My Childhood Friend And The Third Term

According to my childhood friend:

“Right after winter break is exactly when you’ve got to pull the purse strings tight.”

…Or so it goes.

She probably means you should be careful now that your New Year’s money has fattened your wallet. I’ve been there, so I know the feeling well. Impulse snacking and sales are the two things to keep an especially close eye on.

Anyway, as for the present state of that childhood friend of mine, one Sakura Ayuri…

“It’s coooold…”
“Sure is.”
“Samii sosaaa…”
“What’s that supposed to be.”
“No idea. I think it was a line some character said in a manga when they were cold… some kind of dialect, maybe?”
“Don’t go tossing around words you don’t even know the meaning of. What are you going to do if it turns out to be something weird?”
“No waaay.”

Guess I’ll look it up on my phone. Now then…

“…This is bringing up a baseball player.”
“…Meaning?”
“Apparently there was a Major Leaguer called Sammy Sosa.”
“So, in other words…”
“In other words, Ayu was cracking an ice-cold dad joke without even knowing it.”
“Guheeh.”

Really, though. Words you don’t properly understand aren’t words to throw around lightly.

◆◆◆

“Gooood morning!”
“Mornin’.”

I trade greetings with classmates I haven’t seen since winter break, in a classroom I haven’t seen since winter break. It’s nowhere near as long a stretch as summer break, though, so it’s hardly enough time apart to get nostalgic over.

“Mornin’~! Ayu-chan, Gin-chan!!”
“Ah, Hina-chan, good morning!”
“Morning. Rare to see you this lively first thing, Hina.”

Hina had apparently beaten us to school, because the instant we walked in she came straight for us, ahead of anyone else. She’s normally on the low-energy side in the mornings… but today there’s a real spring in her.

“Well, that’s~… you know~?”
“?”
“Ahh… come on, Ayu… you know. That.”

Hina keeps darting pointed little glances at Ayu, and Ayu, the target of every one of them, has no idea what any of it is about. Why am I the one picking up on it when I’m not even involved.

“…Ah. …Hmmm, whatever could you mean?”
“And what was that ‘ah’ just now, huh.”
“Ayu-chan…?”

That ‘ah’ unmistakably meant she’d caught on, and now she’s blatantly playing dumb, pretending she forgot to bring it, or that it isn’t finished yet.

“Ayu-chan… don’t tell me…”
“Mm-hmm~… whatever… could you mean~…?”
“Hey. Quit being mean.”

— Smack.

“Ow— …Yes. Sorry… I did bring it, properly…”
“Yaaay~”

Just as I thought. I watched her put it in her school bag yesterday, and if she’d genuinely left it at home she’d be a whole lot paler than this.

One knock on the head from me and she reluctantly digs a bag out of her satchel and hands it to Hina. Out of the plastic comes, naturally enough, the white handmade scarf I saw yesterday.

“Ayu-chan made this…!”
“I really think something from a proper brand would suit you better, Hina-chan…”
“It’s fine!! This is what I want~”

Hina, delighted, winds the scarf around her neck right then and there, indoors or not. Being appreciated that much ought to make a person happy… but Ayu’s brows are knit, and she looks anything but convinced.

“How’s it look? Does it suit me~?”
“It suits you, it suits you.”
“Isn’t that just because you’re good material to start with, Hina-chan…? You’d be better off with something with sturdier fabric and a better design…”
“Honestly~!! Ayu-chan, this belongs to me now, so stop badmouthing it!”
“Eh, ah, right… I’m sorry…”

Well, of course she’s mad. Ayu, duly chewed out, still doesn’t look like any of it sits right with her… but she does stop saying anything more about it.

“You don’t have to worry about it that much, do you? Compared to the one I got, at least, you’ve improved by leaps and bounds.”
“…What’s so great about a lousy handmade scarf from a total beginner like me…? I want everyone to be wearing something more stylish than that.”

While Ayu carries on being endlessly unconvinced, Hina goes off to parade her new scarf around the rest of the class.

She’d apparently been spreading the word to everyone since before we even got to school, because the whole class was going

“Congratulations!”

and

“I’m so happy for you!”

and the like. Full-on celebration mode. Something about the phrasing feels a little off, but that’s probably just my imagination.

