“Ho ho… Harvard, perhaps?”
“You’ve heard of Harvard?”
“The birthplace of Harvardi cheese!”
“I think you mean Havarti…”
The penguin smiled wistfully, as if recalling the taste, so I decided to let her be. Meanwhile, my sister steered the conversation back on track: “Does that mean…you’re gonna move out?”
It was the first piercing question she’d ever asked me. Her eyes wavered with uncertainty, reminiscent of the days she used to address me with actual respect. And here I thought she didn’t love me anymore… Well now.
“No, I’m gonna enroll somewhere close to home.” If I tried to live on my own, I could already tell my life would fall apart, and who knows what would happen after that.
“Hmmm. Okay then.” She looked up at me with a feeble smile that suggested only half of her concerns had been allayed.
“Oh, I get it. You’re scared you’re gonna miss me!” I teased.
“Am not!” She kicked my shin under the table.
“I know just what to do. I’ll relieve some of that loneliness with a nice massage!”
“Mmfffmmghh!”
I pinched her cheeks and stretched them in all directions, just as she was doing to Yashiro earlier. Meanwhile, it occurred to me that we would eventually have to part ways someday, and then I started getting a little sentimental.
Deep down, I was fond of living in this house. Now that I had survived the greater part of puberty, with junior high Shima-chan’s rebellious phase in the middle, I was ready to admit it. Perhaps that was why my mother never gave me a hard time aside from a little teasing now and then—because she could sense it, even though I never said it outright. She’s so flexible, it’s probably unhealthy.
“Oh?” Just then, Yashiro’s smile vanished, and she glanced over at the kitchen wall. “It appears your phone has beeped, Shimamura-san.”
“Wait, really?” If so, I didn’t hear it. But this alien could sense things on an entirely different level from the rest of us, so I decided to trust in her and go see. “Make sure your penguin stays out of the fridge,” I instructed my sister on the way out. Sure enough, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her physically restrain the penguin as she flailed desperately for freedom.
Life with a pet penguin… Fancy-schmancy indeed.
I walked down the sticky-humid hallway and returned to my room. For a moment I stood there, trying to remember where I put my phone. Oh, that’s right; I had plugged it in to charge. I grabbed it where it lay.
“Huh, I do have a message. From Adachi.”
Nice going, penguin. Not only could she hear distant phone sounds, she could also somehow detect whenever someone was arriving at the house. If I tried asking her about it, she would only laugh in response, so I’d given up and accepted it as a fact of life.
“Go ahead and call… Message sent… Aaand she’s calling.”
Every time this happened, I always found myself thinking it’d be more efficient if I was the one who initiated the phone call—but part of me was opposed to prioritizing efficiency in this relationship. Not like she ever took efficiency into consideration. Besides, the only relationships she really had were with me and her mother… On second thought, maybe her mom doesn’t count.
“Hell—”
“Hellooooo?” I cut in before Hell-Adachi could finish, then waited for her reaction.
“…Helloooo…”
“You know, I say this a lot, but I really like that about you.”
Adorably pathetic, one might call it. Then again, pathetic was a little too harsh. After all, she was a lot stronger than I was—and in this case, by strong, I meant she fought to keep herself from devolving into weird giggles when she was flustered. On the other hand, if she ever completely stopped getting awkward around me, I’d probably start to miss it. Selfish, I know.
“So what’s up? Just wanna chat?”
“I do want to chat, so…”
“So?”
“Is it okay if I come over right now?”
“To my house? Sure, but it’s probably really hot in here.”
The former storage-room-turned-study-room on the second floor did technically have an AC unit, but lately it was undeniably on its last legs. I could only survive the summer by using it in conjunction with an electric fan. So why would Adachi want to go out of her way to visit?
To see me, duh, I realized, and quietly smiled like an idiot.
“Well, I haven’t seen you at all lately…”
“Uh…y-you sure about that…?” I counted on my fingers to double-check. Yeah, it’s only been, like, three days. “Didn’t we just go on a date three days ago?”
Our date destination: the mall. Seriously, there was virtually nowhere else we could go around here. Plus, the mall had basically everything we could ever want, so really, it was no surprise the parking lot was full every day.
“Yeah. Three whole days.” I could practically hear her pouting through the phone, and it made me chuckle.
“Three days of hell for you, huh?” Hell for Hell-Adachi, I joked to myself.
“Every second without you is the same as, like, a hundred years…or something. It’s a long time.”
“Oh, Adachi, you’re such a poet.”
Every now and then, her love for me seemed so overblown, it made me question whether I truly deserved it. Nothing about it was a criticism of me, and yet…it was so grand in scale, it cast a shadow over me, and I was forced to take a harder look at myself. Suddenly it felt like torture to keep standing while on the phone, so I flopped down on the pile of folded-up blankets, using them as a cushion as I stared blankly up at the ceiling.