My Year's End

According to my childhood friend:

“The whole idea of the year turning over is just something humans dreamed up; it’s not as if the temperature shifts with a dramatic snap or anything, and yet, oddly enough, the air feels utterly transformed, doesn’t it?”

…or so she says.

Well, true enough. The temperature doesn’t swing a full one-eighty between December 31st and January 1st, and yet the morning after the date rolls over, the air really does feel clearer somehow. The biggest reason is probably the way the whole world settles into one uniform end-of-year, start-of-year mood; I suppose I get swept along by the collective feeling, or maybe this too is a kind of peer pressure. Either way, that a simple shift in outlook can change how things look to you strikes me as a very human sort of flexibility.

Anyway, the childhood friend who’d been feeding me all this, one Sakura Ayuri, isn’t around right now. Or rather, she isn’t even in town. She’d wound up spending the year-end with her family at her father’s old home, a house up in the mountains a fair way from here, and as she herself put it:

“Don’t go expecting souvenirs! It is technically a tourist spot, though!”

…or so she says. That girl’s sense for this kind of thing swings between two poles, perfectly normal one moment and startlingly bizarre the next. All I can really do is pray it lands on one of two outcomes: either something halfway decent turns up, or she buys nothing at all.

So that’s roughly where things stand. With no Ayu around today, there’s no one to kick off some event the way she usually does, and no lazing the day away in her room for me, either.

And Ayu isn’t the only one the year-end has swept up. Hina’s grandparents are coming over with her cousin in tow, so she’s busy getting ready to host them. Senior Hotaru, like Ayu, has gone off to her grandparents’ place, where a whole slate of new year’s greetings and the like awaits her at the family gathering. Sumire didn’t go into much detail, only that she had plans; well, it is year-end. I think she mentioned something about going to buy a book. Either way, barging in to tag along just because I’m bored would only be a nuisance.

Having gone on at such length in my head about all of this, when it comes right down to it, if I had to sum up my current situation in a word…

“BORED.”

Bored. I was bored to a truly appalling degree.

Normally, when I’m bored, I game. Even when I’m not bored, I game in whatever spare moment I get, and now and then I barge into Ayu’s room and treat myself to a proper session. But with everyone around me off living out their properly year-end lives, just carrying on exactly as before feels a little off somehow.

And as for my own family, which is really the crux of it: my mother’s parents live fairly close by, and we already visited over the summer. My father’s parents live absurdly far off, too far to casually drop in on, and so here I am, sprawled out in my room.

(I really should’ve put in for a shift too…)

Throwing myself into the part-time job wasn’t entirely off the table, but today, of all days, I happen to be off. By rights a supermarket should be slammed over the year-end and new year, but maybe because I’d been working flat out right up until yesterday, they’d given me today off. Personally, I couldn’t shake a small guilt about it:

(I feel bad, getting both Christmas Eve and the day itself off…)

…that was all I’d been thinking when I readily went along with however they wanted to arrange it. Besides, I’d heard that just showing up today earns you a special bonus, so with more people angling for the shift to grab it, they had hands to spare. Either way, the upshot was one thoroughly idle me.

(…Guess I’ll go for a walk or something.)

Year-end also means the big house-cleaning, but since I’m forever lording my room’s tidiness over Ayu, I keep it neat out of habit anyway, so that was done in a flash. Every so often it does a body good to get out for a nice healthy walk. Even if I did just go jogging this morning.

◆◆◆

“Sorry to intrude—”
“If all you’re gonna do is intrude, then go on home—”
“Huh? What’s with that attitude toward a paying customer?”
“Damn it! And of all the rotten luck, this had to be Kanto!”

As I ambled along wherever my feet carried me, I happened past Refrain, Ayu’s workplace. Half doubting what the storefront seemed to be telling me, I tried the door, only to find it open for business as usual.

Huh. The manager here is Senior Hotaru’s uncle, isn’t he. And I’d heard that come year-end, just about the whole family gathers at her grandparents’ place.

“Why are you the one running the shop?”
“The nerve, walking into that very shop to ask me that.”
“I only happened to be passing by… Senior Hotaru told me there was a whole family get-together.”
“Ahh, that… grown-ups have all sorts going on.”
“You’ll get disowned again.”
“Don’t talk like you know a thing, kid… I’ll head over once Hotaru and the others are back, so it’s fine.”

From a grown-up’s vantage, I’m sure there’s plenty going on that I don’t know about. But from the vantage of the “kid” he’d just mentioned, a no-show means the New Year’s money the little ones had been counting on comes up short, which could easily make him the target of some resentment.

“Look, your friend’s already here, so quit dawdling and get to your usual table.”
“Don’t go sulking just because your gag didn’t land. …Hm? Friend?”
“I ain’t sulking.”

