メロウレイン / Futtara Doshaburi Mellow Rain

Life Goes On

 

Just before noon on New Year’s Day, Hagiwara’s phone rang.

 

“It’s one of my seniors from work.”

 

“Emergency?”

 

“God, I hope not. Not first thing in the New Year…”

 

He could hardly ignore it, so he answered with the obligatory, “Happy New Year.” Sei lowered the volume of the television they had left on.

 

“Yes—yes… I’m at home, but not my parents’ place. Oh, really? That’s rough. Right… huh? Er…”

 

It did not sound like a work matter. Even so, Hagiwara looked puzzled, so it was hard to call it good news either.

 

“Er… sorry, could you give me half an hour to think about it? I’ll ring you back. Yes, yes. All right, speak to you later.”

 

Even after the call ended, he sat there humming thoughtfully to himself.

 

“What was that about?”

 

“Well… my senior was supposed to stay in Kyoto with his wife, but she’s got the flu and can’t go. He asked if I wanted to take the booking instead. If I do, apparently he’ll sort it out with the hotel.”

 

“Then let’s go.”

 

Sei answered immediately.

 

“What?”

 

“Why not? We didn’t have any plans. Let’s go to Kyoto. I haven’t been since my school trip.”

 

“But it’s one night, starting today. And he’s not paying for us or anything. He just doesn’t want to lose the cancellation fee, so he wants to hand the reservation over to me—”

 

“I know. I want to go.”

 

At that time of year, getting a hotel in Kyoto without booking well in advance was almost impossible. Sei thought the reservation itself was valuable enough. He urged Hagiwara to answer before the senior offered it to somebody else, and although Hagiwara kept asking, “Seriously?” he finally rang back and successfully secured the room.

 

“Right, then we need Shinkansen tickets… The outbound rush should be over by now, so we’ll probably be fine.”

 

“I’m going home first to get ready.”

 

“What? Why bother?”

 

Most of Sei’s clothes and everyday things were already at Hagiwara’s flat.

 

“Kyoto’s supposed to be cold. I’m changing into a thicker coat.”

 

“It won’t be that different. We’re only going into the city.”

 

“I want to get ready. It makes it feel like a proper trip. Let’s meet up as well. Tell me the Shinkansen time later.”

 

“Where? Shinagawa? Tokyo?”

 

“Tokyo.”

 

“Because it feels more like a trip?”

 

“Exactly.”

 

Hagiwara saw him off with a wry smile, and Sei went home to prepare for their little journey.

 

Tokyo Station was still packed around the Shinkansen gates. Hagiwara was printing their tickets when someone poked him in the back.

 

“…That’s the same coat.”

 

“I decided I’d just put another layer underneath.”

 

“By the way, what are we actually doing in Kyoto?”

 

“Eh? I haven’t thought about it.”

 

“Yeah. I had a feeling.”

 

“I’m not that interested in temples and shrines, and they’ll be crowded anyway. We can wander over for the first shrine visit of the year, and if there are too many people, we’ll just give up.”

 

“Got it.”

 

Hagiwara could not help thinking that they could accomplish roughly the same thing in Tokyo, but Sei simply looked delighted to be going somewhere, so Hagiwara buried his mild sense of inconvenience.

 

Considering how Sei had lived until recently, it had probably been at least five years since he had travelled anywhere. What hurt more than that fact itself was the thought that Sei had likely never considered his small, closed-off world either restrictive or unnatural.

 

If a single unexpected night away made him this happy, Hagiwara wished he had taken him somewhere overnight much sooner.

 

“Here.”

 

As he handed Sei the window-seat ticket, he said, “We should’ve planned a proper trip earlier.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“I mean, we’re both off work. We could’ve gone somewhere properly.”

 

“It’s better because it’s sudden,” Sei said. “Just wandering off somewhere. If you planned everything too carefully, I’d probably decide I’d rather stay at home and laze around.”

 

“I can understand that, sort of.”

 

He really was a difficult man.

 

When they went up to the platform, chunks of snow were scattered along the tracks opposite.

 

“Tohoku Shinkansen, maybe?”

 

“Probably.”

