The Clear Sea

The Clear Sea

 

>>I’VE BEEN JUMPING and hopping around lately.<<

 

>Seems good for your health.<

 

>>I hurt all over… But it’s fun. I kind of feel like it’s a luxury that I have an opportunity to become someone other than myself.<<

 

>Actors sure are something. I don’t think I could ever do that—become someone else, I mean. Not unless something drastic happened.<

 

>>But you’ve been on stage, too, Sayaka.<<

 

>That was…just me. I felt like I was starring in the play as myself.<

 

>>If you could pull off the role like that, that’s impressive in its own way. I’d like to do something like that again someday.<<

 

>Right. Someday.<

 

>>Yeah, someday.<<

 

I was a second year, and she was a first year. I don’t say this as a point of pride, just to explain why, when our eyes met, she gave me a nod but still kept her distance. Tracking my gaze, the friend sitting across from me asked, “Sayaka, is she a friend of yours?”

“Yes. She’s a first year, though.”

“Aw, she could have just come over anyway… Well, okay, maybe not.” My friend changed her mind mid-sentence, probably remembering her own days as a first year. It was harder to guess everyone’s ages without uniforms to mark their grades, and as a first year, everyone around you looked older. You felt out of place no matter where you went on campus.

“Next time we see her try to run off, let’s catch her.”

“Catch her?” I gave a strained smile. My friend’s uninhibited manner reminded me of someone from my high school days.

“Erm, what’s her name?”

“Edamoto-san.”

Edamoto Haru. I had yet to call my college underclassman by her first name.

Spring was scorching, the air shifting to a faint ochre color. Though our table at the open café sat under the shade of a parasol, it was still hot. The shadows of the pedestrians flowing past us were lengthening. I watched those shadows overlap for a while as the silence stretched and my friend’s eyelids grew heavy.

“I’m sleepy,” she grumbled lazily. She slumped down as if she had no intention of attempting to revive herself. “I really just shouldn’t eat lunch. It makes it impossible to function after.”

“But going hungry would make it hard to function, too,” I said.

My friend pinched the end of her straw, unneeded now that she’d finished her drink. “I guess. It’s a lose-lose situation.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I give up. I’m going home.” My friend pushed off the table to stand up, suddenly energetic, as though she’d forgotten all about being tired.

“What about class?” I asked.

“It’ll be fine. Skipping once isn’t so bad.”

“This is your third time.”

“If you don’t add them all up, it’s just three separate ones.”

I rolled my eyes at this illogical attempt to justify herself. Well, it didn’t affect me, so I supposed I didn’t care. My past self probably wouldn’t have forgiven others for being so flippant. I wasn’t sure whether I’d become more accepting or just too lenient.

We left the protection of the parasol, the sun beating down upon our heads. The summer of my twentieth year awaited me under that intense sunlight. At times, my high school days felt like a far-off dream, while other times it was like they had just happened yesterday.

I parted from my friend, who really was heading out through the main gate, and then blended into the flow of people going to the lecture building. When I looked at the sea of students and professors around me, each focused on their own goals and own thoughts, I felt strangely restless. I felt the world milling around me in the way one might be aware of the blood circulating throughout your body.

Someone once said that college is the best place to find something. That something could be your future career, future relationships, or even the truth of your own laziness…for better or worse. My friend, who fled from lectures, might have found something other than scholarship in college.

I hadn’t found anything concrete in my first year. What about my second? What might I find?

I looked to the skies, as though seeking something hidden beyond the dazzling light.

 

The next day, I happened to see Edamoto-san again in transit. My eyes met hers beyond the glass of a co-op store I passed, where she was standing before the register. In that moment, it was like the corners of her mouth and her tied-up hair both sprung up in greeting.

Still holding her wallet in her hand, she forcefully held up her palm toward me. Then, after looking around indecisively, she lowered the hand and the shopping basket it contained with a grunt. It seemed heavy. She was clearly in the middle of paying; why not just finish that up instead of getting so excited? The employee serving her seemed bewildered, too.

After Edamoto-san finished paying, chattering all the while, she rushed out of the store with such force that I feared she might drop her wallet, her purchases, and her bag all at once. There’s no need to rush, I thought automatically. As I silently waited for her to reach me, the sun passed behind the clouds. A strong wind ruffled the banner in front of the co-op, snapping it loud enough to reach my ears.

“It’s hard to signal someone that you want them to wait a sec, isn’t it?” she said awkwardly, with a bashful smile.

I couldn’t help smiling back at her. “It is. I didn’t understand in the least.”

“Aw, I knew it. Hmm, but you waited anyway, so I guess it’s fine.”

Edamoto-san put her wallet away and came up next to me, and we resumed walking in the same direction. I watched the way she walked: not with a stoop but with a slight pitch forward.

Edamoto Haru. A first-year college student, one year younger than me. She was petite, and her short ponytail would bounce charmingly like the tip of a brush when she walked. The corners of her eyes were slightly raised, like a cat’s—but when those eyes met mine, she would give me a cheerful smile, so she was much clearer and more forthright about intentions than any cat I’d even known.

When she faced forward, her ponytail and exposed ears gave her the sharp profile of a young boy, but when she turned toward you, her femininity was immediately apparent. It was both strange and novel to me to be around someone with such distinctly visual shifts in mood. She was always a touch too loud, and walked quickly, as though she hated to stop. She came to my side like this whenever she saw me, cheerfully, without a hint of hesitation.

“So, Edamoto-san…”

“You can call me Haru.”

“Edamoto-san.”

“You’re so stubborn.” Despite my evasion, her smile was untarnished. “So, what were you gonna say?”

“It seems like you’re following me. Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

“I don’t have afternoon lectures today, so I’m headed where I want to go. Right over here!”

She smiled and pointed ahead. I suspected that if I had walked in the opposite direction, she would have found a destination that way instead.

“There’s a gate if we walk in this direction, too.”

“Yes, there is.”

“Though this is sort of a roundabout way to get back to my room.”

“To what room?”

“To my apartment. It just seemed confusing to call it my ‘house’.”

My eyes went round with surprise at that. “You live alone?”

“Yup. Since my parents’ house is pretty far away.”

Edamoto-san lifted up her co-op shopping bag. I could see a carton of milk through the thin plastic. We had headed home from campus together in the past, but when I thought about it, I realized that Edamoto-san had always parted ways with me before we reached the station.

“Sayaka-senpai, you commute from your parents’ place, right?”

“Yes.” I already had experience commuting to school by train in my junior high years, so I was used to it. Now that I thought about it, I’d never lived away from home. I was too used to a world where my family, cats, and a room with a familiar ceiling to look up at were ever-present. Just as a creature adapted to aquatic life couldn’t come up onto land, leaving that familiar world behind was beyond me.

For some reason, I found myself thinking of a close friend of mine, who had left home quite naturally and started walking her own path.

We walked between the trees and buildings, passing several lecture halls. I’d been here an entire year, but every face we passed was unfamiliar to me. Unlike high school, the relationships that formed in college spanned frameworks and categories. Just like how I was currently walking with an underclassman, a year younger than me, whom I’d met by chance.

It was news to me that Edamoto-san was living away from home. There was still so much I didn’t know about her. I hadn’t even asked her why she’d been crying when I first met her, nor had I seen her cry again since then. I felt some belated curiosity stir within me but got the sense this wasn’t a good time to bring it up.

“Is your apartment close by?” I asked.

“Of course. That’s why I selected it.”

True enough.

“Why don’t you come visit sometime, Sayaka-senpai? We can have tea and, umm…” Edamoto-san glanced at her shopping bag. “…I can offer you some bean sprouts.”

“That’s a pairing I’ve never tried before.” I attempted to picture myself eating bean sprouts between sips of tea, but my imagination wasn’t up to the task. “Someday.”

“Someday, huh,” Edamoto-san snorted out a soundless laugh. “I kind of feel like an adult just made me an empty promise.”

With that, she looked up at me as if she was rather amused.

Since my parents were the type of people who would never give promises they couldn’t make good on, I didn’t know how that felt.

We were just talking about hanging out for a bit at a friend’s house. I was probably taking it too seriously.

I knew that, but I still felt intimidated by the thought. Was it because of my inexperience or just my very nature? Going to visit another girl’s house held no small significance for the person named Saeki Sayaka.

It wasn’t as though I felt those sorts of emotions toward Edamoto-san, of course.

Still, if our relationship deepened… But how deep exactly does a friendship go? And should I really describe it as “deepening,” rather than “building up” a relationship?

After all, going deeper meant that you were sinking.

Once we got to the lecture hall that I had been heading toward, I parted ways with Edamoto-san.

Edamoto-san shifted her weight restlessly and shot me a sly smile.

“Although if you were a bad girl, I would just invite you to hang out right now, Sayaka-senpai.”

“A ‘bad girl’?” Bemused by the expression, I tried taking the opposite approach. “Why, do I look like a good girl?”

“Very much so.”

“You don’t have much of an eye for things, then.”

I meant that sincerely, but Edamoto-san seemed to take it as a joke and kept on smiling.

Right before going through the door, I turned around to find Edamoto-san waving at me wildly from a distance. I wondered what she would have done if I hadn’t turned around—it would have become a very sad affair.

“She’s an odd one…” I muttered, but waved my hand demurely at her.

Edamoto-san seemed satisfied to have gotten a response. She turned away and jogged towards the gate, her shopping bag theatrically bouncing along up and down with her. As I wondered whether she should be more concerned about that, I watched her until I could no longer see the movement of her ponytail.

Once I got into the second-floor lecture room, I took a seat near the center and exhaled.

Though it wasn’t to the point it was actually tiring, spending time with Edamoto-san felt like I was being drawn into leaping and jumping along with her. Her movements were always on the exaggerated side, and she seemed to be not only bursting with energy but full of too many emotions entirely. I had never dealt with a personality like hers before.

“Although, if I had to compare her to someone…”

An old face I’d nearly forgotten resurfaced in my mind as if I’d tugged on a thread.

Relationships were a mess of strange stimuli.

In the interval before the lecture started, I thought for a while about Edamoto-san and the past.

 

At the very least, it seemed that I wouldn’t forget her name or what she looked like.

 

>>Sayaka-senpai.<<
>>Are you at school right now?<<

 

>I am.<

>>Have you had lunch?<<
>>Do you have any plans?<<

 

>None in particular.<

>>Come eat with me!<<
>>Will you?<<

 

>Sure.<
>Are you also at school, Edamoto-san?<

 

>>You can call me Haru.<<

 

>Where should we meet?<
>Edamoto-san?<

 

>>Whoa, you’re like a steel wall.<<
>>Right, where to meet…<<
>>At mi casa.<<

 

>Umm.<
>You mean your place?<

 

>>Oh, not at the one that’s far away, of course.<<
>>At my apartment.<<

 

>Well, obviously…<

 

>>But I thought you said calling it your “house” would be confusing?<<
>>Well, yeah, but…<<
>>I thought that calling it mi casa instead of my apartment<<
>>would be softer and wouldn’t put you on your guard.<<

 

“Aha ha ha.”

A dry chuckle spilled from my lips as I held my phone. She was honest but also a bit cheeky.

Still, the word guard caught my attention a bit.

What did I need to be on my guard about if I was going for a quick visit to a underclassman’s house?

What is with this girl…? I unintentionally narrowed my eyes.

