Interlude: A Visit to the Butcher’s Shop, Part 4

Interlude:
A Visit to the Butcher’s Shop
Part 4

“C AN I LIFT YOU real quick?”

I was at Nagafuji’s house after school, lounging around under the kotatsu table, when Nagafuji asked me her most bizarre question yet. She’d been staring at me—or, rather, zoning out in my direction—for a while now.

“Can you what?”

“Lift you.”

“What for?”

“To see if I can,” she explained dutifully. I couldn’t begin to fathom how her brain came up with this idea.

“Okay, well, I’m too tired to get up. Drag me out,” I groaned, reaching out to her.

Sure enough, she responded by grabbing my hand and literally dragging me from under the kotatsu . Fortunately, the heater was on, so the room was by no means chilly.

Nevertheless, the cold air always seemed to settle near the floor, like hoarfrost.

“Help me up!”

I wiggled my hand until Nagafuji hoisted me upward and to the side. Eventually, through a series of adjustments on the X and Y axes and absolutely no effort on my part, I successfully reached a standing position.

“Okay, I’m up! Oof—now I feel dizzy. And my ears are ringing like crazy.”

Here I was, lamenting my suffering, and yet Nagafuji ignored me completely. She put her hands under my armpits. Oh my god, she’s actually doing it . Startled, I flailed my dangling feet. Meanwhile, she lifted me higher and higher until I hung there like the lion cub in that one movie. Now I was taller than she was.

While it was refreshing to see from a different viewpoint for a change, it kinda made me want to pass out, coupled with the ringing ears and vertigo. Nagafuji’s arms started to shake harder and harder, until eventually she hit her limit and was forced to set me back down.

“You’re heavier than I thought,” she commented as she massaged her bicep.

“Hey ! Rude much?!”

I’d rather die than be short AND heavy! If I were heavy, I would’ve sounded like a sack of potatoes when I hit the ground! But I didn’t! So there!

“What was the point of that, anyway?”

“I just figured I could probably lift you.”

“Ugh, forget it.” Knowing Nagafuji, that really was her only reason. There were never any hidden depths with her.

I slid back under the kotatsu , and this time she joined me. Then she took her glasses off. Why does it feel as if she always takes her glasses off whenever she’s with me?

I’d never bothered to ask her about it, because I knew I’d only get an ambiguous answer, like the one she’d given me just now.

As I collapsed forward onto the table, I exhaled and watched as my breath made the desk calendar’s pages flutter slightly. I blew on it again, for fun this time. Then I noticed the holiday coming up ten days from now: Valentine’s Day.

“That reminds me—do you want chocolates again this year?”

We’d exchanged gifts on Valentine’s since I was a kid, so by now it was kind of a tradition. At one point, it turned into this crazy competition in which we tried to one-up each other with the weirdest chocolate we could find, but lately we’d gone back to tamer gifts. You see, when it came to food, dear sweet Nagafuji-chan only liked “normal” stuff, like curry and Salisbury steak. If I was getting her a gift, I figured I might as well make it something I knew she would like.

“Sure,” she said. “I like candy.”

“All right, then, I guess that’s a yes.”

Of course, we never did anything super special—we just went to the store together, picked out our chocolate together, and ate it together. End of story.

But, to us, that was Valentine’s Day.

~ Today’s Adachi Forecast~

“Ada-chee!”

I imagined Shimamura’s voice pronouncing my name with extra emphasis on the last syllable. It was pretty cute.

God…I really shouldn’t be thinking about this stuff in the middle of class.