Unusually, Yomiuri was absent, and the rest of us had to pick up the slack. I’d been so busy at the register that I couldn’t remember much of what happened.
At some point, I looked up, and I was walking along a street lined with trees done up in Christmas lights. The air was full of seasonal music, mixed in with shopworkers calling out into the street about special sales.
Oh, right. It’s almost Christmas.
Asamura was walking beside me, matching my pace as he pushed his bicycle. Recently, we’d started walking home together after work more regularly. His bare hands as he held the handlebars looked cold.
When I asked him why he wasn’t wearing gloves, he said he felt like his hands might slip. He seemed to feel it was safer that way but quickly contradicted himself, mentioning that helmets and gloves might soon be required by our school.
“All the more reason to wear them,” I said. He replied that he’d look into it. “You aren’t wearing a scarf, either. Aren’t you cold?” I pressed. I wasn’t just concerned that his neck was cold—I’d been wondering for a while if he even had one. Scarves were classic winter gifts, right?
He replied that scarves were even more dangerous than gloves when you were riding a bike, and I gasped. He might have a point…
Still, I didn’t want his fingers to freeze, so I put my hand on top of his. I was wearing a glove, so our skin wasn’t touching, but I hoped it would help block the chilly wind.
Before I knew it, we’d turned off the main road onto a narrow side street. The crowds had thinned, and there were fewer streetlights. Maybe that was why I’d been so bold—because no one was looking.
I’d only put my hand on his, but my heart was pounding. I worried he could hear my heartbeat through the palm of my hand, but another part of me wanted him to notice.
“How did you do on your exams?” he asked suddenly, and my heart skipped a beat.
“Oh, um, my total was 815.”
“Wow.”
He sounded impressed, but it turned out he’d gotten 819. Our scores were really close, and I knew it didn’t matter whose was higher. But before I knew it, the words were out of my mouth.
“You beat me again…”
Why was I so determined not to let him outdo me? I was puzzled by my own competitiveness.
I must have sounded pretty frustrated, because Asamura started saying he’d only scored well because he was going to prep school. He even praised how much I’d improved in Modern Japanese and said I’d do better than him if I went, too.
“I don’t intend to go to prep school,” I said.
“I guess it is pretty expensive.”
That was true, too. But the real reason I didn’t want to go was that I was afraid to show my own weakness. I was scared that if I started relying on Asamura, I’d keep doing it indefinitely. Of course, if I kept that up, I’d never learn how to rely on others. Like he’d said, that was a skill, too.
When he offered to help me get set up if I ever changed my mind, I started to feel guilty. It was true that prep school was expensive, and I was reluctant to rely on others. But there was another reason, too—maybe the biggest one, if I was being honest. If I spent too much time around Asamura, I’d start watching him instead of paying attention.
Not that I could ever tell him. I mean, how embarrassing was that?
When our apartment finally came into view, my thoughts switched back to normal mode, and I started wondering what to do about dinner.
I hadn’t had any time before work to stop by the apartment and start preparing, and now it was getting late. I was thinking about how to put something together quickly when we stepped inside…and found that Dad had bought a premade meal. There were fried dumplings, sweet-and-sour pork, and shredded beef with green peppers.
I was so grateful. Maybe Mom had asked him to pick up food on his way home. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this was Dad’s own idea. He was Asamura’s father, after all.
I heated the food and dished it onto plates while Asamura got the rice and soup ready.
Once it was all ready, we dug in.
After we started eating, Asamura and I had a slight disagreement about our choice of dipping sauce for the fried dumplings. We took turns trying each other’s sauce, but I just couldn’t understand the appeal of using soy sauce. Come to think of it, Asamura also liked soy sauce on his fried eggs.
Right as I was about to try a fried dumpling dipped in Asamura’s sauce, it hit me. Wasn’t this…an indirect kiss? To be honest, it probably didn’t even qualify as indirect, but it still affected me. I felt like a little kid.
After that, we ate in silence. When that begun to feel awkward, Asamura brought up the subject of birthday gifts. It was a welcome change of topic.
He looked surprised when I said I was fine receiving something I could use up. But the way I saw it, if our relationship continued, we wouldn’t need things to remember each other by. Wasn’t it enough to keep making more memories together year after year? That seemed a lot nicer to me than an expensive present.
Maybe I thought like that because of my experiences with my birth father. He was always particular about things and appearances.
When I was young, he’d still been kind to us, and he often gave gifts to my mother and me. He even moved his company’s office into an impressive building, saying it was for the sake of his employees. Material possessions were important to him. But after he changed, he’d say things like “You dare to complain when you’re living off the things I bought you?”
If you asked me, he let things tie him down.
And that was why I preferred a gift that wouldn’t last.
That was half the reason anyway. As for the other half…
I still remembered watching my mother from behind when my birth father left us. Her shoulders were slumped and trembling, but she held back her tears, even as she turned around and embraced me. She was trying to keep me from feeling uneasy, but I could still sense her sorrow.
I have a hard time believing my emotions and relationships will last forever. If what I have with Asamura comes to an end one day, seeing all the presents he gave me would only make me sad. So I thought I’d prefer something that would disappear.
It was just like me to think about a present becoming a sad memory before I’d even received it.