My Childhood Friend And Summer Break

✳ A guy shows up in this one, so if that’s not your thing, consider yourself warned.

According to my childhood friend, “Motivation won’t come until you actually get moving, and summer homework’s no different: the whole trick is getting yourself fired up first,”

…Or so she says.

On that, I’m with her. Knock out the tedious stuff fast and spend whatever’s left playing. Nothing beats it. Though the very girl who said all that does, every so often, come crying about it to me or Hina.

Now then, as for what that childhood friend of mine, Sakura Ayuri, is up to at present… she’s not here right now. Today she’s apparently off at the library, doing homework with Sumire.

And as for what I’m doing right now…

“Huh? You want to date Ayu?”
“…Yeah.”

Summer break, and I’d been summoned out to our usual café. Three people were waiting for me: Hina, the one who’d called me here, now wearing a troubled look; Shinohara Kengo, a boy I’d known since grade school; and his friend, Katsuragi Yuuya.

“Kengo, are you in your right mind? Did the heat scramble your brain?”
“Sakura’s your friend, right…?”
“I’m curious too~. You said you had something to talk over about Ayu, so I brought Gin along just like you asked. So how come you want to date my Ayu, hmm~?”

This girl just went and said “my Ayu.”

“Now, now, hold on, you two. Kengo does have his reasons, y’know. Right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Ohh~? Reasons like what~?”

This girl is terrifying. Ayu, Hina, and Kengo supposedly go all the way back to kindergarten together, and yet here she is practically spoiling for a fight; the pressure rolling off her is unreal.

“Look, back on the last field trip, on the bus home, Sakura sang and got the whole place going, remember?”
“So I hear. I was asleep for it, though.”
“And ever since, here and there among the guys in class, you’ve had people starting to go ‘Sakura might actually be a catch,’ and so…”
“…and Kengo — childhood friend since kindergarten — started to panic? That the gist?”
“More or less.”

Beside me, Kengo grumbled, “You don’t have to put it like that,” but that’s beside the point. What I’m more interested in is…

“The field trip was, what, back around May? It’s not like anyone’s actually confessed to Ayu since, so why panic now, of all times?”

It’s already July and summer break’s here, y’know?

“…So it’s not the boys in class you’re on guard against. It’s Ayu growing up~?”
“Well…”
“Nailed it~.”

…Ahh. So that’s what this is about.

Ayu, going by looks alone, is a pint-sized little kid. Up through middle school, even when a guy did make a move, he’d usually go for Hotaru beside her, or Hina, or, worst case, me, and almost never for Ayu.

But now we’re high schoolers.

I don’t know how long Kengo’s carried a torch for Ayu, but hearing that under-the-radar buzz among the guys, he got anxious: now that she was in high school, Sakura had become that kind of prospect too. Once summer break hit, his chances to be around her would naturally thin out, and meanwhile somebody else might make a move on her. That’s about what he must have pictured.

“So how does that turn into consulting us? Just go confess on your own, or whatever.”
“Right~. Confess on your own, get pulverized on your own~.”
“Don’t you mean go down in a blaze of glory?! And aren’t you two being cold, when we go all the way back to kindergarten and grade school?!”

I mean, come on, right? I dragged myself out here in this godawful heat, and this is the conversation I get… right?

“…What I want to ask is for your help. There’s a fireworks festival coming up, yeah? …So please! Find some way to get Sakura and me alone together at the fireworks!”

Kengo slammed both hands down on the table with a bang and bowed his head. It honestly startled me; for a second I thought the water was about to slosh right off the table.

“Just invite her yourself. Tell her, properly, that you want to go, the two of you.”

If he doesn’t spell it out, she’ll absolutely go “let’s all go together!” That’s just how she is.

“…If I pulled that without a word, Momozono and Senior Kazufuku would be scary, y’know?”
“No way I’d allow it~.”
“And yet you go asking for our help to get that permission on top of it. You’ve got some nerve.”

Well, this is intel Kengo isn’t privy to, but our group already had plans to hit the summer festival together, so coming to us like this was, in fact, the right call.

“Please! I’m begging you! I’ll cover the whole bill here!”
“Ehh~? A fireworks night with Ayu is priceless, though~.”

…To back up a step, and this is something only I know: Ayu, by her own account anyway, is a reincarnator who carries the memories of a past life. And in that past life, she was a man. What Ayu’s into romantically these days, even I don’t really know, but the odds of this going well struck me as awfully…

It happened right as I sat there fretting over that.

“…Ohh, why not? Just let her go for it.”
“Huh?”

…Honestly, that was the biggest shock of the day: that this person, of all people, would give it a push. Well, I did know she worked here part-time, so it wasn’t exactly strange that she’d overheard.

“Senior Hotaru?!”
“Mm, I think it’s fine. So Ayu’s spring has finally come, hasn’t it… even if it is summer.”

The reason this café is our regular haunt is simple and plain: it’s run by a relative of Hotaru’s, and through that connection she works here part-time.

But this really is a surprise. I’d have bet this senior would react the same way Hina did.

“You— you really mean it?!”
“If you’re okay with some conditions, then I’ll give my blessing. While the two of you make the rounds of the stalls, Ginko and the others keep a good, close watch from out of sight; and you share your stall route and your fireworks-viewing spot with them ahead of time. How’s that?”
“Yes — please!”
“Senior Hotaru!!”

