My Childhood Friend And Penny Candy

According to my childhood friend, “Just because something’s cheap doesn’t make it okay to blow money on it — that’s a classic case of penny wise, pound foolish,” apparently.

It’s true that back when my New Year’s money came in, I was riding high. I was about to snap up every game that had ever caught my eye in the sale, one after another, so from the outside I probably did look like I was on the verge of blowing every last yen. That was the moment I got those very words from my childhood friend, and honestly, hearing them from this dopey, airheaded girl kind of got on my nerves.

And yet, even though I did wind up cutting back on how much I bought… my game list still has titles I’ve barely even launched to this day. In the end, things turned out exactly the way she said they would.

These days, I’ll picture that imaginary childhood friend in my head, all smug and pleased with herself:

“See? I told you so,”

And even though I know it’s unreasonable of me, it still leaves me a little miffed. That’s the state of my gaming life lately.

Anyway. As for the childhood friend who blessed me with those oh-so-precious words that leave me stewing every time I look at that game list…

“Today, I’m going to try doing something you can only do now that we’re high schoolers!”
“Uh-huh.”
“And that is… buying snacks to eat on the way home! So let’s make a little detour and hit up the candy store! Gin!”
“Haah.”

We’d split off from the other childhood friend and the friends who walk home with us back at the station, leaving just the two of us. The instant we were alone, my childhood friend Sakura Ayuri, the one who privately calls herself a reincarnator, made that declaration to me, brimming with energy.

“My, my, you’re in low spirits, Gin. You just became a high school girl in the bloom of youth and you’re already senile?”
“If anything, what’s with all your energy? The candy store’s the same place we always go to anyway.”

There’s only one candy store around here, so of course the one this girl wants to go to is that very same one. What’s there to get so worked up over about visiting a shop we’ve been to a million times? I really don’t get it.

“You really don’t get it, do you, Gin. We’ve become high schoolers now, you know?”
“Sure.”
“Unlike back in middle school, the amount of cash we can openly carry around has gone up too, right?”
“Sure.”
“So the thing to do is obviously use our bigger allowance to grab a bite on the way home!”
“…Wouldn’t a convenience store be fine? It’s pricier, sure, but they sell all kinds of stuff, and they’ve got hot snacks and everything…”
“Haah… good grief, you really just don’t get it, Gin…”

Ah, I’m clearly being looked down on right now. Getting this openly mocked by this girl seriously pisses me off, so without a word I jab her in the side at a decently quick clip.

“Hmph.”
“Urk.”
“C’mon, c’mon, go ahead and tell me just what it is I don’t get, c’mon.”
“W-wait, sorry, I’m sorry, so stop— ngh.”

Good grief, I’ve won yet again. This oh-so-mighty reincarnator is a total wuss who still gets cocky at the drop of a hat, which is a pain.

Not that I’m especially fired up about it, but I’ve got nothing against going to the candy store itself. Snacking on cheap candy while I finally take a crack at clearing my game backlog today has a charm all its own, I suppose.

“Well, fine. Then it’s settled — we’re going to the candy store today, so let’s just get moving.”
“O-ohh…”

And so the two of us strayed from our usual route home and set off on our detour.

◆◆◆

“Now, what should I get…”
“Yep, yep — a high school girl agonizing over what to buy at the candy store… now that’s a picture.”

— Click.

“What are you doing taking pictures without asking?”

Cheap as it all is, there’s still stuff I’m in the mood to eat and stuff I’m not. Worst case I could just hand the extras off to family or friends, but it’s my own money, cheap as it is, so I’ve got to start by picking what I actually want to eat, or there’s no point… And while I was mulling it over like that, Ayu had her phone pointed at me, snapping away.

“I got permission from the shop lady, so it’s fine.”
“No, before the shop, get permission from your subject first.”
“Already took it!”
“So it’s after-the-fact consent, huh.”

Well, whatever. Ayu casually snapping photos is nothing new, and she’s surprisingly the type who hates putting private stuff online, so I decide to let it slide. Of course, I’ll be checking later to make sure it’s not a weird shot.

“You hurry up and pick too, Ayu — this was your idea, wasn’t it.”
“Ehh~ I want to soak in this situation a little longer…”
“Don’t tell me this is what you actually came for.”
“Kidding, kidding, I’ll pick for real.”

Tucking her phone away, Ayu starts gazing at the shelves beside me, humming a thoughtful “Hmm…” as she deliberates.

…I see. It’s true I’ve watched Ayu agonize over what to buy in this shop plenty of times before. Call it an everyday scene, a familiar sight. But this time’s a little different from usual. We’re high schoolers now, and we’ve come here straight after school, still in our uniforms. It really is a touch fresh, and I find myself keenly aware that we’ve grown up too.

I’m starting to feel a little nostalgic, and I can sort of understand why Ayu, playing the big sister a bit, got the urge to take pictures. Not that snapping them without permission is suddenly okay.

“I see…”
“Hm? What’s up, Gin?”
“Nothing, just — we’ve grown up too, huh.”
“…Nothing’s any different from usual so far, though — where’s this coming from…?”

