”
“Something’s started, apparently.”
“That’s quite the venerable old program you just parodied…”

Lunch break on the first day of the third term. The four of us were picking at our respective boxed lunches together for the first time in a while when Ayu and Hina sprang that on us.

“A debate… about what?”
“About me, that’s what! The topic: is Sakura Ayuri the prim-and-proper type, or is she not!”
“Doesn’t it embarrass you to say that out loud?”
“Shut it, Gin-chan!”

Offering up something to talk about is fine, I suppose, but hawking your own shame piece by piece strikes me as deeply questionable. She’s clearly set on ignoring my objection and pressing ahead regardless, and she’s evidently already roped Hina into it, so I may as well play along.

“I mean, come on. This morning I did the teensiest bit of vaguely sexual hint-dropping, ‘my first time’ this and ‘treat it with care’ that, and everyone took it as not even being a bit! Proof that people think of me as the prim-and-proper type who doesn’t tell dirty jokes!”
“That’s true~… hm? Ayu-chan’s… hmm???”
“Hina-san is glitching out…”
“It’s true that Ayu’s said pretty much nothing in that direction before.”

How to put it… looking back, somewhere along the line talking like that in front of Ayu had quietly turned taboo. And if even Hina, who is glued to her side day in and day out, short-circuits like this, then an “Ayu = sexual topics off-limits” mood must genuinely have been hanging in the air. Not that I’d ever been especially conscious of it.

“Back up. What even is ‘prim and proper’?”
“That’s, y’know… like, a pure sort of vibe… naive… sexual stuff off-limits… pure…”
“Your vocabulary is tragically poor.”

At the very least, I get the feeling Ayu doesn’t especially clear the bar she just laid out. Though if I take it seriously for a moment, pinning down what “prim and proper” actually means might turn out to be a real problem.

“And then… looks like she’s never known a man… long hair… and yeah, no dirty jokes…”
“Aren’t those just the traits you personally like…? Hm? If those are the criteria, then Sumire-san would fit—”
“Nope.”
“…Huh.”
“I am not prim and proper.”
“I-is that so…”

She shut that down with startling force. Some line must be drawn inside Sumire-san’s head somewhere; I haven’t the faintest idea where.

Anyway, hold Ayu up against the new criteria. Far from never having known a man, she is a reincarnator who used to be one. Her hair falls well short of anything you’d call long. And dirty jokes are… well, honestly, it’s anyone’s guess whether they’re off-limits or not.

…Yeah, “Ayu is prim and proper” doesn’t sit right, does it.

“Come to think of it… why did Ayuri-san end up with a no-sexual-topics air about her in the first place?”
“Hmm~… well, that would be~…”
“Ah, she’s rebooted.”
“Back in elementary school, I think it was~… there was this slightly grown-up manga that got popular with some of the girls~…”
“Ahh… that was a thing, huh…”

Huh, was that a thing?

“It was all messy melodrama and really fun~… but it had this slightly naughty scene in it, see~ and from the reaction Ayu-chan had to it, everything around Ayu-chan turned into a no-sexual-topics zone~”
“…Did I really react like that?”
“You did, you did. It was adorable~”

And out comes a memory I’ve never once heard of. In short, the off-limits mood from back then simply carried on, and since Ayu never brings that sort of topic up herself, she ended up a kind of sanctuary. And thinking about it calmly, she has always gently vetoed bathing together, hugging, sleeping in the same bed. Behave that way consistently enough and the atmosphere probably does form around you.

…Hold on. I’m the one who kept allowing all of that, and outright demanding some of it. Doesn’t that make me the sketchy one?

“In that sense~… rather than ‘prim and proper,’ ‘innocent’ might be the closer word~”
“I see… I’m innocent!”
“Innocent… innocent?”

Innocent, is she. This girl who claims, behind the scenes, to be a reincarnator on her second run at life. She’s forever lording her surplus of life experience over me, so “innocent” is a hard word to concede.

Or rather. This is something only I know, but Ayu is a reincarnator. Given how she sometimes agonizes over how close she can let people get, self-conscious about having been a man in her past life, I suspect she avoids dirty jokes for no deeper reason than a fear that they’d land as harassment. Still, some things are better left unsaid.

“Yours truly is innocent!!”
“…Innocent? More like you’re just a brat.”
“Isn’t that a bit harsh?!”
“It might be~”
“Hina-chan, not you too?!”