 

There was not even a flurry of snow here, yet only a few hours away by train it had piled up that heavily. The thought stirred the faintest sense of travel in Hagiwara. Even though he rode the Nozomi often for business, he leaned forward to watch as their train approached.

 

“Snow tastes kind of metallic, doesn’t it?”

 

“What? I’d say more like earth. Sort of muddy.”

 

“No, it tastes metallic.”

 

“Does it? It’s been about twenty years since I last tried it.”

 

Sei glanced vaguely upwards as if calculating.

 

“More like fifteen, surely?”

 

“You were eating snow until a fairly impressive age.”

 

“Only clean snow. Freshly fallen stuff.”

 

“What are you defending yourself against?” Hagiwara laughed.

 

They waited for the carriage to be cleaned, then boarded. Their seats were at the very front, so there was plenty of legroom. At first Sei stayed glued to the window, but after they passed Shin-Yokohama, Odawara and Atami, he began to look bored.

 

“Tunnel, tea fields, tunnel, tea fields…”

 

“Shizuoka stretches a long way sideways. Still less boring than the Sanyo line, I reckon.”

 

“Hmm.”

 

Apparently giving up on the scenery, Sei leafed through a weekly magazine he had bought at the station. The moment he saw the contents page, he snorted and leaned closer.

 

“Look at this.”

 

“What?”

 

“‘Terror of a Direct-Hit Tokyo Earthquake: One Hundred Thousand Dead!’ right next to ‘Your Sex Life After Fifty’. Which is it? Are we all dying or not?”

 

“So you won’t have any regrets when disaster strikes?”

 

“Does nobody in the editorial meeting ever go, ‘Nah, that’s ridiculous’?”

 

“Weekly magazines run some version of that stuff all the time. Mostly aimed at middle-aged blokes.”

 

“Then I’d better read it for future reference.”

 

“Oi.”

 

Sei read the article with an impressively serious expression before reporting, “It only talked about swingers’ clubs and swapping partners.”

 

“Keep your voice down…”

 

“Oh, Mount Fuji.”

 

Sei turned back to the window and gazed at the mountain, faintly capped with snow.

 

“Hagiwara.”

 

“Mm?”

 

“What kind of trips have you been on?”

 

“With my family?”

 

“With all your ex-girlfriends.”

 

“You really want to know that?”

 

“Yeah. Just normally.”

 

“Normal trips. I never went abroad. When I was a student, I used to stay in love hotels even when we travelled.”

 

“Really?”

 

“They were cheaper than a dodgy business hotel half the time, and sometimes had better facilities.”

 

“Huh. Clever.”

 

“…What about you, Nakarai-san?”

 

Hagiwara hesitated, wondering whether it was something he should touch on, but if Sei had not wanted to be asked, he probably would not have turned the question back on him. Besides, Sei had mentioned before that he had dated women in the past.

 

“Me? The worst.”

 

Despite the word worst, Sei smiled as if the memory amused him, his expression blending into the grey-blue mountains beyond the window.

 

“When I was at university, I went to a hot-spring resort in Yamanashi with the girl I was dating. While we were there, I found out she was cheating on me.”

 

“No way.”

 

“Phones really are landmines. I only wanted to borrow her charger. She was still in the big bath, and her phone had finished charging, so when I pulled the cable out the screen lit up for a second. Her sent messages were right there.”

 

“Were you angry?

 

“Of course I was pissed off. I knew the bloke’s name, but she’d told me he was pestering her and she didn’t know what to do about him. Then I see her message and she’s practically bouncing off the screen. I still remember it: ‘Just left Shibuya, I’ll be there soon ♥♥♥!’”

 

“Bloody hell…”

 

It ought to have been a spectacularly ugly scene, yet Sei spoke so lightly that there was barely any tragedy in it, and Hagiwara ended up laughing too.

 

“Did you confront her?”

 

“Nah. At first I thought, what the hell am I supposed to do with this woman? I packed my stuff. I was going to leave her there and go home. But…”

 

“Ah. You ended up sleeping with her anyway.”

 

“I did not.”

 

Sei frowned as if genuinely offended. Hagiwara had only assumed that men were creatures who tended to lose to lust whatever the circumstances.

