One slightly chilly morning. As Aya was changing her shoes at the entrance hall, she spotted two figures walking down the hallway from the direction of the staff room.
The sewing club’s advisor, Saeki, and Sakura. Sakura walked along showing Saeki her sketchbook; Saeki gave advice with a seriousness Aya had never seen from her in class, and Sakura scribbled notes into the sketchbook as they went.
Aya, a smile rising to her lips as she thought about calling out to them, decided instead to walk quietly behind them so as not to interrupt. But Sakura, noticing the footsteps, turned around first, and Saeki, drawn along, turned too. Their eyes met squarely, so Aya resigned herself and greeted them.
“Morning.”
“Oh, morning. Right on time for your usual executive-hours arrival.”
At that, Sakura exchanged a few more words with Saeki. Once the conversation wrapped up, Saeki smiled this way, gave a small wave, and climbed the stairs alone.
Sakura closed the sketchbook and, of all things, walked back over to Aya.
“Morning,” she said, dutifully.
“Morning. Is that okay, leaving your talk with Saeki-sensei?”
“Taking up too much of a busy teacher’s morning would be rude. I’ll settle for a senpai who looks like she’s got nothing better to do.”
“Wow, way to put it. Well, I do have nothing better to do.”
At Aya’s honest admission, Sakura hugged the sketchbook to her chest and, with an utterly innocent expression, plastered herself right against Aya’s side. Climbing the stairs like this was maximally inconvenient. “Scheming something again?” Aya asked bluntly, and Sakura tilted her head as if she genuinely had no idea. “What do you mean?”
Whether unconscious or a bald-faced lie, either way, this closeness was dangerous.
“You might’ve forgotten, but — I like girls, you know?”
Knowing that was exactly why Sakura had tried the honey trap in the first place; just in case, Aya put a pin in it. But, surprisingly, Sakura only said, breezily, “I know,” and showed no sign of moving away. If anything, she closed the distance further, brushing arms.
Not understanding any of this at all and feeling vaguely restless, Aya settled for a plain “hard to climb stairs like this.”
“I know that too.”
She looked up at Aya with an impish little smile, and Aya let her eyes wander off and fell silent.
Fourth period, right before lunch. Somewhere amid the classroom noise, someone’s stomach seemed to growl.
With midterms coming up, math class was handing back a pop quiz. Mostly meant to gauge comprehension, it also included a few deliberately tricky word problems in the style of a regular exam, as a kind of training exercise.
Famous for being extremely difficult, and explicitly stated not to count toward grades, plenty of students still cared about the results as a gauge of their own strength. Amid the return of papers, a voice rang out:
“Whoa, perfect score!”
A few students turned toward the loud voice.
It was Endo. Clutching her own crumpled answer sheet, she stared, speechless, at Yuki’s answer sheet in the seat behind her. The whole room buzzed at the news, and the math teacher, hearing it, smiled with something like pride and added:
“This problem’s recycled from last year, but Kayano was the only one who got a perfect score on it.”
Taking that as encouragement, the whole classroom erupted in praise.
Some students clapped teasingly, and Yuki, on the receiving end of it all, waved both hands as if to say “stop,” laughing wryly. As the cheering gradually died down, several students whose scores had come back poorly gathered at her seat before even checking their own answers, coming to ask about the word problems.
“Amazing… guess that’s the doctor’s kid for you.”
“Is everyone who goes to med school on this level?”
“If she got a perfect score on this, the midterm’s basically a lock too.”
Classmates chattered freely, ignoring Yuki’s strained smile; others pushed through them to beg for pointers. Aya, watching from a distance at the back of the room, chin propped on her hand, eventually lost sight of Yuki behind the mounting swell of expectation, and quietly turned her eyes back to the blackboard.
—For a student, the single biggest perk of commuting by train is the pass. That was how Kayano Yuki saw it.
In most cases, parents pay for the pass. And while the assumed usage was the twenty-some weekday round trips per month, naturally, within the pass’s covered zone, you could get on and off as many times as you liked, wherever you liked. In other words, a student could go wherever she wanted, as often as she wanted, without denting her own wallet. Legally, freely, covering distances too far for a bicycle and beyond reach without a car she couldn’t yet drive.
At nine p.m., a little later than usual, Yuki stepped out of the station and found herself briefly captivated by the star-strewn mid-autumn sky.
It had gotten a little cold today, so she’d bundled up more than usual. Looking bored, eyes half-closed with drowsiness, she opened her phone and pulled up the message history with the contact saved as “Mizuki Aya.”
A back-and-forth of her asking if she could visit today and a sticker showing cheerful assent. Yuki’s expression softened looking at the cute panda sticker; she gently stroked it, then tucked the phone back into her pocket and followed the road.
A few minutes later, arriving at Sagara Books, Yuki opened the door without hesitation.
The part-timer at the used book counter gave a half-hearted “welcome” and, recognizing Yuki, smiled knowingly, gave a small nod, and gestured toward the adult corner’s noren curtain. Guess I’ve become a regular face around here, Yuki thought with a wry smile, returning the nod as she lifted the curtain.