So that’s not it? Those photos you took were just you getting drunk on the moment? Half from having the rug pulled out from under me, half from embarrassment at getting a little drunk on the moment myself, I give in to the impulse and jab Ayu in the side again.

“Hup!”

Ayu’s a delicate thing, so I keep the poke light, though with just enough force to actually land.

“Urk— I’m kidding, I’m kidding! Coming here in our uniforms is kind of fresh, isn’t it!?”

So she confessed, and I gave her one more jab for it. If you get it, then don’t go pulling the rug out from under me.

◆◆◆

“Ahh, we bought a lot, we sure did.”
“How much did you spend?”
“About five hundred yen.”
“For a candy store that’s kind of… no, maybe not that much?”

We ended up spreading our haul out on the bench in front of the shop and digging in right away. I’d kept mine to a decent pile of little snacks, somewhere around two or three hundred yen, but Ayu, it seemed, had bought some bigger candy on top of the small stuff.

“You bought Choco Baby? You can get those pretty much anywhere — not exactly something you need to come here to buy.”
“In a drama I watched a while back, there was a scene where someone eats these at a candy store. I thought it looked kind of nice, so.”
“Huh.”

Is that so. Well, it’s very like Ayu to be into the whole scene and that kind of vibe, I suppose.

“According to that drama, ‘kids eat them one pellet at a time because they don’t want to waste them, but I’m an adult, so I eat them all in one bite,’ or something like that. You brought up growing up earlier too, Gin, so I figured I might as well give it a shot while I’m at it.”
“Ohh… should I do a chant for you?”
“A chant?”
“The ‘C’mon, chug, chug!’ thing. You know how college kids and working adults supposedly do it at drinking parties? That kind of thing.”
“That’s just something adults happen to do — isn’t it actually pretty childish…”

Not that I really intended to do it anyway; it’d be embarrassing for me too.

She breaks the seal and tips the container, and a mound of pellets amounting to about a third of the box builds up in Ayu’s palm. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen Ayu eat these in one go. Or rather…

“So that’s how you do it.”
“?”
“No, I just figured you’d pour them straight into your mouth.”
“True, that’s what they did in the drama, but… that’s honestly unladylike, Gin.”

Ha ha. This girl, Ayu, lecturing me about being unladylike? While we’re at it, Ayu tosses the small mound into her mouth. Isn’t eating it all in one go kind of unladylike to begin with? The thought does cross my mind, but I’ll leave that one alone.

“Mm, not bad.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
“Yehh…mm.”
“Huh, what?”
“Mngh… you’ll have some too, right, Gin?”

With that, she holds the mouth of the container out toward me. So the reason she didn’t put her lips to it and down it in one was probably because she’d been planning this all along. If she’d downed it herself, I’d have refused, after all.

“I’ll take some, then.”
“You bet! …Whoooosh!”
“…Huh? Wait a se— hey!”

Chocolate pellets pile up on my outstretched left palm. Does she have no intention of stopping the flow pouring out of the upended container? I scramble to catch the overflow with both hands.

“Say stop when you want me to stop!”
“You tell me that now?! Stop! Stop!”

At my “stop,” the gentle avalanche of pellets finally comes to a halt. The result was a mound two or three sizes bigger than the one that had been in Ayu’s palm earlier, now sitting in both my hands. That’s way too many, and the container’s completely empty, too.

“Wow, greedy little thing, aren’t you, Gin.”
“…If ‘stop’ was the only word that’d make you stop, shouldn’t you have told me that first?”
“…C’mon! Chug! Chug!”
“Don’t ignore me.”

She balked when I was the one about to do it, yet now that she’s on the giving end she’s leading the chant herself. What’s up with that? …Well, setting that aside, the real problem is this mound of chocolate pellets piled up in both my hands. It’s not like it wouldn’t all fit, but I’m reluctant to open wide and eat it that way in the first place. Or rather, I just don’t want to cram my mouth full of a huge pile of chocolate.

“Hey, Ayu, to sum up what you said earlier — eating it all in one go is the mark of an adult. That was the gist, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Then here — hold out your hands.”
“Huh, okay… whoa-whoa-whoa.”

I tip my mound straight into the palms I’d made Ayu hold out, pouring it in. In no time my mound shrank while Ayu’s built up in its place, and once the two were about the same height, I stopped pouring.

“It’s true we’ve grown, moving up from middle school to high school.”
“Mm.”
“But still, in the eyes of the world, high schoolers are basically kids — and on top of that, we’re at a stage where it’d be no surprise if we got treated as practically middle schoolers.”
“Well, that’s true.”
“So downing that amount in one go is still too much for us. This much is just right — that’s what I figure.”
“Well, you’ve got a point… but…”
“…Why hesitate there? This is stuff you bought in the first place, Ayu.”

Now that some of the pellets have been handed back to her, Ayu’s got a look on her face like she’s mulling something over. Even though it’s about the same as what she ate earlier, or maybe even a little less.

