Tomoko wanted a friend. Not like the two friends she had now. A new friend. Her two other friends were best friends with each other, and she was just a regular friend who hung out with them. She knew that. They weren’t a group of three—they were a group of two, plus one. And she couldn’t stand that.
She’d started to hate the number three. You couldn’t be friends and have fun together without two people involved. But a third or more was plain unnecessary.
Her two friends had no trouble chatting or playing when she wasn’t around. Even when Tomoko was with them, they often got caught up in their own conversation, shutting her out and leaving her to watch on the sidelines. Every time that happened, it felt as if they were saying, “We don’t need you.”
Tomoko wasn’t their best friend. She was just a friend. A spare, an extra. The thought brought tears to her eyes, and she clenched her hands into fists and bit her lip to stop herself from crying. It was so sad and so frustrating. Well, fine, let them go off and be besties without her. She didn’t need friends like that!
What I really need is someone who doesn’t have any other friends. Someone who’ll have me as their best and only friend.
If she could meet someone like that, they’d become even better friends than those other two.
But I wouldn’t make friends with just any kid who doesn’t have friends of their own. I wouldn’t want to hang out with a bully, or a liar, or someone who’s mean or selfish.
Tomoko sighed. She wanted a new friend so badly.
Ideally, they’d be cute and nice and smart. But they’d also be all on their own, without any other friends.
As if someone like that actually existed.
Tomoko was absorbed in these thoughts on her way home from school and wasn’t really paying attention to her surroundings. Suddenly, there was a thump, and she realized she’d bumped into someone. They fell onto their butt, and the things they’d been carrying scattered all over the ground.
“Ouch… S-sorry. Are you okay?” they asked, looking up at Tomoko.
It was a girl with silver hair, dressed in a neon-pink hoodie. Her right eye was covered by an eye patch the same shade of pink as her hoodie, with an crossed-out heart on it. Quite a flashy sense of style, but she was cute all the same. She looked about the same age as Tomoko—probably in elementary school, or maybe she was a little older and in junior high already.
Now this is the kind of girl I’d like to be friends with. I don’t know if we have a lot in common, but she apologized first, even though I’m the one who bumped into her. So she must be a nice person.
In the back of her mind, Tomoko was hoping this might be the opportunity she needed to make a new friend. She got to work helping the girl pick up the things she’d dropped.
It was candy. Round ones individually wrapped in colorful paper. There were small candies the size of cherries, and bigger ones about as large as grapes.
“I’ve never seen these before… Are they some kind of hard candy?” Tomoko asked as she handed them back to the girl.
“That’s right. They sell them at a little candy shop down the street from here. But they’re not just any candy—they’re Lucky Candy. When you eat one, it gives you good luck.”
The girl said all this with a friendly smile. Tomoko could only blink in surprise.
“Lucky Candy? Candy that gives you good luck? No way…,” she said.
“It’s true. That store sells all kinds of rare stuff you can’t find anywhere else. Like, say…”
The girl finished collecting her candies and looked Tomoko in the eye, still smiling.
“…a prize draw that can give you a new friend.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Huh…?”
Those words set Tomoko’s heart racing.
“If you want to try it, you should go check out that store I mentioned. You see the alley between the buildings over there? Keep going straight down it, and you’ll find the candy store at the end.”
The girl pointed behind Tomoko, who turned to look. She’d taken her eyes off the other girl for only a moment, but when she turned back, the strange girl with the eye patch was gone.
✦ ✦ ✦
Tomoko went down the narrow alleyway, and just like the girl said, a candy store was at the end.
“Wow… I didn’t think places like this even existed anymore.”
The store looked old, like it had been there for a long, long time. Tomoko had seen similar ones in malls, although those were more of a retro style, never a real one from way back when. She went inside and started to look around.
This store had little lollipops, and pocket-size bags of dried snack noodles, and reddish-brown cola gummies, and light-blue soda gummies, and gumballs that changed color when you sucked on them, and long, thin jelly sticks in lots of different colors, and yogurt packs that came with flat wooden spoons, and spicy-sweet dried squid, and chocolate coins, and powdered juice in orange and grape and other flavors, too…
There were snacks everywhere—on the shelves, in drawers, on the walls, even hanging from the ceiling. As interesting as they all looked, Tomoko passed them by without stopping, going straight to the cash register. Behind the counter were several cardboard boxes for different prize draws. One of them was labeled:
Friend Prize Draw
¥100 per try
“Is that what the girl told me about…?”
Tomoko gulped in anticipation. Then a voice came from behind the counter.
“Would you like to give it a try?”
Tomoko nodded a little hesitantly.
A prize draw that gives you a new friend… There’s no way this is real.
She knew that, of course. And yet…
I’ll give it a shot. I won’t buy any candy today; I’ll just do one prize draw…
Curiosity and anticipation were swelling inside her chest. She couldn’t hold back any longer. She reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out her coin purse.
“One try at the Friend Prize Draw, please,” she said.
“Okay, that’s one hundred yen. If you win, you’ll get a wonderful new friend.”
The person behind the counter said this as if it was nothing unusual. He seemed to be a young man, but it was hard to tell. He was wearing a big scarf and a hat pulled low over his eyes. Tomoko couldn’t really make out his face in the dim lighting.
The man went to the row of boxes, brought one over, and set it down in front of her. She stared at it for a moment.
“Does it…does it really give you a new friend?” she asked him.
“Of course. That’s what it says on the box, doesn’t it? A cute, sweet, smart new friend, just for you. If you win, that is.”
Tomoko was getting more and more excited. She took a hundred-yen coin out of her purse and handed it to the man.
“This is a bubblegum prize draw,” he told her. “You reach inside, grab a piece of gum, take it out of the wrapper, and blow a bubble with it.”
He tilted the box toward her so she could reach the hole cut into the top. Her heart pounding, Tomoko stuck her hand inside. She groped around, feeling different gum wrappers shifting beneath her fingers. Finally, she grabbed one and brought it out.
It was a square, silver-colored wrapper with a round piece of gum bulging out in the middle. She pulled on the jagged edge and tore the wrapper open. Just like the store employee had told her to do, she put the gum in her mouth and started chewing it then and there.
She chewed and chewed and chewed.
She chewed until the gum was nice and soft, then rolled it over her tongue and blew. The gum stretched and began to form a bubble. Tomoko blew into it harder, but it didn’t burst.
She blew even harder. Still it didn’t burst. She blew as hard as she could, but the bubble just kept getting bigger and bigger. Eventually, it was so big that it towered over the top of her head.
And in that giant bubblegum bubble, she could see something: a silhouette.
It was hard to tell through the gum, but it looked like a person—a child…
Pop!
The bubble finally burst, and the sound echoed throughout the store. A moment later, a small strip of paper fluttered gently to the ground. Tomoko walked over and looked down at what was written on it:
TOO BAD!
“Looks like you didn’t win. Feel free to try again sometime,” the store clerk said, returning the prize-draw box to its position behind the counter.
✦ ✦ ✦
Tomoko was walking home from the candy shop, thinking about what had happened and trying to contain her excitement.
It had been brief, but she’d definitely seen someone—a girl her own age—in that bubble. When it popped, all that was inside was the TOO BAD! paper, but that didn’t change what she saw.
I bet if I’d had a winning piece of gum, my new friend would’ve come out of the bubble instead!
There was no longer any doubt in her mind. That strange prize-draw game really worked.
Now I have to go back and try to win at it.
If she could draw a winning piece, she’d get a brand-new friend, just for her. Then she could finally stop being a third wheel.