My Childhood Friend And Happy New Year

According to my childhood friend, “New Year’s money is a fleeting dream, an ephemeral thing that slips away somewhere and is gone before you even notice it.”

…Or so she claims. No, that just means you can’t hold on to your savings, doesn’t it.

And yet, for all the needless fuss she makes over those savings, my childhood friend, one Sakura Ayuri, turns out to be a pretty free spender when it comes down to it. Anyway, as for what she’s up to right now…

“Once more, and properly this time… Happy New Year, everyone!”
“Happy New Yeaaar~”
“Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year!!”

With the first three days of the New Year behind us, today’s the day we all synced up our schedules to make our first visit of the year to the local shrine. Part of me feels we should have gone a little sooner, but with the first three days past it can’t be all that packed anymore, and remembering the shrine I went to right after the year turned, coming now might actually land us at just about the right level of crowded.

“It’s been forever, Ayu!! Seriously, forever!!”

She already gave us the whole reunion routine when we met up, and here she is doing it all over again, this senior of ours, her energy climbing higher by the second.

“As New Year’s got closer you kept whining, ‘I don’t wanna go to the family gathering!’, huh~”

By the way, this time around Senior Hotaru’s here too, folded in with the usual crew. How does this person always manage to wedge herself into her juniors’ shrine visit? I can only assume her friends in her own year must be…

“If you mean a first shrine visit, I already went with everyone from the light music club and with my classmates too, you know?”
“A third round really can’t count as a first visit, Hotaru.”

…This feels oddly like old times. Or rather, how is it she can still read my mind the way she always could?

As for why Senior Hotaru dreads these family gatherings so much, apparently every time the relatives get together she gets nagged about things like which music college she’s aiming for, and about having joined the light music club in high school. Ayu seems to have been through something of the same sort once herself; talent brings its own headaches, I suppose, though I imagine it still beats having none.

◆◆◆

We met up in front of the station, same as always. The shrine we’re headed to is within walking distance, so on foot it is. That said, the five of us can hardly go shuffling along all in a single row, so…

“So what was it like over there~?”
“There was a little relative of yours there, right…?”
“Um, well…”
“Mm-hm, mm-hm. They looked to be doing well — splendid, splendid.”
“Yeah, s’pose so.”

Ayu, Hina, and Sumire took the lead, the three of them together, while Senior Hotaru and I trailed along behind. Even she had apparently talked herself out of elbowing the juniors aside to glue herself to Ayu.

“You let something slip just now, in passing…”
“Hm? What is it?”

Nothing for it, then; I suppose I’ll play conversation partner. Though, well… asking how she spent the year-end and New Year would only bring a downpour of grumbling raining down on me, so there isn’t a whole lot we can safely talk about.

“Is this your third time? Going to a shrine since the year started.”
“That’s right~”
“Were they all different shrines?”
“With the club seniors it was a different spot, and where we’re headed today I already went with my same-year friends, so… this makes my second time here.”
“…”
“You’ve got that look that says, ‘Then why not just go to a different shrine?’”
“Well…”

A first shrine visit, if I’ve got it right, is the occasion where you go and pray something along the lines of thanks for everything up to now, please look after me again this year… I think. Probably. So a different shrine each time you could still just about call a first visit, but going to the same one twice running is only an ordinary visit, and if you’re going within such a short stretch anyway, a different spot seems the better bet to me.

“Senior Hotaru, you’ve got your entrance exams next year, right? Weren’t you going to go somewhere tied to exam luck…? Ah — or was that the one you went to with your club seniors?”
“Nope, with the seniors we went to a shrine famous for blessings of good health — ‘may Senior Hiiragi’s surgery go well~’… that sort of thing.”
“Ah… for Senior Hiiragi.”

Senior Hiiragi… a third-year, the light music club senior Hotaru looks up to most of all. If I have it right, she’s got a major surgery scheduled after graduation, and it was to cheer her on that Ayu ended up performing a song at the culture festival. True enough. Once we’re into the new year and the short third term wraps up, the third-years graduate. For Senior Hiiragi, graduation and surgery amount to one and the same thing, so I suppose Hotaru, who adores her, is putting that much more prayer in to the gods on her behalf.

“So — here too, you’ll be praying for the surgery to go well?”
“Nope. For that, I tossed in plenty of offering money and prayed plenty at the shrine over there, so here I’ll let myself wish for something else.”
“…And today makes your second time at this one, right? Are you going to make yet another different wish?”
“Yep. Today I’m planning to have them grant a wish that’s different from the first time, too.”

Is that… allowed? I mean, next to someone who only ever shows up at New Year’s, the gods probably do lend a readier ear to a regular… but if that’s so, all the more reason it’d seem better to spend the wish on Senior Hiiragi’s surgery going well.

“It’s fine, it’s fine! Senior Hiiragi looks all delicate, but she’s actually tough as nails and strong… and on top of my praying at all sorts of shrines over there, she got a real boost from Ayu’s song, so it’ll definitely go well!”
“Well, if you’re okay with that, then sure… so what are you going to wish for here?”
“Ehh? You wanna know?”
“No, on second thought, never mind.”
“Ehh?! Come on, ask me!!”

That was Senior Hotaru protesting, but she looked so achingly desperate for me to ask that it started to grate; and besides, whatever came out would just be some Ayu-related wish, so there’d be no fun in hearing it anyway.

