Still, it wasn’t as if I learned nothing from that unfortunate experience. The most important lesson my junior-high years taught me wasn’t anything from the curriculum, but that insulating yourself in an echo chamber of people who are too afraid to speak out or go against the grain only breeds narrow-mindedness. That was why I was so eager to take my father up on his offer to move me to the big city. My primary goal was to get away from insular, single-minded Sodeshima. I figured that in a place with as much diversity as Tokyo, the city I’d originally been born in, I was sure to find somewhere I could belong, some group of people who would accept me into their niche. Alas, those hopes were quickly dashed.
At first, people at my new school were extremely interested in me because my remote island lifestyle was something they couldn’t even fathom. Their curiosity didn’t last for very long. My natural awkwardness shined through soon enough, and my difference in life experience made it hard to relate to my fellow classmates, so I gradually became an outcast all over again. Then, after I failed a few tests in a row, some students started treating me as though I was some illiterate country bumpkin. There was nothing good about my time there. I persisted anyway, in the hopes that one day I’d meet someone who would be willing to accept me the way I was. Instead, my frustration continued to build and build, I grew more and more impatient, and with the incident last night, it all reached a boiling point.
“I knew it was a mistake to bring you back to Tokyo with me.”
When those words left his mouth, it felt like the entire city of Tokyo was sneering at me, ridiculing me for thinking I would ever fit in. I couldn’t bear to stay a moment longer, so I ran away to my grandmother’s house in Sodeshima as quickly as I could. Now here I was, running away from the place I’d run away to.
“Man, I wanna go home…”
Not to Tokyo nor Sodeshima—to some undefined concept of the word “home,” to some place out there where I could feel like I belonged. Where on earth that place might be, I didn’t know. Probably somewhere beneath cool linen sheets on a brisk spring morning, where I could sleep the day away in spite of the world. While I knew full well that that was a pipe dream, I still didn’t feel like going back to my grandmother’s house anytime soon. Luckily, there was plenty of daylight yet remaining, so I decided I’d wander around the island for a bit.
I moped around feeling sorry for myself for a while, until eventually I came to the concrete path that ran along the coast. There I was greeted by a powerful gust of saltwater wind that made my little hairs stand on end—both on the back of my neck and inside my nostrils. As with most small islands, the winds around Sodeshima were pretty intense all year long, mainly due to the lack of any significant land barriers to impede them. The open ocean was where strong winds were born, after all, which made Sodeshima a sitting duck right in the middle of the tempest.
As I walked along the shoreline, bracing against the blustery gale, I eventually came upon a young girl sitting on the waist-high seawall, her legs dangling out over the ocean as she gazed in longing toward the mainland. She wore a thin, slightly oversized sweater and a pair of plain, black comfy-casual pants. Her washed-out chestnut hair was styled in a shaggy, mid-length bob, and I could tell just from seeing her face in profile that she had a smooth bronze complexion. Except I already knew that her hair was only so washed-out because of chlorine bleaching, and that her skin color was not the result of any artificial tanning but the natural pigment she’d been born with. Her name was Akari Hoshina. She was the younger sister of the island’s star athlete, and also my best friend growing up.
“Aka—huh?”
I started to call out to her but then stopped short—because as the first syllables were leaving my lips, I noticed that there were tears streaming down her cheeks. There was something captivatingly natural about the way she was crying too—she wasn’t sniffling, wasn’t making any attempt to wipe her tears away, and hadn’t even blinked as far as I could see. I had to second-guess whether calling out to her now was truly a good idea. Still, I couldn’t very well walk right past and pretend not to notice her, so I slowly walked up behind her and called her name once I was a few feet away.
“Akari…?” I asked. She immediately whirled around, so fast that the centripetal motion sent teardrops flying off her cheeks.
“K-Kanae-kun?!” she said, gasping with genuine surprise as she shot up to her feet on the raised part of the seawall. “Wh-what are you doing h—ah, wagh!”
“Whoa, careful there!”
Perhaps due to how quickly she’d stood up, Akari lost her balance right away and nearly fell backwards into the ocean. Thankfully, my emergency reflexes kicked in. I shot forward to wrap my arms around her thighs (which were at eye level) and pulled her back in. For a split second, I could feel her body heat against my cheek, even through the thick cotton fabric. As soon as I made sure she’d regained her balance, I pulled away with urgency. That was one brash maneuver on my part—even if it was just to make sure she didn’t hurt herself. As I stood there, desperately praying that I hadn’t made things ten times more awkward, she hopped down from the seawall and brushed sand off the butt of her pants.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “You startled me, is all.”
“Yeah, my bad. I shouldn’t have snuck up on you like that. You all right?”
“Yep. A little frazzled, but beats falling to my death! Thanks for the assist!” she grinned teasingly. She didn’t look like she was planning to hold my jamming my face between her legs against me. As I let out a sigh of relief, I remembered what I meant to ask when I first saw her.