Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me - Volume 5 - Chapter 3.2

“Well...” I groaned, looking at the nearby statues.

The statues farther in the back were raised as if they were standing on stairs, but the halolike parts of the statues in front were in the way. It was a bit dark here as well, so I couldn’t really make out the faces of the statues in the back rows.

“What about that one?” Kurose-san said as she approached Runa and pointed at a statue. “That’s a lot like your sleeping face from when you were little.”

“Ah, now that you mention it, maybe!”

I couldn’t tell which one they were talking about, but Runa was happy as she looked at the statue.

“Then you’re that one next to it,” she said.

“Eh? Was my face really so round...?” replied Kurose-san with a smile.

It warmed my heart to see the two sisters being on such good terms with each other.

“I wonder which one’s me...” uttered Tanikita-san, looking around.

Icchi, who happened to be standing next to me, pointed at one of the statues after seeing her like that.

“Isn’t it that one?” he asked. His voice was so quiet that only I could hear him.

Looking in the direction he pointed, I spotted a statue of an asurendra with an expression of wrath on his face. I couldn’t help but smile.

Tanikita-san turned out to have terribly sharp hearing. “Who’re you calling an asurendra?!” she yelled, lashing out at us.

“No, I mean, the one behind it...” replied Icchi in a hurry.

Tanikita-san wasn’t listening, however. “Who do you think you are?! Just because you’re kinda tall and good-looking...!”

“Like I said, I didn’t mean that one...”

A nearby male teacher scolded them. “Tanikita, Ijichi! Keep it down.”

“What did I do...?”

Icchi was the type to get easily upset when scolded and his dejection was clear as day. I felt a bit sorry for him.

Next to us, Yamana-san spoke to Nisshi. “Ren, did you find any statues that look like someone?”

“Nah. Honestly, all their faces look the same to me...” he replied with a smile.

He wasn’t tense, and the air between the two was easy and natural. It was a bit surprising to me. When had they managed to grow so close?

“I wonder which one’s me...” Yamana-san said as if talking to herself.

Nisshi hung his head all of a sudden. “None of them.” He then looked Yamana-san in the eye for a bit. “You’re too beautiful for that, Nicole,” he said shyly.

“Oh... Okay. Thanks.”

It was a blunt reply, but Yamana-san was blushing too.

It felt like I shouldn’t be watching what was happening here.

“Hey, let’s go look over there, Icchi,” I said, stepping away with my friend.

After Sanjūsangen-dō, it was time for a visit to Kiyomizu-dera.

“Wow, we’re up so high!” Runa exclaimed as she looked at the Kiyomizu veranda from some distance away. “Damn! C’mere, Maria, take a look!” Runa excitedly pulled Kurose-san in front of her.

“You don’t have to tell me. I can see it myself,” she replied with a smile, looking a bit taken aback by Runa’s childlike joy.

“It’s, like, crazy! You could totally go bungee jumping there!”

“Those handrails are made of wood, though, so I’d imagine they’d break,” Tanikita-san said.

“A one-way bungee jump, eh? That takes courage,” added Yamana-san.

Runa smiled. “Well, guess that’s not happening, then!”

While the girls were happily talking to each other, we guys lined up in order of height and looked at the veranda, resting our hands on the wooden handrail.

“Could you make a temple like this in Yourcraft?” Nisshi asked.

“Probably? Maybe I should give Japanese architecture a go one of these days,” replied Icchi.

“Damn, man, you’re the real deal,” I said. I genuinely respected him for that.

“Gotta say, though, we’re higher up than I expected,” Nisshi said quietly. “Looking down gives me the chills...”

While Nisshi was busy looking down, Yamana-san crept up behind him. Signaling me with her eyes, she forcefully pushed his back.

“Hey!” she yelled.

“Whoaaa!” Nisshi crouched down, looking like he was about to fall on his rear.

Yamana-san smiled. “What, you scared?”

“O-Of course not!”

“Not a fan of high places?”

Nisshi hung his head, still crouching down. “When I was in primary school, I was at an amusement park with my family and we went on a roller coaster. It broke down halfway and we got stuck at the top for thirty minutes...”

I’d never heard that story of his before.

“Huh...” uttered Yamana-san, looking displeased. “Well, I guess everyone has a thing or two they can’t handle. As for me, I really hate insects.”

Hearing that, Nisshi got up, his spirits having returned. “Really? I never would’ve thought that! I should buy a toy bug at a hundred-yen store and put it in your desk sometime.”

“Do that and I’ll fucking kill you.”

Nisshi kept grinning, unfazed by the anger on Yamana-san’s face.

I didn’t know her all that well yet, but Yamana-san’s manner of talking seemed similar to talking to Sekiya-san. They probably seemed similar even though they hadn’t dated for a long time because their personalities were alike to begin with. It seemed natural that they’d be drawn to each other.

Speaking of Sekiya-san... We had gotten to about when he’d be getting his final results from his college entrance exams. He’d said he’d let me know if he’d gotten in anywhere, and it was a bit worrying that I hadn’t heard from him yet.

Watching Nisshi and Yamana-san making a fuss in a friendly way made me recall another pair from Sanjūsangen-dō. It was a bit depressing.

And so our visit to Kiyomizu-dera came to an end. We were heading to the bus stop, when...

“Hey, check that out. ‘En-musubi no kami,’ it says!”

Runa was pointing toward a set of stone stairs. At the top of them was a shrine archway made of stone. The large red writing on it read “En-musubi no kami”—gods of love and relationships.

“Jishu Shrine? We didn’t learn about this place,” I said.

“Let’s go check it out,” Runa suggested to everyone.

“You don’t need help from the gods of love and relationships anymore, do you?” asked Yamana-san.

