Chapter 6: Adachi’s Revival

Chapter 6:
Adachi’s Revival

ONE BY ONE, I pasted in the rest of the stickers. There wasn’t enough room at the end, so they ended up overlapping some of the letters. Then I looked down at my star-spangled to-do list and basked in the feeling of success.

This was the first thing I did when I got home. Somehow I’d managed to check off four items all in a single day. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade…right? Then again, does this even count as lemons?

Thanks to that fight we had, I decided to change. I was prepared to rethink my Shimamura-only mindset and start taking other people into consideration. No, really, I was totally fine with it! Tomorrow, per Shimamura’s suggestion, we had made plans to hang out with friends in a group, those friends being Nagafuji and Hino. Apparently I was allowed to choose where we went, and they would happily go along with it.

“…Ugggghhh…”

It felt like they were taking pity on me, and the thought made me want to tear my hair out. Ugh, who am I kidding? They think I’m a sad loser!

“…Oh, but…”

I leaned forward and reached out to grab the to-do list. If I was forced to endure this humiliating charade either way, then I figured I may as well pick a location that would lend itself to my objectives. Was it overly ambitious? Yeah, but I liked that about myself. Recently I’d learned a new life lesson: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The only reason I hadn’t learned it sooner was because…well…I hadn’t really wanted anything before now.

I trailed my finger over the paper, contemplating my next challenge. Every item on the list involved doing something with Shimamura, so if other people were going to be around, that would limit my options. It didn’t help that I’d crammed too many words onto each line, resulting in a list that was barely legible. Looking at it now, I realized it was proof of just how excited I was at the start of summer break.

Is Shimamura actually enjoying this dumb vacation with me…? No, I shouldn’t call it dumb. She was trying her best to be considerate of my feelings. But I had to admit, I wasn’t exactly flattered that she was treating me with kiddy gloves when we were the same age. Her kindness felt lukewarm, and unlike true warmth, it was not a temperature I could tolerate for long periods of time. It just wasn’t comfortable.

That said, forced kindness was still kindness in its own way. The world could be surprisingly nice to me, and I didn’t really know how to feel about it. But instead of recoiling in fear, I knew the correct thing to do would be to return that affection. I was tasked with learning human decency: make friends, love thy neighbor, honor thy father and mother. Care about people, in other words.

“Yeah…”

That’s probably it, I thought to myself as I tucked my knees under my chin. I had turned a blind eye to everything I didn’t understand, and now it had come back to bite me. Like a tidal wave, it pulled me under and dragged me out to sea.

I swallowed. Twice. I was so thirsty, even my saliva had dried up. Then I leaned my head against the wall, and when I closed my eyes, I started to hear a faint sound, like the rustling of thread intertwined. But unlike the drone of the cicadas, it wasn’t coming from outside. It was coming from within.

***

3. Shimamura lets me hold her hand and we have a fun time.

Technically I had already achieved the first half, so I put down half of a sticker. But what was I going to do about the second half?

“Having fun” was generally achieved in a big group—according to conventional wisdom, anyway. (Personally, I didn’t see it, but I was choosing to go against my better judgment and put my faith in common sense.) With that in mind, going to the pool was off the table. The pool was relaxing, not thrilling. I mean, maybe I got a thrill out of Shimamura’s swimsuit, but that’s not what this is about. No, really, I swear.

After a lot of agonizing in that vein, I ended up choosing karaoke. I could remember going to karaoke with them before, and I couldn’t think of anywhere better, so I chose the exact same thing as last time—the way an old person re-buys the same model of car over and over. I had no sense of adventure; I wasn’t bold enough to leave the nest.

We had agreed to meet up outside the train station, and for some reason (my natural disposition, I guess?) I had once again arrived ahead of schedule. No one else was here yet. Was I just a loser with a ton of free time on my hands? Well…seeing as I hoarded every minute without ever spending it on social activities, maybe the answer was yes. But now Shimamura was asking me to find something to fill that hole.

The only problem was…I had a sneaking suspicion I might get buried alive.

“Oh…”

As I stood in the shade near the taxi pickup area, I heard a small voice that seemed to be pointed in my direction. I looked over my shoulder and found myself face-to-face with a girl I didn’t know—tall, wearing glasses, probably my age. But although I didn’t recognize her whatsoever, she gazed at me for so long that I started to think maybe I knew her from somewhere. She stood stock-still for a moment, then turned and hurried off into the train station.

