メロウレイン / Futtara Doshaburi Mellow Rain

Let’s Go See the Sea

 

“Hagiwara, you’re paying today.”

 

They were drinking together when Sei announced it without warning.

 

“…All right. I don’t mind.”

 

Hagiwara blinked at him.

 

“Short of money? That’s unusual.”

 

Sei earned somewhat less than Hagiwara in Sales, but still perfectly well. Surely a bar bill was not beyond him. Had he bought some absurdly expensive appliance?

 

“That’s not it. I already paid your share.”

 

“What?”

 

A bill Hagiwara knew nothing about?

 

His confusion only deepened.

 

“Festival sponsorship,” Sei said.

 

“Sorry, am I drunk? I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

 

“Last year, at my flat. Remember seeing that summer festival float go past? ‘Seeing’ is generous. We basically just happened to witness it.”

 

“Oh. Yeah.”

 

“I thought it was kind of nice. That local sort of thing.”

 

Sei turned his glass slowly.

 

“I hate religion, but all over the world there are tiny festivals and rituals that tourists never come to. I feel like somehow, through things like that, people manage to keep all sorts of things going.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Sei sometimes said things that were abrupt or difficult to follow. Hagiwara still was not entirely sure he understood him every time. But when those strange thoughts came out of Sei’s mouth, with Sei’s expression, they somehow landed naturally inside Hagiwara.

 

“I didn’t actually want to participate, though. So I donated five thousand yen each. In my name and yours.”

 

“Huh.”

 

I don’t even live there.

 

The thought crossed Hagiwara’s mind, but Sei looked so pleased with himself that saying it would have been painfully uncool. Perhaps Sei had simply wanted to try doing something like that.

 

A form of entertainment, such as throwing rice cakes at a festival or giving a small ceremonial tip.

 

“I got receipts. Want to claim it on your tax return as a donation?”

 

“No. Too much hassle.”

 

“There’ll be stalls at the shrine the week after next. Come with me.”

 

“Do sponsors get free beer?”

 

“You get your name displayed. Like a sponsor list.”

 

“Ah. Yeah, I’ve seen those.”

 

“Apparently if you give thirty thousand they hang a lantern with your name on it. But that seemed a bit much.”

 

“Sounds like the reward catalogue for hometown tax donations.”

 

Different perks depending on how deep your wallet was. Although even if they gave you the lantern afterwards, what exactly were you supposed to do with it? Hagiwara realised with mild surprise that it had been almost a year.

 

Nearly a year since the two of them had watched the toy-like festival float crawl along beneath Sei’s window.

 

Without realising it, this relationship had already lasted longer than any of Hagiwara’s previous ones. It was not that he had expected them to break up immediately. Even so, the fact still surprised him.

 

They had started at the most emotionally intense points in both their lives and moved almost immediately into the deepest kind of intimacy.

 

It was like two actors who played lovers in a film and then genuinely began dating afterwards. Making a soft landing from the extraordinary into ordinary life was not easy.

 

Yet even with arguments, misunderstandings and moments when they missed one another completely, they had kept going.

 

And Hagiwara still loved Sei.

 

Surely it was not exactly the same feeling as at the beginning.

 

But that was like the flavour of alcohol changing slowly over time.

 

You enjoyed the taste it had now as fully as possible while looking forward to whatever time and air would deepen it into next.

 

Hagiwara believed Sei probably felt the same.

 

“Look, look.”

 

Outside the flat, Sei pointed to a sticker fixed beside the door.

 

Apparently this too was a thank-you gift for sponsoring the festival.

 

Perhaps it was meant to resemble a shrine talisman: long and narrow, with the shrine and neighbourhood association names printed across an aggressively shiny silver background.

 

Hagiwara was from the wrong generation, but it still reminded him vaguely of a Bikkuriman sticker.

 

“A ‘we paid money’ sticker?”

 

“Basically.”

 

“Anyone without one looks stingy.”

 

“Nobody’s inspecting every front door. It’s just quietly fun. Sometimes I spot one in a bar and think, Oh, they donated too. Makes me weirdly happy.”

 

The things that made Sei happy remained difficult to predict.

 

Hagiwara still had moments of, Really? That?

 

It was entertaining, so he did not mind.

 

Though occasionally he worried that, to someone this subtly eccentric, Hagiwara himself might be too ordinary in both thought and reaction.

 

“…Hagiwara.”

 

They were slowly, quietly losing themselves in each other later when Sei suddenly remembered something.

 

“Earlier, you asked whether you were drunk.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You didn’t ask whether I was drunk.”

 

“Hm? What about it?”

 

“Nothing. I just like that about you.”

 

“I don’t understand…”

 

Their foreheads touched lightly.

 

Sei’s fingers slid above both of Hagiwara’s ears and stroked through his hair.

 

There he goes saying difficult things again, Hagiwara thought.

 

But whenever Sei, through some completely Sei-like way of seeing the world, found something in Hagiwara that apparently belonged only to him, Hagiwara felt absurdly reassured.

 

The night of the festival was cloudy.

 

They had both arrived hungry and intended to make the stalls their dinner, so first they bought sauce yakisoba and a can of beer each, the cans bobbing in tubs of ice water.

 

They bought one each rather than sharing because there were no tables and both hands were already occupied.

