WHEN YOU START THINKING that it’s warm, then it rains, and when you’re thinking that a bitter wind has really brought in the cold days, then the warm days come back. We have an idiom for that kind of weather, “three cold, four warm,” and it’s supposed to be a sign that spring is coming. Thinking about it that way, the cycle of warm and cold is as if spring is walking in little by little nervously, and it makes it kind of fun.
Getting into March, it’s a good time to see full-bloom plum flowers in my neighborhood. I’m not girly enough to go around admiring them, but from the front of Yukari’s house you can see a bunch of them in the distance like mist. The sight steals my breath away.
It was night. The air was moist, and there was no moon in the sky.
“Oh! Gaku-chan, there you are.” Yukari came from behind and sat beside me.
“Yeah… Flowers at night are pretty, aren’t they? I like that faint glow they give.” I’d looked at this view in the daytime, in the evening, and now, after the sun had set, and I did think it was prettiest at night.
“Yeah, actually, they light them up over there at night.”
“Oh… Okay, I get it. Where’s Tenjou and…?”
“At the back door picking on Kasoku-kun, who came to deliver sake. Why does Ten-chan always pick on Kasoku-kun so much? And lately Alice-chan’s been joining her. You know, Kasoku-kun is actually a really nice guy. He’s kind and reliable…”
“Don’t…worry about Kasoku. Didn’t you say he had amazing drills?”
“Ngh. You don’t stand up for Kasoku-kun either. Should I not have told you about his drills? Could it be that everyone is jealous of his drills? They are pretty dreamy, but…”
“Okay. I’ll tell Tenjou and Alice you said that.”
“H-huh?”
Yukari didn’t leave. This spring, she’d enter her third year of junior high with us. What I was worried about most now was whether we’d still be in the same class in the new school year.
I vaguely remember that in another world we were in the same class. (By the way, I had her seal away the calling feature of my left hand. I guess because of that, that “dream” had become really like a dream. I thought about taking out the cell phone itself, but I didn’t ask her to do that. After all, this left hand of mine was my bond with Yukari and the other “mes”.) That said, I couldn’t take it for granted. Especially given the confounding factor.
“But isn’t it great? We’ll be third-years with Alice-chan!”
“Yeah, yeah, sure.”
It turned out that Alice was going to stay at our school through the change of year. Originally, I understand she was planning to go back to Jaunt by the time we had the closing ceremony for the third term, but I guess she had some kind of change of heart, because in any case I heard she was extending her stay. Yukari was very happy about that, and I, well, sure, I was happy. Though Alice was still calling me a nobody on the daily and trying to judge whether I was worthy of being called a true friend.
(I’d say we were doing pretty well for all that.)
Alice and Nanami seemed to get along, perhaps because of their common perverse nature. This helped Nanami gradually start to interact normally with Yukari, which made Yukari plenty happy too.
Spring had nearly arrived: it would be the first time I would see winter turn to spring with not only Yukari but Nanami and Alice too. I had a feeling that this year would be even more fun than the last. I hoped we would be in the same class.
Gazing at the distant plum blossoms, floating illuminated in the night, I felt as if I was looking at something not of this world, peeking into the peach blossom spring.
Then I noticed Yukari looking at me. “What?”
Yukari shook her head. “Nothing.” She looked down and picked up one of the model robots dotting the veranda.
I naturally stared at it too.
Oh, yeah, weren’t these robots moving when that thing happened? Fighting to protect Yukari, looking at me as if concerned… I asked Yukari about it, and she brushed it off as my imagination, but I don’t think I could have mistaken anything else for that…
“Um, Gaku-chan?”
“Uh-huh?”
Yukari didn’t cast her purple eyes at me. She kept them glued to the robot in her hands as she dropped out the words, “Thank you.”
“Uh…for what?”
“Well, lots of stuff.” Yukari smiled.
She softly kissed the robot in the palms of her hands.
I watched her lips brush against it.
And for some reason, I felt unbearably embarrassed.