“She used a lot of time off when moving earlier this year... And she’s with a temp agency, so she feels awkward about taking a vacation in summer while the regular employees want to rest too.”
I sat down beside her as I listened.
Shirakawa-san’s mother was apparently working in a department store in Tokyo. Since she worked shifts, she rarely got consecutive days off, and it would’ve been difficult to come here on a day trip when she had work the next day. Shirakawa-san told me that her mother would get in touch once she managed to get enough days off lined up.
“How about seeing her after you go back to Tokyo?” I suggested, sympathizing with her.
Shirakawa-san tilted her head. “I dunno. If I go back there first, she’d have to get in touch with my dad to see me, you know? She said she just split up with her new man, so it’d be awkward to call my dad now.”
“I see...”
They have their circumstances, huh.
“It’s tricky, I guess,” I added.
“Yeah. It’s such a pain.” Heaving a sigh, Shirakawa-san went silent for a while.
“After she started going out with my dad in their first year of middle school, my mom was so devoted to him, right until they divorced,” she said, after some time. “She gave birth to my big sister, then to me and Maria... It was then that Mom found out Dad had cheated on her. But she forgave him. She loved him, and because she’d never dated anyone except for him, she wasn’t confident she could have a relationship with another man now even if they got a divorce. She was worried about living alone.”
I listened without a word, only nodding here and there. I’d almost never had someone tell me about their intricate family circumstances before, so I wasn’t sure about what to say.
“Maybe that was why... She always repeated the same thing to us, like a mantra. That guys cheat.” As Shirakawa-san gazed up at the sky, her eyes looked distant, like she was recalling the past. “But it seems like she couldn’t take it the second time she found out Dad’d had an affair. When she remembered how much he’d sworn that he’d never do it again after that first time, she couldn’t believe anything he said anymore... And so she told me that she could no longer be with him.”
I doubted anyone could blame her mother for leaving, though it pained me to think that her decision had torn Shirakawa-san’s family apart.
“I don’t think Dad was serious about his affairs. It looks like he still loves Mom,” she said, then looked at me and smiled. Even though that expression should’ve been a happy one, she looked pained. “I think he chose to take care of me because I took after Mom. He says that a lot to me recently—that I’m coming to resemble Mom more and more. He looks really happy when he says it... It’s so stupid, right?”
Seeing Shirakawa-san like this hurt, so I considered how I could shift the conversation from her past, if only a little.
“Is your dad dating anyone at the moment?” I asked.
Shirakawa-san thought for a bit and shook her head. “Well... I don’t think there’s anyone these days. He used to disappear sometimes on his days off, though. Maybe they broke up.”
“I see...”
“He has me, after all. Wouldn’t a daughter in high school be the last thing a girlfriend would want to see?” Her usual cheerful tone resounded sorrowfully through the external corridor in the dead of night. “Maybe my dad can’t have a relationship go well while I’m home. I do feel guilty...but hey, he’s getting his just deserts, I guess.” Shirakawa-san curled her lips into a smile, but her brows were still knit.
Though she barely said much in that regard at all, this was my first time hearing her speak ill of someone. She had mixed feelings about her dad, who had caused her parents’ divorce. When I thought about it, my heart ached for her.
“So, what’s up, Ryuto? Don’t tell me you wet your bed,” Shirakawa-san said, teasing me in a joking tone.
Perhaps my face had looked melancholic.
“D-Don’t worry,” I said. “I made it in time.”
No matter what I said here, it would be nothing more than irresponsible words from an outsider. With that in mind, I knew I couldn’t return to the previous topic. My only option was to follow her lead and joke around.
“Okay. Guess I’ll visit the bathroom too and go back to my room,” said Shirakawa-san. She then smiled, stood up, and waved at me.
I got up too...and, making up my mind, took her hand.
“Ryuto?” she asked, gazing at me in apparent surprise.
As I recalled the kiss I’d missed back when we’d played with the fireworks, a fire lit up in me.
Nobody was watching now. But while that was true...
“Mom said she can’t come this time after all.”
Recalling how sad Shirakawa-san had looked moments earlier was painful. It was so painful and hard to bear that I felt an impulse to hold her. But...was this not the right time for her?
But in the end, I reluctantly let go of her hand. “Good night, Shirakawa-san. See you tomorrow,” I said.
Returning my gaze, she smiled a little. Then, she turned her back toward me.
“Yeah. Good night, Ryuto.”
As she headed toward the hallway, it struck me that her voice seemed a bit choked with tears.
***
I felt like I constantly had something troubling me this summer.
