I Drink Every Night With a Lookalike of a Popular Idol on the Riverbank
The usual riverbank. The usual lemon flavor. Nanase and I sat there without talking about anything in particular.
It was a tropical night, and even just sitting there, sweat was pouring down my face. The reason we gathered at the riverbank on a day like this, sweating while drinking, was something Nanase couldn’t quite figure out, which was one of my recent concerns.
More than anything else, it’s hot. Nanase-san points her handheld fan at me, but all that comes out is hot air.
“It’s hot, isn’t it…”
“Yeah, it’s hot. It’s a tropical night, apparently. Lip Slime? I mean, there’s nothing we can do about the intense heat during the day, but I wish there was something we could do about tropical nights.”
“Hey, I feel like the temperature dropped by a degree after Nanase-san said that.”
“Right? If you keep saying boring things, even tropical nights will feel cooler.”
“If you’re going to keep saying boring things in a hot place, it’s better to just sit in silence in an air-conditioned room…”
“Hey, you’re good at inviting people.”
Nanase smiles and points the handheld fan at me.
“Hey, it’s not what you think!”
“Well, actually, I’ll be busy with work for a while starting tomorrow, so I won’t be able to come. I want to burn this scenery into my memory.”
“I see… How long?”
“Hmm… About a month and a bit.”
“I see…”
“So, the next time we meet, it’ll be cooler. Right?”
Nanase gently strokes the ground as if talking to the Earth.
“That might be impossible.”
I played the role of the Earth, speaking in a wrinkled old man’s voice.
“Huh… What’s that? The Earth?”
“Yeah, the Earth.”
“The Earth, huh?”
“Hey!”
“Haha… Well, anyway, we’ll have to say goodbye for a while.”
“Yeah, I understand. Then, since we won’t know when we’ll come here next, should we decide on a contact number first?”
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s not good to make you wait alone. Hmm… um..”
Nanase froze as she opened her smartphone to exchange contact information.
“Ah… well, we don’t have to exchange contact information! Just a vague date is fine!”
Saying this with concern, Nanase shook her head and hurriedly did something on her smartphone.
Then she immediately showed me a QR code.
“No, just scan this and it’ll be fine.”
“I… is that okay?”
“Yeah, it’s okay. I deleted the confidential information from my profile.”
“You shouldn’t show that to anyone, not just me!”
“Right. That was dangerous.”
I didn’t know what it referred to, but when I scanned the QR code, it displayed “Nanase.”
I still didn’t know if it was her first name or last name.
“Nanase-san… so your name is Nanase.”
“Yeah. That’s right. Nanase is Nanase.”
Nanase-san smiled slightly with her mouth while keeping a straight face, as if to hide her true intentions.
Then she pointed her smartphone camera at me and took a photo.
“What…?”
“In the worst case, I’ll put this photo in front of me and drink alone in my room.”
“Don’t treat it like a memorial photo!”
Nanase smiled again and said, “Yay,” while making a V sign.
“You’re lowering the Earth’s temperature again…”
“Well, Yousuke, just keep living your careful life for a while.”
“Careful life, huh… Sometimes I wonder…”
I took a sip of the lukewarm canned chu-hi and spoke up.
“You always say, ‘careful life,’ don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Nanase-san, still wearing her cap pulled down low, nodded quietly.
“I wonder what that means. Where is the line between a ‘careful lifestyle’ and a ‘careless lifestyle’? I think I probably fall into the careless category.”
When I said that and looked down at my clothes, Nanase chuckled softly.
“The line… Isn’t it whether you can post it on social media or not?”
That slightly sarcastic remark was typical of her.
“SNS, huh…”
“Well, that’s how it is. Waking up to the sound of birds in the morning, drinking hot water, and eating bread you baked yourself is a ‘careful lifestyle.’ On the other hand, struggling with your alarm clock, grabbing a bite of convenience store bread, and rushing out of the house is a ‘careless lifestyle.’”
“… The latter is pretty much my weekdays!”
“But I think life isn’t something you’re supposed to live carefully, but rather something you struggle to keep going. It’s something you manage to keep going in order to survive. Packaging that with the pretty word ‘careful’ and talking about it like it’s an ideal feels a bit off to me.”
“Yeah… I’ve probably been living carelessly for the past month… In fact, being here has allowed me to live carefully without drinking too much.”
“I don’t want to see you all bloated when we meet next. Be careful, okay?”
“You too, Nanase-san. Don’t come back all skinny.”
“Hmm. I’ll do my best.”
The two made a small promise and clinked their cans of chu-hi. After taking a sip of the 7% lemon-flavored drink, Nanase-san said, “There’s a phrase I’ve been wondering about too.”
“What?”
“Like, ‘A new song to blow away the heat!’ The part about blowing away the heat. You know… it doesn’t actually blow away the heat, does it?”
“Hmm… you’re right. Those kinds of songs are always so overly energetic, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, exactly. They should just be honest and say, ‘A new song to release adrenaline and endure the heat!’”
“That’s blunt!”
“Hehe… but somehow, using words like that to cover it up…”
Nanase suddenly stopped talking. She fell silent for a moment and turned to face me.
“Hey, Yosuke.”
“W-What’s wrong?”
“I want to add to our promise.”
“Besides not getting fat?”
Nanase nodded silently.
“I-I guess so… but what is it?”
“I don’t want you to make a girlfriend.”
Those words caught my attention.
Making a girlfriend.
That means…
“Nanase…”
“Hm… what?”
“You know… I’m also bothered by the expression ‘make a girlfriend.’”
“Haha… That’s true. We’re human beings, after all. What does it mean to ‘make’ one? If you could get a girlfriend, you’d just go out and get one, right?”
“Exactly! That’s what I mean…”
Before their brief parting, the conversation flowed more freely than usual, and they talked until midnight about trivial things that they would probably forget by the time they met again.
Maiasa