Alone, I tilted my head. Who was that? I had only ever spoken to a handful of people in recent years, so the possibilities were severely limited, and yet I couldn’t place her. Before I could finish wracking my brain, however, Shimamura arrived—on bike this time, probably because the place was so far from her house.

She was wearing an old-fashioned white cloche hat, but it was way too dowdy to be part of her regular wardrobe, so she had to have borrowed it from her mother. Total grandma hat.

“Good morning! Well, I guess it isn’t ‘morning’ anymore… Anyway, hi!”

She came to a stop next to me and raised her hand briefly in greeting. Her soft voice and warm smile paired nicely with the thin ribbon wrapped around the brim of her hat, affording her a different aesthetic today.

“Uh…hi.”

I wanted to play it cool and lighthearted, but instead I stumbled over the very first word. At this point, I started to wonder whether every attempt I ever made was destined to end in miserable failure.

“I’m guessing the others aren’t here yet?”

“Nope.”

“Those two are always late, I swear. Not sure if it’s Hino’s fault or Nagafuji’s.”

“Yeah…”

Quietly, I panicked. What do we do now? This always happened whenever I was with her—I would try too hard to be perfect, end up needlessly overthinking everything, and act like a total weirdo in the process. You’d think someone as self-aware as me could simply stay calm, but my brain would never let me. To this day, Shimamura could destroy me by simply existing.

What sort of conversation would lead to “having a fun time”? I couldn’t find the words. Instead, what I had were questions: Do you get annoyed whenever I’m around? Do you hate having to interact with me one-on-one? I wanted to ask, but couldn’t take the plunge. What would I do if she said yes?

Come to think of it, she already did say I was annoying once. That was what motivated me to change in the first place, and now here I was, waiting for something that wasn’t her. Then, at last, that something arrived: Hino and Nagafuji riding double on Hino’s bike. Apparently Nagafuji still didn’t know how to ride one.

If I were that helpless, would Shimamura drive me around? I glanced at her face in profile. No, probably not. She might help me to an extent, but our relationship would never go as far as Hino and Nagafuji’s. We were missing a key element—affection, or passion, or something like that. I couldn’t describe it in specific; I could only get a glimpse of a rough outline through a blurred lens, like I was gazing into the depths of the ocean.

“Sorry we took so long. It’s mostly Nagafuji’s fault,” said Hino.

“What? It is?” asked the culprit in question.

Hino turned around to look at her. “Yes, dumbo!”

“Okay, I guess it is, then,” Nagafuji mused.

It was a…charming little exchange, I guess. It was clear just how fully Nagafuji trusted Hino.

“So I see we’re not in our uniforms today,” Hino continued in lieu of a greeting.

What? Did you really think we’d wear our uniforms over summer vacation?

“We didn’t wear them last time either.”

“We didn’t? No, I feel like we did… Well, no point in harping on about it,” Hino shrugged to herself. Nagafuji nodded along emphatically, which was always a good sign that she had no idea what we were talking about. “Okay, then, let’s get going!”

And so the latecomers led the way to the karaoke place. Karaoke was my suggestion, but seeing as Hino knew this town far better than I did, I had given her final say on where we ended up. And so I followed behind, feeling like an outsider on a guided tour of my own hometown.

Hino’s bike took the lead, followed by Shimamura’s, then mine. Whether consciously or unconsciously, I always ended up on the fringe of any group I tried to join. If interpersonal relationships were a jigsaw puzzle, then I was a piece that didn’t fit anywhere—set aside and forgotten. Would I ever find someone I could truly connect to?

“Shimamura?”

As I trailed behind Shimamura, I called her name. She turned and fixed me with a look that said what’s up?

“Would you wanna…maybe…sing a duet again?” I suggested hastily. Because of the spontaneous nature of this outing, I hadn’t memorized any songs in advance, but surely we had at least one in common.

“I don’t mind,” she nodded without missing a beat. She glanced ahead at the road, then back at me. “But what would we sing?”

“Let’s figure it out once we get there.”

I made it sound so simple, but in reality, I had no idea how we were going to “figure it out” at all. Not like the songbook would magically tell us which tracks we both knew the words to. But in response, Shimamura smiled and turned back to the road.

That was when I noticed just how relieving it was to talk to her one-on-one. It was reassuring, yet at the same time, it was stressful, too. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was actually listening to a word I said.