 

“It was already after eleven at night and there was no way for me to get back to Tokyo. It was the middle day of a long weekend, so there was no chance of finding another room either. I realised that storming out dramatically would only make things difficult for me. And I couldn’t exactly lock her out.”

 

“You were pretty calm about it.”

 

“She wasn’t in front of me, so I kept cooling down. Eventually I started wondering why I was even that angry.”

 

“Because she lied to you.”

 

“Obviously. But then I realised I was angry because she’d treated me like an idiot, not because I loved her. Those aren’t the same thing. Once I thought, Oh, maybe I don’t actually like her that much, everything just settled down. We broke up right after the trip, but there wasn’t some huge fight. It was all very matter-of-fact. I never even told her I’d seen the messages. By then it didn’t feel important enough to bring up.”

 

“Is that really how it works?”

 

“When you’re a student, people get together and split up all the time.”

 

Sei rested his forehead against the window.

 

“It’s incredibly easy, you know. Almost feels good. That moment when you realise, Ah, I don’t love them. It’s like being released. Suddenly you feel lighter because you know you don’t need this person in your life.”

 

“…That’s terrifying.”

 

“What?”

 

“My heart actually shrivels up when you say something like that so casually.”

 

“Why?”

 

“You know why. It makes me wonder what I’m supposed to do if one day you suddenly go, Ah, and realise the same thing about me.”

 

“That could happen to either of us.”

 

“No. I couldn’t make a clean break like you do, Nakarai-san.”

 

“Am I really that cold?”

 

“I don’t mean cold exactly… You’re just unusual. Looking at you makes me realise what an incredibly ordinary bloke I am.”

 

“In what universe?”

 

Hagiwara meant it sincerely, but Sei brushed it aside. Then, as though a needle had swung gently into place, he let his head fall against Hagiwara’s shoulder.

 

“It was a long time ago.”

 

“Mm.”

 

“Actually, it feels less like an old memory and more like somebody else’s memory. Maybe it was a past life.”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

 

“But that’s what it feels like.”

 

“I sort of get it.”

 

If Hagiwara told his younger self that one day he would fall in love with a man, that version of him would never believe it either.

 

And yet Sei was here. This was their reality, their life together—for now.

 

At some point Mount Fuji vanished from the window. The Shinkansen carried them through Hamamatsu, Toyohashi, Mikawa-Anjo and Nagoya. In time with the train’s steady progress, the short winter day began to sink towards evening. The ridgelines glowed in the setting sun, and Sei narrowed his eyes.

 

“Wow.”

 

“We’re heading west, so it feels like we’re driving straight into the sunset.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Hagiwara was sure he had seen views like this before. He had simply never felt this way about them. Sei’s lashes, lowered and faintly trembling in the evening light, and the quiet voice meant only for Hagiwara turned this orange-washed moment into something special.

 

Maybe even without that beginning, even without everything that had happened between them, Hagiwara would eventually have fallen in love with this man anyway.

 

He was drawn to Sei’s childish honesty and his equally childish cruelty. He did not say it aloud, but it was not a bad possibility to believe in.

 

Just as Hagiwara had predicted, Kyoto did not feel much colder than Tokyo. They took a train from Kyoto Station and reached their hotel. It was so plain from the outside it could almost have passed for a block of flats, but the unpretentious, compact cleanliness was exactly the sort of atmosphere Sei liked.

 

“Your senior’s got good taste.”

 

“Yeah. I need to remember his souvenir tomorrow. He asked for something you can only buy at Isetan.”

 

They took off their coats, made coffee with the capsule machine in the room and relaxed for a while. Before they knew it, it was time for dinner.

 

“What are we doing for food?”

 

“Know anywhere?”

 

“Not really. It’s New Year’s Day. Most places’ll probably be shut.”

 

“In that case, this is fine.”

 

They ended up eating in the hotel restaurant.

 

“This doesn’t feel very Kyoto-ish. Could be Tokyo.”

 

“We saw a five-storey pagoda and Kyoto Tower from the Shinkansen.”

 

“And that’s enough for you?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

The hotel had a small bar as well, but after dinner they decided they might as well go for a wander.

 

If they found somewhere to have a drink, great. If not, they could buy whatever they fancied from a convenience store and drink in their room.

