The Day My Childhood Friendship Began

“You know the saying, ‘the eyes speak as much as the mouth’? That’s how I can tell just from your face that you’re angry at me right now.”
“…So c’mon, tell your old gramps — how come you get so worked up every time you come to see him?”

I still remember gramps asking me that, back when I was little, around the age I’d started kindergarten.

Why was I so angry at him back then? Or, more honestly, why did I dislike him? The reason was simple enough. Back then I absolutely hated my own name, and gramps was the one who’d given it to me. I mean, honestly. Fujino Ginko, of all things?

Sure, it beats the so-called kirakira names people love to gripe about these days… but even so. “Ginko”? That’s a full-on shiwashiwa name if ever there was one, and yet my big brother got a perfectly ordinary one.

As it turned out, the name had belonged to gramps’s older sister, long since passed. My great-aunt, in other words. I’d always thought it sounded like some old woman’s name, and sure enough, that’s exactly what it was, a name straight out of her generation.

From what I gathered, my mother, gramps’s daughter, had looked up to this great-aunt as someone genuinely cool and admirable. She respected her so much that when someone suggested passing the name down to me, she agreed on the spot.

…Still, getting handed the name of a person I’d never once met was a bit much.

And really, admired or not, is it actually okay to name a newborn after someone who’s dead? That was my thinking, anyway.

“Ha-ha! Old granny!”
“Shut up!”

There was another reason the name grew on me the wrong way: a handful of kids in my kindergarten class used to tease me over it. And back then I wasn’t the type to sit still when I got picked on, either. The moment they started, I’d throw a punch, get into a brawl with whichever boy it was, and end up hauled apart by the teacher every single time.

“Ginko, do you not like your own name?”
“‘Cause… it’s so old-fashioned…”

The eyes speak as much as the mouth… I think it was right around then that I first understood what those words really meant. Because however much I hated the name, to my mother and gramps it was something precious, and every time I pulled a face about it, their eyes would go so sad.

Honestly, I almost wished they’d get openly angry with me instead, that they’d flatly reject what I felt and call it what it looked like: a child’s tantrum, some selfish, unreasonable fit.

So I clamped a lid on the resentment, talking myself round with things like ‘once I’m grown I’ll get used to it; it’s a normal enough name anyway,’ and I spent my early childhood lugging that murky, unsettled feeling around with me.

The turning point came right around the time I started elementary school.

◇◇◇

“There it is — Kanata! Ginko! This is the house we’re all going to live in from now on!”
“Whoaaa!”
“So this is it…”

Just before I started elementary school, we moved one town over. My parents’ long-cherished dream, a house of their own, had finally come together. My big brother was crushed at having to switch to a different school from his friends, but I didn’t have any friends that close in kindergarten, and honestly I was just glad to hear I’d be getting my own room.

“A child your age lives in that house over there, Ginko. You’ll be walking to school together from now on, so let’s go say hello.”
“Hmph…”

…Little did I know back then that the kid I was about to meet would turn out stranger than anything I could have imagined, or that, neighbors or not, we’d still be knocking around together all the way into high school. Not in my wildest dreams.

“My name’s Sakura Ayuri! What’s your name?”
“…Fujino Ginko.”

My first impression was… that she seemed like a noisy one.

It’s a mean way to put it, and I’m sure she didn’t mean anything by it, but the way Ayu looked at me back then was… how do I put it, like a kid who’d just been handed a brand-new toy, eyes sparkling, practically bursting with excitement.

“Ooh! So you like games, Ginko! What kind do you play?”
“…Minecraft and stuff.”
“That’s amazing, Ginko! You actually build proper houses! Me, all I ever manage is a pit dwelling…”
“I just watch tutorial videos for it… and what even is a ‘pit dwelling’?”
“What?! How do you not know that?!”
“…Do you not watch videos or walkthroughs, Ayuri?”

True to that first impression, she really was a noisy one.

She’d react to every last thing I did with wild exaggeration, heaping over-the-top “amazing, amazing!“s on me… and more than that, the longer we spent together, the more one thing in particular kept getting to me.

“…”
“Hm? Something wrong?”
“…It’s nothing.”

It was those eyes.

Not like the classmates who treated me as something troublesome to be handled. And not like the grown-ups, either, who used to talk me down in those roundabout, knowing ways. If anything, they reminded me of the eyes of that boy who used to mock my name, eyes that put every feeling right out in the open, hiding nothing. Even if what they held was the complete opposite.

“Huh… Ginko, do you not like your name?”
“…Yeah.”

Something about those eyes and that warmth, so completely opposite to that boy’s, put me at ease, and before I knew it I’d let my worry slip out to her. Maybe she’ll get it… or if not, then someone this happy-go-lucky might just come right out and tell me ‘you’re wrong.’ I think that was the kind of thing I was hoping for.

“Huh? But it’s cool!”
“…Cool?”

Against that hope, what came back was neither agreement nor denial. It was praise, delivered through those same sparkling eyes as always.

“Why?”

The word slipped out before I even realized it. Why would she think that? How could she say it so flatly, so sure of herself… how could she just hand her feelings to another person like that, without a shred of fear? Me, I’d resolved to keep a lid on it all, because I couldn’t stand what my words did to someone’s face.

“W-well, why, huh… it’s got this cool, sharp image to it, y’know… and also I just plain like silver more than gold… and then…”
“Hmm…”
“Anyway! You’re definitely gonna grow up into a cool, pretty lady, Ginko! I think it’s a really great name!”

