-book Exclusive Bonus: New Short Story

Their Distance

“What’s something that gets closer the farther you go?”

Ayase Saki blinked. It was a rare sight indeed—Asamura Yuuta, presenting her with a riddle.

“Eh? What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”

The words were out before she could stop them, and Saki instantly regretted it. A classic communication blunder. Yuuta, who always struggled to start conversations, had clearly mustered up all his courage to bring this up at the dinner table, and her first response was to question his motive? He’d be at a total loss. This was bad. As his girlfriend, she should have eagerly jumped on the topic he’d worked so hard to introduce. Her thoughts, she mused, were definitely being tainted by a certain mischievous friend. No, no. Surprise aside, she needed to show some interest in what her boyfriend had to say.

“Ah, that’s not what I meant!” she backpedaled quickly. “I was just a little surprised. It’s just…” Flustered, Saki tried to calm herself and focus on his words. She hadn’t really processed the question at first, but now that she thought about it, it was a strange riddle. No obvious answer came to mind; in fact, it seemed pretty difficult. Getting closer by going farther? What could that possibly mean? But this was Yuuta. If he was asking, it had to be about the two of them.

If I don’t solve this, our relationship is doomed! Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but it certainly felt like a critical moment for us. A communication crisis in the making.

“…riddles just feel so nostalgic, you know? Ah, also… um, a hint! Yeah, give me a hint!”

“A hint?” This time, it was Yuuta who blinked in surprise. After a moment’s thought, he spoke.

“It’s about 1.5 kilometers from our house to Suisei High School, right?”

“…Yeah.”

What’s this all of a sudden? she wondered. Why bring up the distance between home and school?

“If you go to school from Monday to Friday, there are about 200 school days, excluding long vacations. So in a year and a half, just one way, that’s 1.5 kilometers times 200 times 1.5, which means we’ve walked about 450 kilometers,” he explained. “From Shibuya, that’s about the distance to Aomori Prefecture if you go north, or Kobe if you go west. That’s quite a distance, don’t you think?”

The fact that he rattled off the numbers so smoothly suggested he’d probably calculated it all beforehand, right when he thought of this riddle.

“That’s… far, I guess,” Saki said, stalling for time as she sank back into thought. “Huh. So we’ve walked a pretty long way without even realizing it.”

450 kilometers is definitely far, but the number itself probably doesn’t mean anything. It’s more about the time.

Yuuta attended Suisei High for three years, which means he commuted that 1.5-kilometer one-way distance for all three years. So why single out a year and a half? A year and a half… that would be from enrollment until around September or October of our second year. Or maybe from then until graduation? Something like that?

Just then, a thought struck her.

Wait a minute, Yuuta bikes to school! He doesn’t walk at all. The one who walked to Suisei High from this house was me. Saki sneaked a glance at Yuuta’s face, then muttered aloud, “You bike to school, don’t you, Yuuta?”

“That’s right.”

He probably intended to say it without a change in expression, but he’s not slick enough. Inwardly, Saki did a little victory dance. For a split second, a pleased look had flashed across his face. That means I’m on the right track.

I need to be careful, though. I moved into the Asamura house in the early summer of my second year, and from then to graduation is one year and nine months. Not a year and a half. So I have to subtract about three months. September or October of our second year… so it’s the distance I walked starting around autumn, but why that specific period?

Did something happen in the autumn of our second year? The cultural festival, maybe? My birthday is in December, and before that… Halloween.

“Ah…”

“Figured something out?”

“Um, that 450 kilometers… is that maybe the distance we walked to school together, side-by-side?”

He smiled, a genuinely happy look on his face. But the distance we walked to school only increases, it never gets closer… which means… she pushed her thoughts further.

450 kilometers. Thinking about it now, it really is a long way. At first, I hated being teased about us, so we never walked to school together. But around Halloween, we started walking together more often. So, the actual distance we’ve walked side-by-side is surely even longer. It’s grown from that initial 1.5 kilometers, surpassed 450, and from here on, the two of us will probably walk much, much farther together.

“I’ve got it,” she said, her voice full of confidence. “The thing that gets closer the farther you go. It’s ‘the distance between us,’ right?”

She knew from Yuuta’s smile that she was right.