“Hey, Kamiki,” said Hasumi, as he stood up from playing on his phone in bed. “Think I’m gonna go ahead and take the first shower tonight.”
“What?!” I said. “No, I was literally about to go take one myself…”
“Too bad. You snooze, you lose, my friend.”
“Hey, no! Wait a minute!” I cried after him as he scurried to the bathroom. “That’s not fair at all! At least rock-paper-scissors me for it!”
“Ugh… Okay, fiiine…” said Hasumi, walking back.
Heh. What a sap. In my household, we wouldn’t even entertain such negotiations. Whoever made it into the bathroom first had dibs—that was the law of the land. Which was why you’d often see Ayaka and me take off sprinting down the hallway as soon as the water finished heating up, like we were practicing for the hundred-meter dash. As I mocked Hasumi internally for his foolishness, I stood up and held out my right hand.
“Okay… Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”
“Damn it. This sucks…”
I heaved a sigh as I trudged down the hallway.
Having lost my own gambit, I was now forced to wait what would probably be at least another twenty minutes before Hasumi got out of the shower. I could have stayed and waited in the room until he was done, but I was afraid I might fall asleep in the meantime, so I’d opted to kill time in the hotel lobby instead. Visiting Ushio’s room was also an option, but I’d decided against it, since I knew we were both probably much too tired to play more card games or anything like that tonight.
I walked down the staircase and out toward the front desk. We were forbidden from leaving the hotel, but I was fairly certain I wouldn’t get in trouble for visiting the lobby—even if I didn’t see a single other student hanging out down here at the moment. Instead, there was what appeared to be a tour group of middle-aged and elderly folks occupying most of the lounge area. I didn’t feel comfortable hanging around while they were here chattering with one another, so I spun around to head back upstairs…but then I spotted a couple of vending machines tucked away in a corner of the lounge, in what appeared to be a smoking area. The machines looked abandoned and forgotten, as if no one had used them in days, perhaps because the hotel had its own little convenience store where guests could buy food and refreshments. It seemed like the perfect place for me to lie low for a while without bothering anyone else—and I was getting pretty thirsty to boot. I made a beeline for it and checked the drink lineup.
“What the heck does ‘Soft Katsugen’ taste like, I wonder?”
“Yeah, the name doesn’t really tell you very much, does it?”
“Says here it’s got a ton of really good health benefits, though.”
“Like one of those nasty-tasting ‘superfoods’ or whatever?”
“Yep, exactly. Wait, what the…?!”
I nearly jumped out of my shoes in fright. How had I not noticed him standing right beside me when we were literally talking to one another? Was I really that blockheaded?
“What are you doing here, Sera?” I asked.
“Same thing as you, buddy,” he said. “Came down to buy myself a drink.”
I wanted to gag. I couldn’t believe I’d just stood there and bantered with him about the drink choices like we were friends without even realizing it. Any day I ran into Sera was not a lucky one in my book, and now I’d had two unlucky days in a row.
“Please don’t talk to me right now,” I muttered. “I’m way too tired to deal with you today.”
“So you’d gladly talk to me if only you weren’t tired?”
“Sorry, allow me to rephrase: Never speak to me again, period.”
I had no qualms whatsoever with being cruel to him anymore. It was like the more time I spent around him, the more he brought out the worst in me.
“Y’know, I always heard that they sold alcohol in hotel vending machines,” he said. “But not here, for some reason. You think it’s because they get a lot of high schoolers staying here on class trips?”
He had struck up yet another conversation with me as I was trying to decide on a drink. It went without saying that I completely ignored him.
“Speaking of which, did you know that they completely shut off the pay-per-view channels when there’s a school group staying here? Won’t let you watch ’em even if you put a thousand-yen bill in the machine—something a friend of mine found out the hard way back during our junior high class trip. Man, he was so mortified…”
I wasn’t sure what to get. Coffee milk was my old standby and would be the safest choice, but I was really curious about Soft Katsugen now. After going back and forth in my head for a little while, I put some money in the machine and pressed the button. A few moments later, I heard my carton of Soft Katsugen fall down with a little ka-thunk.
But as I reached down to retrieve it, Sera made another effort to rope me into a chat.
“Boy, Ushio sure was acting strange last night, wouldn’t you say?”
This stopped me dead in my tracks. For once, he’d said something I actually agreed with; it had seemed like something weird was going on with Ushio yesterday.
“Like, it wasn’t just me, right?” he went on. “She seemed way different from usual that whole time we were playing President. I mean, why would a girl who usually won’t even give me the time of day let me stay in her room and play cards with you two for so long? And what was that secret of hers about, anyhow? She ‘can’t keep doing this much longer’? I’m tellin’ you, man, something’s definitely up with her.”
I grabbed my Soft Katsugen and turned around. “Yeah? Like what, exactly?”
“What do you think?”
The corners of his lips curled up in a smirk. His ostentatious attitude only served to fan the embers of my impatience. I knew he was only bringing this up to get a reaction out of me; there was no way he actually gave a damn what Ushio was going through. Still, I had to wonder: If Sera had picked up on her strange behavior as well, did that mean he also had a theory as to what was causing it? While I could criticize Sera for a lot of things, his perceptiveness was not one of them.
“Don’t mess with me,” I said. “Just come out and say it.”
“If you ask me, I’d say it seems like Ushio’s trying to prepare herself,” said Sera. “For a major change in her life. Or at least a life-changing decision.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She’s holing up inside herself, like a butterfly gearing up to finally spread its wings. And I can almost guarantee that when she emerges from her chrysalis, she’ll hardly resemble the person you thought she was before.”
There wasn’t a shred of sense to this baseless theory of his, yet I couldn’t help but entertain it. I didn’t believe for a minute that he had the situation all figured out or that he understood Ushio better than I did—but I was desperate for some sort of hint, or at least a new perspective that could potentially give me some deeper insight into what she might be going through.
“What about you, Sakuma?” asked Sera, tilting his head to one side—though not in the way one usually might, as if they found something rather peculiar. It was a more relaxed inclination, like his neck had simply grown tired of supporting his head’s weight. “Have you noticed anything strange or contradictory about Ushio’s behavior lately?”