“Welcome.”
A familiar voice came from behind the register counter’s opaque panel, and Yuki’s slightly bored expression slackened, relaxing. Smiling faintly, she said “hey” and started to peek around the panel — but before she could, Aya stood up and came out through the swing door.
Slightly wavy, jet-black long bob; features you could call handsome. Today she wore a thick gray hoodie with a denim apron over it, black cargo pants below.
“Yo. Sitting down again today?”
Aya said this with an affected air, opening the swing door and gesturing inside. It was a welcome Yuki had already gotten thoroughly used to, but the kindness of it still soaked into her exhausted body, warming her chest a little. Touching a hand to that warmth as if to confirm it, Yuki laughed, “pardon the intrusion,” and slipped past her.
Sitting in the prepared chair, Aya dropped into the other one and asked, “How’ve things been lately?”
Various topics floated up in Yuki’s mind. They hadn’t gotten much one-on-one time recently, so she had plenty she wanted to say. But saying it all would take far more time than she had, so Yuki’s lips wandered up, down, and sideways as she deliberated. Then, on impulse, she tossed out an icebreaker instead.
“Come to think of it, we haven’t talked much lately, huh.”
“Ah, true. Someone went and stirred things up.”
There was a faint edge to Aya’s words, but her expression was warm with affection. “True,” Yuki agreed with a wry laugh, her thoughts drifting to Sakura.
“How’s Tokiwa-san doing, since then?”
She thought it was a clumsy way to ask, but Aya caught her meaning and answered.
“…Seems like she went through a lot, but I think she’s fine now. Not worried about her.”
That was wonderful news, but hearing it, Yuki planted her heels firmly on the floor, reflected on her own lack of progress anywhere, and felt a flash of self-loathing. Still, she managed a smile and offered “I see,” celebrating Sakura’s new start. Aya, in turn, narrowed her eyes with something like concern for her this time, her mouth softening.
“What about you, Kayano? Any changes lately?”
A jolt of alarm ran through her, but she didn’t feel like hiding anything from Aya.
“Well… nothing much has changed, really. Same as always.”
Aya crossed her arms and, worried, offered up something like a compliment.
“Perfect score on the pop quiz again today, right? That’s impressive.”
“That was… well, just luck. Happened to click well with the word problems. Probably Hashimoto-san did about the same — she’s usually around second in the year.”
“If luck’s enough to solve it, the test wouldn’t mean anything.”
Having said that, Aya, looking troubled, changed the subject.
“—You came all this way, and I’m boring you with this stuff. Let’s talk about something fun. First, let me grab something to drink. Tea or coffee, which do you want?”
Aya asked, standing up, and Yuki, feeling a little guilty about it, took her up on the offer.
“Is that okay? Then, tea, please.”
Before long, Aya returned through the curtain with a steaming paper cup and some sweets. Yuki, who’d been minding the register with Aya’s phone number on standby in case of customers, let out a relieved breath and switched places with her. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” “I was so nervous.” “You’re used to it by now, right?” They traded lines like this as they took their paper cups.
Yuki said “thanks for the meal” and sipped the tea Aya had brewed for her, breathing out in relief. It was still a little early to call it properly cold out, but the kindness of it soaked into her heart.
Was it really this hard to find someone she could confess her weaknesses to, and who would stay close to her through them? Chewing on both the preciousness of the friend beside her and her own affection for her, Yuki still felt some small unfilled part of her heart, and wanted to lean on her a little more.
Putting her feelings into words like that made it sound almost like romantic love, and she looked down as if averting her eyes from the thought. To Kayano Yuki, Mizuki Aya was a kind friend who stayed close through her anguish and conflict. But to Aya, she was probably nothing more than one of many friends who just came to unload her troubles on her. So even if this feeling, made clear, turned out to be romantic love, it could only ever be one-sided — so she decided to close her eyes to the true nature of her own desire.
But even so, a little of that desire leaked out anyway.
“Oh, come to think of it — you and Tokiwa-san, are you, um, dating or anything?”
Feigning naturalness, putting on a bright expression, Yuki asked this with slightly halting delivery.
Aya’s round eyes turned to her, and reading it as simple surprise at the unexpected question, Yuki quietly let out a breath of relief. Sure enough, Aya twisted her cheek into a laugh and crossed her arms.
“With Tokiwa? Nope, she’s got no feelings like that for me.”
“I see — right, of course. Sorry, maybe that was a weird thing to ask.”
Yuki laughed to cover it, and Aya, looking a little amused, peered into her face.
“What, you at that age where you’re curious about that stuff?”
Like water dropped on hot iron, Yuki’s face instantly shot up in temperature. Her attempted deflection — “no” — came out trembling and hoarse.
“I mean, gotta keep tabs on a friend’s love life… otherwise it’d get harder to come here, right?”
At that, Aya let out an “ah” of understanding, then laughed breezily.
