The chirps of birds outside my window were what woke me from my sleep.
“Morning already...?” I muttered.
“Sure is,” Nanami said, wearing her pajamas and lying next to me in my bed. Of course she was wearing her pajamas, as was I.
Nothing was out of place. We hadn’t done anything at all. We just slept together, lying under the same covers. Though I honestly wasn’t sure if those could be modified by the word “just,” that was all we had done.
Actually, now that I thought about it, I was surprised that I was able to sleep with Nanami on my bed, given that it was a twin-sized mattress. Since it wasn’t nearly as big as the mattress we’d shared in Hawaii, I had thought one of us might fall off in the night.
Either way, both Nanami and I were relieved by the fact that we had been able to keep our heads on straight. Maybe it was because we had talked things over before we had gone to bed. If we’d just gone to sleep without discussing things first, perhaps we would have done something inappropriate.
Morning, huh? But it’s still cold, and I don’t wanna get out of bed... Just as I was thinking that, though, I also began feeling that I needed to hurry up and get myself out of bed already. This may have been the biggest difference from the class trip. In Hawaii, we never thought getting out of bed would make us cold.
“I wanna stay in bed,” I finally groaned.
“Seriously, it’s freezing,” Nanami agreed.
If it was this cold inside the house, then it must be super cold outside. It wasn’t so bad in bed because I was curled up with Nanami, but even so...
“No, we’ve gotta get up!” Nanami shouted, flipping over the covers resolutely and hopping out of bed at once. She went over to the curtain and pulled them open, sunlight instantly pouring into my room.
I soon got up to join Nanami by the window. It’s gonna be another beautiful day. A layer of snow had settled overnight. Had it snowed all night long?
There had been snow on the ground last night, but now a world of pure white spread before us. Even though the snow must have been soft, there were no imprints on it at all, not even tire marks.
Maybe we’d woken up earlier than we’d meant to. I couldn’t see a single person outside shoveling snow. The possibility that I might have to do it was a downer, but it didn’t detract from the fact that this was the kind of view I wouldn’t mind waking up to more often. Even though it was still cold.
As I was feeling the chill, I felt Nanami in her adorable pajamas cling to me. The heater was probably running on a timer and would probably turn on soon, but even then, the cool air in the room made the parts where we were touching feel that much warmer.
Now that Christmas had come and gone, our winter break was starting to feel more real. I mean, technically speaking, winter break had started the day before yesterday. But somehow today felt like the actual beginning of our vacation. Maybe because, from this day on, neither of us would be seeing our classmates until school started again.
“What should I do during the break?” I muttered.
Nanami looked lonely after hearing my question. She probably was lonely. I felt that way too—because starting tomorrow, Nanami was going to visit her mother’s side of the family for the holidays. In other words, she and I weren’t going to be able to see each other for at least a week. And even though there was nothing we could do about it, both of us were still pretty miserable anyway at the thought of being separated for that long. But it wasn’t as if I could come with her.
“Gosh, I do wanna see my grandma, but it sucks I don’t get to see you,” Nanami murmured.
Perhaps she had wanted to sleep together last night to try to soothe some of that sadness—to put a balm on some of that loneliness so we could both bear being apart a little better. What Nanami shared was definitely true, but perhaps the loneliness she felt over us being apart for a long time gave her the push that she needed. Regardless...
I finally slept with Nanami of my own free will.
Even as I realized that, I felt like I had come to it kind of late. After all, this wasn’t the first time Nanami and I had woken up together; she and I had slept in the same bed several times before.
But making a conscious decision to sleep with her; getting into bed with her; saying good night to her, as she did to me...and then waking up to find Nanami there, next to me. This was the first morning when all of that happened naturally and as expected. So in my mind, this was the first genuine time I had slept with Nanami. It was, in a sense, a true first for me.
Wow. This is quite the Christmas present.
“What’s wrong, Yoshin?” Nanami asked.
“Oh, um...I was just thinking about how this was the first time we’d made a conscious decision to sleep together,” I explained.
“You think so?” she said, tilting her head and lightly tapping her temple with her finger as though trying to nudge her brain into recalling her memories.
“Oh, but maybe that’s true for you,” she said. “Because I was thinking about it a lot when we were on the class trip.”
Now that she’d mentioned it, I guess Nanami did make a body pillow out of me during our class trip. This time, though, there was no way I could do that to Nanami.
All we’d done was lie next to each other and sleep—and yet, I had woken up filled with a mysterious sense of satisfaction.
When I went back to the bed so I could lie down again, my stomach growled. Looked like my stomach could have a lavish meal one night and still get hungry the next morning.
“What should we do for breakfast? I guess we could make something, huh?” I said.