So why — how could she hand me the very words I hadn’t even realized I’d been wanting to hear?

“…You think?”
“Mm-hm, mm-hm! You’re gonna turn out an absolute stunner, Ginko~ Your mom was a beauty too, after all!”

I’d bet that, unusually for me, I was fidgeting a little just then.

Honestly, even when gramps or my mother praised the name, on the inside I’d twist it into something sour.

‘You two only think it’s a nice name because you knew the great-aunt it came from.’

That kind of thing. And the other way round, whenever some adult who’d never known the great-aunt praised it, I’d think ‘you don’t know the first thing about it, you’re just tossing out flattery to be polite’… yeah, however you slice it, I was far too twisted back then.

But that was exactly why Ayu’s praise, coming out of nowhere and so plainly heartfelt, felt, well, kind of ticklish. The girl doing the praising probably figured I was fidgeting because she’d told me I’d grow up pretty, though.

Ah, looking back on it, even then Ayu was a dope, an airhead, and a warm-hearted one.

◆◆◆

Sumire shook me awake, and I surfaced out of the dream. The bus had reached school safely, it seemed, and we’d been let off right there; now it was just Ayu and me, making our way home through the dusk.

“~♪”
“…You sang that much on the bus and you’ve still got more in you, huh.”
“Well~ with everyone watching I couldn’t really sing the songs I like, so it left me kind of unsatisfied, y’know…”

Yeah, right. Hina and Sumire told me that while I was out cold she’d been sneaking in oldies and tokusatsu songs and anime songs. Apparently she’d been lining them up all nervous, muttering things like ‘A classic’s safe even if it’s old, long as it’s famous, right?!’ and ‘If it’s one nobody looks like they’d know, they won’t clock it as an anime song, right?’

“Fwaaah…”
“Oh, yawning, Gin? You slept that whole time on the bus and you’re still not rested enough?”
“Well, yeah — when someone’s belting it out in the seat right in front of me and whipping up the whole crowd.”
“I’m so sorr— …wait, is this even my fault?”

It absolutely is.

I could sort of understand it if she’d only sung along with the old middle-school crowd, Hina leading the charge, but belting out that much, the hype was bound to spill way past just the same-school kids, and on top of that, with Ayu taking solos, well, of course it turned out the way it did.

“By the time we reached school, Hina was completely wiped out, remember? More worn out than the actual field trip, that one.”
“Don’t blame me! Everyone whipped out maracas and got carried away all on their own!”

Yeah, put that way, I can’t entirely shake the feeling that Hina and the others are more to blame. Come to think of it, a few besides Hina had looked a little wiped out too; they must have really gotten into it while I was asleep.

“So unfair, honestly…~♫”

And Ayu started singing again. This song was… from some robot anime, I think. At some point, at karaoke, Ayu had sung it while a bit of slightly dated anime footage played behind her.

“~♪”
“…”

I don’t know what anime it comes from, but I remember it being a song with a kind of wistful feel to it back at karaoke, probably one Ayu drifted into now, moved by this dusk. But maybe because she’s singing it in such high spirits now, and a cappella, it comes across less as the mournful, dark thing I remembered and more as a song with a faint, bright hope threaded through it.

“You’re in a good mood, Ayu. …Did you have fun today?”
“Hmm~? Of course I did!”
“…I see.”

Just as gramps said, you really can read the rough shape of what someone’s feeling from their eyes. And beyond that, when Ayu sings with even a scrap of feeling in it, her mood is an open book to everyone around her. So even without bothering to ask… anyone who caught this voice, this face, this whole way she carried herself, this transparently happy Ayu, would know without being told that today had been a fun day for her.

And yet I asked her whether today was fun anyway.

“You can tell just by looking at me right now, can’t you? Weird Gin.”
“…Guess so.”

See, the girl herself even calls me on it. From the outside I probably look like I’ve gone soft, swept up in the mood.

…But it’s exactly because I dreamed of the time we met that I’m thinking this now. Even if ‘the eyes speak as much as the mouth,’ the truth is you can read the feeling and still miss the finer thoughts. Back in middle school, this childhood friend right in front of me drove that lesson home, so I couldn’t help but ask.

“What about you, Gin? Did you have fun?”
“…Well, more or less.”
“I see… that’s good, then!”

I only said ‘more or less,’ and yet she beams like I’d told her I’d had the time of my life. That smile that seems to say ‘I know how you really feel’… it’s a little galling, honestly. Especially when I can’t even claim to understand Ayu’s feelings in return.

“Youth feels long, but it’s short, y’know! Even when you think ‘it’s only been a month or so,’ before you know it, it’s flown right by.”
“Coming from you, maybe that actually holds some weight.”
“Right~?!”

I wonder if Ayu ever realizes it. That for me, the fun youth she’s always going on about pretty much always has Ayu in it. That every time Ayu sets out to make our youth a fun one, the space she takes up inside us grows a little bigger.

“…”
“Something wrong?”
“It’s nothing.”

She probably doesn’t get it. Not with a face this carefree. That in this youth of ours, I’m the only one who feels somehow lonely, the only one who knows Ayu’s secret.

Ayu picks her humming back up.

And as I listened, I walked on home, taking my pettiness out on the evening glow with a private little the only reason I feel lonely right now is this sunset and this song.