 

>What do you mean about being on guard?<
>Are you planning something devious?<

 

>>I don’t have the brains to plan anything.<<
>>It’s too bad I’m lacking in that regard.<<
>>I wonder what kinds of devious things you’d be capable of, Sayaka-senpai.<<

 

>Who knows…<
>So, at your apartment, then?<

 

>>Yep, yep.<<

 

>I see…<

 

>>My place is nice and cool.<<
>>Plus drinks are on the house.<<
>>And the food’s probably tasty.<<

 

>What are we eating?<

 

>>I haven’t thought of what yet, but…<<
>>I’m planning on making something.<<
>>That’s why it’s probably tasty.<<

 

>You’re making it yourself?<

 

>>I’m actually pretty experienced, yeah.<<
>>And you can call me Haru.<<
>>I like it—my own name, that is.<<

 

>I’ll think about it.<

 

>>Okay, I can’t wait.<<
>>Oh, which thing were you thinking over?<<
>>Lunch or my name?<<

 

>Both.<

 

>>Well, I hope you make a decision soon about lunch…<<
>>I’ll make something you want to eat.<<

 

>Right.<

 

>>…Right?<<

 

>Then I suppose I’ll take you up on that.<

>>Right!<<
>>Right, yeah, awesome!<<

 

>Try not to get too excited, hmm?<

 

>>I’m at my apartment right now, so I’ll head over to you!<<

 

>I’ll be waiting at the gate.<
>Please come get me.<

 

>>I’ll run over!<<
>>I’m running now!<<

 

>I’d rather not run, so please take your time.<

 

I put away my phone and stood up from my seat. While I was focused on our exchange, most of the other students had left the lecture room.

After I looked around the room feeling like an overlooked weed, I started walking at what I thought was a quick pace.

“She’s rather forward…”

This girl was pressing in on me. A sensation like a strong wave sweeping me away shook me to the core.

I wondered if she stepped into other people’s lives just as freely. Even if that was just her nature, I didn’t find it very admirable. Most people wouldn’t want someone to encroach on their space with so little restraint, in my opinion.

She must be prioritizing her own feelings over anyone else’s.

That might have been the reason she was crying that day.

Thinking back, the tears streaming down her cheeks were in huge droplets.

I’m sure they must have been drawing up tons of emotion as they fell.

And by showing up on the spot where those tears fell, I had unintentionally shook up Edamoto-san’s emotions quite a bit, it seemed.

“Edamoto-san’s apartment… I wonder if this was a good idea.”

She had invited me the week before and again today. In the end, I decided to go. There hadn’t been anything to deepen our bond in particular—I hadn’t even seen Edamoto-san’s face this week. Edamoto-san amounted to nothing more than a friend whom I’d just met at college, but somehow she was casually pushing her way into my life.

Although I had agreed, I still felt a bit reluctant. For one thing, I didn’t have much experience going to friends’ houses, and for another… I tried to continue with that thread, but even when I waited for the next part to come, I couldn’t seem to produce it on my own.

What exactly was I expecting from Edamoto-san?

When I left the lecture building, the heat weighed down on me. Summer had spread its wings and set our world ablaze with just a flutter or two. There was no gentleness in the heat wave that brushed my cheek.

The cicadas had yet to follow on the back of summer. Soon the college and all its trees, abundant in verdure, would be a cacophony of their cries no matter where one went. And the human commotion on campus was not to be outdone. As lunch break began, the students appeared all at once, as though flitting out from a hive. One person, two, three. Even if I followed them with my finger and eyes, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with them all.

These were all people whom I’m sure had lives not so different from my own college student experience.

As for the few individuals I met from among all these people…

Perhaps I should be more conscious of that and cherish those connections.

Breaking away from the crowd as it surged toward lunch, I went to the main gate, where I found Edamoto-san already standing next to the entrance. She noticed me and waved excitedly. That was childlike enough as it was, but when she used her entire body to give me an unrestrained reception, the passing students occasionally shot her strange glances. Eventually, she realized she was in the way and moved farther to the side, but she didn’t stop waving her hand. Just seeing how close it was to smacking into the wall gave me a shudder.

I hurried over to Edamoto-san. When I got closer, it appeared that she really had run over, considering how sweaty her palms were. Her bangs, too, had become disheveled and were sticking to her forehead.

“I’m sorry…for making you wait.”

“You don’t need to apologize like that. I ran over because I like to run.”

“You like to run, do you…?”

That was an unfamiliar feeling to me.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t had to run at all lately. It was as though I hadn’t had anything to hurry me.

Was that pleasant, or just boring…? It was probably up to each individual’s interpretation.

I suddenly recalled the relay practices for the athletic festival in high school. In retrospect, I couldn’t help laughing a little at how poorly I had worked with a certain someone.

“Okay, follow me.”

Edamoto-san merrily started moving. I was dragged along behind her, even though she hadn’t actually grabbed my hand.

On the way, my eyes met with the sea otter printed on Edamoto-san’s shirt… An otter?

The otter was looking straight out as it carefully cradled the shell in its paws. Maybe she liked otters.

“First, we cross here.”

We traversed across the road in front of the college. When Edamoto-san tried to cross the moment the signal turned green, I warned her, “It’s dangerous if you don’t look both ways first.”

It sounded like something an elementary school teacher would say.

“Oh, uh, sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize to me.”

It was plain to see that Edamoto-san was too giddy to pay attention to her surroundings. As for the reason for that, well, I supposed that was me.

I was a little troubled—her restlessness seemed like it could rub off on me.

Once we crossed the road and entered the shadow of a nearby building, I decided to speak to her. “So, Edamoto-san, you cook for yourself?”

“Yeah, I cooked even before I left home. It was just kind of fun.” Edamoto-san smiled, flashing her white teeth. “Do you not like domestic girls?”

“We’ll see. I have high expectations.”

As though in response, her gait widened. She didn’t seem to mind working up a sweat.

Edamoto-san’s apartment really was close to campus; we arrived in just under two minutes. Then again, that short time was also the result of me matching pace with Edamoto-san’s long, quick strides. The apartment building was lightly colored, from its khaki walls to its bluish-white roof, and its cramped bike parking area was piled high with bicycles. I wondered if Edamoto-san’s bike was among them.

I followed behind her as she went up the stairs on the side. Her place turned out to be the first apartment immediately after going up to the second floor. Edamoto-san stopped in front of the door and pulled a key out of her pocket. She put the key in, twisted it, and then likewise cocked her head to the side. After turning the key two or three times, she said, “Ohh, okay, I get it,” then opened the door.

“I forgot to lock it.”

“You didn’t need to leave in such a rush…”

“It’s fine, no problem. I love rushing.”

With that silly excuse, Edamoto-san beckoned me into the room. Being so overly welcoming is actually going to put me even more on my guard, I thought, half-joking. She was just having a friend over—a friend, nothing more.

“Pardon the intrusion.”

“Come on in. This is my first time inviting a friend over from college.”

This was my first time going over to a college friend’s house, too.

The moment I came in, the presence of Edamoto-san grew stronger. Most likely, it was due to the smell of her clothes and makeup, which I normally sensed only faintly. Obvious though this might be, the room was thick with Edamoto-san’s scent. It seemed to stand out against the scents of summer and was a bit refreshing as it slipped by my nose.

When I went through the entryway, I saw a toilet and a modular bathtub beyond the door to the right. In that dim interior, I saw my shadowy reflection in the bathroom mirror. Suddenly, I felt self-conscious about my overgrown hair that I had left uncut.

We passed by the bathroom and into a south-facing room with a bay window and good sun exposure. In other words, it was terribly hot.

“Your room is pretty warm.”

“I have the air conditioner on full blast, so if you’ll just wait a few more moments…”

Edamoto-san bowed jokingly and chuckled a little. Just as she said, the air conditioner set up next to her wall was running loudly, not unlike Edamoto-san herself when she rushed over to meet me.

Her room was tidy. To be more accurate, she didn’t have much to keep clean: just a small white table, a bed by the wall, and a lamp directly on the floor. Her clothes were folded up and set in a corner—she didn’t have a single shelf of any sort. Her college textbooks and bag were stuffed into what seemed to be a laundry basket.

“I don’t have any floor cushions, so you can sit on the bed. You can even lie down if you want.”

“I’m all right, thank you.”

I chose the carpet and sat down. After I set my bag down next to me, I breathed out slowly.

It was a curious feeling to leave the college and look up at the ceiling of another person’s apartment, even if it was lunch break. Normally, I just went to the cafeteria instead of going off campus to eat.

It felt almost as though I’d skipped out on school partway through the day… Maybe I hadn’t completely left behind the feeling of being a high school student. As I glanced around, feeling a bit anxious, I heard Edamoto-san laugh.

“There isn’t much to see here, is there?”

“I suppose. I can’t compare it to other apartments, but it does seem very neat and minimalistic.”

“Well, I figure there’s no point buying more things if I’m just gonna lose interest in them and leave them lying around.”

“Hmm…”

I thought of the novels I never reread on the bookshelf in my own room.

Edamoto-san took a green towel from the folded laundry pile at the far end of the room and wiped her forehead. As I gazed at her profile and mannerisms, I felt vaguely aware that we were alone together in her room. Since it wasn’t a house, there were no family members around, which was an unusual situation to me.

I wondered if the light blue wallpaper was an attempt at a consolatory reprieve from the inevitable heat. There was a thin curtain, but since it was mercilessly showered in the sunlight, it likely lost effectiveness quickly.

“The supermarket is close by, and there’s a home improvement store, too, so I think it’s a pretty good location. The modular bathtub is a little small, though.”

After wiping her face and neck with the towel, Edamoto-san turned toward me.

“So, Sayaka-senpai, what would you like to eat?”

“Right…”

I went into thought for a bit. My body wanted something cold, but I’d just had a variety of somen noodles at home yesterday. In that case… I tried to line up the prospective choices in my thoughts, but I couldn’t picture anything good.

“Nothing really comes to mind. I don’t have any particularly strong preferences.”

“That’s the most difficult answer you could give…”

Edamoto-san smiled awkwardly as she bent down, presumably to open the refrigerator door. Because there was a wall between us, I couldn’t see everything she was doing. But since her face was being showered with light, I thought that must be the case.

“Hm. Do you have any allergies or foods you can’t stand?”

“Neither, really.”

“Wow, you really don’t have any preferences, then. Oh dear…”

Edamoto-san’s ponytail wiggled fretfully. I didn’t know what ingredients she had in the first place, so it was difficult to request something. When I shifted to take a look, I saw that the refrigerator next to her sink was very compact.

Edamoto-san pulled out a bottle of tea and poured it in glasses she’d put out in advance.

“Well, how about some tea for now?”

“Thank you.”

“There’s no ice since I don’t have an ice maker, though.”

“This is plenty. You don’t have to fuss over me.”

The glass I accepted was so cold that it felt like I was touching the liquid inside it directly. With delicate ridges, the glass encapsulated many colors at its bottom, drawing in the light and glittering. It was a rainbow glass.

It was so pretty that instead of drinking out of it, I ended up examining it from other angles.

“Well, I’m going to fuss anyway. Lots and lots.”

Edamoto-san rejected my politesse, wagging her finger and shaking her head from side to side.

“I mean, if you don’t like my place, Sayaka-senpai, then you won’t come again.”

“Hm.”

It wasn’t as though I was guaranteed to come back even if I did like it, but her earnestness did make a good impression on me.

It also felt nice to be clearly aware that she was being kind specifically for my sake.

“So anyway, that’s pretty, right?”

She pointed at the glass. When I replied, “Very,” Edamoto-san smiled as though she were relieved.

“I won’t give it to you, but make sure you take a good look at it.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

“And drink what’s inside it, too.”

“All right, all right.”

Edamoto-san returned to the front of the refrigerator. She pulled things out one at a time, scrutinizing each one and putting them back over and over.

“Then can I just make whatever?”

“I’ll leave it up to you.”

After putting the ball fully in her court, I finally drank some tea. I quenched my thirst and then closed my eyes. It became difficult to tell apart what was left and right. What a quiet room, I thought.

Unlike the college, there weren’t an abundance of trees close by, such that the cries of the cicadas might never reach here. The air conditioner had also calmed down from its blustery start-up. I peered into the corners of the room.

“So you don’t have a TV or a bookshelf.”

“I’m not really the reading type at all. And as long as I have my smartphone, I don’t really need a TV, either.”

