Chapter 22

That led to a discussion about hair products and hairstyles, peppered with talk about the stuff we’d done and the food we’d eaten that day. We were just sort of chatting away when one of us, Hiwatari, exclaimed, “I’ve got a new topic for us—L-O-V-E!” and the discussion took a new turn. “I’ll take point on this one,” I said. If I didn’t, who would? “No, you go last,” said Karasubara, an excitable event-planner type of guy. “We’ll be here an hour. I should know, it’s happened to me,” Tashiro said, recoiling in what I felt was really an overdramatic reaction. He was holding a bottle, one of the carbonated juice drinks they’d served at dinner in lieu of beer. And here he’d just brushed his teeth. “Okay, right at the end, then. We can fall asleep to it, like a lullaby,” said Shirahama. He was good friends with Tashiro and was in step with him now, but his remark was even more cutting. He was starting to yawn; he was on the basketball team at school and had been mountaineering today. “You know what they say—fall asleep to a lullaby of love and you’ll live it in your dreams,” said Hiwatari, openly envious of me. He’d been the one to bring the subject up, but I guess he didn’t have any actual romantic experience to share. (Maybe it wouldn’t be nice to say that out loud.) Miyano was grinning a little. He was ahead of the curve on this subject, as of just a few hours ago. “Okay, I’ll start,” offered Shirahama. “Girls… Let’s see… I want a girl shorter than me. I want to be able to pat her on the head.” Not a surprising declaration from a guy who always seemed shallow and superficial. “Pat her on the head? Yuck. What a way to talk,” Hiwatari said. I agreed with him. “Short girls, huh? I guess you’ve got the height. But you’re not even 180 cm, are you?” Tashiro asked. “I’ll have you know I’m 175,” Shirahama shot back. He was so slim that he looked taller than the number suggested. “So I guess 170 would be about right, in Shirahama-Land?” Tashiro said. “Yeah, that would be fine. All girls are cute anyway.” I guess he didn’t mind tall girls, either. “All of them? So you’d be okay with an older girl?” “Oh, for sure. One hundred percent!” “This guy doesn’t have any criteria!” Karasubara groaned. “I really screwed up going to an all-guys school,” Shirahama said. “I should’ve gone coed.” To hear him talk, you did have to wonder what he was doing in a men-only institution. “You mean it? Just the other day, you were saying how easy life is with only guys around.” Leave it to Tashiro not to let him off easy. “When was this?” “After gym class. You said the guys all stink, so you didn’t have to worry about your body odor.” “You’re imagining that. Anyway, Tashiro, you wouldn’t know if I stink. I’m always careful on the way home.” Coming from Shirahama, who never allowed so much as a hair on his head to be out of place, you could believe it. “Oh, c’mon. No guy ever smelled good,” Karasubara interjected. “Mere prejudice from someone who makes no effort to maintain good hygiene.” “I make some effort!” Banter like this between Karasubara and Shirahama was perfectly ordinary in class, so it was strange to me that it seemed so special while we were all lying around. I continued to listen and refrained from pointing out the fact that this wasn’t really “love talk,” they were just talking about types. “Smell…” I heard Miyano murmur from beside me. It didn’t sound like a carefully considered part of the conversation; more like it had escaped without his meaning it to. “What’s that?” I asked softly. He flinched and blinked. “Oh, nothing… I just suddenly remembered how Sasaki smells like bread sometimes.” “Oh…” He just remembered? What kind of answer was that? I wondered if he knew that Sasaki’s family ran a bakery. I was pretty sure I’d mentioned that I’d seen Sasaki at his part-time job once, but I wasn’t sure I had actually told Miyano at that moment. Sasaki had popped out of the store, and I’d realized that was where he lived. Eh… Never mind. “Okay, my turn next. Karasubara! Okay? Why thank you.” “Great! You’re your own MC,” Tashiro quipped, teasing him for essentially playing to his own crowd. “Laugh it up,” Karasubara said. “Anyway, me, I like women who know their history.” “Are you a history buff?” Miyano asked, and Karasubara nodded emphatically. “Sure am. History is a story! We’re left with the conclusion, and we research and investigate, and uncover what happened and where and how piece by piece. I love putting those puzzles together, using whatever we know happened and letting my imagination take it from there. And