Ushio ground her teeth with chagrin; it seemed this last assertion of his had hit a soft spot. But as she grew increasingly more livid, I regained my composure. Something about seeing someone else even more pissed off at the object of my own ire helped to calm my own nerves, in a weird way.
While I didn’t condone what Sera was saying by any means, I did agree with him on one thing: My own insecurities aside, I wanted Ushio to spend her class trip with her other friends too. Not because I didn’t enjoy spending time with her, but—as Sera said—because she and I could go out on dates anytime, and there were precious few opportunities to hang out and see the sights with your friends in a new and unfamiliar town.
“So you just want half a day?” I asked.
Hearing this, Sera beamed giddily, and Ushio scrunched up her face.
“Wait, Sakuma—”
“It’ll be over in no time, I promise,” I said. “Then we can spend the whole afternoon checking out Otaru together.”
Ushio didn’t seem convinced. “But…”
“Don’t you worry, my dear,” said Sera, feigning a sweet smile as if to reassure her. “Nothin’ bad’s gonna happen. I’ll return him to you safe and sound.”
Though Ushio looked conflicted, she ultimately sighed in resignation. “How long is ‘half the day,’ exactly?”
“Well, it’s almost ten o’clock… So what if I have him back to you by one o’clock?”
“Okay. You’d better not be late.”
“We won’t be. Promise.”
Ushio didn’t say another word after that, heading over to where Hoshihara and the other girls were standing. At one point, she glanced over her shoulder at me as if she wanted to say something, but she faced forward again and kept walking. As I watched her trudge away by her lonesome, I felt my courage wane. Why did I feel like we were making a big mistake here?
Just as I got cold feet and was about to call her back, Sera clapped a hand on my shoulder. He wasn’t gripping it or anything, yet it felt like he had me pinned down and there was nowhere for me to run. I could feel my whole body tense up as he flashed me his usual, carefree grin.
“Shall we?”
About ten minutes later, I stood waiting on the sidewalk all by myself.
“Where the hell did he run off to?” I muttered.
Almost immediately after Ushio left us, Sera instructed me to “hold tight for a sec,” then promptly waltzed down the street. I was grateful for every second I didn’t have to spend dealing with his bullcrap, but it did grind my gears a bit for him to wander off and leave me here without any explanation. Especially when he was the one who was so adamant about wanting to hang out with me…
Wait a sec. What if this is all just one big ploy to get me and Ushio apart from each other?! And now that we’ve fallen right into his trap, he’s gonna swoop in and mess with her and Hoshihara or something?!
I definitely wouldn’t have put it past him.
Damn it, why am I so stupid? Yet as I scrambled to pull out my phone and dial Ushio’s number to check in on her, a compact sedan pulled up alongside me on the shoulder of the road. The driver’s side door opened up, and the person who’d been driving the vehicle stepped out onto the sidewalk.
“Hop in, Sakuma,” he said.
“Wait… Huh?”
It was Sera.
My brain glitched out for a moment as I tried to wrap my head around what I was seeing. Sera was…driving a car? In high school? Way out here in Hokkaido? My mind swirled with all sorts of scandalized thoughts. Had he stolen a car and was now driving it without a license on top of that? Should I yell at him, or should I inform the authorities, or should I just run like hell? There were too many options to choose from, and I couldn’t process a single one—so I simply stood there rooted to the spot.
Then Sera reached out and slipped something into my hand.
It was—unbelievably—a driver’s license.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know how to drive. Now don’t just stand there—hurry up and get in before one of our teachers sees us.”
“Huh? Oh, uh… Okay…”
I did as I was told and climbed into the passenger side. Sera got back in, put the car in drive, then stepped on the gas. The engine let out a low hum as we pulled away from the sidewalk.
“Seatbelt on, Sakuma.”
“R-right, sorry…”
I pulled my seatbelt taut across my torso, then clicked it into the fastener. It was only at this point that the gravity of the situation I’d just gotten myself into finally set in, and my blood ran cold as an icy sweat dripped down my back.
“W-wait, but…where did you get this car from, exactly?” I asked.