Beneath the sound of Edamoto-san’s voice, I heard running water.

“Oh, sorry. Are you bored waiting for me?”

“No. I’m not bad at being patient.”

Although I wasn’t good at being patient, either. Perhaps I had never gone about waiting for things the right way before.

“I thought I might pass the time by talking with you, Edamoto-san.”

“Oh, sounds great.”

“But will you be all right talking while you work?”

“I’m fine, no problem. I normally talk to myself tons while I’m cooking.”

“…You should probably be careful about that.”

I could imagine Edamoto-san having a lively monologue alone in her room easily enough. At the same time, I pictured a chicken energetically moving around inside a pen.

“You seem like you read a ton of books, huh, Sayaka-senpai?”

I was fairly sure someone else had said that to me before. Perhaps that meant I gave off an intellectual impression.

“Well… I suppose you could say that.”

“Do you go to the school library a lot?”

“I go to the library…on occasion. But I mostly just read the newspapers.”

Edamoto-san didn’t reply; I wasn’t sure whether she could hear my voice over the clamorous sounds of cooking. Even though I had said I would talk to her, I didn’t want to be a distraction, so I tried to make sure I wasn’t initiating the conversation. Just as she had said, as she started cooking, she talked to herself more.

Occasionally, she would even whistle. Many of her choices were children’s songs; though it wasn’t yet sunset, she was trying to go home with the crows in her song. Maybe it had to do with her being able to hear that melody being broadcast in the distance when evening did come.

“Oh, riiight,” she groaned abruptly. This time, she didn’t seem to be talking just to herself.

“What is it?”

“I don’t have many plates or bowls. Ha ha…”

Edamoto-san leaned back to show me her face, grinning sheepishly.

“Oh, right, since you live alone and all.”

It was only natural that she wouldn’t have more than the minimal number of dishes and chopsticks she needed.

“You can use mine, but then I wouldn’t be able to eat… Maybe I could borrow some from next door…? No, this isn’t quite right.”

Edamoto-san grumbled to herself uncertainly. While she did so, I came up with a simple solution.

I only faltered for a few seconds about whether to do it or not.

Before my feet could entangle themselves into the floor like roots, I drank all my tea and then stood up.

“I wonder if the home improvement store carries tableware?”

“Huh? Oh, good question…I think they have lunch boxes and stuff, at least.”

“Lunch boxes… Well, that ought to do just fine.”

I picked up my bag and headed to the entryway. Right as I was about to pass her, Edamoto-san scurried over to cut me off.

“Senpai?”

“I’ll go buy tableware while you’re cooking. I hope the store’s easy to find.”

Even though I’d been commuting to this college for over a year already, I hadn’t walked around the area outside campus much before. I always went shopping in my familiar home neighborhood, and on the rare occasion I went out with college friends, the only place I’d go would be a family restaurant.

“Ahh…I feel kinda bad. Let me pay for it, at least.”

“It’s fine, especially since you’re treating me to food and all. Make sure you lock the door.”

With that light warning, I put on my shoes. As I did so, I looked at Edamoto-san’s shoes next to mine. At a glance, they looked like children’s shoes, so obviously her feet must be quite small.

For some reason, I was strangely perturbed to think of a girl with such small feet living alone.

After I finished putting on my shoes, I felt eyes on me and turned around to find Edamoto-san standing right behind me. She was crossing her arms behind her back.

“Uh, it might be weird to say this, but…like…”

She hemmed and hawed for a moment and then broke into a smile like a blooming flower of happiness.

“Come back soon.”

“…Yes, I’ll be right back.”

I hesitated before exchanging the greeting with her, feeling strange and bewildered.

Since this wasn’t my house, and she was just a friend… “strange” was the only way to describe how it felt.

It was rare for me to feel confusion that wasn’t unpleasant, so I ended up answering how she wanted.

When I went out the door, my heart shaken a bit, the heat that I had nearly forgotten was waiting for me outside.

I headed to the stairs, sighing automatically due to the blinding sun. Perhaps it was pointless to go out of my way to buy tableware that I might not use again in the future. Maybe I was wasting my time, and maybe I was taking a detour. Regardless, I still walked on beneath the summer sky.

It was the beginning of the summer of my second year of college, and I still didn’t know what I was supposed to achieve.

Since I didn’t know the right answer, I could proceed in any direction I chose.

 

“Welcome back, Senpai.”

“…Thank you.”

There really was something embarrassing about having that exchange at a friend’s apartment. That was no different than our exchange on my way out, though.

I had even gone to buy tableware, almost as though we were living together… Anyway, it was weird. Edamoto-san didn’t seem particularly aware of that as she welcomed me back, peering at the shopping bag that dangled from my hand.

“You didn’t get lost?”

“I didn’t have to take any turns, so yes, I managed.”

The walk to the home improvement shop was a straight line past the front of the college. According to her additional directions, turning left partway and walking further would get you to the supermarket. In a town that was chock-full of buildings to the point where it felt cramped, it might only be natural that the roads were minimally planned.

I was relieved to find that the air conditioning in the apartment was working well. On top of that, there was something fragrant mixing in the smells of the apartment. Drawn in by the scent that was stronger than Edamoto-san’s, I peered into the kitchen and found the source of the smell in a pot containing simmering chicken and eggs.

“Is that oyakodon?”

“Yeah, since I had leftover chicken, plus some rice I made yesterday.”

I reached into the bag and pulled out the bowls I’d purchased. I had bought two, thinking of the possibility that there might be a soup, but perhaps that was excessive. In a frying pan next to the pot, there was something that seemed like a stir-fry of green onion and shiitake mushrooms.

“And that’s just something I ate a lot at home. Also…”

Edamoto-san turned to the table. Irresistibly following her gaze, I found a mountain of torn lettuce pieces—just raw, unseasoned lettuce—piled high in a bowl.

“I thought just having two things at the table would look kind of sparse, so I tried adding more stuff.” She glanced at the empty rainbow glass that was still off to the side where I’d left it. “Maybe I should have gotten more stuff ready before I invited you.”

“This is plenty. I doubt I’ll be able to finish it all anyway.”

I was grateful she was being so considerate and hospitable, but I wasn’t a particularly big eater.

She told me to sit while she got things ready, so I obediently took a seat in front of the table. I picked up the chopsticks I had bought and looked at their perfectly matched tips. I think it was my first time buying chopsticks for myself.

After all, normally you only needed one pair at home.

Wondering how I had ended up with two pairs, I opened and closed the chopsticks as I gazed at them for a while.

Edamoto-san put down the oyakodon pot and the frying pan each on their own trivets. Upon closer inspection, one of them was a place mat rather than an actual trivet. I wondered whether that was really all right, but Edamoto-san didn’t even pause as she served the oyakodon components into my bowl, loading it up until it seemed about to overflow.

“…Thank you.”

“If that’s not enough, you can put as much as you want on top.”

If I added any more than this, I felt like it’d end up spilling, and my fingers would be covered in egg.

“All right, we’ve got everything we need.”

Looking at the new bowls and the pot, she broke into a satisfied smile.

Edamoto-san had cooked, and I had bought the tableware we were lacking.

It was almost as though Edamoto-san and I were living together. As I thought that, I secretly felt bashful.

“Well, thank you for the meal.”

“Go ahead, dig in.”

She motioned urgently for me to eat, not even picking up her own chopsticks. It seemed that she wouldn’t even touch her food until I ate. I picked up the food she had served me with my chopsticks and brought it to my mouth. Then I chewed and slowly swallowed.

Wow. Taking in the lingering taste on the insides of my cheeks and on the tip of my tongue, I instinctively glanced back at my bowl.

“How is it?”

As soon as I finished eating a bite, Edamoto-san asked me for my thoughts. She really was a hasty person.

“Yes, it’s good.”

“Oh!”

“Very.”

“Very?!”

Her voice cracked. After she coughed and cleared her throat, Edamoto-san withdrew, seeming relieved, and sat back down.

“Well, that’s wonderful… I’m really relieved.”

“You’re being pretty dramatic.”

“I mean, I would’ve felt awful if you didn’t like it after going out of your way to buy bowls.”

I suppose that’s fair, I thought, then looked at the bowl I held in my hand and smiled slightly.

At the very least, I thought Edamoto-san’s cooking was worth having gone out and bought them.

I stretched out my chopsticks toward the stir-fry. In response, Edamoto-san’s eyes also followed my movements.

It was a little difficult to eat under such scrutiny.

“Is it good?” she asked again. Being ogled as I chewed on the shiitake made it hard to swallow.

“It’s good.”

“Oh, looks like your opinion fell by a rank.”

She seemed amused by this, not particularly disappointed. I swallowed.

“I just thought it might be pointless to repeat myself.”

“I think it’s a good thing to repeat positive words, though.”

“All right, then. It’s very good.”

“Wah ha ha ha!” Edamoto-san was genuinely thrilled. She had a fitting smile for such simple praise.

Next, I nibbled on the lettuce.

“Is it good?”

I figured she would ask as much.

“It’s nice and crisp.”

“Right? Isn’t it?”

Even though I was only chewing on lettuce she had ripped up, Edamoto-san seemed proud.

It was a bit entertaining.

After I gave her my review of everything on the table, Edamoto-san finally started eating. While she did so, she spoke less, her hands and mouth working silently. I was secretly impressed with her posture and behavior; her back was unexpectedly straight and proper. It was very different from her normal way of speaking and messy movements.

But the result was still typical Edamoto-san.

“That hit the spot.”

“………”

“What is it, Senpai?”

“I was just thinking that you eat pretty fast.”

“Huh?”

Edamoto-san, who had finished eating before I knew it, looked at my bowl. “Oh yeah, look at that,” she remarked as she looked at my remaining food.

“This was how fast I normally ate at home, so…yeah.”

“Does everyone rush at your house?”

“Maybe so.”

Edamoto-san grinned sheepishly as she took her bowl to the sink. She came back right away and sat back down in the same spot. Her eyes flicked around between me, the pot, outside, and back to me. Then, she suddenly spaced out in a different direction, like a cat staring at a seemingly empty corner.

Her small ponytail that wagged along with her movements reminded me of a short tail.

“Is it good?” she leaned forward and asked again.

I wondered if my feelings hadn’t been conveyed sufficiently the first time.

It’s a good thing to repeat positive words. I remembered what she had just said.

“It’s good, and feels a bit odd.”

“Odd?”

I picked up a shiitake as I responded. “Since I think this is the first time I’ve eaten a friend’s cooking.”

It was my first home-cooked meal from a friend. The first one-person apartment I had gone to. And, most of all, it was my first time encountering a underclassman like the one in front of my eyes.

“…What’s up?” Edamoto-san asked, as though becoming self-conscious under my gaze.

“It’s nothing, really…”

I was experiencing many firsts with Edamoto-san.

Most likely, it was because I’d never had a close bond with a personality like hers before.

Back then, I’m sure that if I hadn’t seen her crying by chance, we never would have spent time together. Even if we had have been briefly introduced by someone, I think I would have just wandered away without much interest.

It was specifically because of that occasion that I was eating oyakodon like this.

In fact, this underclassman had many traits that I had never found very charming before.

So if I had to say…

“I thought at first that you were a little bit like someone who used to bother me in the past.”

It was that lighthearted smile of hers that seemed to pull me along by the arm.

“Hmm…” Edamoto-san frowned a little, squinting in thought. Then she screwed up her lips in a pout, still squinting. “Wait, was that your indirect way of telling me you don’t like me? Isn’t that kind of a big deal?”

“No, it’s not like that.”

“Then if you wouldn’t mind explaining what it is like…”

“It means that…I’m curious what kind of relationship I might be able to build now with the kind of person who bothered me in the past.”

That girl I met back then was endlessly one-sided. I wonder if she ever thought about my feelings even once. We were children then, so perhaps she wasn’t capable of that level of thinking, and I’m sure her natural personality had something to do with it, too. Though her behavior and expectations had generally bothered me at the time, now I might be able to grasp her wishes and intentions a bit more. I think that’s a sign that I’ve grown.

