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I can’t get excited.
Nothing bad happened today, but nothing good either, so I was halfway through the day and had no way to lift my spirits. Still, I feel that if I don’t call Sendai-san at least once a week, she will pursue me as to why, so I call her up and ask her to do my homework.
I don’t know what’s so interesting.
Sendai-san seemed to be enjoying herself as she ran her pen through her notebook, and I felt depressed.
My body feels heavy and unmotivated, like I have a stone stuffed in my stomach. However, even if the world is gray, tomorrow will surely come, and before I know it, I find myself with less than a week to go until summer vacation.
Today is probably the last time I will see Sendai-san before the vacations.
「Sendai-san, go get a novel from the bookshelf.」
I take the pen from her hand. Then I heard a little grumpy voice.
「Go get it yourself.」
「Because it’s an order. Any of them, just get one book.」
「Okay, okay.」
As if she had no choice, Sendai-san gets up and goes to the bookshelf.
I told her she could get any of them, but she didn’t come back right away. She groaned and choose a novel seriously, then leisurely returned.
「There you go.」
Sendai-san said in a deliberately formal voice and handed me a book. But I did not accept it and rolled her pen on the table.
「Read that for me.」
「I thought you might say that, so I brought a few pages.」
Sendai-san sits next to me and opens the novel.
She starts reading from the middle of a flimsy collection of short stories. This is something that has never happened before, but it is not so different from what Sendai-san has done in the past. In short, she does not want to do what she was told honestly.
It was really bad manners.
At school she acts nice and kind, but in this house she is always like this. She do things I don’t tell her to do. The fact that she are not disobeying orders is infuriating.
Well, her voice is good though.
It is soothing and comfortable to listen to and makes me want to sleep.
「Miyagi. You need to turn down the air conditioning.」
Suddenly, the voice reading the novel changes to a voice asking for coolness.
「I don’t want to. Read it quickly.」
「I’m fine to read it, but it’s hot.」
Sendai-san picked up my underlay on the table and began to fan it.
This room is just the right temperature for me.
Winter was the same, and summer is no different.
It’s my room, so it’s tailored to me.
But since we won’t be seeing each other for a while, I think it’s okay if I occasionally match Sendai-san with the hot weather.
「Then you can lower it yourself.」
I point to the remote control on the table.
「Miyagi is stingy.」
Sendai-san says terrible things about the room temperature, something that is important in its own right, and yet she gave it away. But soon the temperature setting is changed and it becomes too cool.
Perhaps satisfied with the air conditioner’s cool breeze, Sendai-san takes a sip of barley tea and turns the page of the novel.
The novel was read out loud, and my eyelids grow a little heavy.
I plop down on the table.
It feels nice and cool.
——I’d say, it’s colder.
When I got up and grabbed Sendai-san’s arm, her body was also cool.
「Wait, Miyagi. It’s hard to read.」
I hear her complaint as I touch her floppy arm. Still, I touch the arm and trace the veins. When I stroked the inside of her elbow and touched it to check the feel of her second arm, Sendai-san said in a low voice.
「Don’t touch me. Don’t I have to read this?」
「You don’t have to read anymore, turn up the air conditioner. It’s cold.」
I take my hand away from her and rub my own arm.
「If you turn it up, it’s going to be hot. If you’re cold, put something on.」
I heard a disgruntled voice.
「Sendai-san, if it’s too hot, just take it off.」
「I have nothing more to take off.」
「You can take off your blouse.」
「Miyagi is a pervert.」
I didn’t really ask her to take off her clothes, so she didn’t take that word seriously. I raise the temperature of the air conditioner without question. After a while, the overly cool room reaches the right temperature, and Sendai-san exhales with a deep crease between her eyebrows.
「It’s hot.」
I knew it, but Sendai-san and I are incompatible both at school and at home. Despite my efforts to adjust to her proper temperature on a whim, I can’t stand rooms that are too cold, so I think Sendai-san should compromise in this house.
I unbutton one button of Sendai-san’s blouse.
「It’ll be a little cooler this way.」
Sometimes the third button was allowed to be undone, and sometimes it was not. Today seems to be a good day to remove it and she doesn’t say anything.
I touch Sendai-san’s chest, the area where I gave her a hickey on a rainy day.
「…Here, did the mark disappeared right away?」
I ask what I have always wanted to know and could never ask.
「It’s gone, you know?」
The voice comes back to me in a whisper, and I put strength into my fingertips that touch her chest.
But I can’t ask her to show me.
「Give me your arm.」
Without waiting for an answer, I grabbed her wrist and she shook my hand off, not wanting to follow orders.
「If you’re going to do something like that, you need to do it somewhere else.」
「I just asked you to lend me your arm, I didn’t say anything else.」
「You’re going to make a hickey anyway, aren’t you? If I have a mark on my arm, it will stand out, so don’t do it.」
「Where is the other place that is fine?」
「You’ll have to figure that out on your own.」
Sendai-san said plainly and glared at me.
There are so many things she wants to say, but if it’s an order, she will obey it.
I guess that’s how it is.