sometimes they’ll find some old book, and that one text will turn everything we thought we knew upside down! History is new every day!” “Gee, you make it sound pretty neat,” said Tashiro. He always said exactly what he meant, so his compliment made Karasubara blush a bit. I understood—Tashiro was such a straight shooter with his kind words that you could get a little bashful. “Well, uh, I mean, that’s the reason that makes me sound good,” Karasubara said. “But the truth is, in my first year of middle school, there was this girl in my class who liked history. I mentioned something about the subject to her, just something I’d picked up on TV, and she was so thrilled. She started to talk to me all the time, and I thought she was really cute. And that was… I mean, my first love… And thanks to her, I started studying a lot about history.” There was a collective sigh as Karasubara finished talking. “No fair dropping a bittersweet story of first love on us! I wasn’t ready, and you hit me right here!” Shirahama said, pounding himself on the chest. “So what happened with this girl?” Tashiro demanded. Karasubara shook his head. “I told her how I felt about her on the day of our graduation ceremony, but she shot me down. She said she wanted someone like the great warlord Oda Nobunaga…so his era is the only one I can’t stand.” That story sounded vaguely familiar… Even if the ending was different. “Really? But you get such good grades in history class,” Hiwatari said. “That’s because I can’t un-learn stuff about the warring states period! Even if I hate it! So of course I put what I know on tests and whatever. She loved that time period, so I learned a lot about it while I was busy having an unrequited crush!” Apparently, Hiwatari had struck a nerve. This was the tricky part of sharing your love stories. “That’s knowledge hard-won,” Shirahama said. I wondered if he had a crushing story of first love, too, even if he wouldn’t fess up to it. “I wish I could get good grades,” said Tashiro, who seemed to be enjoying the pathos. “Damn right you do.” Karasubara laughed, and then he said, “Hiwatari, you next.” “My case is pretty classic: She was a manager for the same club I was. Really cute girl.” “I thought this was an all-boys school?!” Miyano almost choked. “There are other schools! They do exist! You can bump into the manager of another school’s team!” He sounded very passionate about it, but everyone looked at him in confusion. The natural question was: Even if you happened to meet another school’s manager, would you really have a chance to talk with her? “She’s nothing but an opponent, then,” I pointed out. “And her school’s team must be good, right? Otherwise they wouldn’t be a rival,” Miyano said. “What are we good at? Soccer, basketball, kendo… Maybe ping-pong, too.” At the word ping-pong, Tashiro sat up suddenly. “What team are you on again, Hiwatari?” “Geez. The soccer team,” he said. He seemed annoyed, but honestly, I hadn’t been sure either, so I was glad Tashiro asked. “What position?” “I’m the manager.” Now it made sense. “You are?! I guess you can think of another school’s manager as your rival…” “Sounds like a tough job,” said Karasubara, nodding and looking very engaged. “It keeps me pretty busy, yeah, but I like the behind-the-scenes stuff. Not just helping out with practices but tracking data and keeping in touch with whoever we need. I really enjoy it.” I made an impressed noise. It sounded like a lot of detailed work. “Don’t you ever wish you were on the field?” asked Miyano. He was no athlete and not even a manager, but something about this seemed to have spoken to him. Actually, thanks to my girlfriend’s lessons, I thought I knew what it was: probably the potential relationships he imagined between the players and the manager at an all-boys school. Intra-team BL. Sigh. “I actually did play up until middle school, but I liked watching games better. Besides, sometimes we would go to practice games against other schools, or they would come to us, and a lot of the managers handling prep and keeping everything moving were girls. It was like, Wow! I knew how much work it was, and it was great to watch them pull it off.” “Ah, the bloom of youth,” Miyano said. Come to think of it, one of the recent books my girlfriend asked me to buy featured a sports team at an all-boys school. “Never got a girlfriend out of it, though,” Hiwatari said. “Wouldn’t be the bloom of youth if you had.” Gee, this story even came with a punchline. “All right, next is… Let’s go with Tashiro!” Karasubara said. Tashiro cocked