“Hmm…uhh…Sayaka-senpai, do I bother you?”

“Not at the moment, at least.”

Besides, your cooking’s quite good, I thought, taking another bite to thoughtfully analyze the flavor. As I chewed, I felt a desire for some palate-cleansing soup, but of course I didn’t say that out loud. Edamoto-san slumped onto the table.

“Whaaat… So I’m like them, but I don’t bother you… I don’t get it.”

“You’re just a bit like her, that’s all. You aren’t the same person.”

“How am I like her?”

“Well…you’re energetic, I suppose.”

“You don’t like energetic people? Sayaka-senpai, how have you gotten by until now? Wouldn’t that leave you so down in the dumps you’d grow mushrooms out of your head?”

She ended up concerned for me, imagining I had gloomy relationships. I suppose that might be a concern if a bunch of non-energetic people all gathered together.

“…Perhaps I phrased that poorly. I think what I mean is, you act without thinking first.”

She was like a cat pouncing on anything that moved. Only after the fact would she finally think about what it meant. It was the precise opposite of being prudent, but it meant she was able to progress forward faster than people who were prone to becoming fixated and stagnating. When I was a child, I could never bring myself to take action until I found a good reason.

“So that’s what you mean. I guess that kinda makes sense.”

Edamoto-san straightened up, as though she’d hit on an idea. Then, she looked at me.

It was hard to eat while being stared at so intently. I lowered my chopsticks.

What’s wrong? I asked with my eyes. Edamoto-san chuckled lightly.

“If I don’t rush things, I’m afraid they’ll just end right away.”

“What will end?”

Edamoto-san stood up without responding to my question and then headed to the sink. I heard her starting to wash the dishes.

“If you waited a little longer, I would’ve helped.”

“The sink is small, so it’d be hard for you to help anyway.”

True, I nearly agreed out loud. If Edamoto-san and I tried to stand side by side in there, it would probably be too cramped.

As I picked up the sounds of the running water from the hardworking air conditioner, I felt the illusion of cold droplets trickling along my neck.

“Sayaka-senpai, what are your plans for today?”

“Once lunch break is over, I’m going to class, and then…”

“And then?”

“…I’ll go home.”

“Aww, too bad.”

Edamoto-san’s tone was light, conveying that she hadn’t particularly been expecting anything.

I actually had one place I needed to stop by before going home, but I left that out, figuring she didn’t need to know the details. There wasn’t such a lack of boundaries between us that I felt obliged to reveal everything.

I wonder if a relationship undivided by any walls even exists in the first place.

People even hide things from their own family, to some extent.

If you shared everything with someone without reserve, you might not even be separate individuals anymore.

“So, Sayaka-senpai…are you seeing anyone?”

“………”

The way she asked that, and how I should answer—those two things tripped me up.

But again, it wasn’t as though there were no walls between us.

“That’s a secret.”

For a while after I dodged the question, I only heard the sound of running water.

“Tsk.”

“What are you tsking for?”

“I was just thinking how I’d like us to become close enough that you would tell me something like that, I guess.”

With that, she trailed off, and the sound of rushing water grew louder. Even when I turned to her, I couldn’t see her expression.

I wanted to ask her exactly what kind of relationship she was hoping to have with me.

But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I moved my chopsticks to eat faster so she wouldn’t have to do dishes in two rounds. When I ate more quickly, I could barely register the taste, which seemed like a waste.

I lightly traced the surface of the bowl that I had just bought with my thumb.

Saeki-san, Sayaka-chan, Sayaka, Saeki-senpai. The names by which people I’d grown closest with referred to me over the years were all over the place. Such simple differences in what they called to me spoke volumes about each person and my relationship with them.

Maybe Sayaka-senpai would be added to their number. Maybe it wouldn’t.

But if my incredibly uncertain premonition—perhaps I should call it a hunch—was right…

I felt sure that it would.

 

>>I’m here.<<
>>I’ll go ahead in.<<

 

>I just arrived, too.<

>>I can see your head.<<
>>Wah!<<

 

“Looks like business is booming.”

“Yeah, I can even hear voices from the second floor.”

I closed my eyes, inhaling the quiet murmur of footsteps and chatter along with the pleasant fragrance.

It seemed that Miyako-san’s café was doing better than it had in the past. The previously unused second floor was open now, and she had the capacity to hire part-time staff. Girls who looked like they were in high school whirled about in uniform, taking and serving orders as if they could barely keep up.

“You come here a lot, don’t you, Senpai?”

“Yes, especially on my way home after buying a new book.”

When I said that, the bookseller bowed her head jokingly. “Thank you for being a loyal customer.”

“What about you, Koito-san?”

“Not on my own, usually… I wouldn’t really fit in here by myself, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

The girl who sat across from me was Koito Yuu. She was a past underclassman and a current friend. She was also a person I’d had some very complicated feelings and opinions about.

Koito-san had lost her pigtails and now wore her slightly longer hair down. Naturally, she had become more grown-up than before. No one ever said that about me, so I might have already looked older than my years during my high school days. I felt like our height difference, and thus the difference in the level of our eyes, had shrunk a bit since then. Although the same amount of time has passed for both of us… I thought with a little smile.

“How’s Touko?”

Though she wasn’t here with us now, I asked for the latest news about her anyway. Koito-san held up her coffee cup, looking deep in thought.

“Well, erm…she’s running around a lot, I guess?”

“What does that mean?”

“She seems busy with her theater group, and also…”

“She acts on the professional stage sometimes, doesn’t she? That’s amazing.”

“It seems like she’s still hesitating about whether to really try becoming an actress, though.”

As an amateur, I ended up thinking, Why is she so worried if she’s already gone pro?, but I suppose that experience didn’t guarantee she could make a living on acting alone. The world of theater must be a difficult one.

“Wait, but you talk to Nanami-senpai, too, don’t you?”

“I haven’t had many opportunities to see her in person, but we’ve been in touch pretty often, yes.”

“Then why bother asking me? Isn’t that a bit pointless?” Koito-san laughed.

“It’s not pointless,” I politely objected. “I wanted to know how Touko seems to you.”

For many reasons, talking in depth about yourself to someone else was difficult. After all, if you don’t have a mirror, you won’t be able to see what kind of face you’re making.

I suddenly met eyes with Miyako-san, who was behind the counter. She gave me a slight wave with her usual soft smile. When I nodded back lightly, Koito-san noticed her, too, and gave the same greeting.

As we had just discussed, it seemed I was the only one of us high school graduates who dropped by here often. There were a lot more people who left their hometown to go to college than I expected. That included Midori and Manaka, and Touko, too.

The option of moving away from my parent’s house hadn’t even occurred to me.

For one thing, I didn’t have a clear objective. More importantly, I probably didn’t want what little time I had remaining with my elderly cats and grandparents to dwindle away.

Sometimes I ran into Hakozaki-sensei here. She was still working at the high school as always, and would give me the latest updates whenever we saw each other. Apparently the student council play had become established as part of the culture festival. Thinking about the fact that we’d left behind a definite legacy was a little embarrassing, somehow. She had invited me to come see it this year.

The conversation had shifted to getting the former student council members to attend as well, and now we were determining what came next.

“Will Touko be able to come, too? I know she’s busy.”

“It’s still far ahead, so we can’t be certain…but I think it’ll work out.”

“I see…”

If she did come, it would be my first time seeing Touko in person in a long while.

The distance between us had become a perfect excuse not to see each other.

Touko was living alone near her college, while Koito-san and I commuted from our family homes. Apparently, Koito-san had been staying over at Touko’s place “occasionally,” which I took to mean “very frequently.” Observing her now, I made a confident guess.

“You stayed over yesterday, too, didn’t you?”

Koito-san’s shoulders jolted, unable to hide her surprise. “Huh? How did you know…?”

“That’s simple…” I started to explain, then paused and let out a breath. “It’s a secret.”

“Whaaat…”

“If I tell you, then I can’t tease you anymore.”

“Hmph…”

Koito-san pouted, as if to accuse me of bullying. It never ceased to amuse me how easily she reverted to acting like my underclassman friend again with a little prodding, even though she looked different on the outside. But in comparison, Edamoto-san was slightly more childish despite being around the same age, I thought.

Perhaps her relationship with Touko had induced Koito-san to mature somewhat.

Though I supposed I didn’t know for sure whether Edamoto-san was seeing anyone or not.

“Saeki-senpai, what about you?”

“What about me?”

Koito-san grinned as if to say, See? It’s a hard question to answer.

“Have you done anything fun?”

This light question gave me a bit more direction to work with. However, it felt unusual to be asked if I’d done anything fun. We had talked about Touko’s future, so was I really getting off with such a casual question?

“Well…”

As I looked into the deep tawny brown of the liquid, a certain smile seemed to float to the surface.

There was also a sea otter’s face next to it, but it was probably best to ignore that part.

“I made a friend. A first year.”

That was about the extent of any recent changes in my life. I wasn’t sure if that qualified as “fun.”

“Oh yeah?” Koito-san’s eyes went round. “What are they like? Is it a girl?”

“Yes, she’s a girl…an energetic one. She’s a fast walker and a good cook, too.”

When I put those traits together, they felt only faintly related. I drank my coffee to distract from what felt like a half-baked remark.

When I put it that way, it was as though I didn’t know anything about her except that she walked fast prior to eating at her apartment.

There ought to be more to say, but I couldn’t really come up with anything.

“A fast walker and a good cook…so she’s talented and athletic, huh?”

“That’s a generous interpretation.”

When I watched Edamoto-san move around, I got the impression she leaned much more toward the latter.

“A friend of yours, huh… She is a friend, right?”

“What else would she be?”

I knew what Koito-san meant by her question, but I feigned ignorance anyway.

Edamoto-san seemed very fond of me, but I hadn’t thought too deeply about what sort of fondness it was exactly.

I brushed against the surface of the thought, but only looked at it vaguely, never focusing fully.

My mind was trying to avoid thinking about it directly.

Perhaps it was certain subtle behaviors of hers, or some kind of instincts of my own, or emotions deep down that I had yet to sort out… Whatever the case, my thoughts on Edamoto-san were still unclear.

Edamoto-san was a friend, but she was somehow different from my other college friends.

Though it was easy enough to put that much into words, I…

“I think I’d like to meet her sometime.”

“Right. Perhaps if the opportunity presents itself.”

In spite of my response, I wondered what kind of situation would ever bring Edamoto-san, Koito-san, and I to the same place.

What kind of relationship would lead to that happening?

I couldn’t even guess.

 

I filled my short periods of free time with the school library and newspapers.

Past the card reader, in the space immediately to the left, there were four benches. I sat at one of them and spread out a newspaper we didn’t get delivered at home. The thick carpet spread over the library floor absorbed sound, so footsteps disappeared into silence. It made the presence of other people seem distant.

Though there was a TV set up close by, the volume was low to match the atmosphere in the library, so I could only just barely make the sound out. There were science magazines lined to one side. Though I had picked them up before, I was uninformed when it came to science, so I just couldn’t get into them. From a young age, I think my interest in subjects—or lack thereof—has always been very black and white.

That applied not only to things but to people as well. When it came to other’s names and preferences, I couldn’t retain any of that information unless I had an interest in them.

I wondered how many encounters I had forgotten up until now.

Even when it came to newspapers, my eyes would only actually go to topics I was interested in. That was actually quite useful.

When my fingertips touched the newspaper, they came away smelling of paper. Lately, it was a smell that I encountered less often than usual.

Perhaps I should go buy a book sometime soon.

I folded the newspaper, put it away, and stood up. As I was about to leave, I took a glance at the TV on my way past. At the moment, it was showing a swimmer being interviewed as she waited her turn for a competition. It seemed that she had just come out of the pool; water was dripping from her entire body. Her exposed skin was deeply tanned, as though she had experienced summer ahead of the rest of us.

