Without looking, I could perfectly imagine my classmate’s smug grin. I made a conscious decision not to confirm it.
“So,” I said, “where to?”
“Mhm,” she said with a knowing cackle. How annoying. “Where to? We’re going to visit the shrine of the god of education. But first, we need lunch.”
Now that she mentioned it, I was getting hungry.
She said, “I was thinking the obvious—ramen.”
“No objection here,” I replied.
I followed her as she walked briskly through the bustling train station. She seemed to know right where she was going; she must have decided on a restaurant from the magazine she read on the bullet train. We took a staircase down which led directly to an underground mall. The signature aroma of ramen grew stronger as we walked down the stairs. Sooner than I expected, we were standing in front of the restaurant. It wasn’t the most glamorous location, and I started to question if this was the right choice, but I saw a page from a famous gourmet manga in which the restaurant had been featured taped to the wall. I felt reassured we weren’t going into some sketchy place.
The ramen was delicious. Our orders came out quickly, and we greedily devoured the noodles and soup. We both took advantage of the option to order a second helping, and when the waitress asked how we wanted our noodles, my companion said, “Like metal wire,” I politely went along with the gag. No one needs to know how embarrassed I became when that turned out to be an actual way people could order noodles. When the stiff noodles came, I imagined the cooking process must have been something like cutting kneaded wheat flour into thin strips and splashing them with hot water.
Fortified by our meal, we went straight back into the station and boarded a local train. The shrine where the god of education resided was only about thirty minutes away. We had no need to rush, but she was running this expedition, and if she said to hurry, I hurried.
On the train, I recalled something I once read. My lips tight, I said, “This is a dangerous prefecture—we’d better be careful. I heard they have shootings here.”
“Really?” she said. “That can happen anywhere. Take that murder just a prefecture away from ours.”
“I noticed they dropped it from the news.”
“I saw an interview with a policeman on TV,” she said. “He said random killers are the hardest to catch. Isn’t there a saying about how weeds grow faster than grass?”
“I think a murderer is on a different level.”
She grinned and said, “I guess that saying also explains why you’ll survive and I’ll die.”
“You know, I just realized something. You can’t trust a proverb.”
Thirty minutes later, we arrived at our destination. The sky was clear when I could have used a few clouds to turn away the sun’s heat. Even just standing there was making me vaguely sweaty. Up until this point, I’d thought I may get away without a change of clothes, but now Uniqlo was looking like a better idea.
“What beautiful weather!” she said. It was hard to say which was beaming more, her face, or the sun. With a buoyant step, she climbed the sloped, pedestrian-only street leading up to the shrine. The pilgrimage road was more crowded than I’d expected for a weekday afternoon. The street—lined on both sides by souvenir shops, various other stores, restaurants, and even one place that sold oddball T-shirts—offered no shortage of interesting sights. The shops selling a local bean cake snack particularly caught my eye, and my nose, as well.
Occasionally, one or another of the stores lured my companion in. We didn’t end up buying anything, but the storekeepers didn’t expect us to anyway, so we were able to browse without feeling uncomfortable about it.
Sweating, we reached the top of the road leading to the shrine grounds, where the first thing we did was buy drinks from a vending machine. Purchasing from a vending machine that had been so insidiously placed to guarantee a sale, I felt the sting of defeat, but the primal urge to quench my thirst superseded all reason.
She tousled her sweat-streaked hair and grinned. “This is the spring of life!”
“There’s nothing like spring about this. It’s too hot.”
“Have you ever played sports?”
“Nope,” I replied. “We of noble birth don’t need to exert ourselves.”
“Noble, riiight. You should exercise more. You’re as sweaty as I am, and I’m sick.”
“I don’t think a lack of exercise has anything to do with it.”
All around us were people sitting in clusters beneath the trees and seeking refuge in their shade. It wasn’t just me—the day was especially hot.
Thanks to our refreshments and our youth, we overcame our dehydration and set forth again. We washed our hands at the purification fountain, placed our palms on the hot metal of an ox statue, crossed a bridge over a pond where turtles swam, and finally arrived before the god of the shrine. A stone plaque explained the story behind the ox statue’s presence on the shrine grounds, but in the heat, I forgot what it said. My companion never read it in the first place.
I stood in front of the offertory box where the god’s money was kept, put in a meager offering, and announced my presence with the customary two bows, two claps, and a third bow.
I read somewhere that shrines weren’t places for praying for a wish to be granted; the point was to declare one’s determination to the god. But I wasn’t determined to do anything at the moment. Since I had to pray about something, I thought I’d help the girl standing next to me. Pretending not to know any better, I prayed to the god for a wish.
May her pancreas be healed.
I noticed she was taking more time with her prayer than I had. It must be easier to pray for something when you know it won’t come true. Maybe she was praying for something else, but I didn’t feel like asking her. Prayers should be quietly and privately offered.
When she finished, she said, “I prayed I would be able to stay active until I die. What did you pray for?”
I sighed. “You always have to crush my expectations.”
She gasped. “You prayed for me to get weak and infirm? How terrible! I thought you were better than that.”
“Why would I wish for something bad to happen?”
My prayer had been for the exact opposite of what she’d guessed, but I didn’t tell her. Anyway, wasn’t this shrine for the god of education? Then again, a god wouldn’t sweat the details.
Then she said, “Hey, let’s go get our fortunes!”
I frowned with my eyebrows. A fortune seemed incompatible with her fate; fortunes tell of the future, but she had none.
She trotted over to the counter where the fortunes were sold and dropped a hundred-yen coin into the offering box without skipping a beat. She then drew her number and found the small wooden drawer with the matching fortune. I followed suit out of obligation.
She said, “The winner is the one with the best fortune.”
“What do you think fortunes are supposed to be about?” I asked.
“Ah!” she exclaimed. “I got a ‘great blessing.’”
Fortunes could fall into categories ranging from great blessing to great curse. She looked happy, while on the inside, I was dumbstruck. What could the god have been thinking? If I ever needed proof that fortunes were nonsense, here it was. Or maybe this unexpected blessing was an act of kindness from a charitable deity.
She burst into loud laugher. “Look at this, look at this! It says my sickness will soon heal. As if!”
I eventually recovered from my stunned silence and said, “I’m glad you’re enjoying this.”
“What did you get?” she asked.
“Blessing.”
“That comes below small blessing, right?”
“Sometimes it’s below great blessing. I think it depends on the shrine.”
“Either way, I win. Ha ha!”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying this,” I repeated.
She pointed at my fortune and said, “Look, it says you’ll find a suitable marriage partner. Isn’t that nice.”
“If you really think it’s nice, you could sound a little more sincere about it.”
She tilted her head, leaned in close, and snickered at me. Caught off guard, I thought, If she kept her mouth closed, she’d be kind of cute, and in that moment, I knew I’d utterly lost this round.
I averted my eyes and heard her chuckle, but she didn’t say anything more.
We left the courtyard of the shrine’s sanctuary and went back the way we came. When we reached the bridge, we turned left instead of crossing and came upon the treasure hall and a second pond, this one called the Iris Pond. A great number of turtles were swimming, so I bought turtle food from a nearby stand and proceeded to toss it into the water. Watching the turtles’ leisurely movements, the day seemed to feel a little less hot. While I was absorbed in feeding the turtles, a small girl asked something to my companion, who responded with a pleasant smile. Again, I found myself thinking she was my polar opposite.
“Are you two in love?” the girl had asked.