 

There was something fun about strolling through an unfamiliar city with no real purpose.

 

“We could just drink the entire minibar,” Hagiwara suggested.

 

There were tins of beer and tiny toy-like bottles of whisky and shochu. At hotel prices, working their way through all of it would become a surprisingly expensive night.

 

“Living extravagantly.”

 

“It’s New Year.”

 

True. They were free to get horribly hungover and lie around until checkout if they wanted.

 

The thought of such a small indulgence made Sei increasingly excited.

 

“Oh, but look.”

 

Hagiwara pointed ahead.

 

Sei could not tell at a glance whether the wooden building was a genuine machiya townhouse or simply built in that style, but the shaded bulbs glowing outside made it clear that something was open. The street around it was dark enough that the filaments inside the bulbs were clearly visible.

 

“Looks like a bar.”

 

“Shall we try it?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

They slid open the door and found an appealingly worn little counter bar inside.

 

“Got room for two?”

 

“Of course. Happy New Year.”

 

The greeting came back from behind the counter with a western-Japan lilt. It felt strangely fresh.

 

At the same time, Sei found himself wondering whether there was some unofficial dress code for men in their thirties who ran slightly quirky little bars, because they always seemed to share the same atmosphere—T-shirt, knit cap, glasses, some combination of the three.

 

The back wall doubled as a screen, showing an old foreign cartoon. A handful of men and women who looked like regulars chatted in Kansai dialect while only half-watching it.

 

They ordered two beers, then Sei, wanting something a little different, asked for a hot buttered rum.

 

“Oh, that’s good.”

 

“Seriously? I should’ve ordered that.”

 

Hagiwara was sipping hot whisky. He lifted the cinnamon stick out almost immediately, and the bartender noticed.

 

“Sorry—don’t like cinnamon?”

 

“Not really.”

 

“Men never seem to like fragrant things, do they?”

 

A woman three stools away joined the conversation, apparently bored of watching a cat and mouse fight over cheese on the screen. Hagiwara answered pleasantly.

 

“Yeah. I’m not great with herbs either.”

 

“What about mint? Ever had a Grasshopper?”

 

“Oh, the one that feels like drinking toothpaste?”

 

“That’s the one. Where are you two from?”

 

“Tokyo.”

 

“Sightseeing?”

 

“Sort of. We came with no plan at all. Anything you recommend?”

 

“Locals never know that sort of thing. Sometimes I read a guidebook and learn something myself.”

 

“Actually, yeah. I get that.”

 

“People from Tokyo don’t care much about Tokyo Skytree either, do they?”

 

“Not at all.”

 

She laughed as if that proved her point, then peered past Hagiwara at Sei.

 

“Your friend?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

The man beside her grinned.

 

“Maybe they’re a couple.”

 

It was nosy, but his expression made it obvious he was only making a drunken joke. Sei did not care enough to react.

 

Hagiwara, however, answered smoothly.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“We are.”

 

The straightforward admission was taken as another joke, and a small ripple of laughter went around the bar. It did not feel awkward or hostile.

 

Sei calmly finished his hot drink, and once he was satisfied, they left.

 

“I was surprised.”

“Sorry. Did you hate that?”

 

“No, that’s not it. You just said it so casually.”

 

“I know… Maybe I’m drunk. I just thought, who cares? We’re never going to see them again… Travelling is dangerous.”

 

“Terrifying.”

 

Maybe Sei was drunk too. He was absurdly happy, his heart trembling in tiny beats. New Year’s Day had left the streets quiet, with little light or noise, and the air felt so clear that a deep breath might dye his lungs the same colour as the night sky.

 

A wind like a blade of frozen glass cut across his cheeks, and Sei screwed his eyes shut.

 

“Cold!”

 

“Yeah, it really does get colder at night…”

 

His stomach was warm and tingling from the alcohol, but none of that warmth reached the sting in his face and ears. The wind snapped at the hem of his coat until laughter finally bubbled out of him.

 

“Why do you always end up laughing when it’s freezing?”

 

“Because there’s nothing else you can do.”

 

“Yeah. That’s probably it.”

