“Well, then… It’s nice to have some extra time, but how are we going to spend it?” I murmured, standing in front of the airport.
Issa had told us it would take two or three hours to finish his business, so we couldn’t stray too far, or it would be hard for us to meet back up later on.
“Is there anywhere nearby you wanna go?” I asked. “I mean, I don’t know anything about Hokkaido, so…”
“Oh, right, this is your first time. I get the impression you don’t travel much, Mr. Yoshida.”
“You’re not wrong. Since I started working, I’ve only been on company trips.”
“Ah-ha-ha. I kinda figured,” Sayu replied, her shoulders shaking with laughter. She shot me a sideways glance. “Still, there must be some place you’ve heard about, right?”
I hummed, taking a minute to think.
Hokkaido… Hokkaido…
Whenever I heard the word Hokkaido, I thought of miso ramen and crab… My only associations were food.
“Oh,” I said at last, turning to face Sayu again. “What about…the Clark statue?”
Sayu stared at me blankly for a moment, then burst out laughing.
“That’s famous, sure, but it’s really far away! We can’t walk there.”
I pouted as Sayu cackled at me.
“I heard it was in Sapporo, though…”
“Well, it is. The city’s just that big.”
“Right… Hokkaido’s huge, isn’t it?”
It took a moment for Sayu’s laughter to die down. At last, she said, “How about we just walk around, then? Take in the atmosphere… It could be nice.”
“…Sure, let’s do it. If you spot anywhere you want to visit, just say so. I’ll do the same.”
“Okay.”
We nodded, left the airport, and set off into the city.
Sayu had always insisted that Hokkaido was essentially the boonies, but the area around the airport didn’t feel much different from Tokyo.
There were cars everywhere, and the streets were packed with people coming and going.
“This is a proper metropolis, isn’t it?” I said.
Sayu snorted. It seemed she found my impression a little naive.
“It’s like the metropolitan part of the boonies, that’s why.”
“Oh… That makes sense.”
Her description was easy to understand.
In that sense, the area I lived in was the opposite—way out in the boonies of the big city.
My apartment was a single train ride away from the city center, and the area around the station had quite a lot to offer…or at least, it had all the stores a person usually needed. And yet, a five- to ten-minute walk from the station would bring you to a modest residential area surrounded by greenery.
Based on Sayu’s remarks, this city seemed relatively convenient compared to the rest of the region.
Well, maybe it was a given that there would be a shopping district right by the airport.
“What’s the area near your house like?” I asked.
“It’s a total backwater. Like, the middle of nowhere,” she said with an air of amusement. “Well, there’s a shopping mall near Asahikawa Station, which sort of makes it feel like a town, but you don’t have to go far before you’re practically in the wilderness. Most places in Hokkaido are like that.”
“I see.”
We both fell silent for a while.
As we walked down the street, we took in the air—so much crisper and clearer than in Tokyo.
I felt myself relax as we slowly wandered down the broad sidewalk together.
I thought again…about just how far Sayu had traveled, leaving this place that seemed so unfamiliar to me and making it all the way to Tokyo.
And now she was right beside me.
But when she’d first arrived in Tokyo—no, even before that—from the time she’d set off on her journey, there’d been no one beside her. She’d taken off into the unknown, alone and with no destination in mind.
I couldn’t begin to imagine how helpless and anxious she must have felt.
“Oh.”
Suddenly, Sayu made a sound, and I turned toward her automatically.
“Hmm?”
“Oh, it’s just…” Her gaze was fixed on a shop. “…There’s…a café.”
“A café…? Do you want to go in?”
I felt like I’d seen the place she was looking at in Tokyo as well, so it must have been a nationwide chain.
“Uh… Yeah, I guess I kind of do.”
“That one in particular?” I asked, but Sayu shook her head vaguely.
“Nah, it doesn’t have to be that one… I just want to go into a café. Any café.”
“Huh… How come?”
The reason didn’t matter to me. If that’s what Sayu wanted to do, I had no objections. I’d asked only out of curiosity.
Sayu hesitated. She seemed to be struggling to put her thoughts into words.
“Oh… If it’s hard to say, you don’t have to answer,” I added quickly, thinking I may have asked something difficult. But Sayu frantically shook her head, just as flustered as I was.
“No, no! It’s nothing like that,” she said, shaking her head vigorously. After a short pause, she explained, “…I just haven’t been to many cafés before.”
“You mean…in Hokkaido?”
“Yeah… Here, and after I left, too. I mean, high school girls are meant to go to cafés all the time, right?”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the way she was talking, as if she had no idea what high school girls did.
“Ha-ha, I can’t be sure, but… Yeah, that’s what I’ve always heard.”
Once these words were out of my mouth, a strange feeling washed over me. Sayu may have been a high school girl, but it sounded as though she’d never done the things ordinary girls her age did for fun…like going to cafés after school.
“I guess…we’d better go to a café, then,” I said. Sayu nodded, her eyes glimmering.
“Yeah! Let’s go!”
The gloomy look that had passed over her face instantly disappeared, giving way to a childish expression. This reassured me a little.
I took out my smartphone and tried searching the web.
“Hmm… Sapporo… Airport… Café… Trendy… There we go.”
“Uh, what about that one?” Sayu asked, pointing to the shop in front of us. I shook my head.
“You’re finally going to a café! A forgettable chain like that isn’t going to cut it. We should go somewhere nicer.”
Sayu blinked a few times, dumbfounded. Then she broke out into a smile.
“…Yeah, you’re right! Let’s stop in a trendy café and rest our feet in style!”
“You got it… How about this one? It’s about a fifteen-minute walk away.”
I showed her the café my search had pulled up, and she read through the description.
“It has Scandinavian-style interiors, and the barista makes authentic coffee using carefully selected beans… Looks great! I bet the atmosphere’s nice, too!”
Sayu nodded happily and smiled.
Now that we’d decided, I typed the café’s address into my navigation app and got directions, and we resumed our leisurely walk.
Soon, we’d be heading to Sayu’s family home, where her mother awaited. And yet, I felt strangely at ease.
I stole a glance at Sayu out of the corner of my eye and found that she was the same—she didn’t seem anxious. I’d figured that once she was back in Hokkaido, she’d start getting nervous, but that didn’t seem to be the case.