Was this summer going to end without me ever kissing Shirakawa-san a second time?
But since I was at the beach hut during the day, and in a house with Sayo-san and Mao-san during the nighttime, I naturally couldn’t do anything bold...
And so, at last, the day of the summer festival came.
Even that morning, I went to the beach hut like usual. This would be my last day working here, as after tomorrow’s breakfast, it’d be time to go to the train station.
Once the afternoon peak hours had ended, Shirakawa-san had Mao-san take her back to Sayo-san’s house for the time being. Apparently, she had to put on a yukata and do her hair in preparation for the summer festival, which started in the evening.
As I tended to the beach hut alone, Mao-san came by and handed me an envelope.
“Good work. Thanks for the past two-plus weeks,” he told me. “You can go now, Ryuto-kun.”
“Huh...?”
It’s only past three, I thought, but Mao-san lightly poked my shoulder.
“It’s your two-month anniversary today, I hear. Why don’t you go find something nice for Runa? She likes surprises, so I think she’d be real excited to get a little something.”
“Ah...!”
Now that he mentions it...
My head had been full of thoughts about stuff like our upcoming festival date as well as how Shirakawa-san would look in a yukata, but now I realized that exactly one month had passed since our trip to Enoshima.
“Make good use of that!” exclaimed Mao-san, pointing at the envelope in my hands.
I thought it wouldn’t be right for me to get pocket money from my girlfriend’s uncle, but when I checked the contents to make sure it was actually money and not something else, I was astonished. My eyes suddenly met Fukuzawa Yukichi’s on the several ten-thousand-yen bills that were inside.
“What the...?!”
“It’s your pay! You’ve been working for five hours a day, you know,” replied Mao-san.
“I earned that much...?!”
Sure, I had worked from morning till evening each day, but I’d played in the water when there’d been nothing going on, and even at the beach hut there’d been a lot of times when I was just chatting with Shirakawa-san.
“Well, that’s how much you worked.”
“But wait... Sayo-san let me stay for two whole weeks,” I countered.
Considering the cost of letting me stay, I’d naturally assumed I was working for free. And calling this “work” might not’ve even been appropriate—this had been more like running a café at a school festival. I’d only been hoping to help in what little way I could...
But as I told Mao-san all that, and not very coherently either, he gave me a gentle smile.
“Since I had you working here, I could restock and prepare things during work hours. In turn, that gave me more time to help Granny and stuff. So, what you did helped everyone. This is compensation for that.”
His usual joking attitude was nowhere to be seen and he’d spoken with sincerity in his voice.
It was a little shocking to see him like that. I felt like I understood now why Shirakawa-san adored him so much. Even being a guy myself, I couldn’t help but be charmed.
I was glad Mao-san was her uncle. Had he been my rival in love, I couldn’t imagine ever winning against him.
“Th-Thank you very much!” I exclaimed, since I had no other option, and lowered my head.
Mao-san waved at me with a smile. “Go give her a great surprise! Take care of Runa!”
***
After changing and leaving the beach hut, I headed to the festival.
The summer festival was to be held at a Shinto shrine at a slightly higher elevation near the mountains. There were already stalls set up along the coast, perhaps because the fireworks would be launched at the beach.
“‘Surprise’... Easy for him to say...”
Could I really find something in such a place that would make a girl in high school happy?
Not all of the stalls were managed by professionals—some of them had locals selling things like a flea market.
There weren’t many people here yet since it was the hottest part of the day. But as I browsed the stalls without buying anything, one stall at a street corner caught my eye.
***
When the blazing heat had significantly died down around five, Shirakawa-san messaged me that she was ready and I headed by foot to Sayo-san’s house.
“What do you think, Ryuto?”
When Shirakawa-san appeared at the entrance, I fell speechless.
She was cute... Utterly, extremely cute.
Shirakawa-san was wearing a purple-pink yukata with a flower pattern. The sash around her waist was a similar color, but deeper. She had a smile on her face and was carrying a small basket bag. Her upswept hair had a gyaru-like showiness to it. However, instead of her look being reminiscent of an oiran—a high-ranking courtesan in the Japan of yore—which was one of the patterns I’d expected, Shirakawa-san’s appearance was fairly orthodox. Perhaps it was because Sayo-san had helped her get dressed.
“Y-You look...cute,” I managed to stammer out, utterly bashful as usual.
“Aah!” whined Shirakawa-san, pouting. “Your reaction to my bikini was better! You perv! You don’t like yukatas?”
“Th-That’s not true! I-I said you’re cute.”
