I don’t have a cell phone.
✦ ✦ ✦
That’s all that was written on it, in small, delicate writing.
“This is…” Sousei couldn’t help but let out a murmur, and the students around him reacted as if to say, “Huh? What is it?” Sousei looked down and rounded his back to hide the piece of paper in his right hand.
“Hmm? What’s wrong, Takarai?” Mr. Oohira called out to him.
“…N-n-n-nothing…”
“I see… Well, as long as you’re okay.”
Mr. Oohira picked up where he’d left off. What was he talking about? Sousei hadn’t been listening properly in the first place, and he wasn’t taking any of it in.
The message written on the piece of paper was only short. However, Sousei saw something else on the bottom right of the page. It was a little bigger than the writing, yet too small to be called a picture. It was probably some kind of symbol.
A sheep…?
It was probably meant to be a sheep. Its body was covered in fluffy wool, and its bald face was looking forward. It was a sheep.
Miss Hitsujimoto…
Sousei stared at the small drawing. When and where had she drawn it? And why had she drawn something like this?
Because hitsuji in her name means “sheep”…
Before he knew it, Sousei was trembling. The corners of his eyes prickled. He could feel the waterworks coming on.
That letter…
Sousei had written a letter and put it inside Kuchina’s shoe box. He hadn’t forgotten about it, of course, but he was tired and hadn’t slept so it hadn’t come to mind.
She replied… I didn’t think she would. I hadn’t really expected her to…
Sousei glanced at the seat at the back by the window. Sure enough, Kuchina was looking out the window.
He stared at the note again.
It’s a sheep…
He remembered the sight of her dreary house in Motomachi, which contained hardly any furniture. In contrast to that, the frozen basement looked like a normal living room that a family would live in. The only difference was that her adoptive parents, sitting side by side on the sofa, were dead.
Miss Hitsujimoto drew a picture of a sheep…
For some reason, it didn’t seem like the first time she’d drawn this symbol. Was it a good drawing or not? Sousei had no artistic sense, so it was difficult for him to tell, but he didn’t think it felt crude or awkward. She must have drawn it at least a few times before.
Kuchina had cared about Katsuhiko and Yoshimi Hitsujimoto, who were in her basement room. In fact, she still did. The couple might not be her biological parents, but they were her adoptive parents, and her surname had come from them. Perhaps that was why. Maybe she had an emotional attachment to the name Hitsujimoto.
It was just an assumption, but Sousei thought that Kuchina had probably drawn a sheep many times in her life up until that point. She used that sheep drawing instead of a signature.
…It’s enough to make you cry, isn’t it?
Sousei desperately held back his tears. He was sure he was feeling like this only because he was sleep-deprived and exhausted—even though he thought it would be stranger not to cry over something like this. But suddenly breaking down in tears during morning homeroom would be weird. Fairly, incredibly weird.
—So Hitsujimoto doesn’t have a smartphone…
As soon as class ended, Kuchina immediately disappeared from the classroom. She’d return just before the next class started. She did the same thing during their lunch break. The moment their morning classes had finished—actually, just before they finished—Kuchina had stood up from her desk and left the room even before the teacher. It was only afterward that Sousei realized he’d forgotten to buy lunch.
“Aaah… I don’t have any food…”
Sousei held his head in his hands, and when he put his face flat against the desk, Wakkuu invited him to go to the school store. The school store was in one corner of the entrance hall, and there was already a long line out the front. At Wakkuu’s recommendation, Sousei bought a grilled chicken bento box that cost 400 yen.
“It’s crazy good luck that the super-popular grilled chicken bento box wasn’t sold out yet! You should be happy, Takarai! This means good things will definitely happen to you! Lots of good things!” Wakkuu exclaimed, slapping Sousei’s back a few times.
It just feels like I burned all my luck on a grilled chicken bento box for no particular reason…
But Wakkuu, who didn’t seem to show even the slightest hint of worry, had still lifted Sousei’s spirits. After Sousei returned to his desk and opened the lid of his bento box, he had a sudden thought.
“…It was the last one, wasn’t it?”
“Huh? What was?” Yukisada asked, stuffing his mouth with rice balls in the seat next to Sousei. Today, they were filled with Nanko pickled plum and spicy cod roe. He seemed to be eating the spicy cod roe first.