Interlude: A Visit to the Hino Estate, Part 1

Interlude:
A Visit to the Hino Estate
Part 1

A FTER SCHOOL ON FRIDAY, Nagafuji told me she wanted to hang out at my house.

I scowled. “Please, no.”

“It’s been two years… No, three years… Come to think of it, what did I have for dinner three nights ago? Hmmm…”

See? What’d I tell you? You can’t trust your own memory! Just trust me instead! But she didn’t seem to pick up on this, so I gave up. Instead, we kept walking, following the stone walkway out of the residential district…and that was how Nagafuji ended up at my house.

“It’s like a summer home. I like it,” she commented as she gazed up at the exterior.

“You think so?” I tilted my head. When I heard the words “summer home,” I pictured a neat and tidy Western-style building, not a Japanese mansion with a giant yard, overgrown trees, and a turtle infestation. “What part of this says ‘summer home’ to you?”

“The stone walkways…the pond…the smell of the trees…all of it,” Nagafuji explained dutifully, pointing around at each in turn. Her nostrils flared up like she was trying to vacuum with her nose. Chill .

That said, she was right; it did smell pretty earthy out here. The residential district was surrounded with greenery to an unnatural degree, and trees were plentiful. It all reeked of old age. They’d remodeled the place several times in the past, but chose to leave the dreary old walls intact instead of rebuilding the house from scratch. The whole family lived here, including my grandfather, who often roped me into tea ceremonies held inside the tea house right next door. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t a fan.

“I’ll never get over how huge this place is.”

“It’s not even that big. It’s just wide , that’s all.”

As I opened the door, the housemaid looked up from her shoe- polishing and smiled. “Welcome home.”

“Yep! Glad to be back!”

Deep down, I was embarrassed to have anyone from school, even Nagafuji, witness what my home life was like. It was just too…grandiose . Ever since I was a kid, whenever I brought a friend over to hang out, I’d always get this weird feeling in my chest… It was impossible to describe.

“Thanks for having me!” Nagafuji declared. Speaking of chests , hers was making a declaration of its own. Nagafuji’s Meats, indeed. Where did I go wrong?

“Is this a client…? No, a schoolmate?”

“She’s a friend , alright? Just a friend.” No need to get all ceremonious about it. It’s not a big deal. She’s not the one paying your salary, anyway.

“I’ll have tea prepared at once.”

“Oh, no, that’s not necessary.” It’s just Nagafuji.

“Not to worry. I’m all set,” Nagafuji announced, pulling out a half-empty bottle from a vending machine.

You know you bought that like four hours ago, right? It’s not even cold by now.

The housemaid looked at the contents swaying within and smiled stiffly.

“See? She’s fine. Don’t worry about her,” I told the maid as I pushed Nagafuji down the hall.

The hardwood flooring was so carefully polished, it was easy to slip and fall if you weren’t careful. No amount of past experience would keep you safe, either.

Near the front entrance, the hallway branched off. Walking straight ahead would take you deeper into the house, while making a right turn would take you down the outdoor walkway for a full view of the inner courtyard. Incidentally, the room immediately on the left was my grandmother’s; she often joked that she and my grandfather were legally separated.

To get to my room, it was faster to cut through the courtyard, so we made a right turn. Nagafuji followed along after me, peering curiously at the walls and ceiling. Then, a few steps later, I encountered a familiar face I hadn’t seen in a while.

“Ugh.”

I had inadvertently run straight into my older brother Goushirou, the fourth son of the family, wearing his traditional kimono. He looked at me and narrowed his eyes.

“That’s no way to say hello to me, Akira.”

He used to live here up until about two years ago, so he was the brother I saw the most. Our relationship wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t comfortable, either. He was always a bit of a nag.

“Rare to see you with a friend.” He smiled slightly.

“She decided to follow me home, that’s all.”

“Greetings and hello!” Nagafuji called out from behind me. Pick one of those and commit to it, damn it.

“I’m Akira’s older brother Goushirou,” he replied. Then he bowed deeply and solemnly, like a moron. Had he never met Nagafuji before now?

“I am Nagafuji of Nagafuji’s Meats.”