 

By the time they got back to the hotel, they were chilled through. Both of them immediately started stripping in the bathroom, scattering their clothes around as they decided on a bath first.

 

Sei adjusted the handheld showerhead so neither of them would get hit by the first burst of cold water and turned the lever.

 

There was absolutely no ulterior motive.

 

“Cold!”

 

“Ah—sorry.”

 

Apparently he had turned on the overhead rain shower instead. Hagiwara, standing directly beneath the holes dotted across the ceiling, took the full blast.

 

So that was why the bathroom had seemed unusually spacious. They had left room for this.

 

“Is this some kind of punishment game?”

 

“Sorry, sorry. It’ll warm up in a second.”

 

“You did that on purpose.”

 

“I did not.”

 

“You’re laughing!”

 

Sei waited until the droplets bouncing off Hagiwara’s skin felt warm, then stepped beneath the fiercely localised downpour himself.

 

“Ahh, warm.”

 

“You’re really annoying.”

 

“Warm me up,” Hagiwara said, catching Sei by the arm and pulling him close.

 

They kissed beneath a steaming squall barely half a metre wide.

 

The water made it hard to breathe. Even when they separated for air, it ran into their mouths, so they ended up closing the distance again, licking water and saliva from each other’s lips. Sei thought they might genuinely drown at this rate, yet his mind was already too deeply submerged in Hagiwara to pull away.

 

Rain struck their skin, streamed down them and dripped from their hair and lashes.

 

“Mmh…”

 

Hagiwara pushed one leg firmly between Sei’s.

 

More than the brief rub against his arousal, it was the touch at his rear—fingertips sliding down from his tailbone—that made a sound catch in Sei’s throat.

 

There was no lubricant. Hagiwara used nothing but warmth and patience, slowly persuading blood and muscle to loosen beneath his touch.

 

His fingers pressed and kneaded only the very entrance. It did not feel good yet, not exactly, but Sei’s body recognised the intention behind the touch and answered with a gathering heat somewhere deeper than those fingers could reach.

 

Kisses came again and again from changing angles, and the arousal that pooled in Sei’s mouth seemed to spread steadily down through the rest of him.

 

Clinging to Hagiwara’s back, he shamelessly rubbed himself against Hagiwara’s thigh.

 

Once every nerve had sprouted some special new sensitivity, even ordinary drops of water seemed to tease his entire body.

 

His body was hot, overheated, short of breath and desperate for more touch, yet his mind had gone hazy in the steam. When Hagiwara finally shut off the shower, Sei felt almost relieved.

 

The glass-walled bathroom had another sliding door opening directly towards the bed, so they could reach it without going back through the dressing area.

 

“…Convenient. Or maybe this is just a filthy room.”

 

Without even drying themselves, Hagiwara laid Sei down on the immaculate bed.

 

“It’s not the room. It’s us.”

 

“Fair point.”

 

Accepting that without argument, Hagiwara peeled away the sheet clinging to Sei’s damp skin and pushed his knees apart.

 

The hunger in Hagiwara’s gaze met Sei’s embarrassment with almost indecent directness. The quiet sense of what they were about to do seemed to thicken through the whole room.

 

“Ah…!”

 

Hagiwara’s tongue slipped easily past the boundary into his body, moving in and out with damp, living warmth. The place Hagiwara had already loosened with his fingers immediately stirred, the sensation rushing straight to Sei’s sex.

 

“Mmh—ah, ahh…”

 

Two places so close together and yet capable of such different pleasure—his swelling front and his opened rear—were teased in turn by fingers and tongue.

 

A wet, resilient tongue pressed straight into the inner wall, then curled away to lick along the underside of his erection and suck at the tip.

 

When the softness of that tongue seemed to spread through Sei’s insides, making him melt and twist around it, Hagiwara immediately replaced it with fingers pushed in to their full, merciless length.

 

“No—ah… mmh…!”

 

A clear drop gathered at the tip of Sei’s erection. Hagiwara scooped it up and worked it between his fingers, making every obscene sound from Sei’s lower body wetter and more layered.

 

Both hands and tongue were endlessly deft, endlessly attentive to what made Sei feel good.

