My grandmother’s reply was indirect, perhaps even off the mark, as she seemed to gaze into the distance.
I hesitated over what to say for a moment and then simply agreed, “Okay.”
“Honesty is the best policy.” My grandmother, who always had a slightly twisted side, wrinkled even more as she smiled.
“It’s okay for minors to buy beer if they’re not drinking it, right?”
“It’s not illegal, I don’t think.”
I wasn’t confident, even though I was technically in the law department at school.
“Well, I already bought it anyway.” Picking up the shopping bag she’d left on the sink, Edamoto-san shrugged. “I was worried that I might get in trouble, so I bought it at the supermarket’s self-checkout.”
As I watched Edamoto-san pull out cans of beer one after another from the bag, I unintentionally let out a snicker.
“Huh? No good?”
Edamoto-san looked flustered, clearly misunderstanding the reason I’d burst out laughing. “No, no.” I shook my head gently. “It’s just that I feel like we’re playing grown-up together.”
For some reason, I was tickled by the sense that we were playing at a park or something.
At that, Edamoto-san too broke into a smile. On closer inspection, I noticed that fresh sweat had appeared on her forehead.
“You can call me Haru.”
“…Edamoto-san.”
I thought about it a bit, but I couldn’t come up with a clever comeback.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to drink all this, though.”
I looked at the ten or so cans she had set down like bowling pins, a bit distressed. If there was extra left over, who was supposed to drink it? “No worries.” Edamoto-san carried some cans to the room.
As I grabbed the remaining cans, I cocked my head, wondering whether these were supposed to be chilled before drinking them.
When you look closely enough, even the most mundane scene can be full of mysteries.
Having beckoned me to her room, Edamoto-san inquired, “So, do you feel any different now that you’re an adult?”
“Not really…it isn’t much different from any other birthday.”
Although celebrating with a friend like this was something I hadn’t done in a long time.
“What about your birthday?”
“March. I was cutting it pretty close.”
After sitting down, Edamoto-san exclaimed, “Oh, right!” and ran back to the sink. She darted out of and back into the room with big bounds. I was still fairly young myself, but Edamoto-san’s movements were just so, well…nimble.
I felt like Edamoto-san still had something that most people lost as they grew out of childhood. She held two glasses in her hands as she came back.
Looking closer, I saw that there was a single coke mixed in among the beer cans lined up on the table. I suppose that was hers.
“Cutting it close, you said?”
“If I’d been born a month later, I would’ve been another grade lower…and then I probably wouldn’t have met you, Sayaka-senpai.”
Edamoto-san put a glass down in front of me as she spoke of what she apparently considered a stroke of good fortune.
“Although I guess it’s silly to speculate like that.”
She negated that supposition immediately. Perhaps she was recalling her breakup shortly after starting college.
“Since no one can see what would have happened otherwise, everything is fate, and everything is inevitable. At least, that’s what I think.”
“You may be right about that.”
It wasn’t as though such thoughts had never entered my mind—thoughts of what would have happened if I hadn’t made the wrong decision.
Her smiling face would be there and mine next to hers. It was a scene from a dream.
Then again, I no longer thought of my current self as a mistake.
March, though, hmm? Perhaps that was the origin of her name, Haru—written with the kanji for sunshine but pronounced the same way as the Japanese word for spring.
Although the sunlight was bright as ever, the temperature in the room was just a tad too low. Edamoto-san picked up a beer can and opened it. I held out the glass to her, and she poured the contents in for me. I was fairly certain there was a specific way of pouring it, but since I didn’t know what that was, I couldn’t voice my opinion.
The golden liquid poured into the glass I always used, with the rainbow visible at the bottom.
“I feel like you would be more of a wine person than a beer person though, Sayaka-senpai.”
“What kind of image do you even have of me?”
“You swirling your glass in one hand like this…”
Edamoto-san played the part of me, gestures and all. It seemed that I was supposed to be wearing a bathrobe and holding a glass of wine in one hand. From my perspective, it was an impersonation that bore absolutely no resemblance to me.
“Excuse you.”
I’d never even worn a bathrobe before. Who wore those nowadays?
“I’m just joking. Oh, I know I texted this already, but happy birthday.”
After pouring coke into her own glass, Edamoto-san sat down, folding her legs underneath her.
“Thank you.”
As a result of telling her my birthday, I was at Edamoto-san’s apartment, about to have a drink-a-thon with her.
What a strange situation, I thought to myself, not for the first time today.
Maybe Edamoto-san would say that this wasn’t coincidence but fate.
If all of this were inevitable, that meant I had no way of deciding anything.
Technically, I should still be able to decide whether to drink the beer in my glass or not.
But if I wasn’t going to drink it, then what in the world had I come here for, really? After I had Edamoto-san buy so much alcohol…though I hadn’t asked her to buy so much. But she had done it to celebrate me.
I couldn’t just reject that.
I see… So I really don’t have any choice but to drink it now.
Perhaps our paths really are all laid out for us from the start.
“Cheers.” We lightly clinked our glasses. Although Edamoto-san hit mine with such alarming force, it wasn’t really light at all.
When I brought the glass to my face, the sour smell of alcohol struck my nose.
The booze-filled glass felt sorely out of place in my hand.
And then, for the first time in my life, I sipped alcohol.
The life-changing taste I formally experienced as a twenty-year-old was—gross.
“………”
I quietly righted the tipped glass.
Then I managed to swallow.
“It’s sour.”
Before I even said it out loud, the taste had likely shown on my face.
Edamoto-san was already wincing a little.
“That bad?”
“Much worse than I ever imagined.”
Since adults drank it without any issue, I thought it would have a slightly milder taste.
The aftertaste stayed persistently in my throat, almost as if it were trying to creep back up to my tongue.
To put it bluntly, it tasted terrible.
“This is the first time I’ve come to your place and had something that wasn’t delicious.”
The well over half-full glass of beer that still remained was literally repulsive. I was already almost gagging.