10:45 A.M.
With bleary eyes, I awoke from shallow dreams.
My lower back was killing me. I lifted myself up in my chair and stretched out a little—only to find that to my dismay, my limbs were numb and my joints felt stiff. How long had I been sleeping, anyway?
About an hour and a half, huh? That’s a pretty good nap.
My body was sore, but I felt well rested. I wasn’t the slightest bit tired anymore. Turning to my side, I could see Ushio gazing listlessly out the window. It seemed she’d woken up before me. I leaned forward in my chair to take a look outside. The weather had only gotten worse while I was asleep; it was practically a blizzard at this point.
“Dang,” I said. “Getting pretty nasty out there, isn’t it?”
Ushio turned to face me. “Oh, hey… You’re awake.”
“Yep, just woke up. You sleep okay?”
“Uh-huh. Only woke up about ten minutes ago myself… But yeah, I wonder if they might have canceled the flight in this weather.”
I checked the time. Assuming it hadn’t been delayed, our class’s plane should have taken off a good while ago and been well on its way to Narita by now.
“Guessing they made it out okay,” I said. “Besides, just because it’s a snowstorm out here doesn’t mean the skies aren’t still relatively clear closer to Sapporo. Speaking of which, where even are we right now?”
I powered on my phone to check our current location via GPS. As soon as the screen lit up, I saw that I’d received several more missed calls from Ms. Iyo, though they suddenly dropped off about an hour ago—which I figured was when they’d boarded the plane. I closed out of these notifications and opened the map.
“Looks like we’re coming up on Asahikawa,” I said. “Which means we’re about halfway there, finally?”
Our bus was scheduled to arrive in Wakkanai a little after one o’clock…so we were still more or less on track. Which shouldn’t have surprised me—bus drivers up here in Hokkaido had to be more than used to driving in inclement weather, so this must’ve been just another day on the job for them.
Unfortunately, that assumption wouldn’t last for long.
“Attention, all passengers.”
An announcement rang out over the intercom. Up at the front of the bus, I could see the driver speaking into what looked like a walkie-talkie.
“Due to poor visibility, we’ll be continuing to our destination at a reduced speed for the time being. Please note that this will most likely mean a significant delay in our projected arrival time, so be aware and plan accordingly. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
The announcement cut off with a loud, staticky click. His voice was fairly dry and monotone, and he’d spoken rather fast, so it took my mind a moment to catch up and process everything he’d said.
“Sorry, did he say to expect a ‘significant delay’?” I asked Ushio.
“He did, yeah,” she replied. “Due to poor visibility.”
It seemed even Hokkaido natives had to exercise caution when driving in these poor conditions, though I wondered how “significant” of a delay this might entail. It hardly ever snowed back in Tsubakioka, so I really didn’t have any frame of reference.
“You think it’ll take an extra hour or something to get there now?” I said.
“Probably more than that,” said Ushio. “Maybe two hours, even…”
“Seriously? Dang, okay…”
And just like that, the schedule I’d laid out in my head crumbled to dust like a castle made of sand. So much for my “rock-solid itinerary”… Way to go, Sakuma, you idiot.
“Are we still going to make it home tonight?” asked Ushio. The doubt in her voice felt like a dagger straight through my heart.
“If it’s really a two-hour delay, then it might be kinda tough.”
“All right. Suppose we’ll have to find a place to stay the night, then. Hope we have enough money to cover that.”
“Sorry. This wasn’t supposed to happen…”
The whole point of extending our stay in Hokkaido was to overwrite the painful memories from our class trip with positive ones. Now it was starting to look like we’d be spending most of that extra time trapped on a bus in the middle of a snowstorm. Hard to spin that as much of an “adventure,” really.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Ushio. “You can’t always predict the weather… Besides, you literally threw this plan together overnight, didn’t you? Of course you were bound to make a few oversights.”
I didn’t say anything to this.
She was probably trying to make me feel better, but having my distinct lack of forethought pointed out to me only made my shoulders slump even lower. And it seemed Ushio picked up on this too, as a panicked expression crossed her face like she’d made a slip of the tongue. Great. Way to ruin everything, Sakuma.
“Hey, I know!” she exclaimed, clearly trying to dispel the awkward tension. “I’ve got just the thing to help make the time fly by.”
She stood up from her seat and sidled past me, then pulled down her bag from the overhead compartment. After fumbling around inside for a few moments, she produced a small rectangular box.
“Ta-da!” she said. “Look, I brought a deck of cards!”
Yeah, no. She’s definitely just trying to make me feel better.
Ushio was not the type of person who’d say “Ta-da!” under normal circumstances. While I appreciated the gesture, seeing how desperate she was to lighten the mood made me feel even worse. But I knew that sitting here and moping about it would only make her consideration go to waste, so I tried to psych myself up again.
“Ooh, good call,” I said. “We should totally play something.”
“Any requests?” said Ushio. “Not sure I know that many two-player card games…”
“You still remember how to play Speed? We used to play that one all the time back in elementary school.”
“Yeah, I remember. Okay, let’s start with that, then.”
Ushio lowered her seatback tray table and started separating out the black suits from the reds. I was a little surprised to see she’d brought her own deck of cards; she must have been hoping there’d be a chance to play some games with her friends at some point over the course of the class trip. And technically she had—if you counted that unfortunate game of President we’d played with Sera the first night.
Ugh, no… Don’t think about that right now. I needed to forget about Sera and focus on having a good time with Ushio so that maybe that memory could be overwritten too.
“Okay,” said Ushio. “Are you ready?”
“Whenever you are.”
At the count of three, we each flipped over the top card of our draw piles.