Saigou High might be hell on Earth, but even they hadn’t done away with holidays entirely.
Obon came in the middle of our supposed vacation, and Saigou High’s summer curriculum took a one-week break.
Around this time of year, I always went to visit my family’s grave. I wanted to bring my elder sister an offering of incense and flowers.
That day, as the sun beat down on me, I left Kurumi’s house alone and made the trip back to my own neighborhood. I was headed for a tiny temple twenty minutes from the station on foot with a little cemetery next to it.
I’d avoided the busiest day, so the crowds were sparse.
I borrowed a pail and filled it with water, then hauled it and a scoop down the gravel path between the gravestones.
When I splashed water over the grave, the Shinohara family name glistened in the light.
“…I’m here again,” I said, putting the flowers I’d brought in a receptacle by the grave. I lit the incense and laid it sideways.
Kneeling down, I put my hands together, offering a prayer for Shion Shinohara—formerly Shion Natsume. She was four years older than I was, and she’d passed away as many years ago.
She’d thrown herself onto the tracks before an oncoming train. I’d heard that her suicide had stemmed from trouble with friends, but I didn’t know much more than that. It wasn’t that no one knew, however. I simply hadn’t been told.
Our parents had divorced eight years back, and we hadn’t been living together. We’d been too young to stay in touch on our own, so we hadn’t communicated at all. There was a four-year blank in our shared history, even back when she was still alive.
Our mother had parental rights to her, so my sister was part of her family. The two of us were basically strangers. And that meant I couldn’t get anything more than the most basic information.
I didn’t hold that against anyone. That was just how these things went. It wasn’t like knowing more would bring her back; fretting over it did me no good.
“……”
I closed my eyes and offered a silent prayer. The smell of lavender from the incense was quite strong.
My sister always used to look after me. That was why I came to see her every year. Before the divorce, when our parents were fighting, she often sat with me. She didn’t do much more than that. She was just there with me—but that had been everything. We looked a lot alike, and when I saw her expression, just as sad as my own, it showed me that I wasn’t alone.
I owed her a lot, and so I made sure to visit her every year.
Our dad certainly wasn’t going to come. If I didn’t visit, it felt like my sister would be utterly forgotten.
After a minute of silence, I stood up.
I cleaned up the incense and took the pail and scoop back to where I’d found them. While I was there, I washed the dirt from the flowers off my hands. The cold water felt nice.
After shutting off the faucet, I took out a handkerchief and dried my hands.
Then, just as I turned to leave, a rainbow orb passed right in front of me.
“Whoa!” I yelped, bending backward.
It was a soap bubble. One had just blown by, taking me by complete surprise.
Who was blowing bubbles in a graveyard? It made no sense. Then again, it was Obon, maybe someone had brought little kids along.
I looked upwind, searching for the source of the bubbles. And what I saw made me gasp.
But that was only natural. It was weird enough to see bubbles in a graveyard, but the person blowing them was even more unexpected.
There was Nana Nanaougi, sitting, knees up, on the stairs nearest the cemetery faucets. She had a blue bowl in hand and a yellow wand in the other. It was her blowing the bubbles.
“…Nanaougi.”
She looked up, like she’d just spotted me. She broke into a smile, like she was delighted to run into me.
“Yoo-hoo,” she said, waving. “Fancy meeting you here, Ren. Nice day, isn’t it?”
I returned this greeting with an impassive stare.
Let me be clear—I was pretty appalled. She’d come all the way here just to contact me? I didn’t get the bubbles, either. What was that about? She must have zero common sense. It was almost frightening.
“…What do you want?” I asked. “If you have something to discuss, there are better places.”
“Huh? I don’t want anything. I’m here to visit a grave. This is pure happenstance.”
I almost called her a liar to her face but caught myself and swallowed down the words. The grave behind her read “Nanaougi.”
That was hardly a common name. The idea that she’d followed me and just happened to find a grave with her same last name on it seemed a lot less likely than the alternative: that her family and my mother’s just happened to have graves at the same temple.
I supposed I’d have to take her word for it. We went to the same school, so it wasn’t that weird for her to live nearby.
I made a face, then shrugged and let the topic drop. Instead, I bulldozed through the awkward atmosphere with a complaint.
“Who blows bubbles in a graveyard?”
“Hmm? Is that bad? I’m making sure not to get the graves dirty.”
“It’s pretty bad. In fact, it’s totally lacking in common sense. Just think about it.”
“You say that, but my grandma always used to get bubbles for me, so I thought it would be nice to show her…”
She trailed off, and I found myself unable to say anything further.
Come on. I can’t argue if you bring up your dead grandma…