“Hey, Akari? Not that it’s any of my business, but…were you just crying a minute ago?”
“Huh? Ohhh, yeah, uh… My pollen allergies have been really acting up lately, you know how it is. Kinda annoying, but what are ya gonna do? Ah ha ha…”
She rubbed the corners of her eyes with her fingertips as she tried to laugh it off, but it hadn’t looked like a case of pollen allergies to me. I was convinced that there must have been another reason she was crying, maybe over something bad that happened today. Even if that had been the case, I wasn’t brazen enough to try to drag it out of her. Especially when this was our first time seeing each other in two years. I decided it might be best if I changed the subject.
“…Well, so long as you’re doin’ okay, I guess. Anyway, it’s good to see you again!”
“Yeah, good to see you too! We haven’t really seen each other since graduation, have we? You home for spring break?”
“Yeah, more or less. Planning to be here in town for a week or so.”
“Cool, cool. Plenty of time to get a little R&R in, right?”
“Yup, that’s the idea,” I said uninterestedly, then looked down at Akari’s legs. “So what’s new with you? I’m betting you’re still on the swim team?”
“I mean, yeah… What about it?”
“Oh, nothing, I just, uh… I could tell from your thighs, that’s all. No way they’d be that tight if you weren’t getting some kind of workout in every day.”
Akari stared at me like a deer in the headlights for a solid five seconds and then suddenly burst out laughing.
“Ah ha ha ha! I’m sorry, what?! Who are you, and what have you done with Kanae-kun? Or did all the red-light districts over there turn you into a massive creep?!”
“What?! C-c’mon, that wasn’t that creepy, was it?! I mean, I guess I see how you might take it as… Okay, yeah, it sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? Look, forget I said anything! Sorry.”
“Nope, too late now! I’m calling you ‘Kanae the Thigh Guy’ from now on! Or how ’bout this: ‘The Femur Fetishist’? …Wait, no! I’ve got it! ‘The Crural Connoisseur’! Ha ha ha ha!”
“Please, no. I will do literally anything.”
The two of us sat down on the seawall, facing inland this time, and shot the breeze for a good, long while. Akari was not only my closest childhood friend but also my very first crush. There wasn’t a specific moment or anything that made me fall for her—it was more like one of those things that you just kinda realize after a while. Sadly, my hopes came crashing down one day in junior high when I overheard her say something to another girl in our class:
“Me and Kanae-kun? Not a chance. We’re just friends. There are zero feelings there, believe me.”
I tried to convince myself it was a good thing I found out before I confessed to having a crush on her and made a fool of myself—key word being “tried.” After that, we maintained the status quo and never grew beyond platonic friends, until eventually we went our separate ways when the time came to move on to high school. It wasn’t uncommon for childhood friends like us to grow apart after a while—how many people could say their best friend at eight was still their best friend at eighteen? Not many, and I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. For me, it was enough that we could get together and reminisce about old times like this every once in a while. I couldn’t wish for anything more.
“Man, oh, man, Kanae-kun,” she said after a while. “I’ve gotta say, I’m relieved to see the big city hasn’t changed you all that much. Here I was half expecting you to come back with your hair dyed and a whole bunch of crazy piercings.”
“Please tell me you don’t think that’s how everyone in Tokyo looks,” I groaned.
“Well, no, obviously. But it’s one of the fashion capitals of the world, right? Bet you ran into all sorts of cute girls and models and whatnot, didn’t ya?”
“I mean, maybe compared to Sodeshima, yeah.”
“Oh yeah? Do tell. You got yourself a little girlfriend over there, big guy?” she asked, turning her head to the side to look up at me from below so she could gauge my reaction. Part of me wanted to say I did, for the sake of sheer bragging rights, but if she were to call my bluff it’d only make me seem more of a loser than I already was. She would never let me live it down, either. I decided to answer honestly.
“Nope, I sure don’t. Sorry to disappoint, but my social life over there has been preeetty boring so far.”
“Yep, figured as much.”
“Wow, okay. Didn’t realize I was getting roasted here,” I grumbled sarcastically. Akari snickered. I decided to turn the spotlight on her, even though I knew it wouldn’t be much in the way of payback. “You haven’t changed one bit either, you know that?”
“Really? You don’t think?”
“I mean, your hairstyle’s exactly the same, for one thing. I could tell it was you from a mile away.”
“…Really? I feel like I’ve changed a lot…” she mumbled to herself before looking dejectedly down at the ground.
If that was really how she felt, then surely something about her must have changed. I gave her another good once-over; obviously, puberty had done its work on her, but something told me that wasn’t what she was referring to. And on the off chance it was, I had no idea how I was meant to respond to that.
I brought my gaze back up to her face, which was when I finally noticed something about current Akari that junior-high Akari definitely lacked, albeit a pretty minor detail: there were faint black circles under her eyes. As I stared at them, wondering if perhaps she hadn’t been getting much sleep lately, she brought her own gaze up to meet mine, and our eyes locked.