CH 16

Chapter 16:

Osakabe spread out a towel underneath the beach umbrella’s small patch of shade. He lay back under the umbrella and waited impatiently for Honoka’s return.

Today’s weather was also sunny.

Despite a few wisps of clouds, the midsummer sun blazed down with ferocious energy. Whenever he stepped even a foot outside of the umbrella, it felt like he was being shot by a merciless spray of deathrays.

Noticing at last when a separate shadow had fallen over his beach towel, he opened his eyes to find Honoka peering down at him.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said shyly, her gaze drifting away.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said as he sat up. He gulped as he caught sight of Honoka dressed in a swimsuit for the first time.

The top of her bikini was trimmed in frills. While the design didn’t show too much skin, the glimpse he caught of her cleavage emphasized the more than sufficient size of her bust. He quickly sized her up as a C, or maybe even a D.

Her swimsuit bottom was a flower pattern on a blue base. Her long legs, pale enough to remind him of unseasonable snow, were slender, but their gentle, feminine curves still caught his eyes.

Honoka sighed as she knelt on the beach towel, then stretched out on her stomach.

“I want to tan. Could you apply this tanning oil for me?” she asked, and held up a small bottle.

Immediately noticing Osakabe’s startled expression, she apologized immediately.

“Sorry, that’s a little too forward, isn’t it?”

“No… it’s fine.”

Osakabe took the bottle.

To tell the truth, he was a tad embarrassed. However, it was absurd for a guy in his mid-twenties to get flustered by a girl who had yet to turn twenty.

In this one thing, he had to show emotional maturity.

He squeezed a few drops of the oil onto his fingertips, rubbed it into the palm of his hands, and started applying the oil. His fingers glided from her neck to her shoulders, from her back to her waist. She squirmed a bit when he reached some ticklish places, then let out a long sigh. With a twinge of guilt, his hands massaged her hips and the backs of her thighs.

Her skin was smooth and soft. It was shinier and firmer than the skin of any other woman he’d ever touched.

“Is that enough?” he asked.

She thanked him and sat up. Taking back the tanning oil bottle, she began applying more to her front. The oil dripped from her palms while her fingers danced bewitchingly over her body.

They sank into the skin of her plush breasts, which overflowed from the edges of her bathing suit. Then her fingers glided towards her navel, and on to her upper thighs, even sliding under the bottom edges of her swimsuit as she meticulously applied the oil.

A trancelike expression rose on her face as she moved, and unsure of where to look, Osakabe averted his gaze.

More or less finished, she closed up the bottle and laid down on her stomach again, closing her eyes.

“…You aren’t going to swim?” he asked her. “I mean, we are at the beach after all…”

Honoka turned her head to the side and said with a look of embarrassment, “Oh, sorry. I can’t swim.”

Osakabe burst into laughter at the unexpected confession. “I just assumed when a Miyako girl boldly invited me to the beach, she’d be good at swimming. That’s a total letdown.”

Honoka puffed up her cheeks and groaned in exasperation.

“My friends are always saying the same thing—’What kind of klutz still can’t swim at your age?’ In my defense, I’m not completely hopeless! I can swim, but not…” She cut herself off mid-sentence. “Well, at least as far as where my feet can still touch.”

Osakabe flopped down on the towel beside her, holding up a hand to block out the shining sun.

“Then let’s take it easy today. I’m not really much of a swimmer either.” He smiled. “We make a good pair.”

“We do, don’t we?” She smiled along with him.

They spent the morning like that, amusing themselves with idle conversation and sunbathing, alternating from lying on their stomachs to their backs. Around the time the sun hung right above them, his stomach growled.

“What should we do about lunch?” he asked uneasily. She reached into her bag and pulled out a basket wrapped up in a cooling bag. “I only really brought some rice balls, if that’s okay…”

“I love rice balls.”

They sat on their knees, side-by-side, and she opened up the bag. There were three each of both rice balls grilled in soy sauce and triangular ones wrapped in dried seaweed.

“You can have two of each,” Honoka suggested, but he declined.

“I can’t eat that much.” He took one of the seaweed-wrapped ones and took a bite. There were flakes of grilled salmon inside. She had used just the right amount of salt, and it was incredibly delicious. She makes good rice balls for someone her age, he thought.

He voiced his praise, and she blushed and lowered her gaze.

Immediately after lunch, Osakabe pleaded with Honoka to let him take a picture of her. “In my swimsuit?” she asked shyly, but after considering it, agreed right away. He took one with the sea as a backdrop. It should turn out well, and he resolved to treasure the photo once he got it developed. After that, he hesitantly stepped into the water.

“Shakkee!” Honoka squealed, then held an embarrassed hand to her lips. “That means cold in the local dialect here. It’s the one word that always outs us as someone from Tohoku.”

“I get it. In some parts of Saitama, people say hyakkoi.” He laughed.

