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At my prompting, she began massaging her cheeks back into shape. Is she made of clay or something? Shrugging it off, I started making the fried rice.
“Come to think of it, Little has been learning to cook as well.”
“Wait. She has?”
“In order to make delicious treats for me.”
“Lucky you.”
“Yes. I look forward to it!” she exclaimed, beaming.
That sister of mine must really love this kid, I thought. When she was in grade school, the two had seemed like cute little besties, but now they were more like…siblings, maybe? I could hardly imagine what their relationship would evolve into next, given another five or ten years. After all, however old my sister got, I was pretty sure Yashiro would stay exactly the same… My vision of the future was riddled with holes, like Swiss cheese, leaving much to ponder as I cooked dinner.
That was when Adachi walked in, having changed clothes and put away her things.
“So how’s overtime been going?” I asked.
“It’s mostly over now,” she answered as she sat down at the table. After a quick glance at the food, she looked back at me. “I’ll cook for us next week.”
“I look forward to that as well!” Yashiro remarked, already stuffing her face with rice. Adachi shot her a weird look, but Yashiro carried on eating, smacking her lips loudly.
“Ha ha ha…” Averting my gaze, I laughed awkwardly. Yashiro used to be like another little sister to me, but our age gap had widened so much that it kind of felt like she was our daughter. “No, no, no.” Surely, daughter was pushing it. Yashiro and I looked nothing alike—particularly our hair.
“What?” Sensing my gaze, Yashiro looked up, her spoon halfway to her lips.
“Nothing. How’s it taste?”
“Like destiny.” That, I had learned, was her way of declaring her satisfaction. “In fact, it reminds me of Mama-san’s cooking.”
“You think so? Hmm… Well, I guess that makes sense.”
This was a flavor I’d grown up with, after all. Perhaps one would assume that I’d gradually adjust my cooking to suit Adachi’s tastes, but Adachi didn’t really have tastes to begin with. Aside from bitter foods—which she avoided—she ate everything in total silence. It was similar to the way she behaved around other people.
“How’s it taste?” I asked again, this time to Adachi.
“Uh, good,” she replied—so flatly, I felt myself smile in exasperation. A beat later, she gasped, realizing something. She looked up. “Like…d-destiny!”
Thanks for reading the room, but… “No need to talk like this twerp,” I replied, giving the twerp in question a little smack over the head. Yashiro was so engrossed in her food, she simply glanced around the table, then forced a laugh. Sometimes she struck me as weird in a completely different way—like she was tossing out a premade response that didn’t quite fit.
Before long, the three of us finished eating.
Yashiro raised her hand. “I shall now return home,” she announced. I’d expected this, of course. She couldn’t spend the night here, because my sister would start to miss her…or so she always claimed.
“Give my sister my regards, okay?”
“And how do you regard her?”
“It’s a figure of speech… Never mind. When you see her, just say, ‘Regards.’”
“Okey dokey!”
My sister was going to be so confused. I certainly would’ve been. “And be careful on your way home.”
“Yes, I know.”
“That means you need to watch out for pedestrians. Got it?”
Assuming she planned to run straight home to my parents’ house, she was liable to crash into someone. Or get snatched up by creeps. Either way, the people around her were more of a danger to her than she was to them.
And so, off she ran, without the slightest pretense that she’d visited for any reason other than a free meal. I suspected that, when she got back to my parents’ house, she would eat dinner there too. All she ever did was eat and sleep all day, like a gorilla, except really cute… Not that regular gorillas weren’t cute, but…
“What am I thinking about…?” Frowning, I walked back to the living room to find Adachi sitting slumped against the couch. “Adachi?”
“Huh…? Oh, sorry. I zoned out,” she replied, sitting up straight. Once her belly was full, her fatigue must’ve taken over.
My gaze wandered bashfully for a moment. Then I sat down next to her and gently guided her head and shoulders into my lap, where she settled without protest. “I don’t know if this’ll help you feel better, but it’s worth a try,” I explained as I ran my fingers through her hair. The Adachi I’d once known would’ve gotten flustered by now, but tonight, she seemed to lack the energy for that. Her eyes tracked my movements calmly for a while before falling still.
“It’s…very soothing.”
“Glad to hear it.” Her word choice likewise put me at ease, and I decided not to think about the pile of dishes in the kitchen sink.
As I caressed her with all the gentle affection of a back rub, her eyelids appeared to grow heavy, and her eyes closed. Then her lips moved—clumsily, like she was talking in her sleep. “How are you…doing at work?”
“Mmm…fine, I guess? It’s business as usual.” That was all I could really say, since I hadn’t achieved anything noteworthy. I essentially did the bare minimum at work; it was no different from when I was in school.
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
As we chatted back and forth absently, I wiggled my feet. A moment of silence followed. For a second, I thought maybe Adachi had fallen asleep, but she evidently hadn’t thrown in the towel quite yet. “There’s probably a better way to ask, but…I guess I’ll never be good at talking,” she muttered, scoffing at herself.
“Nah. I think you’ve improved a lot over the years.”
“Really?”
“You don’t remember what you used to be like? Hoo boy.” Thinking back, I could probably have named an awkward incident for every star in the sky. Those memories made me laugh out loud.
“Hey. What’s so funny?”
“They were good times, that’s all.”
“Look… I admit, I was a bit of a mess back then, but…”
“A bit?” I repeated incredulously.
She fell silent, as if pretending to be asleep, and I couldn’t help giggling at her brattiness. In all this time, the fire of her passion hadn’t dimmed in the slightest, and thus I was content to wait as long as she needed.
When she next spoke, she changed the subject with what looked like tremendous effort, forcing her lips to cooperate. “Let’s stay focused on our careers for now… But once things calm down, we should go somewhere again.”
“On another trip?”
“Yeah.”
Another journey with Adachi to a distant land of our choosing—a metaphor for our relationship.
“To be honest, I don’t care where we go,” she said.
“I know.”
“What matters most is that I’m with you, Shimamura.”
“Mm-hmm.”
I suspected that, if Adachi ever went on a solo vacation, she wouldn’t enjoy a minute of it. In fact, it was difficult to imagine her feeling positively about anything that wasn’t me—which admittedly sounded arrogant, but I’d seen enough of her emotions firsthand to know it wasn’t all that far-fetched. She and I were connected at the fingertips.
“Maybe we should go out somewhere next weekend,” I suggested. That would be like a stepping stone to a bigger vacation.
“Where…?” she asked sleepily.
“Anywhere is fine with me! Where would you want to go?” I asked in turn, despite knowing that she probably wouldn’t have an answer.
In high school, it had been Adachi who spontaneously invited me on a trip abroad. For better or worse, she was always quick to take the initiative… Come to think of it, that kind of mindset would’ve been a great help to me right about now.
After another long moment of silence, I looked down to see her eyes and lips both firmly closed. “Guess she’s asleep.” Gently, I brushed her long hair out of her face. With my hand blocking her face from view, she almost looked like a teenager again.
Whenever I reflected on the day we met, it felt impossibly distant, yet only a single step away. Strangely, I couldn’t seem to settle on one or the other. Maybe that was because the two of us had walked this long road side by side.
So where would we end up?
I’d asked myself that question dozens of times, and when Adachi first proposed that we move in together, I’d asked myself yet again. Ultimately it didn’t matter, though, because it turned out that I was willing to follow her just about anywhere.