This was ten times more embarrassing than I was ready for. I immediately started beating myself up internally. Way to go, dumbass. Think you might’ve laid it on a liiittle too thick there. How are you gonna follow that up, wise guy? We simply stood there in silence for a while, Akari refusing to make eye contact while I plumbed the trenches of my mind in desperation for anything remotely decent to say. An ice-cold breeze tickled the back of my neck, sending an electric chill down my spine and breaking the moment at last.
“L-Let’s lay the blanket down, why don’t we?” I blurted out after far too long. “It’s not much of a picnic if we’re standing up the whole time.”
“R-right, good idea,” Akari agreed. “My legs could use a rest anyway.”
Akari pulled the picnic blanket out from her bulky tote bag, and together we laid it out at the foot of the tree. We both took our shoes off and sat down side by side. It wasn’t the largest blanket in the world, however, so our knees were practically touching.
“Okay, so are you ready to try one of these rice balls or what?” she asked.
“Oh, hell yeah,” I said. “Let’s pull those babies out.”
Since I’d just had dinner a couple of hours ago, I wasn’t actually very hungry, but I wasn’t about to voice that when she’d gone to the trouble of making food for us. She pulled a small plastic container out of the tote bag, set it on her lap, and removed the lid, revealing two neatly packed rows of triangular rice balls—about ten in total.
“Wow, you really went all out!” I said.
“Ah ha ha, thanks… Yeah, I hadn’t made them in a while, but once I got started, I just couldn’t stop.”
“Well, I guess we’d better check out how they taste!”
I plucked a single rice ball from the litter. It was beautifully shaped and still a little bit warm. I bit into it and was pleased to discover some juicy bits of salmon inside. I wasn’t sure whether she actually remembered salmon was one of my favorite foods or it was a sheer coincidence, but it made me pretty happy regardless.
“Oh yeah,” I nodded. “That’s really good.”
“You mean it?!” she beamed. “Phew, thank goodness. Feel free to have as many as you like, okay?”
I proceeded to thoroughly stuff my face, though I made sure to chew each bite thoroughly and with my mouth closed. I didn’t want to let the love and care she poured into them go to waste. Akari simply watched me chow down with a giddy smile on her face.
“You’re not hungry?” I asked between bites.
“Oh, I’ll be having some. Don’t you worry,” she said—then grabbed a rice ball, took a polite little nibble, chewed, and swallowed. By the time she finished her first one, I was already reaching for my third.
“Kinda reminds you of eating cafeteria food back in elementary school, huh?” I asked.
“Mmyeah, I guessh sho,” Akari said with her mouth full.
“You were always the last one to finish your lunch, I remember. Heh-heh.”
Akari gulped down her current mouthful before responding.
“I mean, I was a shrimpy kid back then, with a tiny stomach to match, y’know? It was honestly an ordeal just trying to cram everything in there each day. Had to take lots of breaks.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like anyone was forcing you to eat it all, either. I remember being really worried about you hurting yourself back then—half the time, you looked like a chubby-cheeked chipmunk choking to death. It’s not worth cleaning your plate if it means having literal tears in your eyes by the end of it.”
“Hey, you know I don’t like wasting food! Though there was that one time I puked it all up. Now that was a nightmare.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot all about that…”
“Wow, really? That surprises me, considering you stayed behind to help me clean up afterwards.”
“…Wait, I did? Heh. Nice job, little me.”
We carried on like this, reminiscing about old times as we munched on rice balls. After about another thirty minutes, the container was empty. I was thoroughly stuffed by that point and rubbed my bloated waistline with both hands.
“Phee-yew!” I said, exhaling hard. “That was really good. Don’t think I could eat another bite, though.”
“Yeah, me neither. Want some tea?” Akari offered.
“Oh, absolutely.”
Akari pulled out her thermos and poured some tea into a little cup; I could see that it had been kept steaming hot. I thanked her and reached out to take the cup—and our fingers touched for just a split second.
“Gosh, your hands are freezing, Kanae-kun.”
“Really? Pretty sure this is my normal body temperature.”
I glugged down the tea and handed the cup back to Akari. She put it down, then reached out her own hands and wiggled her fingers in a “gimme” gesture.
“Here,” she insisted. “Let me see.”