Arriving at the karaoke box behind the train station, we headed into our reserved room. The layout was similar to the other place we went to, except the lights were blindingly bright; I could feel the eye strain setting in already.

This time, I succeeded in sitting next to Shimamura. Not only that, but she sat at the very edge of the sofa, so I was the only one who got to sit next to her. I felt a rush of joy as I set my book bag down.

Then I noticed that the other two had waited for us to get seated before they positioned themselves. Perhaps they had refrained on purpose. I could admit it: they were both a couple of “good eggs,” so to speak, and I was grateful for it.

Then Hino grabbed the mic and started singing without even queueing up a song. “All right, I’m going first! It’s been—”

“Stop that,” Nagafuji promptly scolded her.

“Okay,” Hino shrugged.

“Déjà vu,” Shimamura murmured absently, and I was inclined to agree.

“Well, then, let’s start singing, I guess! We don’t exactly have a comedy routine prepared,” Hino mused. Who said anything about a comedy routine?

“Very well! Then I shall take the lead!” Nagafuji declared, rising to her feet and snatching the mic from Hino.

“Hey! Gimme!” She stood on her tiptoes, trying to take it back, but Nagafuji had already put her song in.

It was a song about making croquettes of all things. As Nagafuji danced around the room, Hino joined in partway through while Shimamura and I sat there and watched in silence. When the song was over, Nagafuji addressed her audience.

“Thank you, thank you. That was the theme song for Nagafuji’s Meats.”

“You liar! You guys had freakin’ cabbage for dinner last night!”

“For the record, it was miso cabbage salad, and it was delicious.”

“Give me that!” Hino swiped the mic from her, then looked at each of us in turn. “Okay, which one of us is going next?”

“Wait, are we taking turns?”

“That’s how this works, buddy!”

At this, my eyes met Shimamura’s. We still hadn’t decided on anything. She set down the menu she was holding and took the mic from Hino.

“Well, what should we sing?” she asked directly into the mic for some reason. Was she asking me or herself?

Meanwhile, I was thinking about something else entirely: Hino and Nagafuji were always together, yet they still managed to be social with other people at the same time. In fact, they could even tolerate someone as utterly antisocial as me. So what did they have that I lacked? If I asked them, would they know the answer?

“What does it mean to make friends with people?”

I didn’t know, and no amount of thinking would help me figure it out, so my only option was to seek advice. The three of them exchanged a glance. Was my question too far out of left field?

Then, amid the awkward tension, Nagafuji spoke up. “Shimamura-chee!”

With both arms outstretched, she ran over to Shimamura, who recoiled in alarm. Then she tackled her.

“Boom!”

Shimamura was knocked backward; Nagafuji staggered over to me, then held up a peace sign.

“And there you have it!”

“Uh…okay…”

“I guarantee it,” she insisted with a firm nod.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Hino facepalming.

“Then again, maybe ‘Shima-chee’ sounds better?”

Nagafuji tilted her head at me; I looked from her to Shimamura and back. “Maybe,” I replied, averting my gaze. Even I could tell I was acting weird again.

“Might as well take it one step further with ‘Ma-chee’…”

At this, I bristled. You can’t just call her something random! “Ma-chee” doesn’t fit her at all! For some reason I felt that the “Shima” part was an essential element of any nickname for Shimamura, though I had no real basis for this. To me, “Shima” was the essence of who she was as a person, and no one could possibly convince me otherwise.

“Uhhh… Basically, what Nagafuji’s trying to say is… Actually, I have no idea. What are you trying to say?”

Hino attempted to play interpreter, but swiftly gave up. Nagafuji cupped her cheek in her hand and tilted her head. “Don’t you see, my dear?”

“If I could see what you see, every day would be a living nightmare,” Hino shot back wryly. Shimamura reacted with a grin, and only then did I laugh along with them—a weak chuckle that tickled my chin as it left my lips. “Meh, I’ve already resigned myself to never understanding you. Anyway, if you guys haven’t decided, then I’ll go next.”

She took the mic back, then started another duet with Nagafuji. But while that half of the room was having a great time, it felt like someone had yanked the rug out from under me, and now I was in freefall.

My back itched. With my hands in my lap, naturally, I ended up hunched over. Every time I breathed in this fresh air, it reminded me of how dead I was on the inside. It felt like there was a blockage in my brain, preventing all neural function.