his head contemplatively. “My type, huh…” He played with his long, slightly damp bangs. For once in his life, he looked like he was thinking seriously. “Hmm… Huh… My first love…” Did it really take that much thinking? “Don’t have one? Or you don’t remember her?” Miyano asked, looking almost as confused as Tashiro. “What, a first love? I think it was probably a teacher in elementary school or something.” “I knew you’d always been into older women!” Shirahama joked. I wondered if he knew something about Tashiro’s past that we didn’t. “What do you mean, you knew?! Anyway, my type… My type is whoever I have a thing for at that particular moment.” “That’s not a type!” Karasubara said. He didn’t look happy—maybe he was still stewing after that heart-wrenching story of lost love. “I mean, how am I supposed to know? Besides, I don’t want to cut down my options by getting stuck on one thing.” So he won’t turn down any offers? If that was true, though, it seemed like Tashiro shouldn’t have any trouble falling in love and getting someone to love him back. Just personally, I was leery of introducing my girlfriend to people like Tashiro, whose charm was firing on all cylinders constantly. They seemed even more likely to get along without me than someone like Miyano. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust my friends; I knew Tashiro was a good guy. This was something different. “You’ve just never met anyone. You don’t have any experience to base a type on. Even back in middle school you were always playing with the other boys. I don’t think I ever saw you talk to a girl.” This startling revelation from Tashiro’s friend made me and Miyano share a look. Tashiro seemed like the kind of guy who could easily be the life of the party with boys and girls alike. “I did too! Remember the student council? The class rep?” “You seem like someone who would have had a girl since elementary school,” Miyano muttered in surprise, and I nodded. “Like, the kind of thing where you don’t really know what it means to ‘go out,’ but you and some girl you’re friends with sort of end up as boyfriend and girlfriend,” I said and there were nods of agreement. “You’re so right, and I don’t even have to envy him having a thing going on! The best part is, he’s never even held hands!” Karasubara exclaimed. “No wonder he’s bitter!” The praise was enough to draw a wry interjection from Miyano. “Yikes! You’re just making that up and I can still feel the heartbreak! Enough made-up stuff, though—I want real stories!” Hiwatari had his head in his hands. “That’s some pretty detailed imagining, Kuresawa,” Miyano said. “My girlfriend has me well-trained.” “Give him the slightest chance and he’ll bring up his girlfriend!” Miyano said with a friendly smile. He looked awfully relaxed—did he realize it was his turn next? “Okay, Miyano, you’re up. At this rate, we really will get stuck listening to Kuresawa blather,” Karasubara said. “Huh?” said Miyano, eyes widening. He’d completely forgotten that he wasn’t just an observer in this conversation. He looked left, then right. His brow wrinkled. “Uh, my… My type. Nice people… I guess.” He took his sweet time before he started talking, but even then his speech was halting. I was sure he had just one person in mind. Gotta be Sasaki. I mean, I understood. “Bzzz! Tonight, no one gets away with an answer that vague!” Shirahama said, and there was a chorus of consensus. After all, Miyano was the center of attention now. We would save the best for last. “Have you all gotten loopy just because we’re staying up a little late?! Specifics… Uh, let’s see… Someone who’s calm and collected…” Ahh. Not something that people who didn’t know Sasaki well would associate with him. You couldn’t miss the guy—even I noticed him—and when he kept his mouth shut, it was easy to be overawed by him. But he seemed a lot more…mellow when he was with Miyano. Maybe it was the way he listened closely and nodded gamely along when Miyano spoke. “Give us something to work with here! Let us into your heart!” said Karasubara, who had done just that. In the face of his urging, Miyano looked everywhere except at us—but there was no one willing to jump in and call a stop to his torment. “Uhhh… Okay. I can talk about the kind of person that…that I like. Um. Someone courageous. You know? Someone who can say exactly what they’re thinking, when they’re thinking it, no matter who they’re talking to. Someone who can do things that I can’t.” Shirahama cocked his head in an oh-yeah? gesture. “I never thought of you as a guy who couldn’t speak