3
An hour and a half after they got off the train at Misakiguchi, Sakuta somehow found himself following Uzuki’s butt around. A well-toned butt hugged by the elasticity of her skinny slacks. More accurately, her butt was on a bike she was pedaling, and he was following on a bike of his own.
They’d been at this for half an hour now.
How had things gone so wrong?
Everything had been reasonable when they left the station.
They’d found a roundabout outside backed by skies of that autumn blue. No tall buildings anywhere, so it felt wide-open.
A view that promised a relaxing escape from the daily grind.
The tuna they were after didn’t take long to locate. There were flags fluttering across the roundabout with maguro written on them.
The sort of shop that served meals by day and booze at night.
It was small but comfy.
Sakuta and Uzuki ordered the tricolor tuna bowl. Akami from a bigeye tuna, otoro from a southern bluefin, and Pacific bluefin negitoro. Everything was heaped on top of the rice, all fancy-like. It came with miso and a side for 1,300 yen, a real bargain. And with Misaki Harbor close by, it was as fresh as it was affordable.
Personally, Sakuta would have been satisfied pigging out and going home. Sadly, Uzuki was still searching for herself and didn’t find it in the tuna bowl.
They settled the bill and went outside.
“Now what?”
He figured she didn’t exactly have a plan, so he wasn’t expecting much of an answer.
“Let’s rent some bicycles!” Uzuki cried.
“Where at?”
“The tourism guide booth by the station exit.”
She’d kept her eyes peeled while he’d been gaping at the skies.
They headed back across the street, and there was a bike-rentals sign on the door of the tourism counter.
“You can’t find yourself without a bicycle.”
“I don’t think they’re usually rented.”
She paid this advice no heed, opening the door and calling out, “Excuse me!”
The clerk inside was super nice and walked them through the paperwork, even recommending a good route to take. They got a map of bike paths in the Miura Peninsula area.
Since then, they’d been pedaling around for half an hour now. Possibly a full hour.
At first, there had been cars around, plus homes, and warehouses dotting the landscape. Now there were fields to the left, to the right, and dead ahead.
No people anywhere.
Aside from the occasional farmer toiling in those fields, they didn’t see a soul.
“What leaves are those?” Uzuki asked.
“Daikon. Miura daikon.”
They were still growing, so only the green leaves were sticking out of the soil. If you looked close, you could see the bulbous white top of the root.
“You know so much!”
“We took a field trip to a daikon field in grade school.”
He had not expected to avail himself of that education here.
“So, Zukki…”
“Whaaat?”
“How far we going?”
“Dunno!”
She sure sounded carefree.
“Which way we going?”
“The sea!”
Simple enough.
“What happened to the map?”
“The guide said not to look while we’re riding!”
“True…”
Nothing he said was getting through. But today, Uzuki felt more like the one he knew, and that was oddly comforting.
And even if they did get lost, her phone had GPS, and they could find their way back. They’d come a long way, so he was a bit concerned about their energy reserves, but these bikes were actually pedelecs, so going uphill was not that bad. Quite breezy, really.
“This feels great!” Uzuki cried.
She had a point. Their impromptu bike tour of Miura Peninsula was surprisingly enjoyable. The breeze was pleasant, the skies were clear, and the air was the right kind of dry.
And they had the road through the daikon fields all to themselves.
“Nodoka, right?”
“What about Toyohama?”
“Not her! The meaning of her name! Tranquil!”
Uzuki let out a peal of laughter. The autumn wind carried it to him.
“I’ve been wondering…”
“Mm?”
“Why’d you pick this major, Zukki?”
He’d been wanting to ask that for a while now but never quite had the right opportunity.
There were plenty of options. She could have joined Nodoka over in the international liberal arts school. Or maybe made like Miori and majored in international management.
“Why’d you go with statistical science, Sakuta?”
She turned the question back on him.
“Seemed like the least competitive division.”
“Then I’ll go with that, too!”
“C’mon!”
“You lied, so I’m not telling.”
She laughed out loud again. Her general demeanor and enthusiasm were definitely the old Uzuki, but she was still reading him loud and clear. She knew exactly how he felt and what lay behind his words.
“I wasn’t lying!”
“But it’s not the truth, either.”
“……”
She had him there.
“Oh, the sea!”
She waved excitedly, one hand off the handle bars. Pointing ahead.
“Careful. Eyes front!” he said.
Uzuki slowed to a stop.
They’d crested a long, gentle slope.
Sakuta pulled up alongside her and put his stand down.
“Let’s take a break,” Uzuki said, stretching.
Her back had been bolt upright the whole ride, so she must’ve been feeling pretty stiff. She ran through a number of stretches, clearly ones she did all the time. When she touched her shoes, her forehead tapped her knees. Then she twisted hard, bent backward, stretched her legs out to the side, and even pulled them up to her head.