How had she gotten so burned when she presumably practiced in an indoor pool?

I was about to keep walking without giving it any further thought, until she pulled off her swim cap. Her hair came loose from the cap’s protection, falling just past her ears.

Damp, smooth-looking, silky black hair.

“………”

I stopped.

“I love swimming.”

That was her answer to why she had started swimming. It didn’t seem like a very sophisticated reason.

But perhaps it is important to have such an honest, keen awareness of what you love most.

“And also,” she went on. “In the past, I saw something very pretty in the water. So…um, yeah, I guess you could say I just really like swimming.”

She repeated herself in the latter half with an air of frustration at her own lack of eloquence, which invited a chuckle from the interviewer. Then the short segment ended, and they immediately moved on to the next topic.

I absentmindedly stared at the screen, my half-open eyes barely registering the next piece of footage.

…Hmm.

“………Hmm.”

It was like perusing an old letter you’d long forgotten you received.

“What’s wrong?” Edamoto-san was suddenly standing at my side, looking at the screen with me. “Are you that unhappy about tomorrow’s weather?”

“…What are you talking about?”

I feigned innocence at Edamoto-san’s inquiry, but she pressed on, evidently concerned.

“You just looked kinda serious.”

“You’re imagining things.”

“But you still…all right, fine. Anyway, hello, Sayaka-senpai.”

Taking a step ahead of me, my speedy underclassman peered into my face as she greeted me. I wondered whether I should point out that she was speaking a bit too loudly for the hushed atmosphere of the library.

“Hello.”

“Sayaka-senpai, wanna go to the pool?”

“What for, all of a sudden?”

“Since you were just staring at a pool athlete.”

I wondered how long she had been watching me. Also, the phrase “pool athlete” didn’t sound quite right.

“Edamoto-san, I thought you didn’t read books?” I asked, thinking it was odd for her to show up in the library.

“You can call me Haru.”

“…Edamoto.”

“For some reason, when you say my last name without the ‘san,’ it feels kinda bossy.”

Edamoto-san ducked her head but immediately straightened up again.

“But you said that you read newspapers at the library, so yeah…”

I guess she was listening to what I said at her apartment the other day.

“Sometimes I peek in, and today I just happened to find you. That’s all.”

Edamoto-san concluded and faced forward. Maybe she had actually been checking every day since then, since it seemed like I’d run into her an awful lot lately. Since we hadn’t been in touch about it either, it was difficult to just chalk everything up to chance.

But I purposefully didn’t mention that and walked side by side with her.

I supposed that in theory, whether we met intentionally or by coincidence, it was all the same.

“It is the right weather for going to the pool.”

The moment we took a step out of the library, the sheer heat prompted me to blurt that out immediately.

The cries of the swarming cicadas on the abundant trees of the college were coming from every direction.

The light beamed down on us from a sharp angle.

In the middle of July, the seething summer seemed to hang over us.

“Yeah, true. Then we should go, Sayaka-chan!”

“Don’t call me that, please.” I gently rebuked my underclassman for getting a bit carried away.

Sayaka-chan, she says… I quietly chuckled when she didn’t seem to be looking.

“I obviously don’t have the right equipment to go on the spot, but let’s do it someday.”

I wasn’t like an elementary-school kid who would just have pool stuff on hand.

But still, the pool…

When I was in high school, I went with all the members of the student council, but…my bathing suit…that might work, no, wait… I battled the flow of time in my head.

Then, as I put that aside, the heat and the hesitation both came back to me.

For some reason, we ended up turning left—nothing more than an impulse, but I had no idea where we might be headed.

As we left the library behind and passed by the co-op, I started to feel anxious about our lack of direction.

Lecture…right, I needed to get to my next lecture.

With this belated realization, I looked at Edamoto-san.

“Someday, huh… Oh, right. Would you like to come over to eat again?”

She kept bouncing from one topic to the next. And now, perhaps also noticing that we had no destination, she proposed one on the spot.

“Hmm. But I believe I was just over again two days ago…”

I had already been treated to Edamoto-san’s cooking a grand total of three times. It was delicious and close to the college, and she invited me, and…I kept searching for excuses.

As though I was trying to keep from looking at something.

“Then how about today, too?!”

“Sorry, but I already ate today.”

“Aw, darn.”

Edamoto-san, who had been gaining momentum, almost appeared to shrink with disappointment.

“But someday soon.”

“Ahaha, Sayaka-senpai, you’re so grown-up.”

I tilted my head from the sunlight, and from Edamoto-san’s shamelessly cheerful smile as she said my name.

“Grown-up?”

“Because you keep saying someday.”

Was she unhappy because I kept making such promises? She sounded amused, so it was difficult to tell.

But I wasn’t sure what she meant by “grown-up.”

Since my parents were people who didn’t make half-hearted promises, I didn’t have that kind of impression of adults.

If anything, I thought my habit of prolonging such things could be described as “cagey.”

“There are so many things happening someday that I’m looking forward to them all.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“Maybe a little. But for the most part, I’m serious, so…”

Edamoto-san trailed off, her eyes on the other side of the street. Ahead, on a thin path between buildings, there was a boisterous group of girls walking exactly opposite of us. Edamoto-san’s eyes fixed on one of the girls among them, who was watching her as well. Then Edamoto-san flashed a friendly smile, and the other girl appeared to hunch her shoulders.

The girl’s eyes shifted from Edamoto-san to me, walking next to her.

“Hey,” Edamoto-san called, raising her hand lightly. The girl nodded slightly, then turned away and kept walking. I could tell from the way her lips moved as her friends looked to her that she was making some
excuse.

It seemed like a strange reaction for someone who was presumably a friend or acquaintance.

“Weird.”

Edamoto-san gave a troubled smile as the girl walked away. Then she lowered her hand and faced forward again, as though nothing had happened. Even when I peered at her face, she showed no signs of feeling down in the dumps.

She was cheerful and open, just like always. That was how I saw Edamoto-san.

I found myself curious about the awkward encounter, and her cheerfulness in spite of it.

I wasn’t so uninterested in Edamoto-san that I could completely ignore such a thing.

But it seemed to run deep. I had a hunch that taking a step into Edamoto-san’s business would end up being a very large leap.

Should I ask her or should I not? As I walked, I hesitated a bit.

“Was that an acquaintance of yours?”

“No.”

She shook her head at first. But then, after a short pause, she nodded instead.

“Yeah, she is—an acquaintance.”

Her mouth stayed open for a moment, and then she added another correction.

“A friend.”

After this upward revision, the only sound for a while was our footsteps.

“Or at least, she was.”

She made one last addition. Her relationship with this girl seemed to be quite complicated at present.

“It looks like she doesn’t want to be friends anymore. I mean, we haven’t talked at all.”

Though her tone insisted that it wasn’t a big deal, I found that even more intriguing than her usual dramatic invitations. It was like reverse psychology, though surely not intentional.

Curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Clearly, I had a weakness for anything that appealed to those parts of me.

Thinking about it, it might’ve even been curiosity about the mystery of my first meeting with Edamoto-san that was motivating me to do things like this.

I needed to get to my next lecture, and I was pretty much heading in the wrong direction.

“………”

But I didn’t stop walking. It were as though my feet had other ideas about where I wanted to go.

In spite of the intense heat beating down on us, the light sweat forming on my back was accompanied by something like chills.

I’d never skipped out on a lesson before.

I was tense to the point that my fingertips seemed to go slightly numb.

I stopped and changed direction.

“Huh? Did you remember something you had to do?”

Edamoto-san stopped on the spot, seemingly hesitant about whether to follow me.

So I invited her, “Come with me.”

As I moved my head, the strong cries of cicadas flew into my ears from the other side of the day. Edamoto-san paused for a moment and then lit up in a smile. “Cool, cool, cool,” she announced, running back to my side in a flash.

“Don’t you have a lecture?”

“Not anymore.”

I had erased it from my plans, for better or worse. Even though I was skipping, I felt strangely positive about it.

In contrast, I remembered the tepid feeling of the day when I said I wanted to quit swimming.

I had run away with a sense of guilt that time, but now my heart was feeling completely the opposite.

Perhaps this feeling had prompted me to recall those memories clearly, when they’d been vague for so many years.

“Wait, not anymore…? Uhh, I feel kinda bad… Are you sure?”

“It’ll be fine if I take just one day off.”

After all, my friend who attended lectures so sporadically last year had survived into her second year without a hitch.

In the past, I was always hyper-vigilant of making even a single mistake. But even though I had piled up many failures until now, I was still alive, and even smiling.

That was why I knew it was fine—why I kept going forward.

And so, I led the way behind the lecture building. It was the smoking area that tended to smell, where trees had been planted as though to enclose it.

The very place where I first met Edamoto-san.

I glanced at the bench, positioned such that it seemed to carry the burden of the wall’s shadow and then looked at Edamoto-san.

“Wow, this takes me back.”

Edamoto-san jokingly stood by the wall, where she’d been when we first met. “Something like this, right?” Then, though she wasn’t crying, she rubbed her eyes.

“Was that girl from earlier related to why you were crying that day?”

Edamoto-san’s eyes went wide.

“Sayaka-senpai, are you psychic?”

I remembered Koito-san’s flustered face when she expressed similar doubts during our last meetup, and smiled a little.

“Anyone could guess as much.”

I sat down on the bench, leaned my back against it, and breathed out a little sigh.

The hard sensation that I felt on my back through my clothes and the fragrance of the trees reminded me of the student council building.

“Go on.” I patted the bench next to me. Edamoto-san cradled her bag as she sat.

“I was happy you let me have this place back then… No, that’s not quite right. I was embarrassed.”

Edamoto-san closed her eyes and let the edge of her mouth slacken slightly, as if reminiscing.

“Once I was alone, I didn’t want anyone to see me crying, but I ended up wondering why I felt that way. I don’t think crying is really such a bad thing.”

I remembered Edamoto-san’s face when we had reunited in the lecture room. Her nose was red, but she wasn’t crying anymore.

“Why, then?”

I was curious. Edamoto-san answered right away.

“I think it’s probably because I don’t want to show people my weak side.”

“Your weak side?”

I thought over the words she had chosen.

“I felt like if I seemed weak, people wouldn’t like me.”

Her face had a shadow over it as she smiled, filled with loneliness.

She has a point, I thought at first. If someone is weak, cries easily, and can’t live without relying on others… I might think poorly of that kind of person.

But people cry when they’re happy, too. It has nothing to do with how strong or weak they are.

So I didn’t know for sure whether crying meant exposing your weakness.

I sank into silence for a bit, but there was still sound all around us.

The cicadas were loud. The cicadas were crying—so that they could live.

With voices stronger than anyone.

The first one of us to speak was Edamoto-san.

“It’s a little hot, isn’t it?”

“A little?”

My hair, absorbing the sun all this time, complained that it was more than a little hot. The sunlight seemed to be creeping closer, spreading even into the shade.

“I chose this spot on a whim, but would you rather talk somewhere else?”

“No, here is fine.”

Edamoto-san’s eyes crinkled up, showing her happiness.

“Besides, we’re alone and all.”

Beneath the sky, the confines of the buildings around us seemed relatively distant. And yet, in spite of all that space, Edamoto-san and I were the only ones there. The wall of sound formed by the cicadas’ voices barred all other footsteps, erasing their existence. Yes, of course—we really were alone.

In that space with just the two of us, Edamoto-san made a rare show of shyness.

“Mind if I talk about myself a bit?”

“That’s what I came here to talk about.”

That was one thing I would never learn in a lecture. Edamoto-san hid her mouth with her bag.

“Well, you might’ve guessed something like this already, but…” Edamoto-san hugged the bag closer and went very stiff. “The first day I met you, Sayaka-senpai, she had just dumped me.”

I felt something snap, like putting my finger on a taut thread.