his mind, Miyano.” It was true that Miyano would speak up when he didn’t like something; he had his own opinions and wasn’t the type to get pulled along by peer pressure. “Yeah, but that’s with my friends… It’s harder with strangers.” “You’re not afraid of strangers! What about Hirano or whoever? Like, he’s scary-looking, but you talk to him all the time. You ask me, Miyano, you strike me as the type who, like, if you bumped into someone who needed help, you would be the one to talk to them.” Karasubara appeared to agree with Shirahama. “Sure I would; who wouldn’t? But I couldn’t…uh, like, jump in if someone else was fighting…” This wasn’t hypothetical anymore; this was a real example. Did Miyano realize? Tashiro, of ever sharp intuition, knew all about that situation. “Yeah, I guess that would take some courage. Even just a couple of girls fighting is plenty scary.” Hiwatari nodded…then added that arguing couples could be pretty intimidating, too. “I’m with you. I don’t know much about couples, but it’s like…you’re fighting, but you’re also dating?” There were different kinds of fights, but Karasubara had the right idea: If you were going to speak ill of (or to) your partner, just break up with them already. “Aww, everyone fights!” “How would you know, Shirahama? You don’t even have a girlfriend!” “Come over here and say that again!” The three of them didn’t seem to suspect that Miyano might be talking about a guy who intervened in a fight between other men. We were talking about our “types,” after all. Even if we were going by real-world experience, who would imagine that this story came straight off school grounds? Hold on. But that would mean— “Hey… That sounds a lot like Sasa—” I slapped my hand over Tashiro’s mouth before he could run it any further, but I was a little late. Crap! Feeling a prickle of panic, I looked around. Miyano was blushing a bit, but that was it. Well, that was to be expected when we were talking about love. No one else seemed to have noticed what Tashiro was saying or be bothered by it. None of them realized he had hit the nail on the head. “What’s the deal?” Tashiro grumbled. “Nothing,” I whispered back. I kept my voice low, thinking it would be too conspicuous to jump right back into the conversation. Tashiro seemed to take the hint from me and stayed quiet, too. “All this talk about fighting—it was Sasaki who saved your ass, right, Kuresawa?” Tashiro whispered to me. It was the obvious leap to make. “I mean, yeah. But just… Miyano didn’t actually say that, and what if that wasn’t what he meant? Wouldn’t want to suggest otherwise.” “Yeah, I guess not.” My tortured attempt at an explanation produced an immediate nod from Tashiro. In his mind, it couldn’t possibly be a bad thing to mention another guy, which was sort of awesome in its own way, but it also just about gave me a heart attack. I didn’t think Miyano could stand to have outsiders dragged into this subject at that moment. Even if the other guys meant to be encouraging, it would only put more pressure on someone who was already struggling to work out exactly what it meant to “date someone.” I settled back down in my futon and heaved a sigh. I wish we could all accept facts as easily as Tashiro. The person Miyano liked… No matter how you looked at it, I was sure Tashiro was right. Someone kind and easygoing and who shared Miyano’s interests—or at least tried to. He was courageous, too, and would jump into the middle of a fight if he had to. I could only think of one person in Miyano’s orbit who fit all those criteria. I really wished Miyano would go and tell our senior classmate how he felt, right now. I already had a girlfriend, so I was aware of the feelings that could appear and the ways a relationship could change only after one partner started that conversation. The way Miyano was being so careful about this, it suggested he’d already had things go south with someone he liked. But surely it wasn’t Sasaki, I thought. It was a kind of despondency that was difficult for me to understand, as the person who had been the one to confess how he felt. By telling my girlfriend I cared about her, by giving my feelings form, to my surprise, those feelings became even firmer and stronger. Then again, Miyano seemed likely to get swept away by such a person, so maybe taking his time and thinking things through was the right thing to do. Although he didn’t strike me as the kind to give up so easily, even if he decided that it was probably futile. I mean, this was just my guess, but I thought from the time Miyano started