“Yuu-chan’s still isn’t done, and after that there’s Hotaru-chan’s… If handmade stuff from a friend is really that good, I’d honestly like someone to make one for me.”
“Why don’t you try saying that in front of Hina or Hotaru-senpai sometime? They’d make you as many as you could ever want, exactly as ordered.”
“Th-that’s heavy… I have got to make sure I never say that.”

She is a bit careless with her clothes, this one. If she were the one on the receiving end of a handmade scarf instead… it isn’t hard to imagine how awkward she’d find it, in all sorts of ways.

I glance sidelong at Sumire-san’s still-empty seat and set my things down at my own desk. Ayu does the same at hers, then comes straight back over. Apparently she still has plenty she wants to say.

“Gin-chan, you know, I’m not convinced about you either.”
“Me?”
“Ever since I gave you my first scarf, I feel like every time I see you, you’ve got it wrapped around your neck.”
“That’s… look, since it turned out the way it did, I can afford to be rough with it.”
“Ehh… that’s its own kind of complicated.”

What am I supposed to do, then.

“For your information, that one is my debut piece… my very first time, you know? I’d like it treated with a little more care, is what I’m saying…”
“Why did you rephrase that into something filthy.”
“H-hold on, hold on, you two…”
“Look, here comes someone who seems like she’d be into that kind of talk.”
“Ah, Sumire-chan, morning~”

I turn around to find Sumire-san standing there, the owner of the seat behind me. She’s clearly caught our chatter, because she’s trembling all over.

“On purpose?”
“Nope, coincidence. Such a coincidence I could burst out laughing.”
“B-both of you…!? That kind of conversation… not in the classroom first thing in the morning…!”
“Incidentally, what kind of conversation?”
“Something about Ayuri-san’s first time… and wanting it treated with care…!”
“What are you, a middle-school boy?”

Honestly, isn’t she overreacting a bit?

“What’s the matter, Sumire-chan. Getting all flustered over something that doesn’t even qualify as a dirty joke.”
“It’s less a dirty joke and more just a lack of class.”
“B-because… I’ve never once seen Ayuri-san talk like that, not even as a bit… so I thought maybe she really was going to do that sort of thing with Ginko-san…!”
“Wait, people think I’m more likely to actually do that stuff than to tell a dirty joke?”
“Sumire-san, those creepy fantasies are a little much, seriously…”

Knowing Sumire-san… whatever she’s picturing under ‘first time’ is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a kiss… but doing that with Ayu, of all people, is absolutely out of the question.

This is a girl who goes around talking about a past life. At this point I can’t even tell whether the mind inside her is a man’s or a woman’s. No, no, not a chance.

“R-right… you had me startled…”
“So the world at large classifies me as the prim-and-proper type who doesn’t tell dirty jokes. I had no idea.”
“You are getting far too full of yourself.”

The ones the world generally counts as prim and proper would be people like Hina and Hotaru-senpai, I’d say. Hina, granted. What our senpai is actually like, we won’t get into.

“Besides, a genuinely proper person wouldn’t go out of her way to restate ‘debut piece’ as something suggestive.”
“It’s precisely because everyone thinks I’m a proper person who wouldn’t do that sort of thing that they assume the conversation just now means I really am doing that sort of thing, right?”
“Ahh… is that how it works?”
“Ah! It’s Sumi-chan~! Look, look~ the scarf I got from Ayu!”

Things are getting a bit chaotic… the moment she spotted Sumire-san come in, Hina was over here showing the new scarf off. Also, is she still wearing that? The heating’s on. Isn’t she hot?

“Ohh… it’s cute, Hina-san.”
“Ehehe~ thank you~… By the way, what were the three of you talking about?”
“About how I might actually have been the proper sort.”
“Ayu-chan is a cute, cool, great-at-singing, angel of a girl~”
“You hear that, Gin-chan?”
“Don’t give me that smug face, it’s obnoxious.”

If anything, Hina is the least reliable judge alive when it comes to appraising Ayu. An assessment like that sails well past blind.

— Ding-dong, ding-dong…

“Whoops, that’s the time. We’d better get back to our seats.”
“See you both later~”
“Mm… see you in a bit.”
“…”

The chime before homeroom rings, and Ayu and Hina head back to their own seats.

Is it really all right for the first thing out of winter break to be a conversation this stupid… well, if it’s fitting, then I suppose it’s fitting.