“Oh, hey. Here’s the U of I,” I said. “Really pretty in the springtime with all the cherry blossom trees. And if you go straight down this road, it’ll lead you right to the main headquarters of the Yutosha publishing company.”
“Dang… You almost sound like a local,” said Akira.
“Well, yeah. Probably because I am,” I replied, smiling sheepishly.
“Is your parents’ place somewhere around here too, then?”
“Nah, my house is pretty far away, actually. But the school I go to is nearby, if you wanna check that out.”
“Wait, you serious?! Hell yeah, I do!”
And so we decided to take one last detour and made our way over to my high school—not that taking the scenic route was anything to be ashamed of when time was frozen anyway. Plus, it was only another two intersections away, so we made it there in no time. Akira and I stood there on the sidewalk, gazing up at the large school crest emblazoned on the outer wall of the main building.
“Wow… So this is where you go to school, huh?” said Akira, sounding mildly impressed as she yanked at the closed school gates. I assisted her in wrenching them open, and the two of us let ourselves onto campus.
“Can’t remember a single time when I didn’t feel depressed walking through here,” I said as we walked in the main entrance, and all the gloomy, unpleasant feelings I’d encountered within these walls came rushing back to me.
Akira tilted her head. “What, because you didn’t like school?”
“Yeah, guess that about sums it up. Hell, I even used to wish that a meteorite would come crashing down and level this whole place to the ground.”
“Wanna break all the windows on our way out, then?”
“No, you freaking delinquent. We’re not rioting, for god’s sake.”
We stepped up into the main corridor without stopping to change footwear; we were allowed to just wear our street shoes at my school. Although all of the eleventh-graders were off on the class trip to Hakodate, the other students were still in attendance, so there were people in the building with us.
“As much as I might hate this school, I know there are plenty of people who love it,” I continued. “I’d never want to needlessly deface any sort of property that means a lot to someone out there.”
“A-all right, I get it already!” said Akira. “It was just a joke, sheesh… You’re the one who started talkin’ about meteorites and all that crap!”
“Okay, we’re here.”
After heading up to the third floor and down the hall, we arrived at my classroom. I tried to rattle the door open, only to discover that it was locked. Akira insisted, though, so I went down to the staff room and grabbed the key, then hurried back up and unlocked the door to let us inside.
“This is my seat, right here,” I said as I walked over and sat down at my desk, which was right in the middle of the classroom. Akira promptly came over and took a seat at the desk next to mine.
“Wow. Almost feels like we’re classmates when we’re sitting together like this, huh?” she said, smiling as though she found the thought rather entertaining.
I tried to imagine a world in which she and I were in the same grade, the same school. Me, an antisocial truant, and her, a total miscreant. Chances were, we’d never interact even if we did end up in the same class. Barring getting stuck together in a supernatural phenomenon like this, we’d probably go all the way to graduation without exchanging a single word. Thinking about it like that really hammered home just how fantastical the circumstances of our chance encounter had been.
“Yo, Mugino! Go buy me a yakisoba bun, ya damn twerp!” said Akira, spontaneously imagining a scenario in which I was her obedient little lackey. I immediately took back all of the sentimental stuff I’d just been thinking in my head.
“No way,” I said. “You can go buy it yourself.”
“Tch. Cheapskate.”
“Not even. Just don’t like people bossing me around.”
“Well, aren’t you just a big ol’ stick in the mud? You’re never gonna be popular with the ladies if you keep acting like that, y’know.”
“Like I care about that. Besides, you’re the only girl left in the whole world now, so it’s not like it matters anyway.”
“Oh yeah, guess not… Well, fair enough, then. No skin off my nose if you never find a girlfriend.”
“Okay, when you put it like that, it feels way more insulting…”
Akira stood up and walked over to the window. When she looked outside, she cocked her head and let out a curious noise as though she’d spotted something.
“Hey, your schoolyard looks weird,” she said. “The colors are all wonky.”
Weird? How so? I got up and joined her at the window. Directly below us was the sports field, which was made from artificial grass encircled by a bright-blue track. Definitely different from the all-dirt schoolyard or pavement your average school had.
“Yeah, it’s painted over with a waterproof coating for better drainage,” I explained. “You see it a lot at high schools around these parts.”
“Oh, huh. You don’t say… Sounds like it’d be pretty hard to make an ice rink on that, then…” She sounded a little disappointed.
“Pretty sure there aren’t any schools anywhere near Tokyo that do that, honestly. Doesn’t get nearly as cold as Hakodate down here. Hardly ever snows too… Oh, but that reminds me—there was this one time back when I was in elementary school when it snowed, and we got to spend all of first period playing in it. It was great.”
“Wait, but when did you do your classwork, then?”
“We didn’t. We literally just got to play in the snow that day.”
This was a pretty fond memory of mine, all things considered. Even though I ended up making a snowman by myself off in a secluded corner of campus, it was still a good time.
“Guessing that’d never happen up in Hokkaido, though, huh?” I said.