“Hey, Yashiro-kun! I need advice!”
“Again?”
I was reading just like I always did during our breaks, when Hanamizawa-san came up to me. She’d been doing that every once in a while ever since we went to karaoke, but we’d only exchange a few words. She hadn’t asked me for advice in a while.
Ever since I taught her how to spend time alone, she seemed a lot more relaxed than usual, and it looked like she was having fun. Anyway, now she was asking for advice and I nodded to give her the go ahead.
“It’s gotten a lot easier for me to do things by myself now, like karaoke and stuff. And when I’m talking to my friends, sometimes I can say how I’m really feeling now.”
“That’s a good thing, right?”
“Yeah, I guess. But!” She slammed her hand down on the desk and leaned forward.
You’re a little too close for comfort again.
“You know that karaoke place we went to? Well, they’re really rude to solo customers on Saturdays and holidays!”
“Oh, right...”
Karaoke places charged more for solo customers on weekends, and you couldn’t get a refund if you paid for two hours but only ended up using one. They wanted to pack their rooms full of groups on the weekends because it made way more money. I couldn’t blame them for that. Besides, the place we went to treated customers pretty well during the week, so I couldn’t complain.
Hanamizawa-san pressed her hands together and pleaded, “Please teach me how to have fun alone on weekends!”
“Why are you asking me, though?”
“Because you’re, like, the master of being alone.”
“I don’t remember ever having that title!”
“Master! Please have mercy on your unworthy apprentice and teach me!”
“I don’t remember making you my apprentice!” I sighed when she pressed her hands together again, begging me. “Plus, if you wanna talk about the real master of being alone—” I was about to turn around, but I felt the girl behind me press a hand against my back. It was absolutely frigid. Was she always this cold? That icy touch must have been her way of saying, “Don’t you dare talk about me.”
“Hm? What’s wrong?” Hanamizawa-san gave me a puzzled look.
“It’s nothing. Anyway, you wanna know how to spend weekends alone?”
“Yep!”
Weekends, huh... The easiest suggestion would be studying at the library. It’s pretty empty if you go in the morning, so we’d probably be able to get two seats. But I wasn’t sure if that was what Hanamizawa-san was looking for. “And studying’s out, right?”
“I think it’s weird that you’re so insistent about pushing studying on me.”
Figures. Hm, where else do I go on weekends... “Oh!”
“What, what? Did you think of something?”
“Is your house nearby?”
“Huh? Um... Maybe, like, twenty minutes by foot.”
“Can you get to the Kawaguchi Kori Station?”
“The station on the other side of the river, right? It’s a little far, but I could ride my bike.”
All right, perfect. “Okay, I’ll give you the address so you can use the navigation on your phone to get there.”
“You’re coming with me though, right?!”
I looked at her with surprise. She beat me to the punch, realizing that I was gonna tell her to just go alone. I guess her ability to read the room was another reason she was so popular.
She put her hands on her hips and pouted. “This is my first time, so I’m nervous! You gotta come with me and show me exactly how to do it, just like last time.”
“Can you stop phrasing things in a way that’ll make people get the wrong idea? And do I have to go?”
“Please! Just think of it as doing me a favor!” she pleaded with puppy-dog eyes. It was really hard to say no to, but...
“It’s the weekend, though. If people see us out together they’ll think we’re on a date.”
“Pfft, ah ha ha ha!” She burst out laughing. Dabbing at the corners of her eyes she said, “We’re just going to hang out! No one’s gonna think it’s a date. You’re way too self-conscious.”
Hmm, am I?
“Or is the place you have in mind somewhere weird that would make people think we’re on a date?” She said it in a teasing voice, but her cheeks were slightly flushed.
Maybe she was feeling a little self-conscious too. “It’s not, but whatever.” I had a feeling this back-and-forth was going to go on for a while. I scratched my head. “There’s just something I gotta tell you first.”
“Hm? What?”
“You have to bring a change of underwear.”
