“Sorry? I didn’t quite catch that…”
“Um… I was wondering if maybe we could meet up for a little bit?”
“What, you want to hang out? Like, right now…? At one in the morning?”
“Mm-hmm…” she answered in a weak little voice. I could practically see the pleading puppy-dog eyes on the other end of the line. This, too, was very unusual; the Akari I knew would never call someone up this late at night, let alone ask to hang out. The fact that she was doing it now led me to believe that something must have been up. Concerned for her, I agreed right away.
“All right, sure thing. Just tell me where to go.”
“Wait, really? You mean it? …Okay, meet me at Central Park in, like, twenty minutes.”
“Central Park. Got it. Guess I’ll see you there, then.”
“Yeah, see you in a little bit.”
Central Park was a small but popular park that sat a little bit further inland. Generally, when someone from Sodeshima said “meet me at the park,” that was the one they meant. I assumed Akari had only specified so that I knew she wasn’t referring to the old, abandoned park I discovered the other day.
After hanging up the phone, I hopped out of bed and changed out of my pajamas into some sweatpants and a hoodie. I knew it would only take me about ten minutes to get there, but I decided to head out early anyway. Creeping down the stairs so as not to wake the rest of the family, I snuck out the back door and closed it quietly behind me. As the frigid night air caressed my cheeks, any semblance of drowsiness I may still have felt shot right out the window. Icy wind swept through the empty neighborhood streets, chilling me to my core.
I set off at a light jog in an attempt to conserve my body heat. Sodeshima’s neighborhoods had a lot of steep hills, so I normally never tried to run through them unless I was in a real hurry. I didn’t have many other options at this point—they got rid of my bike when I moved to Tokyo, so unless I felt like borrowing Eri’s, it was either run, or walk and turn into a human popsicle.
The scuffing of my sneakers against the pavement echoed loudly through the streets in a staccato rhythm. Sodeshima was awfully quiet at night this time of year. Whereas in Tokyo you could never escape the constant hum of car engines whirring past, here, the whole world seemingly came to a halt as soon as the sun went down. Sure, you’d have the occasional obnoxious jerkwad zooming loudly by on a motorbike, but those guys were the same no matter where you went.
I was at the park before I knew it, though Akari was nowhere to be found. I took a look at the tall street clock, its face lit up by the nearby lamplight, and saw that I’d arrived almost ten minutes early. I sat down to wait on a park bench, and the icy metal quickly set about draining all of the heat I’d built up in my flushed skin during the jog over here.
“…Brrr,” I shivered, belatedly realizing that I should have worn another layer or two.
Nothing set the imagination running wild quite like the anticipation of waiting for someone else to arrive. If I’d known I’d get here this early, then it might have been a good idea to swing by Akari’s place and pick her up along the way. Even if we did live out here in the boonies, it was still dangerous for a young girl like her to go walking around by herself at night. You never knew what kinds of creepers were lurking in the shadows, and the lack of light made it harder to see where you were going. I’d never had a late-night meetup with a girl like this before, though, so I guess I forgot to consider that aspect of it. Maybe it’d be a good idea to call her and offer to come meet her somewhere closer, even if she’d probably already left. Just as I was about to pull out my cell phone, I noticed a shadowy figure standing at the entrance to the park, and I could tell immediately from the silhouette that it was Akari. I shot up to my feet and called her name. She came trotting over the second she identified where I was.
“Hey, sorry,” she huffed. “Didn’t keep you waiting too long, I hope?”
“Nah, you’re good. I just got here myself.”
Now standing under the lamplight, I could actually see what Akari looked like. She wore a loose-fitting heavy cardigan, her fingers poking out from the overlong sleeves and gripping the thick fabric tightly. I felt a funny feeling well up inside my chest—there was something exhilarating about meeting up in the dead of night, especially since we’d never done anything remotely like this before.
“Oh, okay. Anyway, sorry for dragging you out here so late,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it. So tell me…”
I was about to ask her why she called me to meet up, when all of a sudden, the image of her crying beneath the cherry blossom tree at the abandoned park came shooting back into my mind so that her tear-drenched face overlapped perfectly with the one in front of me right now. I couldn’t get the sound out of my head: her softly weeping as Greensleeves began to play while a flurry of petals soared through the sky. I still wanted to know the reason behind those tears, so I decided to pivot to a different question.
“Why were you crying the other day?” I asked.
“Huh…? Crying? When was this?” she replied, staring back at me in bewilderment.