 

His wet skin showed no sign of cooling after the shower; if anything, it felt hot enough to raise fresh steam. A different kind of moisture began dissolving the crispness from the hotel sheets.

 

“Ah… Hagiwara…”

 

Hagiwara knew exactly what the broken word meant.

 

“Going to come?”

 

“…You can.”

 

“Ah… ah, no…”

 

“Why not? Come on.”

 

“Ah—ahh…!”

 

Hagiwara rubbed hard against the place inside him where pleasure gathered, and the next moment white fluid spilled across Sei’s stomach.

 

Letting somebody else control his orgasm frightened him. That was exactly why the transgression of it had become so addictive.

 

“Mmh—ah.”

 

Hagiwara bit gently at one nipple, stretched tight beneath thin skin.

 

Sei had only just come; his body had not yet calmed, so the sensation was sharp as a thorn.

 

And yet it still felt good.

 

While a fingernail caught lightly against the hardened point, fingers worked through the slick, already-yielding entrance behind him until Sei’s smallest toes curled with the force of his gasp.

 

“Ahh… ah… no…”

 

Hagiwara kissed his way down from Sei’s collarbone, leaving marks the same colour as his nipples, then pushed inside him.

 

The penetration was so smooth it felt almost like swallowing water. Sei thought he ought to be more shaken by how easily his body accepted it, but the heart pounding behind his ribs spoke only of delight.

 

“Mmh… ah…”

 

Whenever they joined like this, a flicker of uncertainty appeared in Hagiwara’s eyes.

 

It was there even when he moved a little forcefully: Is this all right? Are you okay?

 

Perhaps Hagiwara himself did not even realise the hesitation existed.

 

Depending on how thoroughly pleasure overwhelmed him, that faint light blinked in and out until desire finally swallowed it.

 

Sei loved that fragile gleam. Weakness was always more precious than strength.

 

And it excited him so fiercely that even the roots of his hair seemed to prickle.

 

Every time.

 

“Ah—ah, ahh!”

 

Hagiwara filled the quivering ring of muscle, then dragged back across the sensitive lining. Again. Again.

 

What pushed inside was Hagiwara’s desire. What each retreat pulled out of Sei was his own.

 

Their bodies understood the division was perfectly equal.

 

Hagiwara rocked him back and forth, breathing rough and uneven above him, and merely hearing those sounds was enough to leave Sei intoxicated from ears to brain.

 

“…You know…”

 

Hagiwara shortened the rhythm and looked down at him.

 

The strained half-grimace, half-smile he wore while trying not to come was one of Sei’s favourite expressions.

 

He never normally thought about it, but in moments like this the knowledge that several women had seen that face before could make him absurdly furious.

 

While it felt good, he pushed the thought aside. Afterwards he would scold himself because there was no point being angry about something that could not be changed.

 

Maybe this was simply what it meant to loosen the reins on his reason and enjoy Hagiwara without restraint.

 

“…What?”

 

“I was just thinking that wherever we go, we end up doing the same thing.”

 

“You don’t like that?”

 

“No… It’s reassuring.”

 

“Don’t scare me like that.”

 

Hagiwara lightly patted Sei’s sweat-damp cheek.

 

“You made me think you were getting bored.”

 

“I’m not bored.”

 

Hagiwara caught Sei’s hand and squeezed it tightly.

 

“I think about how many more times I’ll get to hold you. The same way I sometimes think about how many more meals I’ll eat, or how many more times I’ll see the cherry blossoms. And every time we finish once, I get sad because that means there’s one fewer left.”

 

“…I understand.”

 

Sei thought: I’m happy.

 

Even the pain of being forced to face the fact that life was finite—an absolute he could have ignored if he had remained alone—was part of that happiness.

 

“Thank you,” Sei said.

 

Hagiwara laughed.

 

“What was that for?”

 

It was a face perhaps only Sei had ever seen.

 

“Ah—ahh…!”

 

The pressure inside him became denser, driving deeper and deeper as if it wanted to reach somewhere beyond the limits of his body.

 

Sei would allow anything. Everything.

 

Even Hagiwara bursting at the very end of pleasure and pouring every last drop into him.

 

Afterwards they followed Hagiwara’s suggestion and lazily worked their way through the minibar alcohol.

