“That’s…kind of amazing!”
If we were in each other’s shoes, I’d ask if she was hallucinating. But evidently, she didn’t even consider the possibility.
“Ha ha ha!”
It was too late to tell her I hadn’t actually sensed anything, so now I was starting to feel pretty guilty. Nevertheless, I grabbed her bookbag out of her bike basket and brought her into the house with me. There, I struck a cheerful pose.
“It’s me, high school Shima-chan!”
“Uhhhhhhhhh…what?” She gave it a moment of thought but ultimately didn’t get it. It was so funny to watch the question marks sprout up over her head.
“I just felt like I needed to say it. And also this.”
I started to walk past her—to the closed front door. No clue where I thought I was going. But before I could pass her, she slid in front of me, blocking my path. No missed connection happening today, apparently.
“And so our story began.”
The question marks filled her eyes next. “Sorry, Shimamura. I’m having trouble keeping up with you today.”
“That’s okay. Some days are like that.” And since she was usually the one operating at full throttle, I deserved a turn now and then. “Anyway, welcome! I’ll show you to the second floor, like always.”
“Thanks for having me… Oh, what about your mom?”
“She’s at the gym, so we don’t need to go say hi.” I glanced down at the porcelain skin peeking out from under her skirt, then headed up the stairs.
She was still wearing the hairpin I gave her a while back, and I was impressed that she took such good care of it. With Adachi, I was impressed a lot of the time, actually; her life was just so strange and new to me. And yet, for all our differences, we were still together. The majority of my time in high school was spent dealing with her odd behavior, but I was satisfied with the way things turned out. Maybe we were just that compatible.
Inside the study room, the AC unit was working its ass off. Despite the fact that I’d been making use of this old storage room for quite some time, it was still super dusty every time I opened the door. Perhaps rooms, like people, had certain innate qualities they were born with.
“Happy to see me after those torturous three days?”
“Yeah.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and stared hard at me as we faced each other. Neither of us had anywhere to run. “My…my crops are watered.”
“Impressive vocabulary you’ve got there. I’ll take it as a compliment.”
I imagined myself raining down and soaking into her withered body, making her all waterlogged. For someone with so much moisture, however, she sat stiff as a board on the floor. Her posture was meek and modest, yet she was actually showing a lot of skin in that off-the-shoulder top.
I should have gotten dressed! I cursed myself as I looked down at my ratty old pajama shirt. Between you and me, there was a little hole in the bottoms, too. And since I wasn’t planning to leave the house, I wasn’t wearing makeup, either. The time I could have spent making myself presentable was instead spent…um…trying to awaken a latent superpower.
No matter how deeply she loved me, I probably needed to put in a little more effort before she gave up on me completely. She’s always got her act together… When I peered at her face, she flinched and straightened her hunched back.
“Wh-what, what?!”
“I was looking for the crops.”
It was still hot in the room, so I turned on the electric fan. The first-floor fan had lost all its blades, but this second-floor hand-me-down hadn’t given up the ghost quite yet. It spun like a little green windmill. Meanwhile, Adachi pulled a notebook and pencil case from her bookbag and set them on the edge of the table.
“Wow, you actually brought study stuff?”
“Wha?!”
“I mean, we are going to study.”
I was thinking we’d end up chatting the whole time. I set the seal plushie aside and settled into my spot at the table. Across from me, she shifted over on her knees. As I watched her move, she flushed faintly; she tried to smile, but messed up, and her eyes watered.
Whenever I was around, Adachi seemed to forget how to smile. Written out like that, you’d think I was intimidating her somehow. But though I hadn’t seen it for myself, I’d heard that her normal personality was cold and calculating—even colder than the version of her I first met. The kind of girl who wore a poker face no matter who she spoke to. Scary stuff.
“Hey, Adachi, try being cold for a bit,” I suggested, mostly as a joke.
“Being…cold?” she repeated, grasping her bicep. She didn’t seem to understand. “Are you saying you wanna go to the pool or something?”
That was a pretty funny interpretation. The pool, hmm? A viable suggestion, but I didn’t want to risk encountering that kappa monster at the gym again.
“No, I mean personality-wise. I wanna see what the normal you is like.”
“The normal me? I’m always normal… This is my normal.”
“You sure? A little birdy told me you’re normally calm and collected.”
In junior high, her personality was a perfect match for the modest clothes she was currently wearing. Obviously, I wanted to see it for myself. Of course, I’d sooner die than show anyone what I was like in junior high, but this wasn’t about me!
“I’m already calm as it is.”
“You suuure?”