“Heh. Yeah, I know.” Akira chuckled boastfully as she puffed out her chest. “But go on—feel free to keep telling me how great I am.”
“I mean, you’re cool and clever too… Not to mention cute.”
“Wh—” Akira let out a flustered squeal, then promptly pouted and turned away. “Shut the hell up. I ain’t cute, and you know it…”
“Sure you are. What with the way your canines peek out whenever you smile, or how your hair looks like you draped a big ol’ sunflower over your head, or how you get all pouty over certain things… Oh yeah, and the way you get this little glint of innocent, childlike wonder in your eyes from time to time, like whenever we—”
“Gaaaah! Okay, okay, I get it! Enough, already!” she interjected, waving her hands frantically. She was bright red from ear to ear. “Man, you really don’t have any problem at all just comin’ right out and saying stuff like that, do you…? I’m gonna have to watch myself around you, or I’ll be in deep trouble…”
Akira sat back down on the bench beside me, shaking her head as she fanned her face with her hand. I pulled out a bottle of water from my backpack and drank the last few swigs. After taking some time to cool off a bit, Akira reopened the conversation.
“Anyway, as I was about to say before that whole tangent…” she began. “So, um… Believe it or not, I’ve never actually been any farther west than Tokyo.”
“Wait, huh?” I said, sounding more surprised by this than I intended.
“I never brought it up before because I didn’t wanna seem like an uncultured hick or anything,” she continued, apparently rather ashamed to admit this. “But yeah, pretty much all of my friends have been to Osaka or Nagoya or something at least once in their lives. But we never had a lot of extra money, so I could never really afford to go with them, and my folks never took us on family vacations either… So I guess I was just thinking…”
Akira turned to face me.
“If you don’t mind, maybe we could head over to Kansai?”
I almost thought I felt the wind blow.
Already, I was picturing it in my head.
A new adventure, just waiting to begin.
Exhilaration coursed through my chest.
I’d never wanted anything more in my life.
“Let’s do it,” I said. “I’ll go to Kansai, or Kyushu, or anywhere at all—anywhere our feet can take us.”
“You mean it?” said Akira.
“Yeah. Hell, we could go all the way around Japan, if we wanted to.”
Akira’s face lit up like the first ray of sunlight after a month of snow. “Now that would be pretty cool, yeah.”
Even with all of our many detours, it had taken us nearly two full months just to make it from Hakodate down to Tokyo. How long would a tour of the entirety of mainland Japan take us, in that case? Over a year, maybe? Not that it really mattered when time was stopped; we could enjoy ourselves or just laze however we liked. We could indulge in this eternal instant of happiness—this timeless paradise for us, and us alone—for as long as we wanted to, and there was nothing anyone else could do to stop us.
So forget the future. All we needed was now.
“Mmmnnngh…”
Akira took a deep breath and held it in a while as she stretched out her back and all of her limbs—then let them fall limp again when she finally exhaled.
“Man, I’m feeling really tired all of a sudden,” she said, doing her best to stifle a yawn. Perhaps her exhaustion was finally catching up with her now that the rush of adrenaline from achieving our initial objective yesterday had worn off.
“Wanna look for someplace to stay?” I asked.
“Mmm, nah. Think I’ll just take a quick nap for now. Weather’s nice enough, and I kinda wanna just lie down right here on the grass. Plus, I don’t even have to worry about any bugs crawling all over me for once. Perks of living in a frozen world, I guess, heh.”
There was a dense patch of grass just behind our bench, where the ground slanted upward at a very gentle incline. It looked pretty comfy right about now, honestly.
“You gonna take a nap too, Mugino?” asked Akira.
“Yeah, I think I will… Oh, but before I forget,” I said, then reached into my backpack and pulled out my notebook and a pen. “Let me just jot down the gist of what happened at my uncle’s place real quick. I’ll come join you as soon as I’m done.”
“Roger that, chief.”
Akira carried her backpack over to the patch of grass, then laid it flat to use as a pillow before lying down herself. Meanwhile, I set my notebook on my lap and got to writing. Regardless of how long our journey might continue, I still wanted to make an effort to keep writing journal entries on a daily basis. It would be good insurance to have in the event that something unexpected happened.
As I scribbled down a quick summary of the previous day, I noticed my ink starting to run dry. My characters grew fainter, and each stroke became a struggle. It seemed it was about time to retire this old pen.
“Hey, Iguma-san?” I said. “You still awake over there?”
“Mmwha?” Akira responded, still lying flat on the ground with her eyes closed.
“My pen ran out of ink, so I’m gonna go find myself a new one.”
“Mmmnnyeah, okay… Oh, wait,” she added sleepily, sitting halfway up. “Could you get me some water, actually? I literally just ran out.”
“Yeah, sure thing. I’ll grab a few.”
“Cool, thanks. See you in a bit,” she said, flopping back down.
Okay, one ballpoint pen and a few bottles of water… Maybe I should pick us up some snacks or something while I’m at it.
I wasn’t sure how much I was going to end up getting, so I closed my notebook and set it on the bench, then emptied out a few things from my backpack to make room for this little impromptu shopping trip. I stood up, walked out of the park, and looked for any nearby convenience stores. I was fairly certain there had to be one somewhere around here… Aha. There we go. Right on the corner.