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Once I come to school, my feelings don’t matter much. The classrooms and hallways are buoyant and everyone is waiting for summer vacation.
I don’t think we have a choice.
I don’t think there are many students who wouldn’t welcome a long break, and it’s impossible for them to adjust to us. The minority has to be like a minority and stay quiet.
For me, summer vacation is too long.
Even if I stay home, I am alone, and even if I were to go out with friends, I can’t invite them over every day. This is especially true this year, now that I am taking exams. I have a few commitments, but not as many as last year. Everyone has different schedules than last year, with cram school and prep school. Even if there are a few more commitments in the future, they should not exceed last year’s.
It’s so boring.
I’m used to being alone, but I don’t like long vacations because I don’t like being alone.
「Shiori, you’re going to get wrinkles.」
Maika, having finished her lunch, reaches out from across the room and presses her index finger between my eyebrows in a gurgling motion.
「That’s disgusting.」
Not wanting to continue to be touched between the eyebrows, which are creeping just by the approach of a finger, I grab Maika’s hand and put it back on the desk.
The classroom, buzzing at lunchtime, is restless. Maika, like everyone else in the class, laughs happily and tries to reach out her hand again. But Ami’s hand next to mine poked me between the eyes a moment earlier.
「I wonder why the space between the eyebrows is so weird.」
Ami says lazily.
「If you think it’s disgusting, don’t do it.」
I poke her in the side and escape her fingertips.
「That’s a foul.」
「And an attack between the eyes is also a foul.」
After patting her brow, which remained uncomfortable, she put the bread she had bought at the purchasing counter in her stomach, and Maika said to me in a detached manner.
「Shiori is not feeling well today, right? So I thought I’d cheer her up.」
「That’s right!」
Just because I’m not in a buoyant mood doesn’t mean I’m not in good spirits. But I seem to be downbeat to both of them and asks,「What’s wrong?」
There was something there, but I can’t tell them what it was.
I promised not to tell anyone what happened between me and Sendai-san after school. And even if there were no promises, what happened on that rainy day is not something you can talk to people about.
「I’m just sleepy because I went to bed late yesterday. If you bought me something to eat, I’d feel better in no time.」
It’s true that I haven’t slept much, and it’s a lie that I want to sleep.
It’s too much trouble to explain the part I can’t tell them, so I mix up half a lie and give a plausible answer.
「Buy you a something? What do you want?」
Maika looks at me, as if she intends to respond to my request. But Ami opens her mouth before I can answer.
「I want to eat ice cream? Go buy it.」
「Why do I have to buy Ami wants?」
Maika says this dismissively, but Ami doesn’t care and decides on her after-school plans.
「You don’t have to buy me a drink, let’s go out for ice cream. It’s hot.」
Indeed, it is hot today.
Maybe the hottest this year.
Sendai-san, whom I passed in the hallway, was also flapping her hands and fanning her face.
She is a hothead and only unbuttons one button of her blouse at school, even in the middle of summer. Today, she had only one button undone, and the second was fastened tightly. So they could not see the hickey she wore on a rainy day.
Of course, when she take two off, they can’t see them, and it should be gone by now. Still, I strongly wanted to be sure.
It is strange to think this way.
I know that.
I know that, but the reason I want to check is because yesterday I couldn’t see if the marks were gone.
After school, I called Sendai-san as usual, and I decided to let her unbutton her blouse to see the marks I had made on it.
But I could not order her to do so.
「The hickeys, you know?」
I think my mouth moved unconsciously and I think I’ve done it. But before I can pretend that the words I said were never said, Maika bites me.
「Hickeys?」
「Yes. How long do you think it will stay?」
Giving up, I ask them both what I was wondering.
「Eh? What? Shiori, is that what you did?」
Maika looks at me with a gleam in her eye.
「I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t even have a partner. Ibaraki-san was wearing a hickey the other day, so I was curious.」
I did not see Ibaraki-san wearing a hickey. Still, the reason I mentioned it as quickly as I did was because I remembered what Sendai-san had told me.
Ibaraki-san told hee that when you want to remove a hickey, you can put a sliced lemon on it.
I remembered that, so I mentioned it, thinking it would not be strange to see Ibaraki-san with a hickey in a prominent place.
「Ahh, I understand.」
It is a very Ibaraki-san-like person who can easily come back with such words.
It shows the importance of daily conduct.
And this is how we can see that facts are fabricated and spread as rumors.
「I thought there were quite a few left, you know? Hey, Ami.」
「Don’t dump it on me. I don’t know.」
「Eh— You didn’t do it with Sugikawa-kun?」
Sugikawa-kun is Ami’s recent boyfriend. We often hear that they are studying together, although they attend different schools.
「Because we have a clean and righteous relationship.」
If not wearing a hickey is “clean and proper,” then Sendai-san and I are definitely not with that description. But we are not in a relationship, so if you say that purity and correctness have nothing to do with it, that’s all I’m saying, and I’m not looking for purity or correctness.
However, I am not sure what will happen to those of us who are neither pure nor righteous.
I can’t hold it on my own.
Besides, lately I am not quite sure when to call Sendai-san.
I call Sendai-san on a bad day.
Those rules in my mind were broken.
So I can’t figure out when to call Sendai-san next.
I feel uncomfortable calling her today since I just called her yesterday, and tomorrow seems too soon.
I look out the window and see a sky so blue it looks like it has been painted with paint.
Soon after Sendai-san arrived at my house soaking wet, the rainy season ended and it has been disgustingly sunny. Sendai-san’s uniform will no longer get wet, and she will not take that uniform off.
It’s hot and humid today, and I’m dizzy.
I wish it was a little cooler.
I have nothing against the sun, but I stared at the sky, which didn’t seem to drop a single raindrop.