“What, are you gonna read my palm or something?” I quipped but held out my right hand regardless. Akari grabbed it firmly with both of hers and pulled it in close, mere inches from her face. The softness of her skin and the rolling, massage-like movements of her fingers were more than enough to make my heart beat double time.
“Yeah, you’re pretty cold, all right,” she said.
“W-well, you know what they say. Cold hands, warm heart.”
“Oh, is that how that works? Gotcha.”
I’d given a canned response on my part, but she took it as genuine. Meanwhile, I was stuck in limbo, my eyes darting from side to side without ever looking directly at her—I knew no matter how uncomfortable I felt about this, wresting my hand away from her would only make things ten times more awkward. I knew one thing for sure, though. This method of hers was making my face heat up way faster than it was warming up my hands.
Something I’d noticed but hadn’t really dwelled upon over the past couple of days was how assertive Akari was being with me, to the point that it would be very easy for someone to read it the wrong way—especially after what happened last night on the school roof. Perhaps something had happened between us in the time period I hadn’t experienced yet which helped bring us closer together. Though it must have been pretty abrupt, if so, because there were only two days of Rollback left at this point.
“Hey, Kanae-kun. Do you still remember that time back in second grade when you came to my rescue?” Akari asked, snapping me out of my reverie.
“Huh? In second grade?” I replied. “Could you be a little more specific?”
“You know, the time everyone was making fun of my skin. You came up, grabbed me by the hand, and dragged me out of the classroom.”
“Oh, riiight… I feel like I vaguely recall doing something along those lines…”
“Yeah? How ’bout the part where you tried to cheer me up by sucking on my fingers?”
All of a sudden, the contours of the faint memory I’d been reaching for at the back of my mind became crystal clear—and the thick layer of embarrassment and regret it had been buried under came rushing to the surface.
“Oh my god, why did you have to remind me of that?” I groaned. “And here I tried so hard to block that awful memory out of my mind…”
“Awful?! What?! I mean, yeah, it was a little cringeworthy… But it meant so much to me at the time!”
“A little?! You don’t just shove other people’s fingers in your mouth, Akari. Even a second grader should know better than that…”
“Oh, please. It’s not that weird.”
Akari stared down at my hand for a moment, fixated, then brought it in even closer to her face. Then, she opened her mouth, and my heart raced. Was she really about to do the same thing to me, just to prove it wasn’t anything to be ashamed of? For a split second, I panicked, but no. All she did was purse her lips and blow out a few slow puffs of hot air, so that her humid breath enveloped my hand in a blanket of warmth.
“There. Did that warm you up?” Akari asked with a playful grin.
“…Yep. I’m officially nice and toasty,” I surrendered.
“Heh-heh… Good.”
I had to resist the urge to let out a long and wistful sigh. I was thoroughly content in this moment. Being together with Akari like this felt so comfortable, so natural, that I nearly forgot the reason I’d brought her here—to find out whether or not she was hiding something from me. If I allowed myself to let that little tidbit slip from my mind, I could fully immerse myself in the happiness I was feeling right now. Too bad that it wasn’t an option. I needed to clear up as many remaining uncertainties as I could if I was going to prevent Akito’s death. There was no excuse for me to leave any stone unturned when someone’s life was on the line.
“Kanae-kun? What’s wrong?” Akari asked as I sat there lost in thought, her voice tinged with concern. Her eyes looked so pure and innocent, clear as a winter morning’s sky. After hemming and hawing about it for much too long, I finally said screw it and asked her point-blank:
“Akari, I really hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but…”
“Mm? What’s up?”
“You’re not hiding something from me, are you?”
“…Hiding something? Like what?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Like…what happened on the night of April 1st, for example?”
I could almost hear Akari’s heart skipping a beat. Or at least, that was how it felt to me. Judging from the way her hands were trembling, my question had obviously come as a huge shock to the system. She slowly pulled her hands away from mine, and I watched the vivacity drain from her face as she did so. This time, it wasn’t just my right hand that felt exposed to the cold night air. My heart did too.
“Kanae-kun, I…” she began, her voice a fragile whisper. She didn’t finish her sentence, and so I waited. I was prepared to wait as long as it took for her to complete that thought. After what felt like an entire minute, she delivered, in a soft yet heart-wrenching voice: “I can’t talk about that.”
I could hardly believe my ears.