“It’s a rental, bud,” said Sera. “You didn’t think I stole it, did you? Ha ha ha! Man, you can be a real numbskull sometimes, Sakuma!”
Despite Sera’s obnoxious cackling, I did feel a bit relieved to learn that I hadn’t been made an unwitting accomplice to a crime. This only lasted a moment before my next obvious cause for concern reared its head.
“You still shouldn’t be driving, though!” I exclaimed. “I mean, you’re in high school, for crying out loud…”
“Oh, didn’t you know?” said Sera. “In Hokkaido, anyone’s allowed to drive once they reach high school age.”
“Wait, seriously?!”
“Yup. I mean, think about it. It’s a pretty big island, right? Plus, it snows all the time. It’d be too dangerous to expect everyone to commute to school on bikes or mopeds all year round, which is why the prefectural government made driver’s ed a mandatory part of any high school curriculum. They teach it as a part of home ec class—even let you go on test drives and everything.”
“Whoa… That’s nuts.”
I had absolutely no idea. What a crazy regional quirk. I considered myself pretty well read, yet it seemed I had much to learn about the ways of the world.
Hey, hold up.
“Why home ec class?” I asked.
“I guess because they think of it as a necessary life skill, kinda like cooking and housework,” said Sera. “Everyone’s gotta know how to drive, especially out in the country.”
“Ah, okay. Makes sense…”
Heck, even in the city, it was pretty inconvenient not to have at least one person in the household who could drive. In that sense, once could definitely argue that it fit more naturally into home economics than subjects like gym class or physics.
As I nodded in understanding, Sera suddenly burst out laughing like a rabid hyena who’d just eaten a whole lot of psychedelic mushrooms. It was so eerie and ominous that I was at a loss for words—but more importantly, I needed him to calm down and pay attention to the road. Once he’d finally gotten it out of his system, he reached up and wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes.
“Oh, man… You’re so funny, Sakuma. I just made all that stuff up, FYI.”
“All of it?!”
“Uh, yeah? Wasn’t it kinda obvious? Not even a kid would fall for a complete load of baloney like that. Besides, I’m not even from Hokkaido, so how would that apply to me? Yet here you completely overlooked all the most blatant contradictions and only got suspicious about the home ec thing! Pffft! Ha ha ha!”
He clapped his hands together and started cackling like a ninny again.
So it was all a bunch of bullcrap, huh?
It did sound awfully strange, now that I thought a bit harder about it. Not that I should have needed to think very hard about it, I supposed. I should’ve known better than to take Sera’s words at face value, even in a situation as bizarre and bewildering as this. Like, was I a complete moron, or what?
I thought about all those notorious phone and door-to-door scams and whatnot you’d sometimes hear about on the news; I’d always wondered how people could allow themselves to get swindled by such obvious forms of deception. Now I understood: When someone had successfully disoriented you, it was a hell of a lot easier to get tricked into believing any lie they might tell you, no matter how ridiculous.
“Hm? Wait, back up!” I said. “How do you know how to drive, then?!”
“I mean, that license you’re holding is real.”
Oh, right… The driver’s license. I almost forgot.
I supposed if he had a valid license, there wasn’t technically anything illegal about this. But how could he have one? It didn’t make any sense. Sure, the name and picture matched up—but he wasn’t old enough to drive. I looked down at the date of birth listed on the license…and then blinked a couple of times.
I looked back up at Sera.
“Hey… How old are you?” I asked.
“Nineteen,” he answered matter-of-factly. “Took a couple years off from school at one point, so I’m actually two years older than the rest of you. But let’s just keep that between you and me, ’kay? Heck, some of my teachers don’t even know.”
“Damn, seriously? Jeez…”
Assuming the birthday on his license was accurate, he wasn’t lying either. This threw me for a bit of a loop, but at the same time, it felt oddly believable. Looking back, he had struck me as a bit more mature than most kids our age when I first met him. That impression didn’t last, but at the time, I’d chalked it up to him having grown up in the big city, where everything was a bit more progressive. But no—he was literally just older than us, plain and simple. Had he been hiding it on purpose? It was a strange feeling to learn this about him; in a way, it felt like I’d finally caught a tiny glimpse of this nebulous enigma’s true form, if only for a split second.