A few days after the four of us hung out, the country had hit Obon week. Summer break was entering its final stretch — the end was in sight.
In a normal year, I’d be panicking about the homework at right about this point and learning what hell tastes like — but this year, thanks to Riona, I was done.
So the usual end-of-summer pressure was effectively absent. Today I was on my way to a fireworks festival in Kisarazu, Chiba Prefecture, with Reona and Riona. We were currently riding a bus across the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line.
The reason Chiba and not Tokyo: Reona and Riona had attended every major Tokyo fireworks festival over the past several years and wanted something different.
Yeah, fireworks-summer is for a class of person fundamentally different from indoor-introvert-loner me. Although, this year, I was clearly living the normie lifestyle I was always wishing would explode.
“Today’s festival is thirteen thousand shells.”
“Haven’t seen fireworks yet this year. Excited.”
“My last fireworks were like three years ago, I think.”
Last year Mio had dragged me to a local summer festival, but there hadn’t been a fireworks display. So it’d been a while. Both of them piped up at my comment.
“Aww, really? That’s, like, nine-tenths of a life wasted.”
“A summer without fireworks isn’t a summer.”
“Nine-tenths is just most of life, the fireworks weighting is way too high.”
Genuinely could not understand the value system. Difference between main-character types and Mob Character B. As I was thinking that, the windows outside brightened.
“Oh — we’re out of the Aqua Tunnel.”
“Sunlight does feel more relaxing.”
“The Aqua Bridge view is what I’m looking forward to.”
“As promised, let’s stop at Umi-hotaru.”
“Yeah, that’s the whole reason we left right after lunch.”
Umi-hotaru — the artificial island halfway across the bay — has five floors of facilities, plenty to make the stop on its own. We got off the bus and headed straight to the fifth-floor observation deck.
The 360-degree view was stunning. Clear weather meant Mount Fuji was visible too. Reona and Riona were happily snapping pictures.
“Let’s take a three-person shot.”
“You two go ahead, I’ll skip.”
“No. Ryouya too.”
I tried to slip away and they pinned my arms. Inevitably I got sandwiched between them for the photo. This sort of thing had happened often by now and I’d never escaped once.
“Anyway — I’ve been meaning to ask — what do you guys do with all the photos you take?”
“Oh, photos of me-and-you go on my social media.”
“Wait, really?!”
Reona showed me her phone screen. Photo after photo — Tokyo Inclusion Square, the Bikan Quarter — every place we’d ever been, laid out in a grid.
A popular kid’s social account has serious follower count. Plenty of people had definitely seen these. I was effectively a public exhibit.
“This account is set to friends-only, so don’t worry.”
“Nee-chan’s friends only.”
“That is not a comforting clarification, none of that is comforting—”
Reona’s friends are all top-caste popular kids, so the idea of being seen by them was specifically the bad version.
“Oh, Ryouya-kun — Mio just liked one.”
“Mio follows you too?!”
“I liked them too.”
I do not have one of those popular-kid social platforms and was not planning to start, but letting Reona’s stream run unmonitored felt bad. I was genuinely considering creating an account purely for surveillance purposes. Needless to say.
Done with the deck, we went down to the fourth floor for souvenirs. They had merchandise with the Umi-hotaru mascot, so I grabbed a keychain for Mio. We wandered Umi-hotaru a bit longer until we noticed our bus departure was coming up.
“Back to the bus stop?”
“One more place I want to see first.”
“Mm, this was actually a major reason we came to Umi-hotaru.”
Reona and Riona led the way. After a short walk we arrived at a viewing spot with a large bell.
“Oh — that was the point.”
“Yeah, I wanted to ring the Bell of Happiness.”
“You ring it with your feelings for someone important and they reach that person.”
“So let’s ring it together, three of us, each making a wish.”
The bell-ringers had been couples up to this point, so it was clearly that kind of spot. Since we’d come this far, fine.
We grabbed the rope together and rocked the bell. A clean clear tone rang out — actually pleasant. Reona and Riona were wearing dead-serious wishing faces. I had to wonder what they were wishing for.