Cutting our vague sort-of greeting short, I set off for the usual table where this so-called “friend” was supposedly waiting. Come to think of it, the guy’s gotten even chummier with me since Ayu started working here. Not that I mind; it’s easier on me either way, so it’s fine.

In any case, when I turned toward the corner table, the one I always make a point of claiming whenever it’s free, the “friend” in question came into view. It caught me off guard to see who it was, but I went over, took my seat, and said hello.

“Hello, Sumire.”
“…Ah, Ginko… hello.”

◆◆◆

“You could’ve just given me a shout if you were coming out this way.”
“I thought everyone might be busy, what with it being year-end… Hina especially.”

Sumire’s coffee and my black tea swayed gently on the tabletop. Chilled through from my walk outside, I welcomed the warmth of the mug against my palms, and the way that first sip spread heat from my core felt wonderfully good.

“Well… true, everyone but me, I suppose… actually, Sumire, I’m fairly sure you said… you were going to go buy a book, weren’t you? Did you go already?”
“The day I actually went was yesterday… today I came out for a walk, thinking to soothe away yesterday’s fatigue.”
“Huh…”

Now that I really think about it, in an age when you can buy just about anything online, what sort of book is worth going out to buy in person? Ayu, for one, will trek all the way to a somewhat distant bookstore for the bonus extras, so maybe it’s something like that.

“The one you bought yesterday… is that what you were reading a moment ago?”

Right up until just before I said hello, Sumire had been reading a book. There was a chance it was the one she’d bought the day before, and I was a little curious. Every so often she and Ayu get all worked up over some title I’ve never heard of, so I figured maybe I’d give it a try myself over the long break… or so I thought, but…

“…It’s not this one, actually. This is one I’m still partway through, something I was reading on the trip yesterday.”
“I see.”

A little disappointing.

◆◆◆

“Ah, this is late to bring up, but… did I maybe interrupt your reading? …Sorry.”
“Eh… don’t worry about it. I’d been hogging the seat long enough anyway, and honestly I’d been wondering whether to head home at a good stopping point, so your timing’s just about perfect.”
“Yeah? Well, in that case…”

Which, in its own way, left me feeling like I’d gotten in the way of her leaving. But well, if she herself says not to mind it, I’ll take her at her word.

“Come to think of it, Ginko, that scarf you had on earlier…”
“…Hm? This?”

Feeling a touch awkward, I glanced out the window, and this time the conversation turned to the scarf folded atop my belongings, the handmade one Ayu had given me as a Christmas present that Christmas Eve night.

“It really did surprise me… When you first came in wearing it, even I thought, ‘Huh, there’s a scarf I don’t recognize…’ but for Hina to see through it on the spot and declare it was Ayuri’s own handiwork… honestly.”
“Ahh… yeah, that one genuinely floored me too.”

This had happened the other day, at the gathering we all had right before Ayu left for her grandparents’ place…

◇◇◇

Since my shift started just past noon, I’d only put in a brief appearance at the gathering, but the instant Hina spotted the scarf around my neck, she said:

“That scarf’s a new one, isn’t it~ It really suit— Actually, mind if I borrow it a sec?”
“Huh, sure, but…”

“…Did Ayu make this?”

It genuinely startled me; or, to be honest about it, it spooked me. And the way Ayu had started trembling there beside Hina, well, surely that wasn’t down to the cold alone.

Ayu and I had gotten our stories straight the morning after she gave me the scarf, so the official line was that “it was a botched piece she’d started to enter in the gift-swap and then pulled, and rather than see it thrown out, I took it off her hands.” Well, it isn’t a lie.

After that we ate at our leisure, and I alone slipped out early for my shift. But according to Ayu:

‘The second you were gone, Gin, Hina started roundabout-begging me to make her one too, on and on and on.’

…or so she says. Sumire must have been there for it too, but I’ll spare myself the digging for details, since I’d only get her own subjective account of it, all heated up and dramatized.

◇◇◇

“Back then the one who made it was right there, so I couldn’t ask, but… it didn’t look weird, did it?”
“No… I thought it looked really lovely.”
“I see. Good, then.”

Well, I’d at least picked out clothes in colors that matched so it wouldn’t look off, so if it went over well with other people too, then I’m glad.

“I wonder if Ayuri’s… over there knitting Hina’s scarf right about now…”
“Is she, now?”
“She had caved to Hina’s pestering, after all…”

The two of us pictured that absent idiot as she must be right about now. I had no idea what the scenery over there even looked like, but she was no doubt as rowdy and cheerful as ever, having herself a fine old time.

After that we talked about a whole range of things: Ayu and Hina, how our part-time jobs were going, what had happened along the way when Sumire went to buy her book, and plenty more.

There’s no rowdy one around today, either… but at year-end, at least, the occasional peaceful day off can’t be so bad.