Spare us the act, for the love of god. She tended to look intelligent on the outside, which meant he was going to think she was actually sensible and well-mannered.

“I hope you’ll continue to guide and encourage our Akira.”

“Oh, certainly. I’ll whip her right into shape.”

Cringe . Nagafuji might have been joking, but Goushirou most certainly wasn’t. Why on earth would someone my age need to “guide and encourage” me, exactly?

He straightened back up and fixed me with a hard look. “We’re entertaining some important guests today, so I must ask you not to make too much noise.”

“Fine, fine. You go have fun with that.” I waved at him and walked off. How did we end up with such wildly different personalities when we both grew up in the exact same house? He was such a hardass, you’d think we found him under a rock as a baby.

“Gosh, that guy was like a perfect clone of you!”

“No, he isn’t. We’re nothing alike.”

My brothers were all very tall. When I was little, it felt like having five dads.

As we walked along past the courtyard, I ruminated on my brother’s words. Important guests at the house… Hopefully they wouldn’t try to drag me into it.

“Right! That’s right!”

I heard the sound of Nagafuji clapping her hands together, so I turned to look at her. “’Sup?”

“I forgot your name was Akira!”

Oh, sure, NOW you remember. Probably because Goushirou said it out loud. Don’t you remember when you used to chase me around shouting “Akira-chan”? How could you manage to forget?

And yet she somehow still got good grades in school. It was a total mystery to me how her brain functioned.

“What are your brothers’ names again?”

As if you’ll actually remember later, I thought to myself, but answered anyway: “The oldest is Kaiichirou, followed by Tokujirou, then Matasaburou, and lastly, Goushirou. That’s the one you just met.”

Each of their names contained the corresponding kanji for “one,” “two,” “three,” and “four,” in that order, so it was pretty easy for most people to remember. Fun fact: if I was born a boy, they would have named me Daigorou, with the kanji for “five.” However, my father was overjoyed to have a daughter in the family, since it meant their compiled list of potential girl names hadn’t gone to waste. Or so I was told.

“I see, I see,” Nagafuji nodded, with a look on her face that told me she’d already forgotten them. “Well, I guess the only name I really need to remember is Hino.”

“True.”

A smart call, especially for her. Not like she’d ever be in the same room with my other brothers. And besides, even if she did try to memorize their names, she’d probably forget all about it after a day or two…but hey, at least she still remembered who I was after I came home from my overseas trip a while back.

We walked all the way to the room on the far corner; I slid the door open, and we entered my bedroom. The first thing Nagafuji did was take off her glasses and set them on the desk along with her bookbag. Then she flopped down on the tatami floor and started rolling around for some reason. I watched her, puzzled.

“Are you enjoying yourself down there?”

“Mostly I’m enjoying the smell of the tatami.” Sure enough, she was flaring her nostrils again. “Your bedroom’s bigger than my whole house!”

“It’s just wider, that’s all. Your house is taller.”

Seriously, three whole floors! I enjoyed being way up high, so I was pretty jealous.

As she rolled, Nagafuji seemed to revel in the moment. Me personally, I was more worried that she might crush her boobs if she kept that up. Doesn’t it hurt? And for that matter, why doesn’t it hurt when I do it? This is injustice!

Then she came to a stop near the far wall. Lying flat on her back, she used her feet to push herself toward me a bit at a time, like a caterpillar, until she slid right between my legs. Was she trying to look up my skirt?! Reflexively, I jumped backwards. Not that she’d never seen my panties before, but at the same time, I didn’t exactly want her looking at them, either.

Nagafuji looked up at me from the floor, tilting her head. “Aren’t you going to get changed?”

“Say wha?”

“Into your kimono!” She swayed her arms as if to swing her imaginary kimono sleeves. Her boobs swayed, too.

“I don’t wear that thing for fun, you know,” I scoffed. Surely she knew I didn’t lounge around the house in it.

“But you still wear it.”

“I mean, yeah…”

She continued to swing her “sleeves” around, and her boobs… Well, you get the idea. She was being unusually stubborn about this, which could only mean one thing…

“…You want to see me wear it?”