I hesitated, wondering whether to leap up or remain still. In that moment, my skin and voice lost their warmth.

“Oh, I see.”

My response ended up being clipped. For a lot of reasons, I was on guard.

“She said that since coming to college, she felt self-conscious about how others saw two girls being together, I guess… Something like that, anyway”

What an awful reason. Internally, I sympathized with Edamoto-san.

I’m sure that her mind must have gone blank when she heard those words. She probably barely heard the girl’s voice after that, without clearly knowing whether the reason was rage or the sense of loss.

I could imagine it as clearly as if it had happened to me.

“I was sad enough to cry back then, but I’m not bothered by it one bit now. Though I might be a little upset that we can’t be friends anymore, I think.”

Her tone sounded indifferent, as if she’d simply accepted reality. It would be strange to try to transition straight into a friendship after breaking up, so of course there was awkwardness still between them.

If it were me, I don’t think I would even want to go back to being friends.

Once a relationship transformed, going back to the way it used to be was incredibly difficult. My decision not to forgive Senpai was one example. Relationships were like piling up rocks, one after another. There was an element of chance…something that made each one unique. If the stack crumbled, then purposefully piling it back up by hand in the exact same way was close to impossible.

People can’t just start something over.

That was why my best friend had been just that from the time I met her, and was still my friend even now.

Nothing wavered in that relationship.

Nothing changed, no matter how much I wished it would.

“Well, that’s all there is to that story.”

“It’s got to be more complicated than that, hasn’t it?”

“Nope, not anymore.”

Edamoto-san looked at me and smiled meaningfully. The eyes of my underclassman’s young face seemed to be at the same height as mine, I thought.

“So yeah, I like girls.”

“…I see.”

I felt the surface of concrete within my voice. I didn’t know when that might begin to crack.

“So…” Edamoto-san started to say something and stopped. I couldn’t bring myself to press her to continue.

The rest of the sentence was lost, as if our voices had been sucked into a vacuum.

“But since that led me to you, Sayaka-senpai, I just think…that’s pretty amazing.”

“Amazing?”

When I expressed my doubt at her sudden lack of vocabulary, Edamoto-san averted her eyes somewhat bashfully.

“It’s like we were connected by something…umm…I dunno, exciting, I guess?”

Edamoto-san’s eyebrows drew upward, and she looked to the sky in consternation.

“It’d be kinda dramatic to call it destiny, but I can’t think of any other way to put it.”

“…Like we were fated to meet?”

“Right, that. A cute-meet.”

You’ve got the order of that wrong. I hesitated a bit over whether to point that out. But we were away from lecture, certainly not in a grammar class, and we were having a very serious discussion… My train of thought was trying to run away from the topic at hand.

“Back then, um…I saw you through my tears, Sayaka-senpai, and you were really pretty. That’s all.”

Edamoto-san put her hand on the bench and stretched out her legs. The bag she’d been clutching was still crumpled up as it sat on her knees. She looked like a cat hunching its neck.

“You were so pretty…”

“Don’t say it twice—you’ll embarrass me.”

Edamoto-san smiled a little, as if she’d been hoping for that reaction.

“I think you can repeat compliments lots of times and never get tired of hearing ’em, either.”

That manner of thinking was very typical Edamoto-san. I had gotten to understand her to the point that I knew this much—at least, it seemed that way to me. Yes, that’s why I had come here.

Because I wanted to know about Edamoto-san herself, and hear her story.

Now what?

Since I had now stepped partway in, what should I do next?

Now what? I was stuck on the question.

I needed to face what came next.

As the scorching summer heat drew ever closer…

“So, Sayaka-senpai…”

While I was still agonizing, Edamoto-san spoke up first. She really never hesitated to make her move.

“What is it?”

“Your hair is long, huh?”

Edamoto-san’s eyes were on the back of my neck.

“It is…”

Since graduating from high school, I’d gotten the occasional trim but never cut it short.

It wasn’t as though anyone would actually say this, but I didn’t want anyone to think that I cut it because I’d had my heart broken.

I hated that I felt that way, but I just kept letting my hair grow longer.

“What about it?” I asked Edamoto-san.

“I like it.”

As Edamoto-san said that, she stood up from the bench. Her voice and movements were light.

The affection that she had put out there as though it were no big deal reached me slowly, like a drifting balloon.

And by the time it touched my heart and began to push, Edamoto-san was already moving.

After putting some distance between us with her quick pace, Edamoto-san turned around and waved her hand at me with a smile.

Though we had parted ways a number of times, it was very rare for Edamoto-san to be the one to leave me, I thought.

“Well, thank you for that…”

I watched her leave and only finally murmured that once I was alone, touching the hair flowing down my neck.

It was the evidence of my past that still remained within me just a little—and she said that she liked it.

Like.

The faint echo made the cicadas’ cries seem distant.

I was bewildered—as though she had confessed her love to me.

And maybe, just maybe, she had.

 

>>Are your cats doing well?<<

 

>They are.<
>Both of them.<
>But they’re taking it easy since they’re getting older, of course.<

 

>>Taking it easy, huh?<<
>>I wonder if they’d let me hold them now.<<

 

>They’re still quick when they’re running from that.<

 

>>Well, it’s good they still have energy.<<

 

>Yeah.<

>>I’d like to see them again.<<

>That would be nice.<

 

>>And you.<<
>>I feel like there’s a lot of things<<
>>I want to talk to you about.<<

 

>I…<
>Yes, me too.<
>That might be nice.<

 

>>Someday then.<<

 

>Yes, someday.<

 

July twenty-ninth, on the morning of my birthday, the same muggy heat swept over us as the last few days.

It was a summer morning not much different from the one before, and likely the following morning as well.

I had turned twenty.

When I picked up the phone by my pillow, I’d already received celebratory messages. They were from Midori and Manaka. When I checked the timestamp, they had come with the sunrise—the pair must have gotten up pretty early. They had sent them together. Midori and Manaka were sharing a place, so one of them probably woke up the other. Since she had written “happy birthday” twice, Midori had probably still been half-asleep.

In any case, I was happy.

I hadn’t gotten a message from Edamoto-san. That was only natural—she didn’t know my birthday any more than I knew hers. Neither of us knew much about the other. I’d just learned one more fact about her recently.

Though that single fact seemed like quite a significant one.

I wondered if it was something she should have spoken about so readily.

She must have felt that it was safe to talk to me about it, but why?

“………”

Maybe Edamoto-san’s eyes were truly able to see me clearly.

Just as I’d been able to tell that Koito-san had stayed over at Touko’s house.

Did I have my own mannerisms that allowed people to notice a difference in my demeanor?

As I sat there, I thought about Edamoto-san.

I was very aware that I’d been doing this with growing frequency of late.

Maybe it was like a running start. Like something nostalgic was starting to come into view once again.

I turned to the ceiling, as if to look up at the unviewable stars. I hugged one of my knees and swayed on top of the chair. If I just stayed perfectly still here, I could make it through the day gently, normally, without anything happening at all.

As tempting as that sounded, I squinted as though I were looking at a distant wave.

I felt the slight compulsion to try telling her it was my birthday.

Maybe she wouldn’t like it because it was like I was demanding her to congratulate me. But for some reason, I felt that I needed to tell her now rather than after the fact. I had the faint understanding that Edamoto-san would be happy about that.

There was a part of me somewhere that sought that happiness.

I half-closed my eyes as I fidgeted with my phone, maybe a subconscious way of hiding my embarrassment.

“I’ve turned twenty.”

I sent it, waited a moment to see if it would be marked “read”, then put my phone down.

The reply came about thirty minutes later. She had probably just woken up.

 

>>Your birthday?<<
>>Today?<<

 

>Yes.<

 

>>Why would you do that to me…<<

 

>Do what?<

>>I can’t prep anything if you tell me the day of!<<
>>If you’d told me at least three days ago…<<
>>Even yesterday would have been great…<<

 

>Prep for what?<
>You don’t need to do anything.<

 

>>Sorry, I should have congratulated you first.<<
>>Happy birthday, Senpai.<<

 

>Thank you.<
>I know this is a cliché line, but…<
>Just wishing me a happy birthday is more than enough.<
>Although it sort of feels like I forced you.<

 

>>No, no.<<
>>I mean, a little, but…<<
>>I think gift-giving is as much for the giver as the receiver.<<
>>Like, you want to give a good impression.<<
>>And it feels nice to receive something too, right?<<

 

>Well, I suppose so.<

 

>>Exactly!<<
>>…So is there anything you want?<<

>Not in particular right now…<
>I just wanted to hear “happy birthday”.<
>Specifically, from you<
>…Edamoto-san?<
>You’re not answering.<
>Did you fall back asleep?<

 

>>No, no, no!<<
>>I’m awake!<<
>>Which means this isn’t a dream…<<

 

>What are you talking about?<

 

>>I guess I’m just happy.<<
>>More importantly…<<
>>So you’re twenty starting today, Sayaka-senpai.<<

 

>Right.<

 

>>You can drink now.<<

 

>Yes.<

 

>>You can also smoke.<<
>>You can gamble at pachinko parlors all you want.<<

 

>I wouldn’t do any of those things.<
>Your idea of adulthood<
>is kind of childish, Edamoto-san.<

 

>>You can call me Haru.<<
>>Have you drank before, Sayaka-senpai?<<

 

>Of course I haven’t.<

 

>>You’re so straightlaced.<<

 

>Have you, Edamoto-san?<

 

>>Edamoto-san has not.<<

 

>Aren’t you a model student.<

 

>>Yup.<<
>>Wanna try it, then?<<

 

>Hm?<

 

>>I thought maybe we could drink to celebrate your twentieth?<<
>>Oh, I’ll buy the booze. It’ll be a birthday celebration.<<

 

>Alcohol, huh…<
>But you can’t drink yet, can you?<
>Oh, unless you took a gap year or something.<

 

>>Nope.<<
>>Guess I’ll go for broke and drink some coke.<<

 

>Go for broke?<

 

>>I realized that I haven’t had one since I moved.<<
>>But I do like the bubbles.<<

 

>Um…I see.<
>Drinking, though…<
>I wasn’t expecting to do it, so I don’t know if I’m emotionally prepared.<

 

>>Want to drink in my room then?<<

 

>At your apartment, Edamoto-san?<

 

>>Just Haru’s fine.<<
>>But yeah, since I don’t know any places where you can drink during the day.<<

 

>I suppose I don’t, either.<
>Oh, maybe a family restaurant?<

 

>>In theory, maybe…<<
>>Is beer okay?<<

 

>I’m not sure what you mean by “in theory”.<
>But all right…<
>I’ll leave it up to you.<

 

>>Okey-dokey.<<

 

>See you later, then.<

 

Things had taken a strange turn. Strange…yes, let’s go with that.

Regardless, I got ready to head out. Even though I hadn’t particularly planned to go outside today, I ended up doing a complete circuit all around my room in a fluster. While I was moving, I looked out the window outside to confirm that the world was still radiant. The strong sunlight out there reminded me of Edamoto-san. Maybe it was because of her disposition.

Drinking, though… I thought as I picked up my commuter pass.

Would this really be all right? I wouldn’t drink too much and embarrass myself somehow, would I? Since I didn’t even know how much I could drink, there were too many unknown variables. As I clattered around the room, something like nervousness sprouted within me.

But at the same time, I felt a bit uplifted, too.

I was a little excited about celebrating my birthday with someone other than family.

I finished preparing and peeked into the living area to tell my family my plans before I left, where I found my grandmother. She and the cats had aged just like the worn-out chair, yet they were still a reliable part of the scenery. My grandmother noticed me.

“I’m going out for a bit.”

“Oh, but I thought you didn’t have school today?”

Her voice, her attitude, and her bearing hadn’t changed one bit. It felt the same as when she used to ask whether I had classes. To my grandmother, perhaps I wasn’t much different from when I had been in elementary school, either.