 

They slept late the next morning, dashed into the restaurant just before breakfast service ended, ate in a rush and then went out for their first shrine visit of the year.

 

When they asked the front desk the extremely vague question, “What’s the nearest big shrine?” they were told, “Yasaka Shrine.”

 

There was certainly a crowd, but they had nowhere urgent to be. They simply moved with the flow, so it was not especially unpleasant.

 

Neither could think of anything in particular to ask the gods for. They tossed in their offerings, brought their hands together and then drew fortunes.

 

“Small blessing… Hagiwara?”

 

“Middle blessing. Though for something called a blessing, it doesn’t say much that’s actually good.”

“Makes you want to keep drawing again until you get one you agree with.”

 

“That defeats the whole point.”

 

“By the way, what’s the order for fortunes? Great blessing, middle blessing, small blessing, blessing, future blessing, curse?”

 

“What? Isn’t it great, middle, small, future, blessing? And isn’t there a half-blessing or something?”

 

“Seriously? I had no idea.”

 

Sei folded the narrow strip of paper and decided to take it home rather than tie it anywhere.

 

It was not as though he would carefully preserve it in a notebook. More likely, sometime in early spring, when he was about to send the coat to the cleaners, he would reach into the pocket, find it, think, Oh, right, and finally throw it into the bin.

 

But that one instant when the memory returned—We went there—would feel sweet and bitter at once.

 

Like finding an old cinema ticket stub or receipt long after you had forgotten it existed.

 

“Oh. That reminds me. That little art museum inside the park we went to before.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“We bought tickets. What did you do with the stub?”

 

There had not even been a perforation; the attendant had simply torn it roughly in half.

 

Hagiwara thought for a moment.

 

“What did I do with it? I might’ve thrown it away straight off. If I keep something in my hand, I tend to scrunch it up without noticing.”

 

“I see.”

 

“Was I not supposed to?”

 

“No.”

 

Sei shook his head.

 

“I don’t remember what I did with mine either. Actually, knowing there are already things I’ve forgotten is kind of reassuring.”

 

“Is it?”

 

“Yeah… And the way you say you ‘scrunch things up’ is cute.”

 

For some reason, Sei found the phrase especially cute coming from Hagiwara.

 

“It is not cute. I even do it to receipts I have to submit at work sometimes.”

 

In the middle of the crowd, they held hands for only a short while.

 

“If we stayed like this forever, you wouldn’t be able to scrunch anything up.”

 

“Brilliant idea.”

 

Then I’ll plan to keep holding it forever, Hagiwara thought.

 

He looked up at the torii gate and tightened his grip.

 

In the end, they did almost no proper sightseeing before checkout time arrived. They wandered around Isetan, boarded the Shinkansen home and that was that.

 

It had been an astonishingly simple little trip.

 

Inside the carriage, the calm, temporary atmosphere of the New Year holiday still lingered.

 

“…Going home like this and knowing I’m still off tomorrow makes me ridiculously happy.”

 

Hagiwara said it with an expression that was less cheerful than almost solemn.

 

The words were so childishly straightforward that Sei simply nodded.

 

“Yeah.”

 

What should they do tomorrow?

 

The gloom the night before returning to work was awful.

 

Hagiwara always felt low before a long break ended, but after spending the entire New Year holiday with Sei, this year’s drop felt especially severe.

 

Next year—no, this year now—would he actually go back to his parents’ place properly?

 

He was already thinking ridiculously far ahead, wondering what the Golden Week calendar looked like.

 

Waiting for things that would be over in no time, then regretting how quickly they had passed.

 

The year ahead would probably be more of the same.

 

The stiffness and coolness of a work shirt against his skin felt strangely nostalgic. He slid a brand-new collar stiffener beneath the collar. That thin strip of silver made him feel just a little more put together.

 

He hoped Sei was doing all right too.

 

As he stepped out of the flat, Hagiwara noticed a large grain of sand near the entrance. It might have been a tiny piece of gravel from the shrine they had visited.

 

He gently swept it outside with the toe of his shoe and headed for work.

 

His right hand still remembered Sei’s shape.

 

It curled as though closing around the hand that was no longer there.