“I don’t know if you mean it...”
“I mean it!” I insisted.
When Sayo-san came out from deeper into the house, we stopped joking around. We said goodbye to her and left.
Though both the shrine and Sayo-san’s house were near the mountains, you had to head in a different direction to reach each place, so we decided to go down to the beach first and follow the line of stalls up to the shrine. We would need to come down to the shore again later to see the fireworks, but this was the only way we could see the whole festival.
We walked down the road slower than usual in consideration for Shirakawa-san, who was wearing geta sandals.
“Are your feet okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “You’ve been asking the same thing for a while now,” she then added with a laugh.
Apparently, I really had been doing that.
“Sorry... It’s my first time walking with a girl in a yukata.”
She’d gotten blisters on one of our previous dates. I didn’t know exactly how hard geta were to walk in, so I’d ended up bringing up my worries too much.
“Heh heh, thank you,” Shirakawa-san replied with a happy smile.
I wondered how many years had it been since my last time going to a festival. I felt like I’d gone to local ones a bunch of times with friends in primary school when they’d invited me, but that had only been when we were a lot younger.
As the two of us made our way all the way down by the water, there were more people walking alongside the stalls than I’d noticed earlier. This was a rural town that—save for the beach—normally looked deserted. Where had they all come from?
“What’s a ‘cheese hattogu’? A lot of places have them,” I asked as we started walking between the stalls and looking around us. I’d been wondering about it since I’d browsed earlier.
“Huh? You don’t know? It’s a Korean snack. There’s cheese in the middle and you can get a good cheese pull! It looks super cool!”
“Like a cheese corn dog?”
“Ah, yeah, those. It’s deep-fried, though.”
“A deep-fried cheese corn dog looks great?”
“Yeah! Sometimes they’ve even got rainbow-colored cheese,” Shirakawa-san explained.
“Huh... I never knew.”
“They’ve been a staple at stalls for a while now!”
“Really...”
It appeared that festival stall trends had changed while I’d been away. Some stalls even had Shirakawa-san’s favorite bubble tea too.
“There’s bubble tea too,” I pointed out.
“Oh, that’s nice! I’m thirsty.”
“Want me to buy you some?”
“I can buy it myself. But I wanna eat a candy apple too, so I’m really torn between the two...”
“I’ll buy you both,” I offered.
“Huh? What happened, Ryuto? Did you win the lottery?” asked Shirakawa-san in surprise.
She’d said it like I was a cheapskate normally...
I cracked a smile. “Mao-san gave me my pay for working at the beach hut.”
“For real? No way! That must be nice!”
“He didn’t pay you?”
“No... But he paid to fix my phone, so. I should try asking him when I go home.”
“I imagine he plans to pay you too.”
As we talked, I bought both a bubble tea and a candy apple for Shirakawa-san since I had money to spare.
“Wow, I’m so happy! It feels like I’ve got everything in the world! Thanks, Ryuto!” she exclaimed in an exaggeratedly happy way, then bit into her candy apple. “Apparently, the first thing my dad ever bought for my mom was a candy apple. It was at a local festival,” added Shirakawa-san, as though having suddenly remembered it. “What about us? Was it bubble tea?”
“Yeah, guess so,” I said and recalled her birthday date.
“I looked up to my mom and dad. They split up in the end...but when nothing was going on, they got along really well and were a great match for each other,” Shirakawa-san said haltingly, biting her candy apple. “Like I said before, I admired the idea of marrying the first guy I dated, like how my mom did.”
Then, she lowered her head further than it had before as she sunk her teeth into the candy apple again. Her pace became slower and slower, and eventually, she stopped.
“Shirakawa-san?”
As I looked at her face, wondering what was wrong, I was startled to see tears in her eyes.
“A-Are you okay?” I asked, worrying she might’ve remembered something about her parents that was hard to bear.
“Why can’t it be my first time...?” she quietly began, sorrow in her voice. “When I saw how you weren’t used to all sorts of things, I got kinda sad.”
“Huh...?”
I panicked, feeling unable to do anything, and Shirakawa-san looked up at me.
“It’s not my first time. It wasn’t at a festival around here, but walking like this in a yukata with a guy by my side? And watching fireworks together...” As she spoke, her face contorted in pain. “I wish it was my first time...”
Tears gushed from her eyes.
As I stood there, astonished to the point I couldn’t get a word out, Shirakawa-san covered her face with both hands as though to hide from the glances of passersby.
“I wish I had all my firsts with you... I wanna wipe my memory...”
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