คาถาที่ยังไม่เสร็จหลังเลิกเรียน — 第二章 不要完成它

Chapter Two: Don’t Finish It

The next day, Tōru was kept after school again. This time it was not duty. He had added a line for himself on the roster.

When Rin saw him, she hid the chalk behind her back. “You’re here to fill in the corner?”

“I’m here to mop.” Tōru was honest. “I can’t fill in a corner. I only scored sixty-two in math.”

She stared at him for three seconds, then suddenly smiled. The smile was put away at once, as if she were afraid the pattern would record it.

“Don’t finish it.” Tōru set the bucket down. “If you don’t want after school to end.”

“That’s not how the spell works.”

“Then who decided how the spell works?”

Rin’s lips moved. She did not answer. Outside the window someone on the field shouted, “One more ball,” the voice so distant it seemed to belong to another season. Tōru started mopping, and on purpose dragged water over the missing corner until that patch could no longer be drawn on.

Rin looked at the puddle. For the first time, she was not angry.

“You,” she said, “are awful.”

“Duty students are all like that.”