lending him BL manga, Sasaki probably already valued Miyano a lot. Which meant… Well, you know. I tried to think back to when, after that point, Miyano had seemed most out of sorts. Based on the vibe I’d gotten from talking to Sasaki, it was probably right before the culture fest. Maybe immediately before finals, ahead of summer break? When he’d turned bright red talking on the phone—I’d bet that was Sasaki he’d been talking to. He’d blushed so hard, I could tell despite the mask covering his nose and mouth. It wasn’t just a hint of red in his cheeks; it went straight up to the tops of his ears. That marked the time when I started to see Miyano get noticeably embarrassed or lapse into thought. There was no way Sasaki had asked him out over the phone, so maybe it had been a little before that… Hmm. But then… How long had it taken for Sasaki to say how he felt? Miyano had started lending him books in the fall of our first year, so it would have been six months at a minimum, right? Had Sasaki really been biding his time with Miyano, never telling him how he felt, but just slowly getting closer to him all that while? Maybe he was more tenacious than I’d given him credit for. “Guess we’re down to the last, and that’s me,” I said, leaning forward at the long-awaited moment. Some of the other guys buried themselves in their beds. “Knock yourself out. All that’s left is for the rest of us to go to sleep!” Shirahama said. He was one of the ones with his blanket pulled over his head, ready to drop off. “You just don’t want to listen,” Tashiro interjected. He was sitting up, hugging his pillow, prepared to listen politely. Miyano didn’t look ready to go to sleep, either; he was going to hear me out. “Nah, it’s just cold up here in these northern lands. I’m listening, trust me,” Shirahama said, although he could be heard murmuring something about how nice the futon was. Funny how he could be so sarcastic but never actually offensive—no wonder he was one of Tashiro’s friends. “It all started in our third year of middle school, when my girlfriend-to-be and I were assigned to the same group for our school trip…” Miyano could be surprisingly self-possessed, so as persistent as Sasaki might be, I thought they could still end up dating happily. In fact, maybe it was actually Sasaki who was leading Miyano around here. In my mind, though, I already had a clear image of Miyano being the one to reach out to take Sasaki’s hand. “Huh? Is there someone outside?” Tashiro asked, cocking his head. Karasubara sat up, hopeful that there might be something interesting going on. At the same moment, the door to our room flew open. I jumped and my heart began to race. All of us threw ourselves under our covers, but we knew…it was already too late. In walked our chaperone, on patrol. “It’s way past lights out!” “Aw, Teach, how could you do that? How could you fling the door open when we might be asleep?!” whined Karasubara, the instigator of our little conference. “Sleeping with the lights on? I doubt it!” “Well, you’ve got us there,” I muttered. So much for Karasubara’s objection. I saw the teacher’s eyes flit to the table and realized he was checking for contraband as much as wakeful students. “I can hear you kids all the way outside,” he said. “Okay, go to sleep.” He was just about to hit the light switch when Tashiro jumped up. “Wait, I gotta take a leak!” “Yeah, me too!” Shirahama said. Friends indeed. “You goin’ in there together?” someone piped up. “Aw, shut it!” Shirahama shot back. “Just keep it down!” the teacher snapped. So, with much merriment on our part and much annoyance on the teacher’s, the hour grew late on the first night of our school trip. Our destination on day two was the city of Otaru. We got to make handmade music boxes, and I daresay mine came out pretty well. I decided it would make the perfect souvenir for Yuki. Miyano definitely had his back to the wall when he found himself having to make a music box out of assorted parts. I’d asked him to come with us to this activity because he’d done the ice-cream making with us, but I never imagined he’d be so bad at delicate work. It wasn’t just the mechanical pieces, either; he labored to decorate his music box, too. When he finally finished it, he said he was going to give it to his mom as a gift. I saw the sigh he heaved when his music box was finally safely in its case. It had now been two arduous days for him. “Tired?” I asked. “Yeah, a little… But I’m glad we did this. We got to pick our own songs, and I’m sure I never would’ve had this experience if we hadn’t