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But that room continues to play out their routine endlessly.

The wind was rattling the windowpane. The ocean was close, and with no tall buildings around, there was nothing to slow the wind as it blew through.

The sound drew my eyes to the scene beyond the window.

Bare of their foliage, the trees swayed in a dry wind that swept up dust and sand. The smattering of pedestrians walking by pulled their jacket collars close and hunched their shoulders.

Winter had arrived at the school. The same season had come last year, too, but I’d never known gusts so cold.

The sound of the wind was soon joined by voices.

“So, like, it’s been super-dry, right? Yumiko brought in this little humidifier, and it’s just puffing and puffing all through class! Lately, they have those…USJ…USA things? Like, those plug things? You know!” Yuigahama said fervently with animated gestures.

Watching her with a smile, Yukinoshita nodded. “Yes, they’re quite convenient,” she remarked before falling silent.

Yukinoshita isn’t normally a big chatterbox, so her brevity wasn’t all that strange. But I couldn’t bring myself to look straight at her smile.

Without a word, I dropped my gaze to the floor. Directly in my line of sight were Yuigahama’s toes, turning to point in my direction. “Right? So I was thinking I’d like to put one in the clubroom, too. Hey, Hikki? …Hikki?” Her whole body was probably facing me at this point. She repeated herself, waiting for my response.

Lost in my thoughts, I was a little late to reply. To fill up that silence, I deliberately sighed in exasperation before I answered, “…I’m listening. It’s USB. Why would we have to get electricity from America?”

“Oh! That’s it!” Yuigahama replied with a clap of her hands. And then, without waiting for a reaction from either of us, she immediately launched back into her speech. “Now you can charge cell phones by plugging in those USB things, and it’s super-convenient, y’know? Lately, my battery has been running out in no time at all.” She moved the conversation along, and this time it shifted to getting a new cell phone.

That kept the discussion continuing without pause. However, although the words never ended, there was a lack of continuity in both the conversation and its foundation.

An image hit me—this conversation was like drifting ice seen from afar. Was that due to the swaying tree branches I could see through the windows? It seemed like one wrong step would send us sinking forever into the deepest depths.

There was no calendar in the clubroom, but I didn’t have to check. I knew the date. Checking it was akin to counting down your days left to live.

We were already nearing mid-December. Two more weeks, and it would be New Year’s. This year would be over.

All things must come to an end, and there is no taking back days past.

Gazing at the setting sun, I felt conscious of the year’s closing.

Of course, the sun had always set, and the months had passed in exactly the same way. Was the sun today any different from the day before? No, and it never had been. In the end, it was just more of the same. Only the consciousness of those watching it had changed.

I—no, we—had most certainly realized the presence of a visible end, and that was what gave this entirely common sunset such sentimentality.

But if time was a river flowing by, this room was a frozen island.

Ever since the student council elections, our time spent in this clubroom had not changed one bit. We continued with conversations that could only be described as empty, with nothing there but the feeling that something was off, like we were walking on thin ice.

“I’ve been thinking it’s cold, but, like, I guess Christmas is right around the corner…” Yuigahama brought up yet another topic.

And Yukinoshita and I joined in, giving our trivial responses: “Yeah, it’s cold,” “It’s gotten colder,” and “It’ll be even chillier tomorrow.”

But Yuigahama must have sensed this topic had hit a roadblock, as she jerked forward and pushed the conversation on quickly. “Ah! If we asked Miss Hiratsuka for a heater, maybe we could get one in here!”

“I really think that’s unlikely.” Yukinoshita smiled wryly, her calm unperturbed by Yuigahama’s enthusiasm.

“She’d be more likely to give herself a present first.” Or rather, I feel like her greatest priority is making a present of herself to someone. Someone accept her, seriously.


After these unenthusiastic replies from the both of us, Yuigahama’s energy waned a little, too. “Oh… Yeah, I guess so…” Her shoulders sagged slightly in disappointment.

At that point, it kind of felt like her string of efforts was done.

Yukinoshita and I had never been big talkers in the first place, and it wasn’t as if we had any topics to contribute to a casual conversation. So lately, Yuigahama had often taken the lead in conversations. The subject matter was normally casual and harmless. Killing time can be rather tricky.

It seemed to me Yuigahama had gotten better at finding opportunities to start a conversation.

No, that’s not quite right.

I think she’s been good at things like this since before joining the Service Club. She’s probably spent a lot of time cultivating her social abilities—reading people’s moods, filling in silences, smoothing over situations, and ignoring past negative experiences.

Maybe it was kind of like how I had this book open that I wasn’t even reading right then.

The lines of characters and time flowed on by. I offered an occasional comment to the conversation, but I was also sort of ignoring it. Then I happened to look over at the clock. If today was going to be the same as the past few days, then it would be about time for Yukinoshita to prompt us to go home.

The others must have realized that, too. Yuigahama looked out the window and up at the sky. “It’s gotten dark, huh?”

“…It has. Let’s leave it here for the day.” Taking Yuigahama’s words as her cue, Yukinoshita closed her book and put it away in her bag. Yuigahama and I got ready to depart as well and stood up.

The clubroom went dark all at once when we turned off the lights, and leaving the room only led to more darkness. After walking wordlessly down the hushed, chilly hallway, we left through the front entrance.

The sun had already set, and the lights filtering out of the school building seemed forlorn. The afterglow of the sunset didn’t reach the shadows of the school. The darkness of night already covered the side where we were.

With the artificial light of a streetlamp at her back, Yuigahama waved. “Well, I’m taking the bus!” she called out with her arm raised.

“Okay,” I answered, before my feet took me toward the bicycle parking.

Left behind, Yukinoshita watched us go with a farewell. “Yes, good-bye.”

It was too dark to really see her face, but Yukinoshita was probably still smiling faintly. Yukinoshita quietly hefted the weight of her bag on her shoulder, which mussed up her scarf around her neck. She adjusted that, too. Those sedate gestures were the only things about her that made her seem unchanged from before.

“See you.” I responded with that brief farewell and hurried to the bicycle parking so I could avoid looking at her.

But no matter how I tried not to stare, her expression wouldn’t leave my mind.

Her smile hadn’t changed since that day.

In an attempt to shake the image out of my head, I pedaled my bike as hard as I could.

You get used to taking part in situations, you become a part of them, and then they come apart.

Eventually, even situations like this end up in a little package labeled mundane and sink to the bottom of your recollection, where you’ll most certainly call them memories in order to rationalize them.

People say that time heals all wounds.

That’s not true, though. Time is a slow-acting poison. It slowly erodes the events of the past, ending them, making you resigned to them.

As I was flying through the town on my bicycle, the decorative lights that illuminated the houses caught my eye. Like Yuigahama had said, Christmas would be here soon.

When I was little, I’d only ever thought of Christmas as a day when I’d get what I wanted. Well, it’s kind of, like, backwardly compatible with birthdays.

But now it’s different. I’m not a little kid anymore, and I’m not going to get any presents, either.

Most of all—

I don’t wish for anything—or want anything anymore.

I’m sure I won’t even be allowed to want anything.



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