Saturday passed by uneventfully.
Sunday was my birthday, but the world wasn’t about to take a day off to commemorate some high school student’s birth, so I went to prep school in the morning as usual.
After the first class was over, it was time for a short break. I headed to the vending machines in the lounge, thinking I’d have a cup of coffee. The lounge was about one-third the size of a classroom, with six tables surrounded by folding chairs, and it was located at the end of the hallway.
I chose a hot coffee with milk but no sugar, then blew on it to cool it off as I looked for an available seat.
That was when I saw a familiar face—Kaho Fujinami. She was sitting right across from the only free chair. As I sat down, she looked up, and our eyes met.
“Good morning,” she said. Her voice was low and muffled.
“Good morning. What’s the matter? Do you have a cold?”
The tall girl was wearing a white face mask.
“I wouldn’t come to prep school if I had a cold,” she said. “This is just a precaution. When the air gets dry in winter, it’s easier to catch colds and infections. You have to be careful.”
“Oh, I see.”
“My aunt always tells me to wear a mask in winter.”
I nodded.
Her “aunt” was her current guardian. After Kaho’s parents passed away, she’d had trouble getting along with her remaining relatives, and the woman she now called her aunt had taken her in.
“But sometimes, even a mask can’t keep you from getting sick,” she admitted.
“They say making a habit of stuff like that is what makes it effective, so I think it’s probably a good idea to keep doing it. Back when I was little, I used to wash my hands and gargle a lot.”
“Oh? Only when you were little?”
“I caught a cold once and couldn’t eat my birthday cake, so I swore I’d never let it happen again.”
“Oh, so your birthday is in winter. Is it coming up soon?”
“Actually, it’s today,” I said, shrugging.
“I see.”
Fujinami stood up and walked over to the vending machine without a word. She pulled some change from out of her pocket and bought a can of hot corn soup.
I watched her blankly, wondering if she was hungry. But when she returned to the table, she put the can down in front of me.
“Your birthday present. Maybe you don’t want it when you’re drinking coffee, but I hope you don’t mind.”
“Huh?”
“Perhaps it’s a bit cheap, too.”
“Oh, no. I’m grateful. It’s just…” I hadn’t been expecting to receive anything, so it came as a bit of a surprise. “I mean, um, thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. And you don’t need to thank me; it’s cheap, and you’ll soon be done with it. I’ll leave the mementos to your girlfriend.”
I chuckled.
“Okay, then. I’m off,” she said and stood up.
As I watched Fujinami turn around and walk away, I picked up the can, held it at eye level, and bowed toward her retreating figure.
She’d said it was nothing special, but it felt nice to have someone wish me a happy birthday.
I had work that evening.
I arrived at the bookstore twenty minutes before my shift and spent the extra time taking a quick look around the sales floor, still holding my sports bag in my arms.
There were a lot of customers again today. I was making a mental note of the number of magazines piled up on the display shelf when someone patted me on the back.
“Hey, kiddo.”
I turned around and saw Yomiuri with her long, lustrous black hair.
“Oh, hi.”
“Heya. I haven’t seen you for donkey’s years!”
“…I beg your pardon…?”
What was she talking about?
“It means—”
“I know what it means,” I interrupted. “Donkey’s years means ‘a really long time,’ right?”
“Yes! I’m surprised you know.”
“Well, it’s not something you hear a lot. You’re the first person I’ve ever heard say it in the wild. Anyway, how are you? Feeling better?”
I stepped aside to avoid blocking the aisle, and Yomiuri gestured toward the back of the store and began walking. She probably meant for me to come along so we wouldn’t be in the way.
I nodded to indicate I understood, then followed.
“I’m all better now,” she said. “But it feels like I was sick for ages. Were you worried about me?”
“You are my senior coworker. I’m glad you’re doing better.”
“I was mostly better the day before yesterday, but I took off another day just to make sure I didn’t get anyone else sick.”
“So you had a cold?”
“Yep! My voice was hoarse, and I had a fever. Thirty-nine degrees Celsius.”
“Oof. That sounds miserable.”
“It completely laid me out. Guess I should have laid out an offering at the shrine next door, heh-heh. Maybe the local god would’ve saved me.”
It seemed Yomiuri was back in top form. She was even making stupid puns again. A full recovery.
We talked briefly about this and that as we made our way to the office in the back. I knocked, but the room was empty.
“And I’d been so careful not to catch a cold, too. I guess I shouldn’t have gone to that karaoke marathon last weekend. But I hadn’t met up with my high school friends in so long, you know?”
“Did you go to a reunion?”
“A girl from my old club is getting married next month.”
“What?!” I croaked.
“Who would have thought that Mao, who everyone said would be the last one to tie the knot, would beat me to it? She said she and her man had promised to get married once she finished vocational school. It got delayed another six months in the end. She was furious!”
“Oh, I see. Congratulations, I guess?”
“I’m not the one getting married.”
“I know, but still.”
What else was I supposed to say? If she was a former classmate of Yomiuri’s, then she would be a legal adult. Most people waited a little longer these days, but it wasn’t unheard of…
“She was suffering from some prewedding anxiety, so we all went to sing our hearts out and listen to her vent. Anyway, you’d better watch out.”
“Huh.”
It all sounded so far removed from my own life that I wasn’t even sure what she expected me to watch out for.
“Even in modern times, there are all kinds of problems that crop up when two people enter into a social partnership.”
“I guess so.”
“Let me tell you something, kiddo. All marriages boil down to Romeo and Juliet.”
“Two people in conflict coming together, you mean…?”
“There’s a gulf between the Capulets, who put sauce on their fried eggs, and the Montagues, who prefer salt and pepper. A gulf too wide to be crossed.”
“Won’t Shakespeare get mad at you for butchering his work like that?”
“Differences in values can lead to conflict and tragedy. It’s just too sad. By the way, which one are you?”
“If you’re talking about fried eggs, I like soy sauce.”
“Oh, a third faction. Incidentally, I prefer ketchup. Whatever will I do if your soy sauce–faction parents reject my marriage proposal? O Romeo, wherefore art thou a soy sauce lover? Toss that stuff away right now. Actually, that sounds kind of wasteful. We’d better cancel the wedding instead.”
“Well, I’ve realized at last that I have no idea what you’re talking about. I surrender. Anyway, did you have something to say to me?” She’d gotten me to follow her to the back of the store, so she must have had some reason.
“Oh, right. It’s your birthday today, isn’t it?” She placed a paper bag down on the table.
“Well, yeah… How did you know?”
“Saki told me. Her birthday’s next week, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll bring Saki’s later. Here.” She pulled something out of the bag—a thick paper sack. I figured it was full of books.
I shot her a questioning look, and she nodded. I opened the bag.
“Oh… Wow…”
The books looked positively ancient. She must have bought them at a used bookstore. There was Plato’s Apology, Descartes’s Discourse on the Method, Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason… I even saw Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche.
“This…is amazing.”
“It’s a selection of philosophy books recommended by Shiori Yomiuri. I didn’t give much thought to historical period or logical progression, so it’s not very systematic. You’ll find a lot of holes.”