taken this chance.” “You looked like you were really struggling.” “You look like you really weren’t, Kuresawa,” Miyano said, giving me a cold look. I’d picked “When You Wish upon a Star” for the song in my music box. The moment I’d seen it, I knew there was no other choice. Even though the music box was already in my backpack, I could still hear the gentle melody in my mind. That made me think of one of Yuki’s favorite manga—it had a picture of the night sky on the cover. The carefully rendered constellation Orion on the front had made me think maybe it was a story about the stars, but when I read it, it turned out to be about a guy who had moles in the shape of the constellation. The story went that the first thing to draw the protagonist’s interest wasn’t feelings of love but curiosity about the other man’s back, where, supposedly, the constellation Orion could be seen in his moles. Their relationship went from there. I was amazed by the creativity on display—how someone could start with an idea like that and turn it into BL. The genre had shocking depths, I realized. It was that zeal to turn anything and everything into BL. Sometimes Yuki and I would be in the middle of a conversation, and I would find her leaving me behind for some flight of boys-love fancy. And again, I saw the cosmos in the black depths of her hair, the night sky shimmering in her eyes. Lost in those thoughts, I found myself thinking, just for a second, that I should have gone ahead and taken the picture of the pondering Miyano. Because Sasaki, despite going to the same school and even having been to the same place, couldn’t be there with Miyano at that moment. As for Tashiro, he’d decided to do a different activity. “I’m gonna do glassblowing!” he announced, and I was surprised to realize that the group he was going with didn’t include most of his usual entourage. He was chatting affably with them, even though they didn’t seem to share a lot of interests—his social skills were leagues beyond mine. I saw a lot of lovely handmade glass items and pored over them until the last moment, but I decided to put off buying anything until I came here with my girlfriend. Any purchase would be with us for a long time—I didn’t want to pick something based purely on my own tastes. We checked out the shops, which occupied a relatively small area, and grabbed something to eat, and before we knew it, the sun was going down. There was no outdoor evening program planned for that night, and I’d been disappointed to think I might not get to see Otaru’s famous night sky, but it got plenty dark even before dinner. I snapped a selfie against the background of the beautifully lit canals. I’d taken a few during the daylight hours, too, but for those I deliberately left a large space to one side of me. I told Yuki that I pictured her standing there. On day three we moved on to our next destination, Hakodate, and took in the sights. We would also spend day four there, and that was our last stop on the trip. The day after, we would mostly be in transit—and we weren’t allowed to make our way to the airport our own, so this would be our last chance to buy souvenirs. I’d been careful not to buy boxes of treats during the trip so that they wouldn’t weigh down my luggage, but that also meant I wanted plenty of time to shop for souvenirs in Hakodate before we left. Miyano was bringing his music box for his parents, and he planned to grab some “Marui Koibito” sweets for the other members of the Disciplinary Committee. But now I found him muttering to himself over the treats. He was thinking hard; his mind, as they said, was elsewhere. “Even not counting that, I owe him a lot… You know, he likes drinks. I see him having hot chocolate all the time. Maybe there’s some kind of candy that tastes like hot chocolate… And he does like sweet things. Maybe Otaru would have had better choices. They have all those flagship stores…” I sympathized with him, but we’d traveled too far. Getting back to Otaru wouldn’t be easy. “Huh, so Sasaki’s a hot chocolate guy,” I said. The words were out of my mouth almost before I knew I was saying them. Miyano jerked and looked at me. “Huh? What was that?” He really had been concentrating. His eyes were wide and he looked startled. I assumed the “that” that Miyano had talked about “not counting” was his feelings of love. Probably. Not that he’d said so. “You were talking to yourself out loud.” “God, that’s embarrassing.” Miyano looked studiously at the ground. “Didn’t know he liked cocoa.” “Er, uh, yeah. I’ve seen him drinking it.” Miyano