“Don’t you want a good-luck charm, though? Like, a matching one with your boyfriend.”

Yamana-san appeared moved by Runa’s point. “Okay, let’s stop by, I guess. I’d imagine Kyoto’s good-luck charms are pretty powerful.”

“Hey, should we really be stopping at places without needing to?” asked Nisshi. He sounded hesitant.

“It’s fine, we just gotta get back in time,” Yamana-san said optimistically and took the lead heading there.

Thus, we ended up stopping by the Jishu Shrine.

“Ah, there’s the good-luck charms!” exclaimed Runa as she approached the shrine’s shop. “This pair of charms say ‘Your love will grow’! I’m gonna go with these.”

Yamana-san was browsing too. “I guess I’ll get these, then. ‘A bell to bind the hearts of those who spend much time away from each other due to family circumstances, studying, or work,’” she said.

“That’s perfect for you! But wait, won’t you get back together really soon anyway?”

“Senpai will probably be busy with studies even after he starts going to college,” Yamana-san said.

“Are you getting those?” I asked Runa. “Want me to pay for them?”

“Nah, that’s okay! I’m the one who wants them.”

“You’re going to give me one of the two, though, right?”

I’d have been really shocked if that wasn’t the case, all things considered.

“Yeah... Okay, then I’ll pay half and you pay half?”

“Sure. It’s a thousand yen, so I guess that’s five hundred from each of us.”

Thus, Runa and Yamana-san successfully bought some good-luck charms. Looking around, I saw Icchi at a stand all by himself, writing something.

“What’re you up to?” I asked.

His face was like that of a real priest at work. “Well, you know, the whole ‘exorcism with hitogata’ thing.”

Icchi was writing on a thin white paper shaped like a person—a hitogata. The paper resembled a sheet of hanshi—Japanese calligraphy paper. Icchi had written his name and age on it.

He blew on it three times and then put it in the nearby wooden bucket filled with water. The person-shaped paper quickly came apart, starting from the limbs.

Icchi didn’t watch it happen—instead, he pressed his hands together in prayer and kept his eyes closed. He kind of looked really serious about this.

His attitude was giving me the chills. “So, what did you exorcise?” I asked.

Icchi opened his eyes but maintained his praying pose. “The connection with a certain weird girl. So that I can get a cute girlfriend.” He then glanced at Tanikita-san, who was cheerfully talking to Kurose-san.

“I-I see.”

So it’s finally come to this: Tanikita-san is now being called a “weird girl”!

Well, she certainly was weird with the way she was now... I couldn’t deny that, remembering how she’d acted at Sanjūsangen-dō.

Still, I was glad that Icchi actually wanted a girlfriend. Just the other day, he’d said that he wasn’t interested in love.

I should mention that ever since Icchi had lost weight, the girls in our class had started looking at him as if they found him to be not so bad after all. But since Icchi was an extreme introvert and Tanikita-san was radiating extreme pressure, none of them could approach him. Incidentally, there probably wasn’t anyone in our class besides Icchi who didn’t know that she was a fan of his. It was actually strange how he hadn’t heard about it yet...

“Are you done, Runy? Let’s go to the bus stop,” said Tanikita-san.

The girls gathered and looked about to leave, when...

“Looks like this stone tells your romantic fortune,” said Runa, having noticed something nearby. It was a rugged boulder about knee-high. A note on it did, in fact, say it was a “love fortune stone.”

Then, I noticed another stone like this one a bit farther away.

“It says that if you can walk from this stone to that one with your eyes closed, your love will be fulfilled,” Yamana-san said, reading from the sign.

“Oh, I see. Let’s try it, Akari!” said Runa.

“What?! Why me?!”

Runa and Yamana-san looked at each other.

“Well, in our cases...”

“Our love is more or less fulfilled already, after all.”

“Whaaat?! In that case, Mia, you do it with me!” said Tanikita-san.

Kurose-san smiled softly. “I’ll pass. I don’t have feelings that I could have my fortune told on.”

When she finished speaking, our eyes met for a moment, which startled me. However, there was neither sadness nor irony in her smile. It looked like she was telling me, “I’m okay, don’t worry about me.”

Perhaps I was just telling myself that since it was convenient. But Kurose-san really was moving forward too. The thought of it brought a smile to my lips, if only a small one.

At some point, it was settled that Tanikita-san would be the only one getting her fortune told this way. She started walking, her eyes closed.

However...

“You okay, Akari?” asked Runa.

“What’s with your sense of balance?” added Yamana-san.

Indeed, Tanikita-san wasn’t walking in a straight line at all. Anyone could tell she was veering way off course.

“Slow down, Akari, take a right! Right!”

“Ah, you went past it! It’s a bit to the left!”

“Ehh?! What the hell?!” Tanikita-san yelled in confusion.

“We should be the ones asking that,” countered Yamana-san without a moment’s delay.

The stone was only ten meters away, but it kind of felt like it was extremely far. Stumbling left and right as she followed her friends’ instructions, Tanikita-san finally got close to us. Icchi and I were standing next to the second stone.

“Right, Akari!” shouted Runa.

Tanikita-san was walking diagonally with such momentum that she could crash into us.

“Huh?” She tried to rapidly change direction, but her toes got caught on a protrusion in the stone ground.

“Watch out, Akari!”

Her body pitched forward and she was about to fall. At that point, Icchi, who happened to be right in front of her, stuck out his hand on reflex.

“Ah!”

With Icchi propping up her shoulder, Tanikita-san managed to avoid hitting the ground.

“Y-You okay?” Icchi asked cautiously.

Hearing his voice, Tanikita-san opened her eyes. Seeing Icchi in front of her, she looked so astonished that you’d think her eyes might pop out of their sockets.