“…Why are Suzuno and big bro here?”
“That’s what I want to ask.”
I had no idea what was going on. Neither did my brother. Then Kano, sipping her caramel frappuccino, spoke up.
“I messaged Suzuno to bring Ayato here.”
“So this was your doing, Kano-san.”
”…Wait — do you have something important to discuss with me and Suzuno?”
My brother’s face went visibly panicked. I had no idea what he was imagining but he looked like the world was ending.
“Hmm — Ayato, what are you imagining?”
“Sis, Ayato looks like he’s dying — stop dragging it out, just say it.”
Suzuno gave a flat look and prodded. Always kind.
“Suzuno, you’re so impatient. It’s a simple reason — I wanted the four of us to hang out, for old times.”
”…That’s it?”
“Yep. Suzuno said the other day she wanted to gather all four of us like back then.”
My brother looked deflated. I’d been expecting something deeper too.
(Watching him cycle through panic-to-relief in seconds was a tiny bit satisfying. Keeping that to myself.)
“Sis, you remembered!”
“Obviously — who do you think I am?”
She looked smug saying it. Kept the year-one rank through high school and got into the top private university — Sahoda University — straight out of high school. The cred is real.
“True, we haven’t gathered just the four of us in a while.”
“That’s why I wanted to do it — me, Sis, Ayato, Yuito.”
Suzuno was beaming. They got their drinks and sat across from us.
My brother had wanted to sit across from Kano, so he took that side. By elimination, Suzuno ended up across from me.
(Worked out for both me and my brother — no complaints.) Then he addressed Kano.
“It’s almost mid-June — are you used to college life yet, Kano-san?”
“After two months, the weirdness has mostly worn off.”
“For a while you kept saying it felt different from high school.”
She’d mentioned that to me too. College lectures are 90 minutes which is way too long — heard that one repeatedly.
“And you, Ayato? How’s high school going?”
“Top rank in tests is still mine, and I made starting lineup for soccer — going pretty well.”
Pleased to be asked about himself, my brother was perceptibly buoyant.
“Glad to hear. Yuito’s at seventh, right — both brothers performing well, huh.”
“Ayato-kun and Yuito-kun, you’re both amazing. I did better than usual this time and was only just above the middle.”
Suzuno gave us both starry-eyes. I felt the defeat viscerally. First and seventh look close but are leagues apart. No matter how hard I try, that gap never seems to close.
If anything — my brother, in soccer club, manages first while I, in no club, manage seventh. The gap is growing, not closing.
I was sinking into self-pity when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and the screen was —
Kano. Standing in nothing but black lingerie.
”!”
I was so shocked I dropped the phone on the floor. She’d used the screen-share function to ping me directly. Why now?!
“Yuito, what?”
“Nothing.”
I deflected her innocent face and reached under the table for the phone — but Suzuno was already crouched to pick it up.
Suzuno is always kind, I was thinking — and then it hit me. If Suzuno picked it up, she’d see the purikura sticker on the back. Me with the dumb face from being suddenly hugged by Kano.
If she saw that, I had a vision of the future where things got very messy. I scrambled.
“S-Suzuno, hold on —”
I tried to grab it from her — too late. She got a clean look at the sticker.
“Hey — when did you take this with Sis?!”
“Yeah, mind explaining?”
Suzuno was visibly startled. My brother went pointedly unfriendly. All of which traced back to Kano sending me that picture.