sounded nonchalant, but what a guy was drinking wasn’t the sort of thing you normally paid attention to. “Huh! You’re a sharp observer, eh?” “You think so?” Miyano shook his head, but his expression immediately shifted to me: His eyes widened and his face flushed. Apparently, he hadn’t even realized how closely he’d been watching Sasaki. “Okay if I tease you a little more?” I said. “Don’t ask if you know the answer is no, Kuresawa,” he said. Pretty forcefully, too—probably trying to hide his embarrassment. He really took it seriously when you poked fun at him, though; it was better to just apologize. “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself,” I said. “Yeah, well, this isn’t…what you’re thinking.” “I think it’s exactly what I’m thinking.” Miyano was standing there struggling to riddle out what Sasaki would like best, what would make him happy. When I pointed that out, though, Miyano just gave me a doubtful look. I left Miyano to his fretting and went about doing my own shopping. I needed souvenirs for Yuki’s family as well as mine, not to mention the stuff my seniors in club had asked me to pick up. Hokkaido’s locally made specialties were delicious, but as I looked around I realized that trying to accommodate everyone would result in me having the same things everyone else had in their baskets. Maybe chocolates would be a good choice, since I was going to split it up so many ways. They were surprisingly cheap, and there was plentiful variety—but that posed problems of its own. I could only fit so much in my luggage. Then again, as a last resort, I could always have something shipped… “Please, sir?” said a familiar voice. I turned to see Tashiro with his head dipped toward a teacher in an imploring bow. What was going on? “Absolutely not.” On closer inspection, I saw Tashiro was trying to buy some sort of wooden gun. From its polished surface to its meticulous construction, it was tailor-made to entice the avid shopper. “I won’t take it out of its bag until we’re back home! I promise!” Tashiro said. What was he, a kid? “Well… If you promise. But if I see that thing at the hotel tonight, I’m confiscating it. No warnings.” “You won’t, sir!” That reminded me of someone on my middle school trip who’d wanted a wooden sword. It also reminded me that I’d failed to acquire a souvenir for myself. I’d bought a set of postcards at the hotel we’d stayed in the previous day showing the night sky, but I’d sent one to Yuki with some seasonally appropriate greetings and I was giving some with presents, so they didn’t seem likely to last. Maybe I could afford to get one more set. There was still plenty of time. Somehow, the Hokkaido souvenir corner was like a theme park—I never got tired of looking at all the choices. Now, what would Yuki like best? I gave up on Miyano, who was still mumbling to himself, and went to pay for my items. The line for the cash register was getting longer and longer. Just then, I heard another voice I thought I recognized. “Oh, someone gave me one of these once. So they really sell them here!” I hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but when someone is talking right next to you, it’s hard not to hear them. “Hey, that’s the thing you’ve got on your phone. And it’s a limited edition—they only sell it here! Wow, it really exists! So that person you like got that for you?” Intrigued by the mention of something limited-edition, I sneaked a peek at the shelf to find two guys looking at cell phone charms in the shape of a weird-looking dog. It had a massive head, with a sort of afterthought of a body… It was a dog, wasn’t it? “Yeah, that’s right,” said the tall guy. I thought he’d been in my car on the ropeway… I was pretty sure. In the daylight, he looked more muscular than he had that night; he definitely seemed like an athlete. His back was to me, so I couldn’t see who it was, but more striking than his build was his gentle voice. “So what’s with this Hirano guy anyway? He’s cool and kind and sweet? I can hardly picture an older guy who would give someone a weird-ass thing like this.” Hirano again? “Huh…” If he was older, did that make him an upperclassman? And if he’d gotten his hands on something that was only sold here, did that mean he’d come to Hokkaido—on a school trip, say? And this guy was supposed to be really cool? My brain was going a mile a minute, processing the keywords I’d picked up, and all of them seemed to point to just one conclusion. No. Couldn’t be… Could it? I resisted the idea that it could be the upperclassman named Hirano who I knew.