My Childhood Friend And The Gift (Part 2)

“…I ended up showing you a pretty embarrassing side of me, huh.”
“You’re plenty embarrassing on a normal day, so what’s one more.”
“Whyyy you…”

I’d lost track of how long I’d been up here, but a while after Ayu started crying, she wound down on her own and pulled away from me. Now that the tears had stopped, her face had that unmistakable cried-her-eyes-out look to it, a bit of a mess.

“…Ah, sorry, Gin! I’ve gone and left tear stains all over your uniform…!”
“Mm… ah, it’s fine. Sounds like you put in a lot of work today, so I’ll let this much slide.”
“But…”
“I can just wipe it off… More importantly, could you go wash your face, Ayu?”
“Huh?”
“You planning to go back to everyone with that face? If you show up looking like that, it’ll seem like I did something to you.”

They’d take one look and assume I’d flown into a rage over being kept in the dark and made her cry. Even I was seeing Ayu in this “just had a spectacular sobfest” state for the first time.

“…You’re right. My handkerchief’s… ah, it’s under your butt right now, Gin.”
“Sexual harassment?”
“It is not!?”
“Joking… Here, use mine.”
“Thanks. I’ll just run to the tap for a sec.”
“Off you go~. I’ll rest up here a while.”
“Okaaay.”

…Ah, but with my handkerchief handed over, now I had nothing to wipe these tear stains off with. Something else, then… Ayu’s handkerchief, still sitting under my butt, would do the job; a quick brush to knock the dust off and it’d be fine.

◆◆◆

“Giiin.”
“Mm.”

Ayu came back to the landing, face washed. Her eyes still looked a little puffy, I couldn’t help noticing… but she was in better shape than before, at least.

Once she’d sat down beside me, though, she pulled her phone out of her pocket, a little awkwardly.

“So, um… the light music club president’s been calling me nonstop this whole time…”
“Funny you should say that — Hina’s been blowing up my phone too.”
“Never mind the president, but Hina’s a little scary, huh.”
“Yeah.”

When I’d first come up here, I’d thought back to that time in middle school… but this part felt more like the summer festival. Between that and hearing the song earlier, today had turned into one long string of déjà vu.

“…Pick up on the count of three?”
“If it’s Hina on the line I’d have rather you answered… but oh well… okay, here goes.”
“Ready, go!”

We swiped our icons and connected the calls. And then…

“Ah, finally got through! Ayuri, where are you right now?! Hotaru’s gone and—”
“Gin?! Where are you right now?! The light music club people are saying Ayu’s missing—!”
“Waaaah~~~!! Where are you, Ayuuu~?!”
“Hotaru, pipe down! (Senior Hotaru, please be quiet!)”
“So loud…”

Ayu’s phone carried what was probably the club president’s voice, mine carried Hina’s, and out of both at once blared Senior Hotaru, bawling her eyes out. When I glanced at Ayu, the volume must have caught her worse than she’d braced for; her whole face was scrunched into a grimace.

“Umm… so, you see…”
“Ah— Hina? For what it’s worth, Ayu’s right here next to me… huh? No, she’s not asleep or anything… huh?”
“Ah, yes… we just stepped out for a little walk, that’s all… we’ll head right back, yes.”
“Mm-hm, mm-hm… I’ll bring her back, don’t worry… I get it, you and the others are with the light music club people, got it… mm-hm.”

We ducked our heads and just let the whole storm wash over us until we’d each hung up. The somber mood that had lingered right up to a moment ago was gone now, blown clean away in an instant.

“…Pfft.”
“Heh heh…”
“Ahahaha!”

Somehow the whole thing was just funny, and the two of us ended up laughing out loud together.

In the end, however much that performance had meant to the two of us, and however neatly it had all wrapped up, the world kept right on turning the same as ever. And never mind the world at large: even while we sat getting sentimental off in our little corner, the people who had no idea just went on with their day, none the wiser. That’s how the world works, I suppose.

“Shall we get going, Gin?”
“Yeah.”

I took Ayu’s hand and started down the stairs.

Sharp-eyed as those two were, they’d see straight through the fact that Ayu had been crying, washed face or not. However I sliced it, this was going to turn into a hassle.

But that was fine, I supposed. Those two, no, all the others as well, had been in on it with Ayu, keeping the secret from me. And beyond the one secret that could never come out, that Ayu was a reincarnator, surely the two of us could be allowed a single secret out in the open like this.

Today, it was I who took Ayu’s hand as we headed back to everyone.

◆◆◆

Now, as for what happened afterward.

When we rejoined the group, Hina and Sumire were there with the light music club crowd… but the one who came bounding out to greet Ayu was Senior Hotaru, wrapping her up in a fierce hug. In her own words: “You go and disappear right after a song like that, and honestly, I thought you’d vanished into thin air.”

Was Ayu some kind of ghost? Though in a sense, I supposed she was a ghost from another world at that.

Incidentally, the whole reason Ayu and Senior Hotaru had pulled all this off in the first place, the former club president they’d been cheering on, Senior Hiiragi, was there too, and we traded a brief greeting. How to put it… she gave off the same bright, easygoing air as Ayu, except that, unlike Ayu, she carried a sharp, level-headed intelligence along with it. And apparently this Senior Hiiragi had even gone up on stage for a little while at some point while Ayu and I had slipped out of the gym.

With that, even Senior Hotaru, who’d somehow been holding herself together, apparently went to pieces over the whole thing once the show ended. The instant she noticed Ayu was gone, it seems, it all snowballed into a full-blown crying fit. Hina and the others filled us in on the rest.

As for Hina and Sumire… they didn’t press us for details about slipping off the way we had.

