That afternoon, I made my way to our meeting spot and took a seat on the fire escape stairs outside. The place felt foreign to me. It was empty, secluded away from prying eyes—a private oasis. My fascination with tap water was, in truth, beginning to wane after four months of using it as my getaway this semester. This would make a good secondary escape.
I started to grab some bread to kill time until Yanami deigned to show up.
“Nukumizu-kun. There you are.”
Yanami came trotting down the stairs. I looked up at her and was met with a face full of bare thigh.
“S-sorry!” I stammered. “I wasn’t, er—”
“Please, God, save me.” She plopped down. “Karen-chan just invited us to karaoke after school.”
Ah, karaoke. The extroverts’ art. That one such as her would seek my aid, well, a truly perilous art it must have been indeed.
“Uh, then go,” I said.
Yanami held her head in her hands and made a sound like a dying goat. “And listen to those two sing a friggin’ duet together?! I’d literally rather hurl myself off a bridge. Is that what you want?”
“Look, I’ve never been to karaoke.” What in the world did she want me to do about it? “I’m not an expert in what that entails.”
“Oh.” She frowned suddenly and got real quiet. “Oh. Wow, um… Sorry, I-I didn’t realize… Wow, I am so sorry. I don’t even… Forget I said anything.”
After all that? Seriously? Like, why, though? Was that necessary? Was my suffering really necessary?
“Can we just drop it, please? So about the money,” I said.
“They keep insisting that nothing’s changed, and, like, how it’s no big deal or whatever…”
Aaand she brought her lunch. Are we really doing this over food?
I sighed. “I guess just take their word for it. Now the money?”
“I only found out officially the night you spotted me the cash. That they started dating, I mean.” She stabbed her chopsticks into some taro. Again. And again. “Looong time for them to have gotten up to something.”
“Sure, you can make assumptions, but what if they were just busy?”
“Sousuke’s sister messaged me. She said she couldn’t get a hold of him. Wanted to know if he was with me. And, of course, he wasn’t.”
“Oh…”
I was in danger. I looked to my curry bread for support.
“Wonder what they were so busy doing. What do you think?” That taro was so unbelievably dead.
“M-maybe their phones ran out of battery? Happens all the time.”
“That’s true. I should have more faith, huh? Ha. As if I have any of that left.”
What is actually happening right now?
Yanami hung her head for a while before finally looking back up. “Sorry. I’m rambling.”
“Y-you’re good. I don’t mind listening, I guess.”
“Thanks. You’re the only one I can really talk about this with, Nukumizu-kun. My friends wouldn’t get it, and I definitely can’t dump on acquaintances, y’know?”
Ah. So I wasn’t even at acquaintance level. Noted.
“Let’s eat before the bell sneaks up on us,” I said. Complaining and food were about all there was between us, it seemed.
Yanami made a tired smile. “True. Lunchtime, after all.”
We ate in silence. I scarfed down my curry bread in no time before I let my eyes wander over to her. What a surreal sight. Me, eating lunch with a girl.
People of her status were surely used to the ebb and flow of relationships, of hookups and breakups. Yanami was a good-looking girl. She’d doled out her fair share of rejections before, I was sure. The roles were just reversed this time around, and she had to live with that. Rejection was a part of life.
Well, her life.
“You…” The words came out on their own. I had no idea where I was even going with this. “You’re…popular. With the guys, I mean. Personally, I think you’ve, y’know, got a little more going for you… Than Himemiya-san, I mean.”
Yanami blinked at me and made that same face from the classroom that I hated. It was like I’d called her out in front of a live studio audience or something.
“I’ll…take that as a compliment?” she finally said.
“Sorry. Weird. Forget it.” This right here was why you kept your head down, Kazuhiko.
I heard her stifle a giggle next to me. She made a funny smile. I looked away.
“The attempt was sweet. Guess I still had the wrong idea about you.” She carried a less-mangled piece of taro to her mouth.
Whatever her idea of me had been, something told me it wasn’t charitable.
“Anyway,” I said, “can I have that money now? This is the receipt.”
“Sure. Thanks again for that, by the way.” She suddenly froze. “Wait.”
“Something wrong?”
“What’s with that number? Am I crazy?”
“Well, you ordered that watermelon pancake right at the end. With ice cream.”
“Okay.” She nodded.
“And then you threw in the pork shabu-shabu udon salad on top of it.”
“Salad’s low cal,” she added. Honestly, I admired the inhuman amount of trust she was placing in the word “salad” to hold that word salad of a dish together.
After what felt like forever, it seemed like I was finally going to get that money back. Yanami stared at the receipt, then at my outstretched hand, and then back at the receipt.
She nodded to herself. “So, just an idea, but what’s your take on bartering?”
“Bartering?” I parroted. My interest was piqued.
Yanami blushed, fidgeted, and poked at some of the meat in her bento box with her chopsticks. “I-I could… Not that I’m all that amazing at it or anything, but, well, I’m short on cash, sooo… And Sousuke always liked when I did it for him.”
“Okay?”
Where was she going with this? I followed her chopsticks down to the moist, supple chicken she was mercilessly toying with. Moist, supple meat. A blushing Yanami…
Wait, I thought. Wait, no way! Is she implying what I think she’s implying?!
I shook my head at mach speed. “Wh-wh-what are you talking about?! We’re in broad daylight! And at school!”
“I know I’m not the best cook, but I can manage an extra bento maybe,” Yanami continued.
“A what now? A bento?”
“Uh, yeah?” She cocked her head to the side, completely oblivious. “What’d you think I said?”
“Nothing! Gotcha! Bento lunch!” I dug and scraped my mind back out of the gutter, then checked the receipt again. “I dunno if one’s gonna cover all this, though.”
I was rather proud of the nest egg I’d scrimped and saved up.
“Yeah, so what you can do is set a price for whatever I make you, and I’ll keep doing it until the whole tab’s covered.”
Homemade lunch from a girl was definitely valuable. Perhaps even priceless to someone like me. This may have been my only chance at getting to experience such a luxury. The money I’d save on food would add up too.
On the other hand, oh god. Did I really want to keep skulking around behind people’s backs just to play bento appraiser?
“Maybe we should—”
“I’ll be back tomorrow. Same spot,” Yanami interrupted. “Don’t forget!”
She grinned from ear to ear, stuffed her face with yet more chicken, and I didn’t have it in me to spoil her mood.
“Yep.”