“I don’t, but…I’m going to see a friend.”

“How unusual.”

As though seeking agreement from the cat, she looked down at the drowsy feline.

“Unusual… Yes, I suppose.”

That was probably true. The student council hadn’t worked on the weekends, either.

“Oh, right.” Before I headed to the entryway, I asked my grandmother, “Does alcohol taste good?”

My grandmother narrowed her eyes. The cat on her knees also waved its tail as it looked at me.

“Have fun, dear.”

My grandmother’s reply was indirect, perhaps even off the mark, as she seemed to gaze into the distance.

I hesitated over what to say for a moment and then simply agreed, “Okay.”

“Honesty is the best policy.” My grandmother, who always had a slightly twisted side, wrinkled even more as she smiled.

 

“It’s okay for minors to buy beer if they’re not drinking it, right?”

“It’s not illegal, I don’t think.”

I wasn’t confident, even though I was technically in the law department at school.

“Well, I already bought it anyway.” Picking up the shopping bag she’d left on the sink, Edamoto-san shrugged. “I was worried that I might get in trouble, so I bought it at the supermarket’s self-checkout.”

As I watched Edamoto-san pull out cans of beer one after another from the bag, I unintentionally let out a snicker.

“Huh? No good?”

Edamoto-san looked flustered, clearly misunderstanding the reason I’d burst out laughing. “No, no.” I shook my head gently. “It’s just that I feel like we’re playing grown-up together.”

For some reason, I was tickled by the sense that we were playing at a park or something.

At that, Edamoto-san too broke into a smile. On closer inspection, I noticed that fresh sweat had appeared on her forehead.

“You can call me Haru.”

“…Edamoto-san.”

I thought about it a bit, but I couldn’t come up with a clever comeback.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to drink all this, though.”

I looked at the ten or so cans she had set down like bowling pins, a bit distressed. If there was extra left over, who was supposed to drink it? “No worries.” Edamoto-san carried some cans to the room.

As I grabbed the remaining cans, I cocked my head, wondering whether these were supposed to be chilled before drinking them.

When you look closely enough, even the most mundane scene can be full of mysteries.

Having beckoned me to her room, Edamoto-san inquired, “So, do you feel any different now that you’re an adult?”

“Not really…it isn’t much different from any other birthday.”

Although celebrating with a friend like this was something I hadn’t done in a long time.

“What about your birthday?”

“March. I was cutting it pretty close.”

After sitting down, Edamoto-san exclaimed, “Oh, right!” and ran back to the sink. She darted out of and back into the room with big bounds. I was still fairly young myself, but Edamoto-san’s movements were just so, well…nimble.

I felt like Edamoto-san still had something that most people lost as they grew out of childhood. She held two glasses in her hands as she came back.

Looking closer, I saw that there was a single coke mixed in among the beer cans lined up on the table. I suppose that was hers.

“Cutting it close, you said?”

“If I’d been born a month later, I would’ve been another grade lower…and then I probably wouldn’t have met you, Sayaka-senpai.”

Edamoto-san put a glass down in front of me as she spoke of what she apparently considered a stroke of good fortune.

“Although I guess it’s silly to speculate like that.”

She negated that supposition immediately. Perhaps she was recalling her breakup shortly after starting college.

“Since no one can see what would have happened otherwise, everything is fate, and everything is inevitable. At least, that’s what I think.”

“You may be right about that.”

It wasn’t as though such thoughts had never entered my mind—thoughts of what would have happened if I hadn’t made the wrong decision.

Her smiling face would be there and mine next to hers. It was a scene from a dream.

Then again, I no longer thought of my current self as a mistake.

March, though, hmm? Perhaps that was the origin of her name, Haru—written with the kanji for sunshine but pronounced the same way as the Japanese word for spring.

Although the sunlight was bright as ever, the temperature in the room was just a tad too low. Edamoto-san picked up a beer can and opened it. I held out the glass to her, and she poured the contents in for me. I was fairly certain there was a specific way of pouring it, but since I didn’t know what that was, I couldn’t voice my opinion.

The golden liquid poured into the glass I always used, with the rainbow visible at the bottom.

“I feel like you would be more of a wine person than a beer person though, Sayaka-senpai.”

“What kind of image do you even have of me?”

“You swirling your glass in one hand like this…”

Edamoto-san played the part of me, gestures and all. It seemed that I was supposed to be wearing a bathrobe and holding a glass of wine in one hand. From my perspective, it was an impersonation that bore absolutely no resemblance to me.

“Excuse you.”

I’d never even worn a bathrobe before. Who wore those nowadays?

“I’m just joking. Oh, I know I texted this already, but happy birthday.”

After pouring coke into her own glass, Edamoto-san sat down, folding her legs underneath her.

“Thank you.”

As a result of telling her my birthday, I was at Edamoto-san’s apartment, about to have a drink-a-thon with her.

What a strange situation, I thought to myself, not for the first time today.

Maybe Edamoto-san would say that this wasn’t coincidence but fate.

If all of this were inevitable, that meant I had no way of deciding anything.

Technically, I should still be able to decide whether to drink the beer in my glass or not.

But if I wasn’t going to drink it, then what in the world had I come here for, really? After I had Edamoto-san buy so much alcohol…though I hadn’t asked her to buy so much. But she had done it to celebrate me.

I couldn’t just reject that.

I see… So I really don’t have any choice but to drink it now.

Perhaps our paths really are all laid out for us from the start.

“Cheers.” We lightly clinked our glasses. Although Edamoto-san hit mine with such alarming force, it wasn’t really light at all.

When I brought the glass to my face, the sour smell of alcohol struck my nose.

The booze-filled glass felt sorely out of place in my hand.

And then, for the first time in my life, I sipped alcohol.

The life-changing taste I formally experienced as a twenty-year-old was—gross.

“………”

I quietly righted the tipped glass.

Then I managed to swallow.

“It’s sour.”

Before I even said it out loud, the taste had likely shown on my face.

Edamoto-san was already wincing a little.

“That bad?”

“Much worse than I ever imagined.”

Since adults drank it without any issue, I thought it would have a slightly milder taste.

The aftertaste stayed persistently in my throat, almost as if it were trying to creep back up to my tongue.

To put it bluntly, it tasted terrible.

“This is the first time I’ve come to your place and had something that wasn’t delicious.”

The well over half-full glass of beer that still remained was literally repulsive. I was already almost gagging.

When I moved that glass aside, I saw Edamoto-san, her eyes and mouth round.

“What’s wrong?”

As I looked at her, Edamoto-san’s cheeks lightly changed color.

“Nothing, ha ha… You really are a grown up.”

Edamoto-san grinned and nodded to herself gleefully.

“Even though I don’t like beer?”

“No, it’s not that…but I guess that works, too.”

Edamoto-san smiled vaguely and sipped her coke.

Unlike mine, her glass was emptying.

“Mm, this cola’s great.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Do you want to trade for a little?”

“No, we shouldn’t…”

Her birthday was very far away, so she couldn’t even claim to be nearly twenty. If, hypothetically, I were to celebrate her twentieth birthday with her, that would be quite a while from now. By that time, I wondered if I would better understand the taste of beer.

“I said this earlier, but I really don’t think I can drink this many… What should we do about what’s left over?”

Tap tap tap, she tapped the surface of the cans one at a time. She didn’t act like she was very worried about dealing with them.

“How about we open them one at a time when you come over, Sayaka-senpai?”

“I generally only come here during lunch break between classes, though…”

I wondered what my friends would think if I opened a can of beer each lunch break and came back tipsy. I didn’t think that I would be able to actually attend a lecture after drinking.

“If you don’t think you can finish, then I’ll just drink it for you.”

“But you’re underage.”

“I think I could do it if I thought of it as bitter soda.”

Edamoto-san grinned widely, and I absently looked at her teeth.

When I tried to keep my eyes focused straight, I felt a little sick. I wonder what that was about.

Well, putting that aside…

Not to brag, but this college was a high level one.

Unless one was incredibly lucky, it would be near-impossible to get in with half-hearted study habits.

“Oh yeah.”

“What is it?”

As I nodded while tipping my glass, Edamoto-san peered at me.

“You must actually be pretty studious then, Edamoto-san.”

“Huh? Isn’t that rude and blunt?”

Edamoto-san squinted at me suspiciously. Perhaps that was an ill-advised statement.

“I didn’t mean that in a bad way.”

“Can you really mean that in a good way?”

“Isn’t excelling in the pursuit of knowledge a wonderful thing?”

“But you’re saying I really don’t seem like the type.”

Edamoto-san grinned, as though she were enjoying herself. She seemed to be rather self-aware.

“This might be presumptuous, but you don’t seem like you would like studying much.”

“Not particularly,” she admitted freely. “Why, do you?”

“Yes, it makes me happy to gain more knowledge.”

Whenever I learned something knew, the uncertain parts of my vision became clearer, as though I were putting on prescription glasses.

“Sayaka-senpai, you always sound so wise.”

“Are you saying I’m pretentious?”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that. That part of you is just really…um, yeah.”

She trailed off. I chuckled, sensing that she couldn’t find a positive way to phrase it.

I certainly did have a pretentious side. People seemed to expect it of me, so I simply responded accordingly.

But of course, I had my fair share of silly and utterly insignificant thoughts, too.

For example, I noticed that Edamoto-san was sweating quite a bit, yet I couldn’t really smell it much.

“Well, see…” Edamoto-san gulped down the rest of her cola. I was envious. “I was able to study because someone told me we should go here together. So I worked super hard.”

“…Your ex-girlfriend?”

Edamoto-san smiled and half-nodded, her ponytail bouncing with joy. “But still, all that studying was worth it. Since I got to meet you.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. I was happy to have met her, too, but it was difficult for me to express my true feelings. That didn’t seem to matter to Edamoto-san, though. As I stewed on this, she grabbed a can of beer and pulled it towards herself.

“Since this doesn’t seem to suit your tastes…”

“Wait…”

Before I could protest, Edamoto-san had already cracked the can open and tilted it back. I could tell it was coursing smoothly down her throat. After a while, she pulled the can away from her mouth at last, still looking composed.

“Yup, that’s sour all right.”

She had the same impression as me but easily let it out. Unlike me, the bitterness hadn’t affected her.

“You seem like you’re used to it?” I said.

“I may have drunk some cooking alcohol before…” My underclassman averted her eyes slyly.

“So you’re actually a bad underclassman.”

“But you’re a good upperclassman, so it balances out.”

“We aren’t. This isn’t a scale. Relationships are more like…”

I tried to find a metaphor but couldn’t think of a good one. All I knew was that it wasn’t a scale. Even strangers who were irrelevant to each other could establish equilibrium.

I sank back into silence. Edamoto-san looked at me and the window as she tilted her glass. Since my body had nothing to do while we were silent, I sipped the beer little by little in spite of its sourness. As it went down my throat, I regretted that boredom-driven impulse immediately. Though I kept telling myself to stop, as soon as my attention drifted to my thoughts, the glass wound up at my lips again.

The next thing I knew, I had opened a second can.

Edamoto-san also opened a can and was pouring it into her glass, but it didn’t seem to be coke this time.

“So Sayaka…senpai…”

“Hmm? Oh, yes, go on.”

For some reason, my response to her voice was delayed. It was as though there was a bit of distance between myself and my brain.

Edamoto-san used her glass to hide her mouth, as she looked at me as if observing my behavior.

She was like a little dog showing its face as it peeked in from the brush.

“So, I’m only asking this because I’m kinda getting drunk now, but…”

“Wait, are you drunk? I’m completely sober.”

I waved my hand back and forth. But when I looked closely, it was tilted at a strange angle. Huh?

Without letting my slight confusion show, Edamoto-san was looking straight at me.

Then, she asked me a question.

“Sayaka-senpai, do you have a girlfriend?”

Her voice quietly pressed down on my throat.

