I was met with a sweet scent as I opened the front door.
“Welcome home, Oniisama!” My little sister pitter-pattered over.
I looked over Kaju’s head into the kitchen. “Boiling anko or something?”
“Ding, ding, ding! Winner! Your prize is a whole lifetime supply of Kaju!”
“Gee whiz, really?” I said in monotone, slipping past her. I peeked into the pot on the stove. Inside was a soup of red beans and small, white dumplings. “Zenzai? Using dango instead of mochi?”
“Shiratama dango! Have a taste.” Kaju held out a small cup of gooey anko with a single, snowy white dango.
Talk about coincidence. My mind naturally wandered back to meeting a very different Shiratama at Nan-JUS, and the situation (ship?) with Tanaka-sensei we happened to stumble upon. With strange trepidation, I took the wooden spoon from her.
“Careful, Oniisama. Dango are easy to choke on.”
“I know. Not biting off more than I can chew.” I tried to eat, but Kaju grabbed my hand. “Uh, yeah?”
“Shiratama dango especially. Very sweet but very slick. You might not realize it’s gone down the wrong pipe until it’s too late.”
She took the spoon from me, scooped up the dango, and fed me. Still holding onto my hand. The anko was sweet, but subtly so. Saltier than expected.
“Chew thoroughly,” she said. “Chew, chew, chew. That’s the way to eat shiratama.” Salty. So salty. On Kaju’s lips hung a smile that revealed itself in no other part of her expression. “You can never be too careful, Oniisama.”
I nodded. And chewed.
✦ ✦ ✦
After school the following day, Yanami and Komari were anything but calm.
“You’re sure she’s coming?” asked Yanami.
“Relax. Konuki-sensei said she’d be here.” Today was the day Shiratama-san would finally come see the club for herself. Komari was especially antsy, sitting and standing over and over like a bugged NPC. “That goes for you too. You’re a senpai now. Time to act like it.”
“A-a senpai?!” she sputtered. Frozen solid was better than fidgeting constantly, at least.
Yanami nodded. “He’s right. You’ve gotta buck up. Use Nukumizu-kun for practice. Be a senpai to him.”
Why me? Whatever. I was interested in seeing where this went. “Sure, I’ll bite. Lay it on me, Komari.”
“Wh-what am I supposed to do?” she stammered.
Yanami crossed her arms. “Just make him do whatever you want. Give you a massage, buy you drinks, that sorta thing.”
“You better not pull that on Shiratama-san,” I warned her.
“O-okay, um…” Komari stared down at me. “P-pat…my head.”
You could have heard a pin drop, the silence that followed.
“Komari, you’re supposed to be the senpai,” I said. “Senpai give head pats.”
“W-well she said wh-whatever I wanted.”
“Komari-chan,” Yanami muttered grimly.
Senpai role-play in which the senpai demands to be treated as a kouhai. This was too advanced for me. It was only then that I realized the door was open.
“What, uh… Whatcha guys up to?” the spectator asked.
“Lemon-chan! Hey, it’s been a while!”
“Hey, Yana-chan. I hear we’ve got fresh meat comin’?” Still dressed in her practice uniform, Yakishio came over and sat by Yanami.
“Done for the day?” I asked.
“I’ve been going kinda hard, so Coach said to take it easy for a while. Got busted on my morning run.” She shook a protein shake in one hand. Notably the hand opposite Yanami—the result of a hard lesson learned.
“Things going well, then?”
“Eh, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
The smile on her face would have put a sunflower under a clear sky after the rain to shame, and it told me I had nothing to worry about anymore. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. Yakishio’s world was too big for someone like me now. Her wake, too vast. Which did make me a little sad, admittedly. Hypocritical as it was to admit.
The girls chatted together a while. And before long, the door creaked open again.
“Um, excuse me. Is this the literature club room?” Shiratama Riko sheepishly poked her head in, saw me, and then instantly smiled in relief.
“So you’re Tama-chan, huh? C’mon in!” Yakishio called out to her.
She shuffled in, her eyes glued to the floor. Her nerves seemed to get the better of her for a while, until she finally swung her head down into a bow. “Um, my name is Shiratama Riko. I’m a first-year, and I suppose I’ll be, uh, trying things out with you all for a while. Glad to be here.”