 

So they kept swapping noodles and beer, eating and drinking in turns.

 

It was hectic.

 

It was also fun.

 

Next they found a doner kebab stall, something they could eat one-handed, and bought one each with bottles of Corona.

 

They agreed they only needed one shaved ice between them.

 

Hagiwara lost rock-paper-scissors, so he paid and was allowed to choose the flavour.

 

Coffee with condensed milk.

 

They chipped slowly at the mound of ice with straws whose flattened ends were spooned.

 

Will we still be doing things like this in ten years?

 

The thought came to Hagiwara suddenly.

 

Two middle-aged men wandering around together might attract odd looks.

 

That part did not bother him much.

 

Being mistaken for suspicious men hanging around watching women or children would be much worse.

 

“Hagiwara, your hand stopped. Brain freeze?”

 

“No.”

 

When he told Sei what he had been imagining, Sei answered immediately.

 

“Then we’ll just take the food home and eat it there.”

 

“…That works.”

 

“Ah. I nearly forgot. We need to check the sponsor list.”

 

Behind the rows of stalls on either side of the shrine approach stood a large framework like an enormous signboard.

 

Wooden name plaques covered it from edge to edge.

 

Major companies whose presence made Hagiwara think, Seriously?

 

Probably local builders and restaurants.

 

Then row after row of individual names.

 

“Ah. Found us.”

 

Hagiwara Kazuaki and Nakarai Sei appeared next to one another.

 

“Hagiwara, don’t you notice anything?”

 

“I notice our names are there.”

 

“No, not that.”

 

“Hm?”

 

Sei, growing impatient, bit repeatedly at his straw.

 

“Why are our names next to each other?”

 

“Because you paid them together?”

 

“No. Look properly.”

 

“Huh?”

 

Aida Makoto.

 

Ando Masayuki.

 

Inoue Mitsuko.

 

There was clearly a rule to the order.

 

“Ah. Japanese alphabetical order… Wait. Then why are ours beside each other?”

 

“Hagiwara and Nakarai should be nowhere near each other.”

 

Sei smiled with ridiculous pride now that Hagiwara had finally noticed.

 

“I submitted my surname as Hani.”

 

“What?”

 

“I looked it up online. Apparently there genuinely are people whose surname is read as Hani.”

 

“Why would you do that?”

 

“Because if we were doing it anyway, I thought it’d be nicer if our plaques were close together. Luckily there wasn’t a Hamada-san or Hanyu-san stuck between us.”

 

Sei took out his phone.

 

“I’m getting a photo.”

 

Cute.

 

God, he’s cute.

 

This person had always been cute.

 

Hagiwara was embarrassed by how strongly he thought it, so instead he said something irrelevant.

 

“Are you allowed to use a fake reading like that?”

 

“It’s not like I committed a crime. What exactly are you worried about?”

 

“I don’t know. When you do purification rituals and things, they say you have to write your address and name correctly or the gods won’t know where to find you.”

 

“I don’t believe in any of that.”

 

Sei looked down at the cup in his hand.

 

“The shaved ice is basically soup now. Can’t scoop it.”

 

They drank the sweet melted ice between them and left the shrine.

 

On the public noticeboard outside was a poster advertising a spirit-boat ceremony.

 

Write a message to someone who has died, or place an offering for your ancestors aboard a boat, and send it down the river together with your thoughts.

 

Apparently they would release the boats from a nearby river that night.

 

“What happens after they float away?” Sei stopped to ask.

 

“They probably collect them somewhere downstream. Letting them reach the sea untouched would probably be bad now. It’d count as dumping rubbish… which sounds awful when you say it like that.”

 

Long ago, when prayers and festivals had carried far greater weight in people’s lives, perhaps the little boats really had drifted out into the open ocean without obstruction.

 

Some might have reached another shore.

 

Others might have sunk.

 

One way or another, perhaps they had once been able, almost miraculously, to return to nature.

 

“I see.”

 

So in the end, they can’t actually go anywhere.

 

Sei squeezed Hagiwara’s fingers.

 

“…Want to go and watch?”

 

Hagiwara asked even though he already knew the answer.

 

“No.”

 

“Then shall we go home?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

A spring festival was a prayer for abundance.

 

An autumn festival was a time of gratitude for the harvest.

 

A winter festival thanked the passing year and prayed for the new one.

 

But summer festivals carried a stronger colour of remembrance for the dead.

 

A drop of rain fell.

 

Then another.

 

The summer darkness grew wetter and deeper.

 

Hagiwara walked with Sei’s hand in his.

 

He found himself thinking that he did not care who saw them.

 

Even if that person were a friend or relative.

 

If someone he loved told him they could not accept the two of them, Hagiwara would choose Sei.

 

He probably would not agonise over it for long.

 

Losing Sei—losing this hand—would be harder to bear.

 

But an ending would come one day regardless.

 

So, like a bear storing food before hibernation, all he could do was collect small memories.

 

Last summer.

 

This summer.

 

Next year.

 

The year after.

 

One day, even the prayer, "Please let us spend another summer together," would no longer be possible.

 

So he would think it as many times as he could while it still was.

 

Those little spirit boats probably would not make it all the way to the sea.

 

So instead, before summer ended, Hagiwara would go and see the sea with Sei.