“There we go!” she exclaimed. “Well? Pretty sweet, huh?”
“Like hell it is! Where the heck did you learn to do that?”
“I used to come up here a lot whenever I needed some alone time. And, well… I always saw the padlock here, and eventually I started to wonder how hard these things really are to break, y’know? So I started practicing on it out of sheer boredom, basically, but then I ended up figuring it out in no time flat.”
“You’ve got waaay too much time on your hands, kiddo.”
“What can I say? I’m a simple woman. I see a door, I wanna open it.”
Akari did just that, and a bone-chilling gust of wind immediately blew inside from the newly opened door. I stepped through the doorway before taking a necessary moment to catch my breath. A gleaming full moon hung in the cloudless night sky. Beneath that were the sporadic dots of light from the fishing boats out on the ocean and, far off on the horizon, the distant lights of the mainland. The view was stunningly gorgeous. I felt like we were standing at the center of a panoramic impressionist painting.
“Damn… Now that’s pretty,” I said in awe.
“Yeah, wow… It’s my first time being here at night, but even I didn’t expect it to look this cool,” Akari agreed. Then, still gazing up at the night sky, she began slowly tottering over toward the edge of the roof. The protective fence around the perimeter only came up to about waist height, so it didn’t completely allay my uneasiness. The high school stood at such an elevated point on the island that there was nothing around it to block the strong winds. Yet Akari didn’t seem to care. She grabbed the railing with her hands and leaned her upper body out over the edge.
“Hey, be careful over there,” I warned.
“Oh, I’ll be fiiine. Hey, come on over here, Kanae-kun,” she implored me, but I was already well on my way. I took my place next to her along the railing; my eyes soaked in the nightscape sprawled out before us. Beautiful as it was, I faltered whenever I looked down from this height. It was so dark out, I couldn’t even see the ground below us. All I saw was a deep, black abyss. I shivered.
“What, are you afraid of heights?” Akari inquired.
“N-no,” I scoffed. “I’m a tiny bit cold, that’s all.”
“Oh, reeeally…” she said, eyeing me suspiciously. A moment later, she made a mischievous grin, as though she’d devised a fun new way to troll me. Without another word, she leaned in close and pressed her shoulder right up against mine. For a split second, I was extremely flustered by this. Then I decided to roll with it and act like it didn’t faze me at all. I was determined not to let her win. The fragrance of her shampoo drifted in the air between us, tickling my nose.
“You know, this is my favorite spot in all of Sodeshima,” she whispered in my ear. “It’s pretty during the day too. You can see the ocean, and the whole island, and even all the way over to the mainland.”
“Wow, yeah… That sounds really nice.”
“Doesn’t it, though? …Hey, look. There’s the Big Dipper,” she said, pointing up toward the sky and tracing the contours with her fingertip.
“Dang. The constellations are so easy to see from out here.”
“Can you not see many stars over in Tokyo?”
“You might be surprised, actually. The light pollution doesn’t affect it as much as people tend to think.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And the nightscape’s really beautiful too, of course. In a way, it’s kinda like the starry skies and city lights all come together to create one big, seamless gradient.”
“Huh… It sounds really cool when you put it like that,” she said, then lowered her gaze back down to stare across the ocean. She reached out a hand toward the distant mainland and whispered to herself: “I’d love to live there someday.”
“Then do it.”
“I’m not sure I could make it in the big city like you.”
“Sure you could. You’ve just gotta put yourself out there,” I said. “Heck, even if it didn’t work out, you could always come and live with me, y’know.”
Akari looked over at me, her eyes wide. I couldn’t blame her—even I couldn’t believe the words that had just come out of my mouth. I might as well have proposed to her. It took a solid few seconds for the full implications to truly set in, but my entire face flushed red in the instant that they did. I tried to backpedal a little bit.
“Er, sorry. I didn’t mean that in a weird way or anything…”
My mind was like a spinning whirlpool of emotions made up in equal measure of embarrassment and regret. I was so mortified, I wanted to die. But before I had a chance to consider hopping over the railing and putting myself out of my misery, something happened.
Akari wrapped her arms around me, suddenly and without warning. I was so startled by this that I completely froze in place, unable to even hug her back. With her hands clutching the back of my hoodie, she rested her head on my shoulder. The one-two punch of her soft touch and sweet fragrance must have blown a fuse in my brain, because for a minute, I forgot to even breathe. I stood there, thoughts empty, letting myself be embraced by Akari—unable to even freak out and ruin the moment. Then, eventually, I felt her warm breath seeping through the fabric of my hoodie. She was trying to say something.
“Please don’t ever hate me,” she begged.