✦ ✦ ✦
Isshiki cleared her throat with a loud hmmm! Then she jabbed a finger at me and puffed up her cheeks in a pout, as if to cover their redness. “…It’s an exchange, okay?! So the present you just gave me is null and void!”
“Huh…?” Is that how presents work? Are you even if you give something back?
Isshiki ignored my confusion and briskly moved the conversation along. “Sooo you can give me a present later… How about this weekend? I’m free, you know?”
“Huh? Ah, um, I was more or less considering getting you something else…” I even planned to give it to you after school… So I wanted to say, but since there was a surprise party, I couldn’t tell her straight. Oh, dilemma!
However Isshiki took my silence, she smiled brightly and leaned forward on the bench. She gently laid one hand on my shoulder and cupped the other around her mouth. And then with a sweet, syrupy suggestion in her tone, Iroha Isshiki brought her lips close and whispered, “The present is an excuse.”
Before I could ask what for in a totally transparent attempt to play dumb, Isshiki popped away again and smiled as if nothing had happened.
My sigh was drowned out by the bell alerting us to the start of class, and Isshiki stood up at the same moment and continued to walk a few steps away. And then with a light flutter of her skirt, she turned back again.
As if to say she wouldn’t even bother listening to my reply, she waved and said, “Then I’m looking forward to the weekend!” before hurrying off to the school building.
“O-okay…” There was nothing for it but to reply with a bewildered nod at her retreating back, even knowing she wouldn’t see it.
By force of gradual erosion, my weekend plans had been decided.
Oh, I’d expect nothing less of Irohasu.
The way she 100 percent recycled the plastic bottle she’d just bought and then connected it to a future activity was awe-inspiring. She doesn’t just have me in the palm of her hand—she’s got me wrapped all the way around her little finger, too…
I didn’t know how many more times we would repeat that same old exchange. I could swear her tactics were the same as ever, and yet they somehow felt like they had evolved—to become even more cunningly, cutely clever.
A casual and nonchalant accumulation of mundane experiences. That single action had clearly moved my heart and was assembling the future ahead of us.
Irohasu really is the greatest…