“But I sometimes help my dad shovel snow too,” Nanami protested.
“Really? Isn’t that a lot of work, though?”
“It’s a full-body workout, so it’s good for losing weight,” she said, then laughed and added that she was usually covered in sweat by the time she was done and always needed to shower afterward. If that was true, then if she helped me shovel snow instead, she’d end up all sweaty, and so she would need to take...
No, stop, stop. It’s still morning. You can’t be thinking stuff like this so early in the day.
“Were you thinking about it?” Nanami leaned in as she whispered in my ear mischievously.
She was clearly enjoying herself, her smile making it obvious that she had made her comment on purpose. I simply gestured something to express that she was correct—which made Nanami laugh out loud.
We walked slowly to the convenience store. It was too good a walk to do in a rush. But more importantly, the loneliness was already creeping in. I, for one, had realized that I wouldn’t be able to walk with Nanami like this for a while once she left on her holiday trip. Maybe because of the naturally lonesome mood with so few people out and about, but as I walked, I started feeling somewhat sentimental.
“No one’s out, huh?” Nanami whispered. Whether it was because it was a day off, or just a total coincidence, there were very few people walking along the street.
We walked side by side as we talked and fell silent, talked and fell silent again. Every step felt like we were getting closer not to the store, but to our separation, and we found ourselves growing gloomier by the moment.
It’s such a beautiful morning, though... When I thought that, I raised my head and shouted, “Let’s think about something fun!”
“Huh? Something fun?” Nanami repeated.
That’s right: Because it was so beautiful out, feeling glum right now would be such a waste. We could just pretend, whatever it was; I even raised my voice slightly, as if to work myself up.
When we took a step forward, we left our footprints in the soft snow, squishing it under our feet with an airy crunch and flattening the ground in the process.
“What do you wanna do during winter break, Nanami?” I asked, turning toward her. “We should think about what we want to do together instead of lingering on how we’ll be apart for some of it. The break is long, after all.”
“That’s true,” she said, smiling softly, her sadness seeming to melt away with it. She then followed up by asking me what I wanted to do. That was when I remembered—no, it wasn’t that I’d forgotten, it was just that I’d intentionally kept myself from thinking of it.
“Let’s go to the hot springs during break! We won the tickets, after all!” I exclaimed.
That’s right—I was thinking of the tickets that we’d won in the Christmas rock-paper-scissors battle. I had looked them up, but they turned out to be for a hot spring that was located a ways away from here. The inn looked beautiful, and their food also looked delicious. I guessed the trip would take around two days and one night, so calling it a mini vacation was no exaggeration.
“The two of us?” Nanami asked after a pause.
“The two of us!” I replied, eliciting a shy smile from Nanami.
In all honesty, there were probably a number of roadblocks in the way of us actually trying to go on this trip. We had to check whether the inn allowed high school students to stay on their own, for one, and—probably the biggest hurdle of all—we also had to get our parents’ permission.
There was also the question of travel expenses. If we were going to a hot springs inn, then we would probably want to go sightseeing as well; no doubt there would be many other costs that we also would need to account for. And just as we were talking about our need to save up too. Though of course we could excuse it all by saying that we already had the tickets, and that it would be a shame not to use them.
That was when Nanami asked softly, “Do you wanna go in the hot springs together?”
I froze in place. That’s right, that was what I declared just before that fateful rock-paper-scissors match: that I would go in the hot springs with Nanami. I was competing against Shirishizu-san at the time and going with the flow of things and not thinking too deeply about what I was saying, but...
When I looked at Nanami, I could tell that she was embarrassed about the idea but not resistant to it. If anything, she was looking at me with a rather expectant gaze.
Getting into the hot springs together, huh...?
“Let’s think about things, including that—”
“Though it’s the hot springs, so I’m not gonna be wearing a bathing suit,” Nanami murmured.
My body froze once again. That’s, um...that’s quite a lot. But come on, Yoshin. You can’t keep being such a wuss. Besides, you managed to restrain yourself even while sleeping with her last night. A hot spring together should be nothing. Absolutely. Probably. Maybe. Oh, I sure hope so...
“Let’s not go in together if the communal bath is a mixed bath, since there’ll be other people. But if there’s a hot spring in our room...I’ll think about it then!” I proclaimed.
That was the best I could do. Though obviously a room with its own hot spring would be a very high-end one, and not the kind you could stay in from winning some tickets.
So practically speaking, I had just chickened out.
“Hm. In that case, let’s come up with preferences for where we want to go while we’re apart, and then decide where to go once we both get back,” Nanami replied.
I was honestly being a coward, but even then, Nanami still seemed to enjoy talking about the trip. She was right that there were a few options for which room we could stay in; choosing among them seemed pretty fun.