I Drink Every Night With a Lookalike of a Popular Idol on the Riverbank
One day when the capricious weather sent temperatures plummeting into the single digits, Nanase-san and I sat on the riverbank as usual, though our conversation kept faltering.
Every time I spoke, it felt like even the warm air inside my mouth was being stolen away.
“…It’s cold, huh?”
I muttered under my breath. Nanase beside me nodded, burying her face in her scarf, and murmured, “Me too.”
Around her neck was a thick, elegant cream-colored scarf that looked undeniably warm.
“Yosuke, I thought you were okay with the cold.”
“Being okay with it and being able to endure it are different things, you know. This place might as well be Alaska. Or Scandinavia.”
“Heh, you’re exaggerating. We won’t see any auroras.”
She chuckled softly. Then, in the next instant, she took an unexpected action.
“Well then, just this once. I’ll share some warmth with you.”
Saying that, she smoothly loosened the end of the scarf wrapped around her own neck. Then she leaned her body toward me.
“Eh, wait, Nanase-san!?”
Ignoring my bewilderment, she wrapped the scarf snugly around my neck. Our two necks became one set.
My heart thumped loudly.
A single scarf now wrapped around both my neck and hers. Inevitably, our faces were closer than I’d ever experienced before. Shoulder to shoulder, her warmth seeped through the scarf, slowly permeating me.
“…How is it? Warm, right?”
“Ah, yeah… It’s warm, but…”
The warmth wasn’t just from the scarf. Her sudden proximity was rapidly raising my own body temperature.
I didn’t know where to look. Wherever my gaze wandered, I saw her hair brushing my cheek, her large, moist eyes, her faintly flushed cheeks. All of it was numbing my thoughts.
That was when it happened.
My eyes caught sight of a small embroidery on the end of the scarf wrapped around my neck.
In neat, yet stylish cursive, a single letter of the alphabet, ‘N’, was stitched onto it.
N. Nanase’s N.
“This embroidery…”
“Ah, this? My mom gave it to me.”
“The ‘N’ is for Nanase?”
She didn’t answer my question right away. She just stared back into my eyes.
Her eyes sparkled brightly as usual, making it impossible to read her thoughts.
Eventually, the corners of her lips slowly lifted.
It was a mischievous, almost amused smirk.
She filled the few centimeters between us with a sweet sigh before speaking.
“Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.”
An enigmatic answer, neither confirmation nor denial, perfectly ambiguous.
“Which is it!?”
“Hehe, well now, I wonder. Are you curious?”
“Yeah. Because, you see, if it’s a gift from Mom, the embroidery should have the initials of the name. So I was wondering if Nanase-san’s name is Nanase, or if her name starts with a different N, or something like that.”
“Oh, I see… So, the name is Nana then?”
“Nanase Nana!? Your name is practically made up of ‘Na’s’!?”
“Fuha… Four ‘Na’s. Nameless. Nameless. I have a name, yet I’m nameless.”
“You don’t need to make new discoveries about a name you’ve had your whole life…”
“Well, you’ve got a point. Anyway, my name isn’t really Nana to begin with.”
“Really!?”
In the end, I never found out Nanase-san’s full name. The mysteries just kept deepening.
“Nanase-san is still such a mystery…”
“Well, from my perspective, you are too, Yosuke. Your thought process is such a black box. But that’s what makes you interesting.”
Saying that, Nanase leaned even closer to me, tilting her head and resting it beside mine.
“Wh-what!?”
“I’m trying to send you telepathy.”
“That’s zero-distance telepathy!”
“Yeah. True. It’s not long-range, just plain old ‘pasy’.”
What’s ‘pasy’?
“Ah, Yosuke. Did you just think ‘What’s pasy?’”
“Huh!? You really can tell!?”
“Fuhah… You got it. Just a fluke. I sent my name telepathically. Did you receive it?”
“No… Nanase-san is still Nanase-san…”
“Hmm. Then that’s fine.”
Nanase-san smiled beside me, pointed at the sky, and said, “Oh, the aurora.”
“Really!?”
I frantically looked up at the sky.
“Hah… You fell for it. Yosuke, you’re so honest and cute.”
Nanase-san laughed heartily, then ruffled my hair like she was petting a dog.
Maiasa