It’d been a while since I’d seen Hina raise her voice like that… no, this was no time to sit watching so idly. I really doubt it would come to that, but at this rate things might turn into a fight, so I’d better talk Hina down.

“Hina. Stay.”
“Hmm~? You must’ve seen it coming too, Hina, didn’t you? The moment Kengo said he wanted to talk about Ayu. Even I took one look at this lineup and thought, ‘ahh, so that’s it.’”
“Ngh… that’s… true, but…”
“For real?”

Hina and me are one thing, but if even Hotaru, barely involved as she is, had Kengo’s crush pegged, well… the poor guy.

“Besides, Kengo’s not a bad sort — and I’d think you know that better than I do, Hina, hmm~? That’s why you figured you’d at least hear him out, isn’t it?”
“That’s… yeah…”
“Don’t go getting all bashful.”
“Kengo, this is really not the time for you to be blushing.”

And that’s genuinely true. Even I hadn’t seen these two talk this earnestly in ages. Though maybe going weirdly easygoing at the oddest moments is something they share with Ayu.

“If you’re that anxious, then during the watch, the second Kengo tries anything funny, feel free to just barge right in. That’d set your mind at ease, wouldn’t it?”
“…”
“Hina — you want Ayu to be able to smile, don’t you? …Reining her in too much, and on your own say-so at that — I don’t think that’s the way.”
“…Yes.”

…Why is it that over a classmate’s love life, with the girl herself left completely out of it, the mood’s gone and curdled like this? Stuck in the middle as I am, I halfway want to march straight to the library and give the root cause of all this an earful.

“Aall right! Then let’s all put our heads together on Operation Fireworks Festival! Yeaah!!”

To read the room and still land on that… seriously, lady? Everyone but her sits draped in the gloom she stirred up a minute ago, to one degree or another. And besides, shouldn’t she be, y’know, working?

◆◆◆

The gloomy mood was still hanging in the air, but under Hotaru’s cheery leadership, which blithely steamrolled right over it, the plan came together in rough outline. Hina looked unconvinced to the very end, and with the guys a touch apologetic at the sight of her, we all called it there and broke up.

“Thanks for staying behind, Ginko.”

I stayed on at the café by myself, nursing a refill of cola. Not that I’d ordered it; Hotaru had looked like she wanted me to stick around, so I did, and this is what turned up.

“Well, when you throw me that many pointed looks and winks, anybody’d get curious…”
“Hina didn’t seem to catch on, though…”
“As down as she was, catching on would’ve been the harder trick…”

At my words, the senior let slip, sounding genuinely sorry, “Maybe I did Hina wrong there…”

…Though if anything, I can’t quite shake the sense that Hina was the one overreacting.

“Still, that caught me off guard. Knowing you, I’d have figured you’d get mad like Hina, or come out against it.”
“Hmm~? Curious why I threw my weight behind it?”
“Dying to know.”

Honestly, part of why I stayed was to hear exactly this.

“Then — announcing it now! Drrrumroll, please… budu-budu-budu-dum…”
“Is it really worth all that buildup…?”
“Ta-daah! …It’s because this plan is absolutely, positively going to flop!!!”
“Huh? … Haah?!”

Wait, what is this senior even saying? Did I hear her wrong? After stirring the pot that hard, sweet-talking Hina into line, drawing up the whole thing that gung-ho… and THAT’S where she lands?!

“Huh, is it that big a shock?”
“Of course it is!”
“I mean, you were thinking it too, weren’t you, Ginko — ‘no matter how good a guy Kengo is, is this really going to work?’ It was written all over your face.”

I was thinking it! But that’s only because I’m the one person who knows Ayu’s a reincarnator who used to be a man!

The words came surging up my throat, and I barely held them back. Normally there’s no way anything like that would even come close to slipping out; that’s just how much it had rattled me.

“…I-I mean, since you were the one feeding him pointers, I figured maybe you had some advice that’d actually land with Ayu, something I don’t know about.”
“Ahaha, you’re giving me way too much credit… I’m sure there’s plenty about Ayu even I don’t know.”
“That’s…”

Put that way, I had nothing to come back with. People, far more than they tend to realize, barely know the very things they think they’ve got a handle on. Barely even understand them. And I’d be no exception: even knowing Ayu’s a reincarnator… no, if anything, ever since I learned she was one, I’ve only come to understand her less.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong? I did design the plan to work properly, so under normal circumstances it’d either get the two of them together or at least give things a nudge.”
“…I’m not doubting that part. Actually, the way you put it, it sounds like you’re saying Ayu’s not ‘normal,’ so it won’t even amount to a nudge.”

For someone like me, who’s in on her secret, fine. But to the senior, who isn’t, Ayu ought to look like a perfectly ordinary, airheaded high-school girl, her singing aside.

“Mm~, and that right there is what ties into ‘this plan won’t work,’ actually. Want to hear it?”
“…Well, we’ve come this far.”
“Thanks. There’s a favor I’ll want to ask of you later, too, so fill Hina in, okay? …The state she’s in, she probably won’t say a word to me for a while.”
“Understood.”
“All right then — as for why it won’t work…”

And so the time slipped by, and the hour of the fireworks festival drew steadily nearer.

How the senior’s predictions and analysis that day would pan out, I couldn’t even begin to imagine at the time.