The two of them couldn’t go any deeper into the water. The highest they could manage was up to their waists, so they stuck to that part of the shallows. Pulling each other by the hands, chasing each other around, splashing with abandon, they amused themselves as easily as children.

Even though he had been to the beach countless times, he was absorbed by the fun so much that he regretted ever thinking, Is it even worth going all the way to the beach?

Though they didn’t do anything in particular, it was still a refreshing change of pace.

She really is a strange girl, he thought once again.

When they got tired of playing in the water, they returned to the beach towel and stared off at the water, which gleamed with the reflected sunlight.

The wind, soft and warm, carried the smell of brine from the bay.

Neither spoke.

The only sounds that came to his ears were the crash of the waves and the cries of distant gulls.

And yet, the silence was never stifling.

If only this moment could last forever, he thought to himself.

At last, his eyelids began to grow heavy. Just when he was on the verge of dozing off, her head tilted to the side and landed on his shoulder. He jumped in surprise, and then she murmured, “Osakabe-san, I like you.”1

It was so abrupt, and such an unexpected comment, that Osakabe’s reaction was delayed. He took no notice of it at first, the shock not registering until he sensed something off and reconstructed her words in his mind.

“I really like you.” This time her words were clear.

What did she say just now?! He turned to look at Honoka’s expression, but he couldn’t see her face from the angle it lay against his shoulder.

“It’s embarrassing, so I just want you to listen to what I have to say,” she said. “I saw you for the first time on the bus that I took to the junior college campus. Exactly as I told you the other day. And every day after that, I looked forward to seeing your face. I would get on the bus, look at the driver’s face, and every time I realized, ‘Oh, it’s Osakabe again today,’ it felt like I was walking on air for the rest of the day. Even on rainy or windy days, the city always looked different to me. I guess it’s what most folks would call love at first sight? So when I saw you sleeping at the bus stop here in Jodogahama, my heart nearly stopped beating from the shock. I was so happy that I sat next to you without thinking.”

Honoka spoke up to that point as if getting everything off her chest, then finally looked up at him.

“I like you, Osakabe-san. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

Her earnest eyes gazed up at him. However he turned away to escape her gaze.

“Do you even know what you’re saying? I warned you before. I’m a—a criminal. Nothing good will come from getting close to me. Just pain and misery.”

“I understand that. I understand that people will give us dirty looks, and that both of us would face difficulties, all of it. But that doesn’t matter to me. Because I truly like you. What’s wrong with that? Maybe it’s childish of me, but I refuse to understand what makes this so difficult.”

Osakabe drew her small head close without thinking. “A girl like you…” he started. “Thank you. To tell the truth, I’m at a loss for what to do. It’s embarrassing to say it, but I don’t have a lot of experience with girls just straight up telling me how they feel about me. So I have no clue how to accept your feelings when they’re so dazzlingly straightforward.”

No, stop, the negative voice inside his head said.

He reached out in search of an excuse to push away her feelings. But the words that fell into his hands were all overflowing with the feelings of heartbreak and sweetness he had begun to forget.

It’s no use. I can’t lie about these feelings.

He released her from his grasp. “But I can at least say this. I also like you, Honoka-chan.”

He said it.

The two of them exchanged glances. Tears welled up in the corner of Honoka’s eyes, like jewels, and spilled onto the sand.

“I told you not to fall in love with me…”

“That was cruel of you. What’s a guy like me supposed to do when a girl like you confesses her feelings to him? I still have feelings like any normal person would.”

“That’s true,” she said, the tears muffling her voice. “I guess my crush is over now, just when I thought I would have to come to grips with it… Before long, I’ll have to go back home to Morioka. After summer vacation, I’ll go back to Saitama, where I’ll graduate in February of next year, and then I’ll be moving again right after that. We might not be able to meet again after that…”

Honoka started crying even more than before. She still smiled through the tears, but the expression made him care for her even more, and so this time he embraced her head-on.

“That might happen. But distance doesn’t matter. I can go see you again right away. Will you wait for a hopeless guy like me?”

Even as he said it, Osakabe couldn’t help but think that it wouldn’t be that easy. And yet, for now, he forgave himself for telling that little white lie.

“Uh huh.” Honoka nodded. As if entrusting everything to him, she closed her eyes. A single tear stretched down her cheek, and her long lashes trembled.

Seeing the redness of her lips from this close, his breath caught.

And slowly inching to her face, he laid his lips gently on hers.

They felt soft and supple under his own.

The roar of the sea, the cry of the gulls—it all vanished in an instant. As if time stood still, he thought. Only his pulse, unexpectedly quickening, drummed in his ears, and the smell of brine mixed with the sweet scent of her perfume.

I’ll always treasure today’s kiss, he thought.

This is the same “Suki desu” as Minako’s confession in her letters to Osakabe, but I chose to translate this as “like” instead of “love” considering the timing of it in their relationship, to allow room for their feelings to grow. But it’s still a pretty serious confession of love by Japanese standards!