Hina especially seemed to catch on to something the instant she laid eyes on Ayu’s face… but even so, when I told them,

“I found Ayu off on her own and asked her the whole story behind this surprise,”

that was the end of it.

For my part, I’d been turning over how to word things so as not to brush up against Ayu’s past life… but once we’d peeled away from everyone and it was just the two of us, here’s what she said to me.

“Gin… do you remember the talk you and I had yesterday?”
“…The one about how Ayu might end up joining the light music club once the culture festival was over?”
“Mm-hm. You said all kinds of things for my sake back then… and on top of that, today all you asked me was ‘Did you two get to talk?’ and nothing more… so let’s just call it even, ’kay~”

…Well, if Hina was fine with that, then fine. Though if she was going to call it “even,” then by that same logic I still hadn’t told her the specifics of that “hard-to-say thing” I’d said to Ayu as of yesterday either… or so I thought, but poking at that would only be the tactless move.

And so, one thing leading to another…

“Hmm… a jaga-butter with no butter to speak of. How do you figure that works?”
“To think even the extra we bought went and ran out too, huh~.”
“Well, a student stall’s about what you’d expect, I guess.”

Right next to our own class’s stall, Ayu was working through the item on sale there, jaga-butter… or, to be honest, a steamed potato with some seasoning slapped on any old way. Even so, it had apparently sold well enough to run the potatoes right out. The power of a culture festival, maybe? There’s really no telling, in this world.

“After this it’s the closing ceremony and then cleanup, right?”
“That’s right~. Well, ours included, all the food stalls sold out~, so cleanup’s already coming along nicely for classes like that~.”
“In the end the only thing I’ve eaten is this mystery potato dish, though.”
“There, there…”

Looking around, the people I took to be visiting families were filing out in droves. Apparently there’d been stage slots for teachers and outside guests and the like even after the students’ presentations wrapped up, but those seemed to be about done by now too.

“…It’s over, huh. The culture festival.”
“…Yeah, it is.”

Students starting in on cleanup here and there, visiting families drifting out of the school ahead of the closing ceremony, the clock ticking on, moment by moment, toward the hour it would all end. Ayu took in the scene with narrowed eyes, wistful and full of fondness.

“Did you have fun, Ayu?”
“Of course!”
“Even though the only food you ate was our own class’s?”
“If you’re going to bring that up, the only exhibit I got to see was Sumire’s literature club, too, you know!”
“Um… thank you very much…?”
“Why say it like a question~?”
“It’s just kind of embarrassing…”

More to the point, had she really thrown so much into prepping that song that she hadn’t managed to walk a single other stall or exhibit? However much she’d wanted us to hear it… was Ayu really all right with that? Spending the culture festival she’d looked forward to, and with two lifetimes’ worth of anticipation at that, on something like this…? I couldn’t help wondering, just a little.

“How about you, Sumire?”
“Mm, I had fun. Even all the trouble everyone went to, struggling to keep you away from the light music club, Ginko — now that it’s over…”
“…That trouble that kept cropping up while I was working — was that on purpose?”
“No, the trouble was just genuinely real.”
“So that part was for real…”

…Huh? Did she just slip in “everyone,” casual as anything? I’d had a faint hunch, but… had this surprise really roped in the whole class, too?

“And you, Hina?”
“It was fun~. Everyone pulling together toward one goal — that’s a nice thing, isn’t it~.”
“Right~?”
“‘Pulling together’ meaning, what, the whole lot of you hiding Ayu’s song from me? Hm?”
“I’ll be exercising my right to remain silent~.”

And just like that, I’d been neatly given the slip.

Somewhere in all this, Ayu’s gaze drifted my way along with the flow of things… but the face she turned on me, and me alone, was a little… awkward, or maybe hesitant to ask, something like that.

“Gin, you… um…”

“…”

“…How was it?”
“…If it’s going to make you all awkward, you shouldn’t have done the surprise in the first place.”
“B-but… right?”

Ayu turned to Hina and the others for backup, but the two of them just watched on with fond little smiles. Even standing right there in it, I couldn’t have told you what this feeling was supposed to be.

“Haaah…”

…It galled me to admit it, but the surprise itself had been, fair’s fair, a rousing success.

It was true that I’d been knocked clean out of my mind, true that the music had shaken me to the core… and above all, from all the gratitude poured into that song, I’d been able to feel, truly feel, that the me of now was managing to be someone Ayu could lean on. And it was true that this had made me happy.

“Haaah…!”
“Why twice?”
“No, I was just thinking that I’m a pretty simple, childish creature myself, when it comes down to it… Fine. Chalk it up as my loss.”
“It’s not like this was ever about winning or losing, though, right?”

It wasn’t as though I’d said I lost to Ayu, either. How to put it… if the whole class bands together to keep a secret, there’s no way I’d have caught on, so losing was only natural, in a sense… Well, I wouldn’t say it out loud, but roundabout as this was, I figured it might be all right to admit I’d been happy.

“…”

“…Gin?”

Actually, now that I really turned it over… it struck me, only now, that she’d stood up on a stage and sung a song laying feelings like that utterly bare, going so far as to enlist the whole class’s help to pull it off. And on top of that, I was the only one who understood, one hundred percent, what it meant for Ayu to sing there and where that song had come from. So even though I hadn’t been the one up there singing, for some reason, my face went so hot it felt like it might catch fire.

“…Ahh, come on!! The closing ceremony’s any minute now, right?! Let’s hurry up and wrap up all this business and go hit the afterparty already! …Hey, you over there — quit smirking!”
“We’re not having the afterparty that soon, you know~.”
“Oh, hush!”

I snatched Ayu’s now-empty cup out of her hand and lobbed it into the trash.

It was a touch chilly out today; by the time we made it to the gym, surely the heat in my face would have cooled off too.