“Doesn’t matter if I get a girlfriend, you can still come here to blow off steam if you want. I’m gay, sure, and I appreciate you being considerate about that, but I don’t buy the idea that a girlfriend should automatically take priority over a friend. I think both deserve equal respect, and you find a balance.”
Yuki watched Aya say this with quiet eyes, then felt ashamed of her own shallow thinking. Her cheeks flushed with the pathetic feeling of it, and she lowered her face — but at the same time, felt a warmth rising in her chest.
“I see. Thanks.”
—Whatever happens, feel free to use this place as somewhere to rest your wings.
That’s what Aya was saying, beyond the words themselves. A resting place for whenever the journey wore her down, any time. Yuki decided to know her own place — that it was fine, even without being special, just to be nearby.
“Oh, right, have you been getting a chance to unwind lately?”
As if suddenly remembering something, Aya grinned and rose halfway out of her seat. To Yuki, tilting her head, she continued.
“Want me to bring back some more samples?”
Instantly, an image flashed through Yuki’s mind — the adult goods she kept hidden among her study supplies and exercise equipment at home. Recalling the nights, family long asleep, when she’d frequently relied on them in bed, she forced her stiff, uncooperative tongue to insist she was fine.
“No, I— I’m okay! I’ve got more than enough already!”
“That so. The company apparently uses the survey feedback a lot, so if you’re curious about something new, let me know. If there’s a product you look into and want to try, just say so.”
“Uhh… I’m a little conflicted about whether to be happy about that.”
Being praised for one’s own ability to put things into words or point out problems was usually a nice thing, but being complimented in a field you couldn’t exactly publicize made it hard to know how to react. It was flattering, and hiding it entirely felt disrespectful to the industry, but she was still a minor, and it wasn’t exactly something to broadcast either way.
As Yuki groaned, arms crossed, Aya swirled the dregs of her paper cup, regretfully finished it off, and said “…so,” moving the topic along.
“Do you watch movies alone too? Getting your stress out okay?”
She asked this repeatedly, worried, and Yuki answered with a wry smile.
“More or less. Movies I mostly just watch through a phone subscription. We’ve got a family plan, so it doesn’t cost me anything extra. But I don’t do it that often, and mostly right before bed… …well, I manage to relieve stress well enough.”
There was no point hiding it now, but saying the words out loud was a little embarrassing.
Sweating faintly down her back, managing to deflect, Yuki felt oceans of gratitude toward Aya, who simply nodded, “I see, that’s good,” without digging further.
But, thinking back on it, the content of her stress relief might be a little unhealthy. She didn’t think it was a bad thing exactly, but it did seem less than ideal on its own. Wondering if there was something else she could do to unwind, Yuki pulled out her phone and checked the showtimes at the theater she’d gone to with Aya before.
Then she noticed that a movie she’d been curious about from the trailers had, at some point, started running. Eyes widening, she checked the schedule — today was the last day. A little flustered, she checked the time — there was one late show left.
—I should go. If possible, with Aya.
Having decided that, sudden tension gripped her whole body. Holding her breath, she pressed a hand to her mouth and closed her eyes.
She couldn’t look sideways. Would Aya even come if she invited her? She’d said she could close the corner at her own discretion, but would she really go that far just to come along?
If she got turned down, the air would turn awkward.
But she wanted to go with Aya, so Yuki bit down on her trembling lips to still them, and took a deep breath.
Steeling herself, Yuki quietly opened her mouth.
But at that exact moment, Aya’s phone buzzed. Yuki immediately shut her opened mouth, and Aya, looking apologetic, raised a hand — “sorry, a call” — and stepped away a little.
Yuki pressed a hand to her pounding chest and waited for the call to end.
“Ah, hello, senpai? What’s up?”
Senpai — probably that third-year, her ex.
As Yuki eavesdropped, stealing glances, after a few exchanges, Aya glanced briefly at the small clock inside the register counter.
“—After this? Well, I’m free, sure.”
Yuki’s quietly averted eyes shot wide open and drifted back, wavering.
Blinking repeatedly, hearing the sound of her own blood in her ears. Her shoulders stayed rigidly locked for a while, and eventually, she laughed weakly and let the tension drain out of her. A long, deep sigh slipped out.
Aya’s words no longer reached her ears. She wanted to curl up right now and bury herself in a bed.
There was a world of difference between an ex who’d invited Aya out from the very start, and herself — someone who’d only thought to invite her on a whim, hesitated, gotten nervous. She wasn’t someone special to Aya, just one more friend among the many she couldn’t leave to suffer alone, and so she could never truly belong to her. She hated all of it — her own lack of courage to try to become special, her failure to speak up sooner, her inability to just set up a promise for another day instead, right now. She felt close to tears.
Yuki stared weakly at the showtime schedule still displayed on her phone, then closed the tab as if looking away from it. She tucked it into her pocket and rubbed at her stiffened face.
“Sorry, kept you waiting. — You were about to say something?”
Aya, having ended the call, gently tried to draw the rest of it out of her, and Yuki, disgusted with herself for it, put on a bright smile and an airy voice.
“Nothing? Just — it’s fun being with you. That’s all.”