The next day, lunchtime. I had come to the fire escape to get my bento, only to be immediately accosted.
“Gee, thanks.”
“Who? Me?”
“Yes, you.” I had hardly spoken a word and Yanami was already most displeased. “Remember when I asked for your help yesterday? Karaoke? No? Well, guess what. It sucked.”
Yanami sat next to me, only adding to my confusion. I didn’t realize this was going to be a whole thing.
“What do you want me to do about that?”
“Sometimes all a girl wants is a little validation,” Yanami grumbled. “That Frozen duet straight up traumatized me.”
I searched my memory. “Oh, did they do that one that goes ‘let it snow’ or whatever?”
She gave me a look. Not quite, it seemed. “No, they did the song that Anna and the prince sing together. That bit at the end, oh my god. I didn’t think I’d make it.”
“The part where he goes, ‘Can I say something crazy? Will you marry me?’” That one I remembered.
“And then Anna’s all like, ‘Can I say something even crazier? Yes!’” Yanami reenacted with a wispy cadence. She threw her head in her hands and wailed a wail that would have put the damned to shame. She was just torturing herself at this point. “She’s doing it on purpose, I tell you. She’s trying to break me, that…that ice queen.”
“Y-you know how couples are. It’s just the honeymoon phase,” I said. “Anyway, did you bring lunch?”
Cards on the table, I was pretty excited and couldn’t wait much longer. Could anyone blame me? A homemade bento from a classmate, a girl no less, was plenty justification for a little impatience.
“Here,” she mumbled.
The bento box—if it could even be called that—was a colorful mosaic of what looked to be paper. On top, I could make out text reading, “Thighs—98 Yen.” The thing was made of carefully folded fliers. Reminded me of some craft project I’d see at my grandma’s.
“What am I looking at?” I asked.
“The plan was to just make your portion while I cooked mine this morning. I did mean to, really.”
“Okay. And?”
“My mom saw me going for a second bento box and said Sousuke was a ‘lucky guy’…”
Oof, that was a gut punch. Moms really knew how to make it sting.
I maintained a respectful silence as I opened up the “bento.” Inside was but a lone sandwich wrapped in plastic. “This is from the convenience store.”
“Uh, yeah, were you even listening? I couldn’t make you anything with my mom breathing down my neck!”
The only thing homemade about this lunch was the packaging it came in.
“Sooo, how much do you think for this?” Yanami asked.
“Let’s say…268 yen,” I said.
“Yikes, okay.”
Hey, I was just reading the label. She scooped up a piece of fried egg from her own lunch and plopped it into my box.
“We’ll call that 300.” I pulled away when she tried to test her luck with karaage next. That girl wasn’t gonna upcharge me. “Back to the first topic, it sounds like those two really just need some space. You’ve got plenty of other friends to hang out with, don’t you?”
I tossed the fried egg into my mouth. A little burnt but not bad. The Yanamis liked their eggs on the sweet side.
“They can get…weird.” She started languidly mangling the rest of her eggs. Another victim. “It was always just Sousuke and me before Karen-chan transferred in. When I’m not with him, it’s like, people start making assumptions.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m, uh, not sure what to say.”
Plop. Karaage into my box.
“How much?”
I stared at the fried chicken, and it stared back, mocking me for my naivety. “350.”
“Where’d you go after school yesterday, anyway?” Yanami asked. “I saw you leave a different way from usual.”
“You keep tabs on me?”
“I mean, bit hard not to notice the guy beelining for the door by himself every day.”
There was never any bite to her words, and yet they consistently wounded me. No more, though. I chewed smugly on a mouthful of sandwich, safe in the knowledge that such conspicuous days were behind me.
“Turns out I’m in the literature club,” I said. “I’ll be hanging around there for a while, I guess.”
“Huh. Didn’t know you were into that sorta thing.” Yanami munched on an octopus-shaped sausage. “Maybe I’ll come check it out too. You mind?”
“Not really. Didn’t know you were into that sorta thing.”
“I like flowers just fine, thank you.”
“Literature. Not horticulture,” I enunciated.
Maybe I did understand how she got rejected after all. A grain of rice clung to her cheek.