It was a secluded rural school, so I thought there would be nothing to do after school, but that wasn’t the case.
Well, to be honest, compared to Tokyo, there weren’t that many things to do. There weren’t any super delicious franchises, and the neighborhood itself wasn’t that big, so you could walk from one end to the other in no time.
But it had its own charm.
Even without franchise stores, there were shops run by local people. The menu was quite different from what I knew, and the taste was different too, but that didn’t mean it was bad.
All the local adults were either the parents of my classmates or relatives. The village wasn’t entirely blood-related, but still, there were people like us who came from outside. It wasn’t too small, but comparing it to Tokyo, there were many cases where everyone knew each other.
Just like how I roamed the alleys with Harumi and Yuuki, we wandered around the village and the nearby mountains.
When it rained, we wore yellow boots and raincoats, jumped around to watch frogs, and of course, we caught cicadas too.
When it started getting dark, or in the morning, you could see something like stag beetles under the public restroom lights.
In my previous life, I had pestered my dad to raise some when I was little, but seeing them in the wild was a first for me.
“Wow….”
Mako had a calm impression, but she didn’t seem to have any aversion to bugs like these. When Harumi and Yuuki saw cicadas for the first time, they were super scared.
“Look at this! It’s super strong!”
Mako said as she showed the stag beetle clinging tightly to her arm.
“Yeah, it is.”
I replied while tugging gently at the stag beetle on Mako’s arm. I wasn’t pulling too hard though. Based on my childhood experience, no matter how strong they were, they wouldn’t stretch so much that their legs would fall off, but still, I felt a bit bad for tugging at a bug.
“What does it eat?”
“Tree sap.”
A kid who had come up the back mountain with us answered.
“If you want to raise it, you just need to give it jelly.”
Though it wouldn’t last long.
I thought I’d killed some stag beetles and rhinoceros beetles before due to not caring for them properly, but apparently, they lived much longer as larvae and didn’t usually last that long as adults.
Besides, since we caught it in the wild, who knows how long it had already been alive.
But I didn’t say that. I knew that as an elementary student, we could be quite stubborn.
Mako was also surprisingly stubborn in this regard.
“Jelly… okay, got it.”
Mako nodded her head.
So, that stag beetle lived at Mako’s house for a while. It ended up not surviving the year, but it lived its full adult life span of three months, so I couldn’t say it was Mako’s fault that it died.
Mako was sad, but she got over it quickly. True to her character, she studied about it on her own without me needing to tell her.
In a way, I thought she might be a much stronger kid than I was.
*
Anyway, by the time the stag beetle had settled at Mako’s house, it was already summer.
Like me, the kids became increasingly restless as summer vacation approached. The weather was getting hotter, and since there was no air conditioning in the classroom, the teachers started speaking in slightly drained voices, and the adults too seemed to be subtly looking forward to vacation.
Outside the window, the sound of cicadas could be heard.
Unlike my previous school, which was in the heart of the city and had a ton of car noises, here such sounds were hardly audible.
Maybe that’s why? It felt like time was moving slower here, and I strangely felt lighthearted.
The fluffy clouds drifting in the blue sky looked delicious. Spending time with the kids made me feel like I had become a child again.
… But I didn’t really mind that.
It probably wouldn’t matter.
“…”
As I turned my gaze forward again, I made eye contact with Mako, who was silently watching my face.
blink.
Her eyes behind the glasses blinked.
Was she trying to gauge what I was thinking?
Our brief moment of eye contact quickly shifted away. I turned my head towards the teacher, who was droning on while writing this and that on the blackboard, and I sat there listening to the lesson, disinterested until the end.
It was hot, humid, and the classroom was filled with the sound of just a fan spinning.
But strangely enough, I found that laid-back atmosphere quite comforting.
*
Summer vacation in the countryside was somewhat different from in Tokyo.
We didn’t really try to go far for fun. There was flowing water in the countryside too, and it was clean enough to dip our feet in.
Well, city dwellers do sometimes come to the countryside for fun. It wasn’t strange that we had fun by the nearby river.
As long as the water didn’t rise significantly due to the rainy season, it should be fine to play there.
When the kids started roaming outside the village, the streets became lively. Dads went to work, and the kids left alone with their moms or siblings played in the yard or ran around in groups with kids from next door.
There wasn’t anything particularly thrilling, but Mako and I naturally blended in with those kids.
This was largely thanks to Mako.
The first friend I made when I came to the school was Mako, and she showed familiarity because we both came from Tokyo.
Mako hadn’t been here for long either.
I felt at ease being with Mako, and as we played, she also interacted with the other kids.
If I stood far away watching, Mako would turn her head to look at me and wave.
Seeing that smile, I just couldn’t help but join in. What could I do? After all, I couldn’t separate Mako from the other kids.
Although it wasn’t as much as when I hung out with Harumi and Yuuki in Tokyo, I ended up making quite a few friends here.
“Fufu.”
After coming here, Kagami, who had been somewhat protective of me for a while, seemed to feel relaxed when Mako came over to play at our house.
Whenever we were playing, Kagami would often slice up watermelon for us. Since the sun was hot, we got hot while playing, so we sat side by side eating the watermelon that was served.
That one thing was better than in Tokyo.
By the time I brought Harumi and Yuuki over to my house, it had been a while after meeting them. That being said, it wasn’t that I brought them over first, but rather they came because they wanted to visit my place.
Even if they came over, the house was small, so there wasn’t anything remarkable to do. In the summer, we ended up going to Harumi’s or Yuuki’s house anyway.
However, here, it didn’t feel that way at all.
House prices couldn’t be the same, but everyone lived in single or double-story houses, with laundry hanging in the yard, and in the summer, they turned on fans and sat on tatami eating watermelon in a neighborhood like that.
It was the same when I went to Mako’s house. Well, Mako’s dad wasn’t home much during the day, though.
I wasn’t giving anything away. The ones truly managing this house were Kagami and the uncle, and this house couldn’t be called mine as it belonged to someone else.
But even so, my mind felt at ease.
“Koto Ne.”
“Yeah?”
After eating watermelon, our bellies a bit full, we flopped lazily on the tatami.
It was hot, but we didn’t mind. It was hot no matter where you went. But staying inside felt a bit miserable, and both of us thought so.
“Are you going to the festival together?”
“Yeah.”
Mako had many friends, but she only asked me to go to the festival. After all, we’d run into each other anyway.
… Well, I guess only Mako would know the reason. She probably thought I was her closest friend.
“Hehe.”
Mako smiled after hearing my answer.
“Why?”
“Just.”
Mako seemed to ponder for a moment before speaking.
“I think this is the first time I’m going to a festival with a friend.”
“… Huh?”
“My dad usually travels here and there often, so I didn’t have many chances to go to festivals. And when I did, they weren’t people I was really close with. I couldn’t hang out with them for long, after all.”
To be fair, we had only known each other for a few months as well.
We were just hanging out frequently because we had a lot of time to play.
… I see.
Well, maybe I’d had a few friends I hung out with for months like that, but I couldn’t say I went to a festival with them.
Friends made in elementary school can sometimes become friends for life—unfortunately, that’s only possible if you remember each other going through middle and high school.
If you transfer in the middle of it, even if you stay in contact for the first few times, at some point it fades, and you end up not reappearing in each other’s lives.
“…”
Will I become such a presence in Harumi and Yuuki’s lives?
I’m not sure.
“… Let’s have fun.”
“Yeah!”
In the end, not knowing what else to say, I just said that. Mako liked that too.
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