This was followed by the URL for a hotel website and the message Tonight’s hotel. I have a reservation for two under the name Miyako Shirakawa.
“What could he be thinking…?!”
Haruto smiled dryly at Miyako as her facial muscles tightened.
“It looks like the Hashima siblings pulled one over on us…”
“Huh? But why Chi as well…?”
Miyako knew well that Chihiro had a long-term crush on Haruto.
“I guess Chihiro’s finally given up on me…?”
Haruto still had a vague smile on his face. He had an idea of Chihiro’s intentions. She didn’t want to keep going with this unrequited love, so this was her way of saying “just strike the final blow already.” He had already flat out told her he wasn’t interested, so he didn’t feel like Chihiro held the moral high ground here, but he did feel guilty about the years of pain she’d had to go through. He wasn’t angry about being deceived like this—in fact, having Chihiro set all of this up for him made Haruto both thankful and more than a little ready to take the leap.
“Well, since I’m already here, I’ll keep going to Hakodate, but what about—”
He was about to ask “What about you?” Then he thought of a better turn of phrase.
“Would you like to join me, Miyako?”
It was about twenty minutes to Omiya Station, the next stop, and then the train wouldn’t stop again for several hours until it reached Sendai up north. If they wanted to change their plans, now was the time.
Miyako heaved a hefty sigh at Haruto’s invitation. But just then the Gran Class attendant began offering menus and drinks to them.
“Would you like something to drink?”
Miyako looked at the menu. “Cider, please.”
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She was ordering an alcoholic beverage—meaning there was no getting out at Omiya. She was staying on this train for the duration.
“Oh, uh, I’ll have a cider, too.”
“Excellent.” The attendant let them be.
Haruto looked at Miyako’s face. She was turned toward the aisle, blushing a little.
“I mean, I already bought a ticket with the company’s money, and we don’t get anything back if we cancel our hotel reservation the day of. We pretty much have to go to Hakodate, don’t we?”
“Yeah. Let’s just consider it the equivalent of a snow day, huh?”
Relief and tension were intermixed in Haruto’s voice. This couple’s journey was underway.
Both of them had been up late last night at work, so a light meal and glass of cider were enough to trigger sudden exhaustion. Before long, one of the pair drifted off to sleep, then the other.
They both woke up just when the conductor announced they’d be passing through the Seikan Tunnel, the underground tube connecting Japan’s main island of Honshu with Hokkaido to the north.
“Oh… I fell asleep.”
“Me too…”
Miyako sounded embarrassed about it. Haruto laughed a little.
“You know,” she said as she stretched out a bit, “when I sleep on a plane or train, it always makes my neck hurt later, but I feel just fine now. These seats are so comfy.”
“Yeah. Feels like kind of a waste to sleep through the entire Gran Class journey, though. It was all you can drink, too.”
Miyako laughed. “Aren’t you a A-list author, Haruto? You can afford to buy it by the glass.”
“Hey, I can’t change who I am inside. I don’t really think my financial sensibilities have changed at all since before I started as a pro. Not like any of my hobbies take up a lot of money anyway.”
“What about your bar tabs? You always drink fancy craft beer.”
“Yeahhh, imported beer can be on the expensive side…but it’s still just beer, you know? It’s not some kind of weird one-percenter investment the way wine and whiskey can be. If I had to pay tens of thousands of yen for a single bottle of something, I’d be too nervous to really savor it.”
“Me too.”
Haruto hid his anxiety, keeping his voice light and airy. “But if we’re thinking about, like, the future, I guess it’s important that we approach money in similar ways, isn’t it?”
“Maybe so. Personally, I think if you earned the money, you’re free to do whatever you want with it, but…”
It was the most casual way Haruto could think of to sell himself to her. But Miyako, too, was hiding her trepidation and keeping her own replies terse.
Haruto, a bit disappointed at this, pressed the attendant call button and ordered a bottle of apple juice made in the northern Japanese prefecture of Aomori. Miyako chimed in to ask for some herbal tea.
Once the train was out of the Seikan Tunnel, the temperature noticeably dropped inside. The car was heated, but there was a light yet palpable chill in the air.
“I didn’t check the weather or anything, but I didn’t think it’d be this different.”
“If it’s like this inside the train, how cold is it outside…?”
Haruto and Miyako shivered a bit as they examined the scene out the window.
About twenty minutes after exiting the tunnel, the Shinkansen train finally reached its terminus at Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto.
“Oh man, it’s freezing!” Miyako cried as the cold wind outside the train brushed against her face.
“Actually, I think I remember Itsuki and Setsuna talking about how they nearly died going to Hokkaido in the winter…”
Those two were at Sapporo, Hokkaido’s largest city, in February. This was Hakodate, a fair distance south of Sapporo, in early December…but it was still pretty darn chilly.
For now, the two of them went inside the station building from the arrival platform and headed for the Kodate Liner train to the city of Hakodate proper. Waiting inside the heated train car before departure, Haruto noticed a message from Chihiro on his phone.
I put together all the material on the agricultural robot you wanted to learn about in my Dropbox folder, so just enjoy yourself.