After Skank-san disappeared, I had only two choices of destination after school. One was Granny’s house atop the hill. The other was…
“I’m not really good at Othello, though.”
“Well then, I’ll let you go first.”
I had started collecting Miss Bobtail after school and heading to Kiriyuu-kun’s house. The first time I had shown up with my Othello set in tow, he was surprised, but his mother happily brought me orange juice. After a few visits, the shock finally wore off, and Kiriyuu-kun and I played Othello and drew pictures happily together. It was good for each of us to have something we were better at.
When I was at Kiriyuu’s house, my little friend always waited outside. She was rather shy, after all, and so was Kiriyuu-kun. Once, I invited him to come to Granny’s house, but he just froze, looking troubled.
“Well then, good tidings to you and your mother until we meet again,” I said in parting, as I did every day, waving to the two smiling faces before heading for the usual steep path with my black-furred friend.
“Happiness won’t cooome, wandering my way sooo!”
“Meow meow!”
“It’ll be summer vacation soon. What’re you gonna do?”
“Meow.”
“Well, you’re awfully carefree. I want to go to the pool. I have a new friend now. I should try to find a pool that lets in animals as well as humans.”
“Meow…”
She gave me an awkward look. She probably wasn’t so fond of the water.
“It’ll be fine. I can’t swim a whole twenty-five meters yet either. And if you really don’t want to go, I’ll find somewhere else for the three of us. Life is like summer vacation.”
“Meow.”
“You can do whateeeever you want! So you gotta find something awesome… That one might be a little too easy, huh?”
As we chatted, we soon arrived at Granny’s house. As always, I looked at the paper posted on the door, and as always I stepped inside. It was still hushed inside the wooden house, and although we couldn’t hear a sound, there was no need to go searching for Granny.
These days, she was always sleeping. Sometimes she noticed when I came in, other times she slept right through. I never tried to wake her. I would sit on the floor reading a book, or look at the picture on the wall, or play with my little friend. Sometimes she woke up before I had to go home; sometimes she didn’t. When she didn’t wake up, I always tore a page from my notebook and wrote her a note to say we had come.
“You seem to get sleepy a lot in summer. I always get sleepy in spring.”
“When you get older, time seems to go more quickly. Perhaps I’m already in next spring,” she said once.
I thought it was a truly curious and wonderful sentiment. If time moved faster for you, then you could have so many more fun times in a year, after all. Even so, I began to worry about just how much she seemed to be napping.
Ever since Skank-san disappeared, Granny always seemed to be sleeping, and often times did not even notice I was there. I worried that if she napped that often during the day, she might not be able to sleep at night. But that was not all that worried me.
Summer vacation would soon be upon us, and so would the final presentation of our unit. What was happiness? The days flew by, and I could not formulate an answer. At this rate, I really was going to run out of time.
Granny was asleep again today. Sitting beside her, I stared up at the ceiling, my arms folded. But no answer came falling down from the sky. Probably because the ceiling was in the way.