Since she was wearing skinny slacks, this left little to the imagination, but her figure was so relentlessly healthy it didn’t really prompt bad thoughts. And the view around them was hardly fitting for that kind of fantasizing.
A college idol stretching against sea, skies, and daikon fields.
Not a sight you saw every day. Sakuta took a swig of tea from a bottle he’d bought from a vending machine along the way. He’d looked for a brand from one of Mai’s commercials, but they hadn’t had any. He’d been forced to compromise.
“Can I have a sip?”
“It’ll be an indirect smooch,” he warned, handing the bottle over.
She pulled her hands away.
“I’ll stick to mine, then.”
She’d bought some water at the same machine and took a few gulps from that.
As he watched her, she asked, “Did Nodoka put ideas in your head?”
She wasn’t looking at him.
“Mm?” he said, as if he had no idea what she meant.
Uzuki smiled faintly. Like she’d seen that answer coming. Her eyes locked on the road through the daikon fields, to the sea beneath the distant skies.
The wind brushed by.
The daikon leaves shivered.
Thin clouds trailed across the sky.
A moment passed, almost without sound.
“Sakuta.”
“Mm?” he grunted, midswig.
“How old do you think idols get?”
“You’ll manage it your whole life.”
He put the cap back on his bottle.
“I said that once.”
“But not now?”
“I dunno.”
She smiled faintly, her eyes never leaving the water.
“Where’s this coming from?”
“A friend at school said something.”
“What?”
“‘How long are you gonna do that idol thing?’”
“And that made you wonder?”
“Nope. I thought something else.”
“And that is?”
“Just ’cause you had a fight with your boyfriend, don’t take it out on me.”
“Brutal.”
It was so harsh he couldn’t help but laugh. That was definitely not something the old Uzuki would have come out with. She would never have picked up on the aggression in the first place.
“People don’t say that stuff, but they think it all the time, right?”
Looking down on idols.
“Everyone wants to be something,” Sakuta said, his eyes on the ocean, speaking absentmindedly.
“To be what?”
“Something they can boast about. ‘This is me!’”
“……”
“Hirokawa, in your case, that’s singing. The whole idol shebang.”
And people admire that.
It’s something to brag about.
Everyone wants something like that.
“……”
Uzuki said nothing back. Just gazed at the water, listening.
“But they ain’t anything yet. So when they see you on TV, living the idol dream…well, that’s downright bedazzling.”
And they lack the strength and aplomb to admit that to themselves. Sometimes it turns into irritation, and they find themselves sneering, “How long are you gonna do that idol thing?” That results in pure vindictive spite because they realize they have nothing of their own.
A standard-issue self-defense instinct.
“Well, my friend does have a point,” Uzuki said, ducking Sakuta’s words. She smiled at the empty scenery. “You can’t be an idol forever.”
“Hmph.”
“Hmph? Ain’t that where you’re supposed to argue I can?”
“Do you want encouragement?”
“If you gave me any, I’d get real grumpy.”
“Then I should have gone for it.”
“Why?”
“’Cause if you blow your top, maybe you’ll finally start saying what you mean.”
Like Uzuki’s friend had.
“…You can be a real bully.”
“Not really.”
“You’re good at pretending you are and getting people to blurt stuff out.”
“Like…?”
“Like how we’re a long way from the Budokan.”
She said that like she wasn’t speaking to him. Almost as if they weren’t even her own words. The wind caught her voice and carried it away. But this felt like the truest thing she’d said yet.
She only let herself express it in that detached tone—but failed to disguise the bitterness behind the words.
And knowing where that came from made it all fall into place. Sakuta realized why Uzuki had needed to go out and find herself.
She didn’t think they could do it.
Didn’t think they’d get there.
Didn’t think they had it in them.
Didn’t think her comrades’ hard work would ever make their dreams come true.
She thought they were doomed to failure. And the realization that she thought that way had dawned on her.
So she’d gone out looking for something. Anything to distract herself from the truth.
“Zukki, lemme borrow your phone.”
“Why?” she asked, but she also handed it over.
First, he fired up a train navigation app. Looking up the obvious.
“It’s actually pretty close. Only a two-hour ride from Misakiguchi Station.”
“To where?”
“Where else…? The Budokan.”
“……”
Uzuki went real rigid, like she rejected the very idea with her entire body.
But that didn’t last long.
She managed an awkward smile.
“…I knew you were a bully.”
Sakuta handed the phone back and got back on his bike. He took a firm grip on his handlebars, making a show of being ready.
“This whole bike tour thing was fun, but you didn’t lose yourself out here, Zukki.”
“Are you suuure?”
She didn’t sound convinced, but she did get back on her bike.
“Still…Sakuta!”
“Mm?”
“We’ve gotta get back to the station first.”
Unfortunately, neither of them knew which way to go. That was a pretty tall order.
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