“Wear it, wear it!”

She clapped her hands together like a little sea otter. I stood there and watched her. She kept clapping. Then I remembered that my brother had warned me to keep it down.

“Ugh, what a hassle.”

Nevertheless, I flagged down a passing housemaid and asked her to fetch me a kimono. She offered to escort me to the changing room to help me put it on, but I declined. I didn’t need anyone’s help to put the damn thing on, and I didn’t like the idea of her and Nagafuji both fussing over me. I couldn’t stand people contrasting my home life with my school life.

I stripped off my school uniform, and as my skirt hit the floor, I turned back to find Nagafuji looking at me. “What?” she asked, gazing up at me with fuzzy eyes, as though she was playing innocent.

“What do you mean, ‘what’? Quit looking at my butt.”

“I can’t help it.”

“That’s a lie and you know it.”

“I don’t look at anyone else’s, you know.”

“Uh…I mean, I figured, but…”

What did she mean by that? Was she just speaking in general, or was she trying to make a specific point? Both possibilities seemed correct. But either way, it was still rude to ogle my body. Or was there something about my butt that drew her interest? I kinda wanted to ask, but on the other hand, I didn’t want to know.

As I pulled on my nagajuban , then my kimono over it, Nagafuji commented: “You’re very adept at it.”

“Well, yeah. I was formally trained.”

“You remind me of a sales clerk wrapping up my purchase.”

I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or what. Nagafuji was a mystery I always struggled to decipher.

As I got dressed, I could feel her gaze on me at every moment. Is it really that interesting to watch someone get changed? No, seriously, is it? I could feel myself start to rush as I tied my obi . Then, at last, I was finished.

“There. Are you happy now?”

I swayed my sleeves at her; she reached up from the floor like a lazybones and tried to grab them, but missed. I stepped back, willing her to give chase, and she sprang up from the ground. Then, as I was having fun luring her along, she suddenly put a hand on my shoulder…and while I was distracted looking at it, she moved in front of me and pressed her lips to my forehead.

My eyes nearly popped out of my skull, but I quickly recovered. “The heck was that for?” I wasn’t expecting it, but at the same time, I wasn’t that surprised by it, either. Now there was a wet spot on my forehead.

With her hand still on my shoulder, Nagafuji looked squarely into my eyes and declared, “You’re cute, Hino.”

“Wh…where’d that come from?” I stammered, flummoxed. I never knew how to handle plain, direct compliments like hers.

“It’s an observation I made just now,” she replied, gazing unflinchingly into my eyes. Her shadow fell over me, as if to highlight just how much taller she was.

“You twerp.”

Struggling to think of a more substantial response, I looked away…and she promptly wandered off. This was what made it so hard to keep up with her at times—she was always quick to change tack. Not that I really needed to keep up with her in order to hang out with her, of course; I was free to do my own thing.

Then she started swaying her whole body back and forth, so I shot her an inquiring look.

“I’m thinking I might get changed, too. Not sure.”

“Huh? Get changed?”

“Into my pajamas, silly. For the sleepover tonight.”

“What?”

Who said you were free to sleep here? Because you sure didn’t ask ME! I stared blankly back at her. But she ignored me and fetched her bookbag from the desk.

“It’s a big house. They won’t notice me here. Yep, yep.”

She seemed proud of this for some reason. Then she opened her bag and pulled out her clothes and toiletries.

That explains why her bag was looking a little heavier than usual…but you still should’ve asked me first, damn it!

“You need to warn me when you’re planning these things!”

“But if I asked, you’d just say no.”

“…It seems you know me well.” Spend enough time with someone, and you develop an unspoken understanding, I suppose.

“I know, right?” Nagafuji slid her glasses back on, her expression perfectly serious, like she was trying to look cool.

There’s no arguing with this idiot.

~Today’s Adachi Forecast~

As I passed by the mirror, I was horrified to discover that I was grinning like an idiot. Slack-jawed and everything. Hastily, I attempted to press my lips and cheeks back into position.

All because I briefly remembered what happened earlier today…

Whew. Good thing Shimamura’s not here. If she ever saw me grin like that, I’d probably die.