“See, honestly speaking… you won’t get mad?”
“Depends what it is.”
“…Well, I gave downing a little in one go a try just now, and… honestly it’s not bad, but it might not really be my thing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And if I nibble away at it little by little like always, it’ll end up right at the expiry date again, and having to go around giving it away to people would be a pain, I figured.”
“So you tried to make me bulk-dispose of it.”
“Something like that.”

No wonder she was being so pushy.

“Well, once you grow up, doing things that aren’t really your style is just part of being human, isn’t it. Or would you rather struggle to pour it all back into the container?”
“That’d be more of a hassle… guess I’ll do it, then… down it in one.”
“Do that, do that.”

The chocolate I’d been cradling in my hands this whole time was getting to be a nuisance anyway.

When I tip my mound of pellets into my mouth in one go and start eating, Ayu follows suit and pours her own into hers. It’d been a while since I last had these, but they’re pretty tasty.

“Hmm, they really are good, but… more than feeling wasteful… it’s like this faint, indefinable guilt…”
“Guilt, from just downing a cheap snack like this in one go?”
“That part’s, well, a habit from my past life, I guess… over there I used to nibble away at this kind of candy little by little to make it last.”
“Ah, so that’s what you meant by ‘not my thing’…”

If it’s a disposition carried over from a whole other lifetime, then I guess there’s no helping it… or is there? If it were some precious memory, that’d be one thing. But a past life is a past life, so for the sake of enjoying this one, I think she could stand to just forget about that stuff for now.

“Going by that drama you mentioned earlier, then — if you can’t just honestly enjoy this even though you’re on your second life, that makes you still a kid, huh, Ayu.”
“Ghh~… outtalked by a first-life little squirt…”
“Who’re you calling little, you literally pint-sized brat.”

◆◆◆

“Right then, it’s about time for… the last treat of the day!”
“Huh, what’s this all of a sudden.”

Having polished off the chocolate pellets and worked through a fair chunk of the other little snacks, Ayu suddenly stood up and made that declaration, a lollipop in her mouth.

“Look, you’re going to eat the rest at home or wherever, right, Gin? So I figured I’d do one last thing I want to do before we head back.”
“One last thing… like buying extra to bring to school?”
“Non, non! C’mon, we’re heading back into the shop, Gin!”
“Haah… well, fine.”

Paying no mind to me as I fail to keep up with her baffling enthusiasm, Ayu opens the shop door again, and I trudge along after her. For now, even I don’t really know what she’s planning to do.

“Auntie! Let me draw a ticket! The superball one!”
“…I see where this is going.”

What Ayu asked the shop lady for was a superball lottery draw. There seemed to be a fair number still left, and the big ones in particular, the numbers ten and under, hadn’t gone down by even one.

“Gin, don’t you think it’s deplorable how young people these days are all ‘gacha this’ and ‘blew it all on nothing’ with their mobile games?”
“The one who plays those mobile games the most out of everyone around me is you, Ayu.”
“…Anyway! The gacha running rampant in the world these days is expensive whether it’s real or digital! But this — get this — is fifty yen a pull! Even a ten-pull is only five hundred yen! I’m going to use this to vent my urge to roll gacha!”
“I see. What the heck are you talking about.”

This is a textbook case of mixing up the means and the end.

One thing led to another, and Ayu hands the shop lady five hundred yen and briskly picks out her tickets. It seems she plans to choose all of them first, then flip them open at once.

“What’s the goal?”
“Obviously the number-one prize — the huge earth-patterned one! Okay, first ticket, here goes! …Seventy-five!”
“Yeesh, that’s low.”
“Next! Fifty-three!”
“Got a little closer.”
“Twenty-six!”
“Ooh.”

Doesn’t it kind of feel like she’s got a shot? But with lotteries and gacha, a promising streak like this usually…

“Eighty-four! Sixty-five! Ninety-seven!…”

◆◆◆

“So, did you get to vent your gacha cravings?”
“…Well, I guess I vented, all right… in the sense of ‘you’re better off never rolling gacha at all!’”

In the slanting light of dusk, the two of us head home for real this time. Inside Ayu’s bag as she walked beside me, alongside her textbooks and notebooks, and taking up more room than the candy from earlier, was the huge pile of superballs she’d won in that lottery. A thousand yen’s worth of them, no less.

“When I drew that twenty-six, I really thought I could land something ten or under…”
“After that you barely even drew anything below fifty.”
“And on top of that, the one that twenty-six got me was this pattern, huh…”

The superball Ayu rolls around in her palm… its pattern is, how to put it… the color of an egg yolk, and kind of gross.

Well, if the world had a status stat labeled “Luck,” then from experience, Ayu’s is probably on the low side. In the end it landed on exactly the punchline I’d pictured the moment she announced she was drawing the lottery.

“So I couldn’t grasp the earth in this hand after all…”
“…All right, allow me to send some words to you, my luckless Ayu.”
“What…?”

Honestly, sending her these words is mostly me taking out my everyday frustrations on her, and they could even be read as an unreasonable jab. But right now, I don’t know any words more fitting to give this childhood friend of mine. So I say them.

“Do you know the saying ‘penny wise, pound foolish’?”

Right now, I’m probably wearing a slightly smug look on my face.