I could feel some sort of whisper ebbing and flowing in my ears, separate from the voices that echoed all the way to the back of my head. Whose voice was this, putting my skin on edge? When I tried to focus all my senses on it, it felt like I was going crazy.

Am I actually getting worse compared to last year? Why am I always so hopeless? Why am I even here?

The struggle must have shown on my face, because Shimamura wrapped her arms around my head and started stroking my hair. The others were still in the middle of singing, so it was pretty out of the blue, but it barely even registered. I was so detached, it felt like someone else was reacting to it instead of me.

Her fingers gently combed through my hair, and it felt as though I could hear her silently praising me for trying my best.

***

To be perfectly honest, it was five hours of my life I wished I could get back. My shoulders were stiff, my throat was dry, and my back was sweaty. When was it supposed to start feeling fun and freeing?

“What should we do for dinner? Grab food somewhere?” Hino asked as we walked outside. She and Nagafuji had done most of the singing, and their voices were hoarse.

A group passed us on the street in the opposite direction, having what sounded like the most exciting conversation of their lives. One of them was even clutching their gut as they laughed. Sure enough, fun and games could only take root within large groups… It almost felt like they were intentionally rubbing it in my face.

“Wait, so you don’t want to eat dinner at my place? I already asked my parents to make extra for you,” Nagafuji commented, already positioned on Hino’s bike.

“Oh, did you? Well, in that case, let’s go our separate ways here,” Hino replied, retracting her suggestion, and I was grateful to Nagafuji for her unintentional assistance. “See you guys later! Next semester, maybe? Or maybe we’ll hang out again before then.”

“We’re literally hanging out tomorrow…”

“I meant them, not you and me!”

As they pedaled away, I watched them go in silence. It felt like I had just finished my homework—my quota of social activity for the day—and it was precisely this part of me that made me so frustrated with myself.

“That wasn’t much fun for you, was it?”

I looked up. Shimamura was still standing there, gazing at me with a half-smile on her face. She was exactly right, of course, and I had no rebuttal. In the past I managed to come up with a decent counter, but now I couldn’t even find the words to smooth things over. Sure enough, something about me had changed.

But was it really a change for the worse?

“I know this is just how you are, Adachi.”

I could tell she wasn’t just saying it—she actually meant it. She knew as well as I did that I wasn’t cut out for anything but solitude.

“But the thing is, I—”

Just then, a loud ringtone cut her off. Her phone, not mine, of course. My fingers twitched in alarm. She pulled her phone out of her bag and looked at the screen. Her eyes narrowed, and she frowned.

A dark storm cloud settled over my heart. I wanted so badly to snatch the phone out of her hand and see for myself; it was this impulse that kept the blood pumping in my veins, stronger than any survival instinct. It was unclear whether Shimamura could sense my feelings on the subject, but either way, she stowed her phone without answering it.

“I’ll call back later.”

It was hard to say whether she was actually being considerate or just being lazy.

“Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. I want you to—”

“It’s okay,” I cut in sharply, like I was afraid to hear the rest. Then, before her frozen face could recover, I continued: “I’ll be okay. Okay?”

I was so desperate, I was willing to do anything to keep her around. And I must have sounded like a whiny baby, because her trepidation was patently obvious. Regardless, she didn’t push further. That just wasn’t the kind of person she was.

“Okay, then.”

Over and over, I choked back another hollow “okay” with the rest of my spit. She started to say something but gave up. Then she raised her hand and gave it a little wave.

“See you.”

“…Yeah.”

Belatedly, I waved back. This is for the best. Acceptance settled in, blurring and fading like an afterimage. Normally I would have followed her all the way home, but that was precisely the sort of thing I was supposed to stop doing, so no matter how badly I wanted to keep hashing it out with her, I had to let her go. This was the compulsive idea that kept me rooted to the spot.

Before she disappeared, Shimamura looked over her shoulder. Maybe she could sense that something was off. Our eyes met, and she gave me another wave; I waved back slightly. Then she turned back to the road and pedaled off without another glance. She glided over the sidewalks and intersections in the direction of her house until eventually she was gone.

I didn’t want her to stop, nor could I find the will to chase after her. Everything hurt, particularly my eyes. I let out a heavy, pained sigh. Then I stood there, hands on the handlebars of my bike, alone with my thoughts. Everything else—the laughter, the footsteps—faded into the background as I struggled to find the reason that I was here. I needed something to convince me that I had spent my time wisely.