「As long as it’s not visible from the outside, right?」
I ask in passing what I know I don’t have to ask.
「Something like that.」
I looked at Sendai-san as if she said it was natural.
There are only so many places where you can’t be seen from the outside, and right now, the only place where you can’t be seen is where you are hiding in your uniform.
I grab her blouse, which has unbuttoned three buttons, and open it. She close her eyes once as her bosom is exposed, revealing her underwear. She Slowly opened her eyes and pulled my face a little higher than where I had made the mark before, and I heard Sendai-san say,「Miyagi, it’s hot.」
Still, when I puts my lips on it, she herself is hot.
It is different from when she was wet and cold from the rain.
I suck harder than the other day and leave a mark.
When I take my face away, the red mark is darker, if not so dark that it will not disappear for the entire summer vacation. I touch that little mark and stroke it softly. I slid my fingertips over and touched a little above it, then brought my face close to it again and pressed my forehead.
「Miyagi likes to do erotic things, doesn’t she?」
Sendai-san says while clerically buttoning up the buttons.
「I didn’t do anything erotic.」
「This kind of thing is a kind of eroticism, you know?」
「It’s more erotic if you think it was.」
If there is an ulterior motive and lips are attached, or if there is a deeper meaning to the act, it may be a kind of eroticism, as Sendai-san says. But Sendai-san’s words are wrong because today I have no ulterior motive or even deep meaning.
I made excuses for myself and regretted saying “today.”
I don’t want to remember that rainy day.
I didn’t want to remember and explore my feelings.
It’s too long and depressing, but summer vacation may be just the right opportunity to reset these feelings.
The feelings that cannot be handled are disposed of during the vacations. If I lose it all, I’m sure things will be back to normal.
I get up and lie face down on the bed.
I read the rest of the novel.
As I was wondering whether I should say so, I heard Sendai-san’s voice.
「Miyagi, have you decided where to go to college?」
「A place I can go.」
I answer without looking at Sendai-san.
「That’s too arbitrary. It’s the second semester after summer vacation, and you’re in trouble if you don’t make a decision soon.」
「I’m interested on it.」
「What are you going to do during summer vacation? Go to cram school or something.」
Sendai-san starts mumbling things that even my father wouldn’t say, and I want to cover my ears.
I don’t know if he is not very interested in me, but my father never asks me for details about my career path or tells me to study. He never nagged me to do this or that even after high school, even though I might not go to college or work. He only gives me too much pocket money without telling me.
「That’s what you answered last time.」
Learn more
It is also a hassle to tell Sendai-san, who is more fussy than my family, about my summer vacation plans once again. I don’t have to tell her the answer, because I have already told her the answer the other day.
「I thought you weren’t going. Well, then, why don’t you hire a tutor?」
「I would never hire such a person. I mean, Sendai-san, you are too noisy. Leave my summer vacation alone.」
I got up and threw a pillow to Sendai-san, she took it and replied lightly.
「No, there’s a nice person, I thought I’d introduce that person.」
「You’re persistent. You don’t have to introduce me.」
「Five thousand yen for three times a week. Isn’t that cheap?」
「One time for 5,000 yen?」
I don’t know what the market price is for tutoring, so I’m not sure if that’s cheaper.
「No, it’s not. You’ll give 5,000 yen for three times.」
「—Is that okay?」
I stare at Sendai-san, who smiles and says strange things.
「Miyagi, hire me. I’ll teach you how to study.」
Sendai-san is strange.
This is not the Sendai-san I know.
She will come to my house during the vacations.
She has never said anything like that before.
「…I thought there was a rule that we don’t see each other on vacation.」
When I said I would buy her after-school hours, I was sure it was Sendai-san who told me that she would listen to my orders for 5,000 yen a time, except on holidays, when she could not do so.
And it’s a promise that has been kept, and I never saw Sendai-san again last summer vacation. Of course, I never saw Sendai-san during winter break, spring break, Saturdays, or Sundays either.
「I’m making up for folding your textbook.」
Sendai-san says simply.
Without going back to my memory, my modern literature textbook has the folds that Sendai-san made.
But it is too late now.
That was a long time ago, and it’s not something I’d pull out now, and I would have ended it by biting down as hard as I could between Sendai-san’s wrist and elbow.
「A tutor? I mean, you’ve already made up the textbooks.」
「That was Miyagi’s own way of making up for it.」
「You want 5,000 yen that badly?」
It’s the only reason I can think of to be flexible and change the rules to come to this house. It would be strange if it wasn’t. Sendai-san seems to get a lot of pocket money, but there must be no other reason.
「Yeah, maybe.」
I heard a quiet voice.
「…I don’t mind paying you 5,000 yen. But you have a prep school, don’t you, Sendai-san? You’re going there even during summer vacation, right?」
「I can adjust my hours while I’m on vacation and come here when I’m done. Please respond to me by summer vacation. If you want to study, Miyagi can set the schedule.」
「What happens if I don’t respond?」
「I won’t tutor, and I won’t come here the same way I did last summer vacation.」
Sendai-san said this and turned the page without reading the novel out loud.