“Shimamura, do you like warm places?”
Well, that’s a roundabout question. For a moment, I wondered why she was asking. Was it some sort of psych eval?
That seemed unlikely, so I decided to answer honestly. “Yeah, I’d say so. Like a nice, warm bed.” If I’d had to choose a single place to spend an entire day… Well, that would depend on the season, but my bed was a strong option. As someone who got cold easily, I’d spent much of my life gravitating toward warmth.
Adachi was kneeling on the floor, the cushion I’d offered lying rejected next to her. She’d turned up on short notice, and as usual, she was acting weird, her fingers rapping her knees restlessly as if she were playing an invisible piano. The second-story guest room had no window, but I could tell from the temperature that this Friday evening was slowly dipping into night.
“Beds are…important. But…”
“Yeah?” I replied. “Important,” huh? Not sure why you’re blushing.
“What about someplace more…open?” she mumbled, deepening the riddle.
Warm and open? This was getting complicated. For my poor brain’s sake, I wished she’d stuck to something like “What kind of tables can you eat? Vegetables!” Incidentally, my mother’s response to that one was, “Not at my high school, you couldn’t. Especially not the carrots. They were never cooked through.”
With that fun mental detour complete, it was time I faced reality: I still had no idea what Adachi was talking about.
“And what about…soothing?”
“I hate to ask, but if you could please just get to the point…” I felt like I was taking an exam I hadn’t studied for. Have mercy, Adachi-chan!
Blushing furiously, she finally looked up. “Do you want to go to a hot spring?!” she asked, so forcefully I thought that the red in her cheeks might fly out.
At last, the answer to the riddle. To her credit, that did sound warm, open, and soothing. “A hot spring?” I repeated.
She nodded—although, if her flushed shoulders were any indication, you’d have thought she was soaking in a hot spring already.
“Just the two of us?”
She nodded again—three times—and her ears grew ruddy with embarrassment. I was surprised to learn that she still hadn’t fully maxed out her redness meter. “And…and I’ll pay for everything!” she added hastily.
Now I was concerned about the trip’s optics. “You think I want to bum a free vacation on my girlfriend’s dime?” Was she trying to make me look like some gold digger?
“N-no, of course not!”
“You suuure?”
“I’ll pay because I want to,” she insisted, tucking her hair behind her left ear compulsively.
Now I understood: She wanted to spend this money for her own sake. Since she was entitled to do so, I saw no reason to try to stop her, and if that meant I had to be a gold digger, I simply needed to make that sacrifice…right? I needed to?
“Hmm…”
It’d be a hot-spring trip for just the two of us, and Adachi was blushing beet red. Together, those two factors could only mean one thing.
“Hmmmm…”
It didn’t actually take me long to figure out. I just needed to stall for time. And in this instance, that was a definite need.
“Wait. Is that what this is about?” Perhaps it was cruel of me to ask her flat out, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Adachi looked up and froze, as if struck face-first by a gust of wind. After her complexion had ping-ponged back and forth for a while, it eventually settled into her normal anxiety-pale shade. We blinked at each other awkwardly for a few moments.
“Oh, Adachi-chan, you’re so silly!” I exclaimed, patting her shoulder like a good-natured auntie. That immediately switched her face back to red, much to my relief. I evidently took some comfort in her flustered blushing.
“It…it’s not what you thinggh…!” Something caught in her throat, and she started coughing, which was very cute.
As for her proposition…
We’d already made plans to travel abroad someday, but now that distant landmark was replaced with one right in front of my eyes, which forced me to refocus. I obviously wouldn’t mind going on a trip with her, but when I considered what she was probably thinking about, it felt a little harder to voice a “yes.” Adachi wasn’t the only one capable of feeling flustered, after all.
“Hmmm…”
That said…at this point, I mean, did it really matter? I was pretty sure I loved Adachi, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she loved me.
Ultimately, it was the room’s icy chill that tipped the scales in favor of warmth.
“Sure, why not? Let’s go.”
Perhaps I was easily bought. Still, Adachi didn’t seem especially overjoyed at my answer; she just kept nodding over and over. Suddenly, she sprang to her feet. “Well, gotta ret geady!”
“Ret geady?” I repeated. Ooh. It’s kind of fun to say.
“Get…ready,” she corrected herself weakly. Turning, she trudged slowly out of the room, as if to demonstrate that she was in fact perfectly calm.
You can go faster than that, you know.
Once she’d disappeared beyond the door, I heard her take off down the hallway at full speed, negating the pretense she might otherwise have kept up. Then I heard a thud that sounded an awful lot like her body hitting the far wall like a pinball. I could only pray that she’d be mindful of the stairs, if nothing else.
“Wait… ‘Get ready’ for what?”
For obvious reasons, that question made me blush. But, of course, Adachi had probably just meant she needed to go pack… Right?
“Yeah… I should ret geady too.”
If we were only staying one night at a hot-spring resort, I wouldn’t need much. Then again, if we were going to do…other things…
“Uh…how am I supposed to prepare?”
Do some research, maybe?
Research…what?
How?
“My head hurts.”
This was all so complicated—and trying to dissect what “it” was made it even worse. For now, I’d have to pretend I wasn’t anticipating it. But if there was one thing I was a hundred percent certain of…
“She totally wants to see me naked again…”
Spoken aloud, the thought was even more intensely embarrassing, seeping into me until I flopped backward onto the floor, away from the comfort of the kotatsu table. But the cold didn’t matter right now. I smiled faintly to myself, eyes darting, thinking about Adachi. In that moment, I understood the meaning of the phrase “warm fuzzies.”
“Good thing she’s no mystery, huh?”
That suited me just fine.
Incidentally, we’d just had our first kiss too. When I thought back to the taste of her blood on my tongue, I felt a shudder run down my spine.