The drone of the cicadas floated through the air, mingling with the train sounds from the nearby station. But I couldn’t see any trees around here, so where were those little pests hiding?

After a long, long moment spent agonizing fruitlessly, I started rolling my bike in the direction of my house. Though we both threatened to topple over altogether, I put my feet on the pedals, and as I picked up speed, I hallucinated that I was riding the wheels directly. I could hear a weird creaking sound—maybe something was caught in the bike chain. But I had no way of fixing it, so I kept going, crouching lower and lower as I went.

In the distance, I heard something that sounded like the crackle of fireworks. It was still too bright to see their colors, but there would probably be another festival later tonight. Thus far into summer break, my nights were disturbed with fireworks about once a week. This was our big tourist season, and business was booming, literally.

But the sound of fireworks brought something sinister to mind: the sight of Shimamura walking away from me with someone else, exploring the festival with a girl whose name I still had yet to learn. Was she calling her back right this very moment while I was still on my way home? My hands tightened on the handlebars until the muscles in my palms hurt, but I kept it up, punishing myself for getting jealous again.

As the sun sank beneath the horizon, the sunset slid along sideways, pulling the clouds along with it. I knew I needed to watch where I was going, so I looked up, but suddenly I found myself on the verge of tears.

I tried so hard to be friends with all of them, so why was I alone right now?

The next thing I knew, my legs had stopped pedaling. I lowered my feet to the ground, letting the rising heat soak my back. I could feel my mind sharpening. In particular, the back of my neck felt especially hot, almost like it was enveloped in steam. It was reminiscent of the itch I felt whenever I wore a heavy overcoat in winter, and it made me restless. My vision swayed, and the town began to spin around me, until I could stand it no longer.

“No…”

I kicked off, and the gears in my brain began to turn in sync with the bike wheels, faster and faster and faster, ad infinitum, until I could smell the friction start to burn, and once it had filled every last corner of my skull, I yelled:

“It just doesn’t MATTER!”

None of it had any connection to me. I thought maybe I could fix my lone-wolf tendencies and live happily ever after in a big group of friends, but…I had a gut feeling…

This is wrong.

At last, the whisper I sensed earlier came through loud and clear. Every fiber of my being was screaming, terrified of imminent annihilation.

“This is wrong! THIS IS ALL WRONG!”

So what if I was out in public? That wasn’t going to stop me. I was a human firework, breaking out and letting loose everything I had held inside. I wasn’t “okay” at all.

“I didn’t WANT THIS!”

The only person I’d wanted to hang out with today was Shimamura. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was happier that way; it was why I always made such an idiot of myself, struggling to nudge things in that general direction. That was the optimal course of action for me, not burying myself in the midst of a group. What was I thinking? Even cicadas couldn’t stay underground forever. The only time I wanted to be buried that deep was when I died.

I could’ve had a hundred different friends and they still wouldn’t have added up to one Shimamura. They couldn’t reach the height of her greatness even if they stacked themselves up like nori sheets. At last, now I understood: I was by no means obligated to live my life according to someone else’s standards. Shimamura and I were two very different people, but I liked that. It was what drew me to her in the first place.

My legs pumped the pedals so hard, I thought my bones might pop out. The wheels flew over the pavement at lightning speed. At some point I’d risen into a standing position, and now I was racing through town faster than I’d ever biked in my entire life, searching in vain for someone I knew I wouldn’t find.

You’re all I ever think about, so quit thinking about anyone who isn’t me! I…I…!

“I love you, Shimamura! I LOVE YOUUUU!”

It was quite possibly the first time I’d ever said it aloud. The emotions left my lips and brushed against my cheek in the form of fresh air, breathing new joy and panic into my previously muddled mind. The tears that once blurred my view of the sunset now streamed down my face, cooling my cheeks. My head was a total mess both inside and out, but nonetheless, reality came rushing in to fill a thick outline around it all.

Moving at the speed of light, I no longer had time to worry about my surroundings or the people I passed on the street. For once, I was in a world of my own, with a view unlike any other. Everything I had failed to notice on my way here was now sprawled out in front of me: a twilit city punctuated by cicadas and the distant pop of fireworks. But my bicycle cut through it all. I was one lap behind, and now I raced through the hustle and bustle in a desperate struggle to catch up to the flow of time.

I had finally figured out what I truly wanted to do over summer vacation. Among the countless letters of the alphabet that filled the space on my to-do list, the answer stood out to me clearly…

To be continued in the second half of summer.