Like her earlier question, she took a step into my life, but more definitely than when she had asked whether I was seeing someone.

The cloud-like blur over my eyes was cleared away.

I was now aware of the somewhat loud sound of the air conditioning running.

How should I respond to this question? There were many ways I could evade it. I had already thought of three. But those had no guarantee of smoothing over the situation. And most importantly…

I had the feeling that, at some point, this moment would come.

Knowing that, I had met Edamoto Haru.

I put aside the option of evading her and stood head-on in front of the question.

“Can you tell that sort of thing just by looking?”

“More or less.” Edamoto-san smiled slightly. “I guess it’s kind of like the intuition of seeing a bird in the distance and knowing what kind it is.”

“That’s not intuition—it’s concrete knowledge.”

Knowledge. In the past, it was something I had relied upon. I thought that if you knew enough, everything would go well.

Even after learning that was a fantasy, I still thought that knowledge was an important thing.

But this mid-drink conversation was contained nowhere in my knowledge or experience.

“Maybe there’s something about you that’s similar to the reflection I see in my mirror every day.”

“I wonder if that’s really how it works.”

I looked at Edamoto-san, feeling a vague, undefinable feeling. I began to understand it in the form of a hunch. It was difficult to explain what exactly I suspected it might be, but…I knew that my affections moved in ways that might be very slightly different from most other people.

That subtle discrepancy, just as Edamoto-san said, was like looking into the mirror.

“So? Do you have a girlfriend?” Edamoto-san asked again. I didn’t need to think deeply about the reason why. But I couldn’t quite say it yet.

“Not at the moment.”

“So that means you used to have one?”

I didn’t think I needed to truthfully answer that sort of question. But right now, oddly enough, there were cracks in my defenses. Maybe it’s because of this? I took a glance at the glass in my hand. I hadn’t drunk that much, but my vision felt floaty and hazy.

“Yes, I did, once. That was the only time I ever dated.”

When I was in high school, I’d carried an unrequited love with me for three years. It was a single, beautifully straightforward line that hadn’t connected me to anyone. And now, as that path carried on without ever connecting to my erstwhile love, it was about to intersect with a different path entirely.

Though the excessively effective air conditioning might have had something to do with it, I felt like I’d been suddenly exposed to a blast of wintery cold.

“What was she like?”

“Well…”

Since she was asking about my girlfriend rather than the person I liked for all of high school, I leapt through many years all at once to think back on the time period I needed to revisit. I passed over high school to junior high. It would be hard to say what was bitterest—my junior high experiences or the beer I was drinking now.

I didn’t want to talk much about the details of what kind of person she was. In retrospect, there were more bad sides to her than good.

“She was the exact opposite of you, Edamoto-san—for the most part.” She was carefree, pale-skinned, and her words and actions always kept me guessing. I needed to stop there or I would start bad-mouthing her. My forehead wrinkled.

“Basically, umm…I’m scared to ask this, but you mean she was cute?”

Why would she be scared?

“Her face was… Well, yes, she was beautiful. I suppose I usually fall for people with lovely faces.”

“And my ranking in that department would beeee…”

“Ahh…yes, I do think you’re cute.”

Realizing what Edamoto-san was worried about, I laughed a little despite myself. I couldn’t blame her for worrying about that, I supposed.

“I’m cute, huh?” Edamoto-san rubbed her cheek and then met eyes with me. “Right…cute. I’ve been told that much before, at least.”

“…By your old girlfriend?”

Since I was reluctant to be the only one who was being questioned, I tried asking her a question back that seemed like it would hit a sore spot. Just as I expected, Edamoto-san made a slightly sour face—even though she seemed fine with the beer.

“I don’t have a girlfriend right now, though.”

“Me neither. We match!” Edamoto-san agreed jokingly. “But, hmm…so she was beautiful. But it didn’t work out?”

“Well, no.”

Since what she loved and what I loved hadn’t meshed, there was no way it could have worked out.

Regardless of that, I had fallen for her… Though by now, I’d spent more time hating her than loving her overall.

That was how my impression of Senpai had settled.

Edamoto-san chugged the contents of her glass dry all at once.

“Then maybe things would work out pretty well with me?”

My underclassman, who had put down her glass, crawled around the table on her hands and knees.

Then, she approached me.

As if to be closer to my side than anyone else.

 

“Because, right now, I’m in love with you.”

With that finishing blow, she opened up her heart to me completely.

Edamoto-san, literally right before my eyes, was only half-visible to me.

In the other half of my vision, I dazedly thought back to my junior high days.

I’d heard similar words before, at a similar close distance, from a different girl.

And…

“Oh, you looked away.”

“Of course I would…”

This wasn’t a distance from which friends would look at each other—not at a distance where only we would be visible to each other in the world.

And her eyes were fixed on my face, her gaze wordlessly praising it for being beautiful.

Of course it would be difficult to look back at her directly.

“Umm, so yeah…I love you.”

From outside my averted vision, Edamoto-san’s unassuming confession reached me.

“Thank you…”

Was it the effects of the alcohol making my skin feel so hot? My body temperature went up, whereas my head felt as though it had been left somewhere far away, watching the situation impassively.

Maybe it was because I had recalled the time when Yuzuki-senpai confessed to me, after burying that memory for so long.

Goosebumps ran across my skin, as though I couldn’t stand the difference in temperature between my mind and body.

When I lowered my gaze, I saw that Edamoto-san’s arms were shaking as they held up her weight on the floor—so much so that it felt like if I brushed her away lightly, she would fall over. As I observed Edamoto-san’s nervousness, caution churned in my brain.

I did always have the vague feeling that this time would come someday.

And yet, I stayed at Edamoto-san’s side without making much effort to fight it.

Maybe I had been expecting it?

Expecting what?

New love?

Or a person who understood me, with the same point of view?

I cautiously turned my gaze back toward her, like someone hiding behind a wall peeking out at the situation beyond.

Edamoto-san was still incredibly close.

She was bizarrely large in my vision, like a full moon floating in the night sky.

“Doesn’t my breath reek of alcohol?” I asked, directing the question at the reddened tip of her nose. When I tried to look at her, the scene blurred.

“I guess I smell it a little.”

“I didn’t think I’d drank that much, though… Alcohol sure is something.”

If our lips just joined each other, we would end up sharing the taste of alcohol.

That would be a little interesting, I thought.

But Edamoto-san was a minor.

Even though she smelled like alcohol, too, she was still a minor.

When I contemplated our age difference, the flush came back to my cheeks as though my head were being brought back to earth.

“Could you let me think about it?”

Looking straight at her, I asked Edamoto-san to give me a little time.

As I did so, just for a moment, I imagined a courtyard with a fountain.

“Sure.”

As she answered, Edamoto-san backed away, pushing herself along the floor. She sank back into her seat with her back crooked. The arms that had been supporting her body were shaking unsteadily at the joints.

“Well, I’m relieved you didn’t immediately turn me down, at least.”

I could tell from Edamoto-san’s face, free from its tension, that she wasn’t lying. There was a similar sensation stirring in my own heart. I’m not sure if it was that sense of relief or because I wanted to take a pause, but I washed the remaining liquid in the can down my throat.

“Ooh.”

There was a lot more left than I thought. Even though it left me flustered, I finished it off.

It definitely was very bitter, from the moment it crossed the top of my tongue until it went down my throat.

I felt the alcohol rushing through my veins. In its wake, it left a strange presence.

What was so good about this? As a fresh twenty-year-old, I really couldn’t understand it.

It seemed that even among adults, there were those who were new and those who were experienced.

“I’m going to go home for now.”

While lightly wiping my mouth with a handkerchief, I declared I was leaving.

I wanted to think alone in my room.

Yes. I’m sure I have to think this over thoroughly.

That time had come.

Was the gradual blurring in my head and eyes the result of me revolting against the sea of thoughts, or was it just the alcohol? When I stood up, my consciousness seemed to flow downward, like sweat running down me. I started to walk absentmindedly.

Although I was out of it, it seemed my feet were firmly heading towards the entryway.

“Aren’t you drunk? Can you walk okay?”

I’m fine, I almost answered, but figured I should double-check first. I went forward and backward, switching the movements of my legs. Just as I was about to reply that I was indeed fine, I staggered.

I put my hand on the wall to catch myself, taking a deep breath before attempting to stretch my legs again.

“You are drunk, aren’t you?”

“I’m fine. I think that happened for a different reason.”

When I looked at the reason in question, she scratched her cheek bashfully as though she had guessed what I meant.

“Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” I said.

I exhaled lightly, and finally, managed to smile.

“I have to say…this isn’t me giving a firm answer or anything, but…” Without looking straight at Edamoto-san, I voiced my gratitude. “I didn’t know hearing those words could make me so happy.”

My barely-functioning brain tried its hardest to communicate what I knew right now, though my words were pretty clumsy.

The redness that had concentrated itself on the tip of Edamoto-san’s nose spread all the way to her cheeks and ears. I was astonished that there were so many ways to indicate affection. Behavior, voice, the movement of her eyes, and even the color of her face.

It seemed that Edamoto-san was deeply and vividly in love with me. Her love was sweet, and sought to satisfy me, but there was a part of me that doubted it. Ahh. It made me want to clasp my hands to my forehead. I’d thought I never wanted to see Senpai again, but she was still living in my heart and my mind.

“Careful on your way home.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Your limited vocabulary seems kind of suspect.”

“Really fine.”

With awful memories of Senpai in my chest, I left the apartment. If it had been winter, I might have felt a little more settled upon feeling the air outside. But instead, the unfortunate summer heat hit my cheeks and stuck unpleasantly.

The strong sunlight became strong hands and stretched out, beating down on me.

The afternoon light was faint but yellow, with night still distant. The light and alcohol collided and made my skin smart. I took a break for a bit and then moved, and moved again, proceeding in an unsteady march to the stairs. When I went down the first step, they came at me fast. I felt a certain weight pulling down on my shoulders and my core, one that I wouldn’t be conscious of normally.

Gravity was entering my world, contours and all.

As I reached the ground, I was ashamed of the weight dragging down my body. Was this why it was called getting tipsy? I was spinning around. Most of my senses spiraled. What was most worrisome was the illusion that my legs were tangling up with the ground. When I lost focus, the town spun horizontally.

Since I’d gotten caught up in the flow of celebrating my birthday, the result was this: I was drunk while it was still light out.

“Koito-san, Midori, Manaka…and Touko… If they could see me now, they’d probably never let me hear the end of it.”

I looked up at the apartment. I probably should have rested a bit before leaving.

But did I care if Edamoto-san saw? Well, yes. But Edamoto-san already knew.

It seemed this might be a birthday that neither of us would ever be able to forget.

There was a very serious situation between Edamoto-san and I right now. To let alcohol affect that would be disrespectful. I think. So, this was something I needed to go straight home to think about.

I was being overly serious as always, but I thought that was also a virtue in its own way.

Good job, me.

Although it was ridiculous to praise myself like that, somehow I felt light and relaxed.

I was even on the verge of grinning like an idiot.

Once I got to that point, I finally thought, Oh, I really am drunk, aren’t I?

What a stupid thought—I was annoyed with myself, and a little scared.

I swore in my mind that I wouldn’t drink again for a while. It was almost like I was a different person.

How could a little bit of liquid be enough to entirely rewrite my personality?

The corrosive ability of alcohol was a frightful thing.

I wondered why adults enjoyed drinking this stuff. Were they seeking a person different from who they were at the present?

As my mind grew heavy and slow, some small part of it was raising a warning.

…Ah, but this is a lot like you-know-what.

Yes. Exactly.

In my current state, I couldn’t wrap my mind around difficult concepts.

All I did know was how Edamoto-san felt.

When I recalled her cheeks that had flushed red so quickly, I smiled. “Right, it is.”

I knew, of course.

Even letting a single droplet spill into an endlessly vast and transparent sea would dye all of it in that color.

I knew that was love.