Ch.382IF Side Story: Seems I’ve Arrived a Bit Early (79)

I don’t think of myself as a miser.

I’m aware that I’ve received many favors from people around me. And that these favors fall into a category that I couldn’t repay even if I wanted to.

But even so, I was the type of person who did various things for those around me in my own way. In my previous life, I regularly gave my parents allowance money, and sometimes bought birthday presents for my younger sister. Though giving gifts to my sister wasn’t something that happened very often.

I thought I would live that way in this world too.

I’ll become an adult someday, and when I get a job, I’ll have money, and then I’ll be able to do so many things for the people around me.

And—even now, I’ve been buying things for the kids with what money I have.

Like buying gifts for friends. Since remembering special occasions is quite important in relationships, I didn’t mind giving such things to those I was very close with.

“…So, you’re asking me to go to a festival with you?”

Yuka asked seriously with an expression that suggested she might have misheard something.

The first semester was almost over now. The days had become so hot that the word “spring” could no longer be found, and it was the time when the sun refused to set easily.

Summer vacation would begin soon, and in Japan, summer is also the season of festivals.

“Yeah. Are you busy?”

I asked Yuka as we sat across from each other in the cafe.

Ah, we had already exchanged emails.

Kagami bought me a cell phone not long ago. Though Kagami was insensitive to trends among people her age, she was quite sensitive to trends among children my age.

Kagami really hated the idea of me being treated as if I were falling behind other children.

Rather than simply parental pride, it was probably because she knew that our family wasn’t completely normal to begin with, so she was particularly concerned about such things.

In Kagami’s mind, the world revolves around me. She sincerely wanted me to stand tall in front of anyone, to never feel intimidated by anyone.

I maintained a confident attitude in front of my friends partly because I didn’t want Kagami to carry that burden.

“…You know, right? The work we do means we never know if we’ll be busy on any given day.”

If a yokai appears, we get busy. If not, then we’re not so busy.

Unfortunately, tracking down a yokai takes quite a lot of effort. Checking the surroundings whenever there’s time and following its traces requires almost as much effort as conducting an investigation.

But of course, yokai are beings that ordinary people don’t believe in. Beings whose very existence renders our concepts of science meaningless. Naturally, we can’t get help from regular police.

Those who hunt yokai are a small elite group of exorcists. In Yuka’s case, she would probably get advice from her grandfather and father, but those two often have to chase yokai elsewhere as well.

Naturally, it becomes impossible to specify “busy periods.” We can’t even do something like focusing on specific periods based on crime rate statistics, as human society does.

“What if you’re not busy?”

But even so, yokai aren’t always around. Even in the original novel—probably because it was a light novel—there was enough free time to spend summer festivals or vacation periods.

…Well, this is reality for me living in this world, and it’s even before the main story of the light novel begins, so it might be completely different.

“If I’m not busy, I have time.”

“If you have time?”

“What answer are you looking for?”

Yuka said with a slightly prim expression.

“If you have time, I’m saying let’s hang out together.”

“…”

Yuka looked at me.

Again this time, it was a look like she was seeing something difficult to understand.

“How long have we known each other? No, more than that, we haven’t even met that often.”

We met a few more times after the kappa incident. Usually when Yuka called me, it was related to yokai. Although it wasn’t “too frequent,” incidents involving yokai occurred surprisingly steadily, so we met twice in those few months.

Neither of those incidents involved deaths, and in one case, a missing person was found safe and sound, so it wasn’t a major issue.

Even that one yokai incident was resolved with a single swing of Yuka’s sword. It wasn’t a group like the kappa, just something like a somewhat dangerous medium-sized beast.

But those two weren’t the only times we met.

After I asked Yuka for her email, I periodically sent her messages. Sometimes Yuka responded, sometimes she didn’t. She accepted my invitations to meet with surprisingly high probability.

“We’re meeting today, aren’t we?”

“…What does meeting today have to do with anything?”

“If we can meet today, doesn’t that mean we can meet that day too?”

At my somewhat forced reasoning, Yuka frowned again.

“No, I mean, why do you keep trying to do these things with me?”

Well.

Because you remind me of myself.

In this world, you remind me of myself when I was young.

Because I’m different from others anyway. I’ll never be able to mix with those kids, and they probably won’t understand me either.

The person who reached out to me with a nonchalant face when I was sitting in the corner of kindergarten was Harumi.

And thanks to Harumi, I was able to change.

I had Kagami too, but Kagami was family, not a friend. It was natural for her to cherish me. But Harumi was the first person who reached out to me despite not sharing a drop of blood and despite my being different.

I didn’t… fully know about Yuka. The Yuka I knew was actually the Yuka from the book, and I had no idea how different this real Yuka might be from that one.

“It’s nice to become friends.”

That was all I answered.

“We met because of our work. We never know when we might not be able to meet again.”

Yuka said.

“And, speaking from experience, when ordinary people stop seeing each other, their hearts grow distant too. They even forget they were friends, right? And when they meet again later, they’ll wonder where they’ve seen each other before.”

“…”

I smiled slightly.

“True. But that doesn’t change the fact that we played together then.”

“What’s the use if it doesn’t change?”

Yuka frowned even more.

“If we’re not going to meet again anyway, if we won’t remember each other when we happen to meet again later, what’s the point of having been so close?”

That hurt me a little too.

Yuka is talking about her own wounds. She thinks the same thing will happen this time because it’s what she’s experienced all along.

It’s not completely wrong.

Even in this world, I’ve had the same experience of growing distant from friends. Even if it wasn’t my intention.

“Still.”

I couldn’t completely deny her words. There was no point in arguing about who was wrong between our two opinions.

“Still… if we build it up over and over again, there will surely be people who remember later.”

Because that’s what I hoped for.

Harumi, Yuu. Mako too.

I hope we can all smile and talk when we meet again.

It’s too sad to say that all of that is impossible.

I know because I was the one who cut off all relationships and shut myself in my room. That doesn’t automatically lead to happiness.

“We’ve been going to different schools from the beginning. We live quite far apart too. So isn’t it different from transferring schools and drifting apart? If we have personal ways to contact each other, we can stay in touch, right?”

I made a somewhat forced argument to try to persuade her.

“…”

Yuka remained silent for a moment, just looking at me.

And perhaps realizing that what was in my expression was nothing but sincerity, Yuka once again looked perplexed.

Silence fell between us again for a while.

“Haah.”

Yuka let out a long sigh.

“Well, fine. If I don’t have anything else to do.”

While avoiding my gaze here and there.

“Really?”

When I asked again, Yuka nodded.

I smiled as I looked at her.

“Okay, then, I’ll look into festivals first. Is there anywhere you’d like to go?”

“…I’ll leave it to your discretion.”

Yuka saying that somehow looked a bit deflated.

That appearance looked just like someone who had their energy drained, which made me smile a little.

I couldn’t tell Yuka this, but honestly, dealing with Shii had been a tremendous help.

Because Shii, in the early period after meeting me, had a much higher wall than Yuka.

…

Still, it would have been better if things had been happy from the beginning.