“Huh?” She froze. Then once she comprehended what I’d just said, she exclaimed, “What?!” and turned as red as a lobster. “U-Underwear?! You said you weren’t taking me anywhere suspicious!”
“Yeah. But you’re definitely gonna need it. Some people take off their socks as well.”
“You have to take off your socks?!”
“Not everyone does. I leave mine on.”
“Ohhh, I see. So you’ve got some kind of fetish!”
Huh? Fetish? Oh... I finally realized that she’d gotten entirely the wrong idea. Her face was bright red and she was fidgeting around all suspiciously.
“Oh, uh... I didn’t mean it like that.” I considered clearing it up, but decided I’d just let her have the wrong idea. Maybe she’d change her mind and say she didn’t want me to come along after all. Besides, it was way more amusing this way. She was being a pain forcing me to come along with her, so this was some sort of payback.
With both hands pressed against her burning face, she hesitantly asked, “Um... Should the extra underwear I bring with me be, like...pretty?”
“Hm? Well, I guess so, since people will be looking at them.”
“They will?!” She wrapped her arms around her body. Yeah, she totally had the wrong idea.
“So what do you think? Wanna back out?” I asked, hoping she would say yes. She thought about it for a while and then looked down at the ground, cheeks flushed.
“I-I’ll go.”
◊◊◊
The following Sunday, we were supposed to meet up at 11 a.m. at the bus terminal at the Kawaguchi Kori Station. I’d taken my bike, and by the time I arrived, Hanamizawa-san was already waiting on a white Citi bike with a brown basket attached to it. Apparently that’s how she’d gotten here. She looked nice in her dress and white sun hat. I slowed down as I approached her, but she didn’t recognize me at first. But once I stopped in front of her and took off my helmet, her eyes grew wide.
“Huh? Yashiro-kun?!”
“Yeah, it’s me. You been waiting long?”
“No, I mean I did get here early but I haven’t been waiting very long. But...” She pointed at me. “What are you wearing?!”
“What do you mean? These are cycling clothes.” I was wearing a cycling jersey, bike shorts, a helmet, and UV rash guards on my arms. Basically, I was dressed like a cyclist. It wasn’t all that unusual, since I was riding a flat top road bike today.
Hanamizawa-san pressed a hand against her temple. “It’s weird that you don’t find anything strange about it in the first place! Why in the world would you go meet a girl dressed in full cyclist gear from head to toe?!”
“Because someone told me if I was meeting a girl to hang out on the weekend, thinking of it as a date would be too self-conscious. So who cares what I wear?”
“Okay, maybe I did say that! But would any normal person really wear something that stands out so much? I mean, I went out of my way to do what you said! You know, about the underwear...”
“Huh?”
“Nothing! What? Are we going cycling or something?”
“Nah, I already did that. About eighteen miles along the river.”
“Why in the world would you do that before coming to meet me?!”
“Well, I wanted to work up a good sweat first.”
“You wanted to work up a sweat before you went to meet a girl?! Listen, I don’t have some kind of body odor fetish!”
“What the hell are you going on about?”
“You’re looking at me like I’m crazy, but that’s my line!” She let out a deep sigh, tired of bantering back and forth.
“C’mon, let’s just go. It’s pretty close by.”
“Fine. Seriously though, what’s with you?” she grumbled as she followed after me. It took about three minutes to get there by bike from the Kawaguchi Kori Station. “Th-This is it?” Her mouth hung open as she looked up at the building.
I gestured like a tour guide, revealing my secret. “Yes, right in front of us is our destination: Royal Spa Kori.” In other words, a huge bathhouse. It was about the same size as a gym if it had a swimming pool inside, decorated in a southeast Asian theme with palm trees and flags advertising their natural hot springs. This place boasted about its proximity to the center of Kawaguchi City, but if you dug around a little bit, you could find about four bathhouses that featured natural hot springs in a thirty minute radius by bike. Some were even smack dab in the middle of a residential area, and Royal Spa Kori happened to be one of them.