Chapter 121 – Let’s Meet in Our Dreams

“Arina~”

As I was waiting at the central ticket gate of Sendai Station, Tsuru came trotting from the ticket gate with her case in hand. I moved from where I stood and approached her.

“You haven’t changed much. I thought you’d look like a completely different person.”

“The current trend is keeping things as natural as possible, I’m just following it~”

I guess I could call that a change? I don’t know.

Tsuru left her case on a coin-operated locker to lighten her load.

“There aren’t many people here, it feels good~ The amount of crowd feels just right! Over there, there are too many people, just moving around is tiring!”

“Is it that crowded over there?”

“Well, yeah. Sendai’s rush hour is nothing compared to Tokyo. That place is seriously f**ked up! It’s nice that the city prospers, but I wish that there were fewer people there! I swear there weren’t as many people there when I was younger!”

“My mom said something similar.”

It was currently Golden Week, so it was actually more crowded than usual here, but according to Tsuru, this much crowd was okay. I’ve never left Sendai, so I couldn’t imagine how bad the crowd was in Tokyo.

We chose a random restaurant to go to. All we needed was a place where we could talk, so we picked a restaurant near the station.

“As expected, you don’t drink, do you, Arina?”

“Of course not, I’m still underage.” (T/N: Legal age for alcohol consumption in Japan is 20, Arina is still 19 here.)

“That’s great to hear! I don’t drink either, but there are already plenty of idiots in my year that pretty much became addicted already. The welcome party was a mess because of them. Seriously, it was just alcohol, why are they making so much fuss about it?”

“Only dumbasses could understand what other dumbasses are thinking.”

“Wow, I thought your venomous tongue was already cured.”

We ordered soft drinks and toasted.

The sun was already set at this time, so the cabs and cars’ lights were more pronounced when I looked outside the window. The atmosphere made me feel like I finally became an adult. After all, it wasn’t often that I went out at night to eat.

“You became even prettier, huh, Arina? The guys are all over you, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, but they have become quieter nowadays. You’re a pretty girl yourself, Tsuru, so you have to be careful around the guys there. If you let your guard down, they might pounce on you, you know?”

“Don’t worry about me. If they dare to think of doing it, I can just file a lawsuit against them.”

“Law students are scary.”

We caught up with what each other was up to at the university. We both had different majors, so our experiences differed a lot. In high school, we wouldn’t be having this kind of conversation as we experienced pretty much the same thing.

I guess this was what it meant to be an adult. Children walked in groups. On crosswalks, field trips and school excursions, they would gather in groups. But for adults, that wasn’t the case. Adults had to be independent. They couldn’t walk in groups anymore because everyone else had their own lives and walked on their own paths.

“…So, have you been visiting Sui?”

I was surprised that she brought that up. Her expression hardened as she said that.

I put my glass to my lips and took a sip.

“In the past month, I’ve been going there about ten times.”

“That’s once every three days… You’re amazing…”

“There’s nothing to talk about him though. He’s the same as usual, nothing changed since you visited him a while ago. It’s a relief that his condition didn’t worsen at least.”

“I see. How is Ugin-chan doing?”

“She’s doing okay. I went on a date with her the other day.”

“I don’t know why, hearing you saying the word ‘date’ casually feels strange. You used to be more reserved about it, huh?~”

“In any case, Ugin-chan is a strange girl. She’s so similar to Sui, their resemblance is uncanny. Do you know that she loves space as much as Sui? She hides that from him though, she said that she didn’t want him to tease her about it.”

“Really? What is she, a tsundere? She treats him coldly normally, but she actually cares about what he thinks, huh? She’s in her second year now, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Jeez, time flies. I swear I was a middle schooler just the other day. Before I knew it, I’m already a college student. Can you believe that we’re going to be 20 years old soon?”

“We aren’t so young anymore, huh?”

“Wearing my old uniform already feels like cosplaying now. Ah, right, the other day, someone invited me to work part-time in a bar. They have this service where the waitress dresses in a high school uniform. You want to work there with me? We can be high school girls again there~”

“That’s what we call ‘cosplaying’.”

“I know, but wouldn’t it be interesting? Well, I refused the offer though. I don’t want to talk to old men.”

Tsuru laughed the same way as she did in high school.

I was relieved to see that she was doing well. She was one of my few friends, I nagged at her to be careful a lot when we said our goodbyes back at the graduation ceremony. I didn’t want her to be involved in some kind of incident in the big city, after all. But when I saw her smile like this, I realized that my worries were unnecessary.

We spent 90 minutes drinking and eating at the restaurant before parting at the station. She waved at me and disappeared from my sight while dragging her heavy looking case behind her. We promised to meet again later, but I still felt lonely. Like a rabbit who missed human’s warmth.

*   *   *

My part-time job was a perfect job for me.

My workload was mostly receiving payments from the customers, occasionally, I would put up book covers and give out book recommendations. My favorite part of the work was putting up the book covers. It made me feel like the books were my children and I was taking care of it.

My co-workers were mostly college students who loved books as much as me. Being surrounded with books all day made me feel happy. Ever since I worked here, there wasn’t a day when I wasn’t happy. I never had a bad day and even on ordinary days, it always felt like it was the best days of my life.

Two months after I started working, I bought a tablet PC with my savings.

It was something that I would use at university, but the main reason why I bought it was to write with it. The days of writing stories with a pen and paper were a thing of the past, nowadays, a single PC was all we needed. Well, I still had to print sometimes, but I’ll leave that for future Arina to think about.

“Story…”

I muttered to myself as I finished the setup and stared at the blank screen.

What kind of story should I write? I put my arm on the open window and leaned my weight against it. The sky was dark, but I could hear the songbirds chirping from where I sat.

It was already summer. It had been a year since he fell asleep.

He probably was still living in the last summer. The doctor told me that if he didn’t wake up within a few months, his chances of recovery were slim. I was still in high school when he told me that and for a time, I wallowed in despair because of it. But it didn’t last long, my despair quickly dissipated after I found out that there were people who managed to wake up after going through the same thing as he did.

I laid down on my bed and was about to fall asleep, but then, I realized that I hadn’t written down in my diary today. I started writing on it last September and had not skipped a single day.

Today I was thinking of writing a story.

I haven’t decided what kind of story it will be, but I have a goal in my mind for it. I want to write a beautiful story that will make the reader satisfied when they close the book. The story that will give them warmth that they will want to hold the book close to their heart.

I closed my diary, went to the kitchen and brushed my teeth.

As I did that, I started thinking about what I would do tomorrow. My reflection in the mirror looked so happy that it made the gloomy-faced me in the graduation book look like a different person.

I turned off the lights and closed my eyes. The humidity felt unpleasant, but it wasn’t unpleasant enough to prevent me from going to the dream world.

TL: Iyo

ED: Dodo