“Well, even if you won’t ask, Ginko, I’ll just go ahead and tell you anyway.”
“So you’re telling me regardless, huh… It’s got something to do with Ayu, doesn’t it.”
“Good guess. One of them does, yeah.”
“I mean, of course it’d be obvi— …hm? ‘One of them’?”
“Yeah — it’s the one I made when I went with my classmates the other day.”

No matter how endlessly she carries on about how much she loooves Ayu, Senior Hotaru’s her own person too, with a private life of her own, so it wouldn’t be strange for her to have some other wish. …It wouldn’t be strange, no… but the way she went out of her way to stress that one of them like that does niggle at me a little.

“I was mulling over all sorts of things while I prayed, but if I had to name one — I suppose I prayed, ‘may Ayu find someone nice.’”
“Someone nice… huh.”

In Ayu’s case, even if some nice person did come along, I doubt it’d ever pan out… though maybe someone nice is exactly the phrasing chosen to fold all of that in: a nice someone Ayu could actually bring herself to accept. Or rather, just as I’d figured, there wasn’t much fun to be had in it after all.

“So what’s the other one?”
“Hmm…”
“Senior Hotaru?”
“On second thought, maybe I’ll keep that one to myself — I want to think it over a bit more.”
“Didn’t you just say you’d tell me regardless?”

Worked herself up all on her own, reached her own conclusion on her own, and wrapped the whole thing up on her own, this person.

In the end, for something she’d been so desperate to make me hear, “may Ayu find someone nice” turned out to be no fun at all, and on top of that, it’s a wish that seems unlikely to ever come true.

“By the third time, I figure I might as well wish for something for myself, y’know… I plan to agonize over it right up to the very last second.”
“Huh.”
“So — what about you, Ginko?”
“…Huh? Me?”

Well, my curiosity had only ever been mildly piqued; it wasn’t as if I’d been dying to hear it in the first place, so no harm done… or so I was thinking, right up until a baffling question came flying at me from my senior.

“What do you mean, ‘what about me’?”
“You’re on your second time too, aren’t you, Ginko? Going to that shrine since the year began.”
“…Hmm. Whatever could you mean.”

Is she fishing? Senior Hotaru should have been off at her relatives’ place the moment the year turned, so there’s no way she could have seen me. One of her friends might have been there… but I don’t know a single one of her friends by sight, and even if someone from my own circle had been around, word would’ve gotten back to Ayu and the others by now, and I’d already be busted.

“I heard it from my uncle, you know? Ginko — you were at the shrine after the year turned, weren’t you?”
“Ohh, THAT angle—”

Someone had been there, all right. Forget a friend; it was Senior Hotaru’s own relative, and one I happen to know personally, no less. He’d probably been there for some neighborhood get-together or the like.

“And what’s more, what’s more… you went there with a guy, didn’t you!! Have you got yourself a boyfriend?!”
“Haaah?!!”
“Wha—?! Gin’s got a boyfriend?!”
“Ehh~!! For real~?!”
“Is that true, Ginko?!”

Being spotted at all was bad enough… but I hadn’t counted on it snowballing into this. Sure, I went with a guy, I really did, except that guy was my actual big brother, absolutely NOT a boyfriend… and judging by how fast she’d whipped around to react, this idiothood friend of mine had plainly been sneaking an ear into our whole conversation.

“My uncle told me — ‘I went to pay my respects with the folks from the shopping district, spotted her, and when I moved to say hello, I saw she was with some young man.’”
“Ehh?! When did you go and land yourself one, Gin?!”
“I wanna hear, I wanna hear!”
“Argh! Quiet, quiet!!”

My friends, all worked up over the intel from Senior Hotaru… or rather, from that uncle of hers. “Girls love a good bit of romance gossip,” someone once said… now, whose line was that again? Hina and Sumire are pure, genuine girls, so from them I understand it; but even Ayu, who behind closed doors claims to be a reincarnator whose past life was a grown man, is right there with the same starry-eyed look, and honestly, what is up with that?

“That was my brother! My big brother, all right?!!”
“You don’t have to hide it, Ginko.”
“I’ll deck you, Senior Hotaru!”

Sure, the manager wouldn’t know my brother by sight, so it’s no wonder he’d leap straight to “boyfriend”… but Senior Hotaru, at least, knows my brother exists, which means she’s absolutely asking while fully aware of the answer.

“Ohh, what— so it was just Gin’s big brother…”
“What a letdown…”
“Boooring~”
“Why are you lot so disappointed…”

Reacting like they’d been cheated out of a fun new toy to play with… huh. Then again, come to think of it, if our positions were reversed I’d probably react about the same way.

“Actually — Ayu, you were on the phone with me the very moment the year turned, weren’t you. Back then, was there the slightest sign of anyone next to me?”

It’s not as though I’m Yuuka… if I really had been at a shrine at that exact moment, then Ayu, the one on the call with me, would’ve picked up on it in a heartbeat.

“That’s true… Hm? Actually, this is just a hunch, but — Gin, you were home at that time, right? So then, did you go for your first shrine visit with your brother afterward?”
“…”

Crap. I’d dug my own grave.

“Weeell then — we’ve reached the shrine, so let’s get this first visit underway, shall we.”
“Gin? Hey — hold on?”

Half as a way of ducking the question, I barreled into the just-reached shrine ahead of everyone else. From the split-second glimpse of Senior Hotaru’s smirking face that crossed my vision, I understood the whole thing: she’d asked a question she already knew the answer to purely to needle me.