Well. Leave me out of it, since I only say it to needle her. If even Hina, who knows nothing about the secret, lands on the same verdict, then Ayu hasn’t got a leg to stand on as a reincarnator.

◆◆◆

“Now that I think about it… yeah, rather than prim and proper, Ayu’s more of an inno— er, a dumb brat. That fits.”
“Why did you rephrase it?! Why did you add the ‘dumb’?!”
“What’s this about~?”
“Hold on a second, I’m remembering it right now…”
“Could you not ignore me? Hey?”

What was it again… that song Ayu queues up pretty reliably whenever we go to karaoke. Out of everything she sings, a few of them snag on me now and then.

“Ayu, you sing a fair number of pretty old songs when you come to karaoke with us, right?”
“I do. Mostly stuff my mom and dad like, or songs other people are into, or ones they recommended… what about them?”
“Among those, there’s the, uh… what was it… that song with a name like a file-compression extension.”
“…zi*s?”
“Ah, yeah, that one. That song is… honestly, that’s a s*x song, isn’t it.”
“Gin-chan?!”

Up to now I’d always let it slide, carried along by how good Ayu is and by her sheer momentum. Think about it calmly, though, and yeah. They are absolutely doing it in that song. She’s been a genuinely good singer for as long as I’ve known her, and she sings without a thought for her image and without paying the lyrics the slightest attention, so back in elementary school I’d snag on it for a beat and then let it go.

“Ah, if we’re doing that, I’ve got one too~”
“You too, Hina-chan…?”
“What was it again~… the intro goes on forever~… and it opens with something about not needing anything, I think~…”
“That’s B’*… that’s LO*E PHANTOM…”
“That one is also~… quite a passionate song, isn’t it~”
“Ehh… but it’s true, if you actually read the lyrics properly… you could take it that way!”

Take it that way? It’s blatant, is what it is. And going by that phrasing, she really hadn’t been aware of it after all. Are old songs unexpectedly full of this kind of thing? It’s not as though I’m any expert on current music either, so maybe today’s hits are packed with the same.

“Ayu… if there’s even one person outside our group in the karaoke room, you don’t pick these songs, right?”
“Well, no, I don’t.”
“So I figured there was maybe a chance you were, on some level, thinking about the lyrics and your own image.”
“Nope. I’m just reading the room and steering clear of old songs. It’s just that with the four of us I figure it’s fine, so I put them in.”

Personally, I don’t think you need to worry about a song being old when you’re as good as she is. Barring a pick that flatly ignores the mood of the room, the moment Ayu starts singing the place gets hyped whether it wants to or not.

“…Ah, for what it’s worth, I’ve had one of Ayuri-san’s picks snag on me as well.”
“Sumire-chan, not you too… which song?”
“It’s probably a visual-kei band’s song… I believe it was called Vam*ire.”
“Sorry, that one I’m a little bit aware of!”

So there was one she was aware of.

◆◆◆

“So, in conclusion~… Ayu-chan is less prim and proper and more innocent~”
“I’d had a faint inkling of it back at karaoke… but to think she really was singing without understanding what the lyrics meant…”

Now then. Was there any point to holding this debate? And even if the verdict had come back prim and proper, what of it? The fundamental questions are endless, but the end is drawing near.

Fifth period is bearing down on us.

“It’s not like I sing every single thing on brain-dead autopilot, okay? For anime theme songs and the like, I think about what the lyrics mean properly, okay?”
“No need for excuses. More to the point, how does it feel to have exposed yourself as a thoughtless idiot in the very process of proving you’re prim and proper?”
“That’s a brutal insult… but I mean, wasn’t that already fairly common knowledge?”
“Doesn’t saying that out loud make you sad.”

Around now the classmates who’d drifted out of the room start filtering back in. Ayu and Hina pack up their things and head for their seats, or so I thought, right up until Ayu turned back around to face me. Which can only mean she intends to get one last line in. It’s bound to be something worthless, but I suppose I’ll hear her out.

“And with that, everyone, this installment of ‘Live Debate Till Fifth Period’ comes to a close.”
“A debate that did neither harm nor good.”
“For our next session, we are considering the topic ‘Is Fujino Ginko the cool type or the cute type.’ Until then, everyone: farewell.”
“If you actually start that, I’ll k*ll you.”
“K*ll?!”