Adachi to Shimamura - Volume 3 - Chapter 1.2

Bonus chapter: "Meat Shop: The Visitor - Part 4" 

"Do you mind if I try lifting something up?" 
I'd gone to Nagafuji's place after school and rolled under their kotatsu, only for her to ask me that nonsensical question. The fact that her eyes had been fixed on me for a while now gave me a pretty good idea of what this "something" was that she spoke of, but even so, I had to make sure. 
"Lift what up?" 
"You." 
"Why?" 
"Because you look light enough for me to lift." 
I could tell from Nagafuji's voice that she was being dead serious. I wonder, what sort of a path had her mind needed to take in order to arrive to that thought? 
"Getting up is such a pain. Pull me up!" I commanded her while lazily extending a hand. As I did, Nagafuji grabbed it, and in one fell swoop dragged me out from under the kotatsu. While the heater doing its job did ensure that the room outside of the kotatsu's warm comfort wasn't all that cold, the same couldn't be said of the floor; the chilling coldness that had been stored within it assaulted my body as I lay on it, as if I was lying on ice instead of wood. 
"All the way!" I signalled with my other hand. Nagafuji did as told, pulling me up before adjusting me so that both my X and Y axes were straight. Soon enough, I was standing upright on my own two feet, all without having to move a single muscle in the process. Magnificent. 
"There, I stood up. Gosh, I hate it. Not only does it make me dizzy, it also makes my ears ring. It's horrible." 
Completely ignoring my complaints, Nagafuji placed her hands under my arms and began lifting me up. She was really doing it, huh? My feet were left kicking the air as she lifted me higher and higher, like what you'd do when playing with a baby. This led to a pretty rare scenario; I was viewing the world from higher up than she was. 
It was quite the fresh experience, though thanks to the constant buzzing in my ears, I wasn't exactly able to enjoy it. No, I felt like I was right on the edge of passing out. 
Nagafuji's arms began trembling. She then let me down. It seemed that she'd hit her limit. 
"You were surprisingly heavy," she commented while rubbing her sore arms. 

"What a rude thing to say out loud." 
Both short and heavy. That was just the worst, wasn't it? Just now, what had been the sound I made as I landed? A heavy whomp, or a light thud? 
"So then, was there something that you wanted to do?" 
"No, not really. You just looked like I could lift you." 
That was likely all there was to it. Not surprising; Nagafuji's thought processes were rarely multi-dimensional. 
I crawled back under the kotatsu, and this time, Nagafuji followed after me. She then removed her glasses. 
I'd noticed that she'd made it a habit to take them off when it was just the two of us. 
Why? I had never bothered to ask. I had the feeling that if I did, she'd give me some simple yet utterly ridiculous answer, resulting in a back-and-forth similar to the one from earlier. 
I rested my head against the table part of the kotatsu. A calendar stood on it, and as I played with its pages by making them move with my breath, I remembered something, something that would be happening ten days from now. Valentine's day. 
"Speaking of which, want some chocolate again this year?" I asked Nagafuji. 
Exchanging chocolates on Valentine's day had become a tradition of sorts between us back in elementary school, and though there had been some years where I got side-tracked and began hunting for the rarest brand, these days, I was back to buying just regular old chocolate. The reason why? Nagafuji—whose favourite foods consisted exclusively of hamburgers and curry—only enjoyed the simplest of flavours. 
And when it came to gifts, what the receiver enjoyed dictated what you should get. 
"I like sweet things." 
"Yes, yes. I'll buy you something sweet again." 
Most of the time, we ended up going to buy the chocolates together, and then ate them together as well, but whatever. 
That was what Valentine's Day was for us.