My Childhood Friend And The Fireworks Festival

According to my childhood friend, “Summer festivals and fireworks festivals are fun in their own way even if you don’t buy a single thing,” or so she says.

And true enough, I can’t really recall ever seeing her buy anything at those kinds of stalls; if anything, my impression is that she spent the whole time snapping photos of us as we strolled around together.

Now then, as for what said childhood friend, Sakura Ayuri, is up to at present…

“Come on, let’s go, Kengo!”
“Wh—wait…”

Amid the clamor of the summer festival, Ayu had Kengo, her childhood friend since kindergarten, by the hand, hauling him briskly forward through the crush of people.

Something feels off, though. The plan had Kengo taking the lead, and thanks to that slip, the already high-difficulty job of tailing them has only gotten harder.

“Grrrgh…”
“Ohoho…”

Beside me Hina was grinding her teeth while Sumire watched Ayu and Kengo’s progress with open fascination. We’d all bought masks at a stall and put them on so we wouldn’t be made, but under Hina’s, things looked to be getting pretty dire.

Incidentally, Yuuya, who’d come to us asking for help alongside Kengo, had said something like, “Tailing them with four is a stretch, and being the only guy makes me feel out of place, so I’ll just wander around on my own till we all meet up at the end,” and took off somewhere.

“And on top of that, as a creator this is nothing but a delight! Getting to legally watch someone’s da—”
“Sumire, stop!”
“Huh?”
“Ngh!”
“That word’s forbidden — say it and Hina’s heart stops, just like this.”
“Ehh…”

Yeah, honestly, I’m pretty weirded out myself. If she hated it this much, she’d already have guessed what it was about the moment she got summoned to the consultation, so she could’ve just turned it down flat… though it’s probably tactless of me to think that.

“Come on, both of you, let’s move — we know the route, sure, but if we lose them, hunting them down again is a hassle.”

For context, Senior Hotaru, in a sense the real architect of all this, isn’t here either; something about it being awkward on several fronts, so she’d sit this one out, or so she said. That she’s even got the sensibility to feel awkward is a thought I can’t quite shake, if only a little.

◆◆◆

The plan we’d drawn up wasn’t anything all that strange.

1. First, tell Ayu that Kengo and Yuuya have joined the plan to go to the fireworks festival.

2. On the day, get our stories straight so that the time making the rounds of the stalls is Ayu and Kengo, just the two of them.

3. Go around the stalls along a route decided ahead of time.

4. Finally, once the two of them have watched the fireworks for a bit, everyone regroups.

Something like that.

Ayu throws us a little off the original route here and there… but that’s where Hotaru and Hina really come through. Working from the stall info they’d looked up in advance, the two of them predicted what would catch Ayu’s eye, and so far she hasn’t strayed far from that pattern.

Yeah, it really is packed…

And so the three of us tailed the two of them, watching from a distance so as not to be spotted. Maybe it was the summer heat working on them, but Sumire was taking notes with a peculiar intensity, and Hina kept leaning out to close in on the pair, sending me into a fluster.

“Hey, Hina… you’re leaning out too far…!”
“Uuugh… at this rate she’s getting netorare’d~…”
“You have to sleep with someone before you can get netorare’d! …Wait, we have slept together, though…?”
“Wh—?! Hina and Ayuri have slept together before?!”
“Sumire?”

What is this? I’d figured things would settle down a bit without the noisiest idiot around, and yet it’s busier than when said idiot is here. Every time the pair over there made some kind of move Hina would wail, and Sumire, for whatever reason, would ride some high and react to absolutely everything, which made the two of them a handful, a headache all their own.

I catch myself wishing Ayu were here to jump in at moments like this, but since the whole reason we’re in this state is that we’re keeping watch on that very Ayu, there’s nothing for it. If it was going to come to this, I should’ve hauled Hotaru out here by force.

“Oh-ho, Shinohara has just handed Ayuri a melon-flavored shaved ice! Not strawberry, I see… Ginko, our analyst — how do you read that one?”
“Ayu likes pretty much all the standard fruit flavors, so honestly just about anything works — but with shaved ice she always goes melon, so if I had to call it, I’d say he nailed it.”
“I see~”
“…It’s not like the syrups even taste any different~… the real right answer is that, plus getting a Blue Hawaii for yourself and sharing the two~”

That’s a tall order for Kengo. Or rather, there’s no way he’d even think of it, and before any of that, if he actually did it, Hina would come crashing in for sure.

“…If you hate it this much, Hina, want to call Yuuya and go wait at the last spot? We’re all meeting up there anyway.”

Right. For that matter, let’s call Hotaru too; even she’d surely come, awkward as it might be, if it meant Hina roaming around by herself.

It was meant as a considerate suggestion, but…

“Noooo~… I can’t relax unless I’m watching to make sure those two don’t try anything weird~…”
“Give him a little more credit — you two go back to kindergarten, don’t you?”
“It’s not so much Kengo and me that go that far back~…”

Well, any way you look at it, those two are connected through Ayu; the pair of them, I mean. But it’s exactly because she knows Kengo’s a good guy that she wrestled with whether to go along with helping before she answered, and maybe that’s the very reason she hates it, too. …Personally, since this is a one-off anyway, I don’t feel much of anything about it.

◆◆◆

The tailing carried on. We watched the two of them watching the stalls; watched Kengo go to treat her only for Ayu, oblivious, to just pay her own way as usual; and watched, with Ayu leading, the two of them get in line for chilled cucumbers-on-a-stick.

…I already knew, but isn’t there just zero spark coming from Ayu’s side? A high-school girl lining up for a chilled cucumber on a stick isn’t exactly the picture of allure, is it?

“We’re just about at the end of the stall area, huh.”

— Munch, munch.

“Yeah, looks like it~”

— Crunch, crunch.

“You two are just straight-up enjoying yourselves, huh.”

I’m getting hungry too, though, y’know?

Say what you will, but these two are really something. One of them just openly lined up and bought fried chicken; the other went, “I want the same thing as Ayu~,” sneaked into line behind Ayu’s group to buy hers, and is now happily eating it. They could’ve grabbed a portion for me while they were at it.

“Haah~… all right, I’ll go on ahead and link up with Yuuya, then head to the final spot~… somebody’s got to keep an eye out so Kengo doesn’t try anything funny with Ayu~…”
“See you there.”

— Munch, munch.

“He’s not going to do anything… and — she’s gone.”

Weaving faintly on her feet like a thoroughly burnt-out office worker, Hina peeled away. …Is she going to be all right? Part of me worries she’ll have bottled up so much resentment by the end that she’ll pounce on Kengo over nothing.

“Um, let’s see… once we’ve checked the stalls to the far end, we head back the way we came and walk to that park a little ways off… that’s the plan, right?”
“Yeah, that’s about it.”

All right, one more push to go. Whether this plan pans out or not, I’m taking everything I didn’t spend at the festival and blowing it on some kind of over-the-top treat for myself later.

◆◆◆

“Kengo… do you think he’ll pull it off?”
“Hmm… I feel bad for the guy, but I think this ends in a swing and a miss.”

Operation Fireworks Festival was entering its final act; say what you will, we’d made it all the way to the park, the last rendezvous point, without our tail ever being blown. Sumire and I planned to kill a little time at the park entrance, then merge back with everyone wearing our most innocent faces.

“This might be rude of me, but… I’d figured you’d want to go watch, Sumire.”
“Go watch… you mean the two of them, in their time together right now?”
“Yeah.”

When we’d started the tail she’d said something like, “Legally shadowing a real, live date — this is the absolute height of a creator’s bliss!”, and she really had been taking a ridiculous amount of notes.

“Ahaha… I wouldn’t spy that far, honestly. I’ve barely spoken with Kengo, but if Ginko and Hina both vouch for him, then I’m sure he’s a good person, and that his feelings are the real deal.”
“…I see.”

Whether you can call what Hina does “vouching” is honestly a bit dubious… but even with that attitude, she never actually interfered the whole time we were watching, so I suppose her actions speak for her.

“…Well… I do want to peek… I won’t lie.”
“…Then as long as you don’t actually go through with it, isn’t that fine?”

Right. It’s about that time.

And then, together with a slightly deflating little whistle of a sound…

— BANG!!!

A blossom of light bloomed across the sky. It was time for the launched fireworks; we’d let those two watch them alone together for a while, and this pointlessly exhausting day would finally be over.

“…They’re kind of hard to see from here, huh.”
“Well, we’re the only ones just standing around at the entrance, after all.”

This spot, being nothing more than the park’s entrance, had trees in the way that made the fireworks rising into the sky hard to see. Naturally there were people other than us, but every one of them pressed forward, drawn as if sucked into the depths of the park.

“…There’s a fair number of people around, so if we just blend in and slip inside, Ayu and the others probably won’t spot us, right?”

After watching that crowd for a while, the words slipped out of my mouth before I realized it. Honestly, why do we have to cater to Kengo and deny ourselves the fireworks in the first place? With more people packing in there’d be no romantic mood left anyway, so a thought welled up in me: maybe we’d melt into the crowd, spy on how the two of them were doing, and tease them about it later.

That was quite the declaration, and not a moment earlier I’d been the one telling her not to actually go through with it. Sumire, having heard me say it,

“…Yeah, let’s head on in, shall we?”

smiled, mischievous as anything.