Chapter 56: Volume 2 - CH 2.9

......I could hear the sound of the waves.

I opened my eyes thinly and saw a red and white parasol. Apparently, I had fallen asleep while lying alone. When I woke up, I saw something soft and white in front of me.

"Oh, are you awake?"

I heard Izumi's voice and turned my gaze in that direction. Izumi had her hair up and was smiling at me. Her feet were very close to me. As soon as I recognized it, my heart jumped silently. Her red swimsuit was sticking out from the bottom of her hoodie, and her white thighs stretched out from it. She was sitting right next to me, her legs slanted and folded at an angle. She was not holding a phone, a book, or anything else.

"What are you doing?"

When I asked, Izumi replied, "Nothing," shaking her head, and then gave me a mischievous look. 

"I think this might be the first time I've ever seen Kenichi sleeping."

I wonder how long I had fallen asleep by Izumi's side. What kind of sleeping face did I have? As my consciousness became clearer, I began to feel embarrassed. I coughed and sat up. I put my hand on my head and checked to see if I had any bed hair.

"Are you done playing with the sand yet?"

I asked Izumi as I sat beside her, holding her knees.

She nodded and pointed to the beach.

"It's been hit by a few waves, and it's pretty much crumbled."

At the end of her finger, there was a crumbling pile of sand, about fifty centimeters high, like melting ice. Nearby, Yuriko was playing with my brother in her swimsuit, kicking and throwing a football-sized beach ball.

"You don't swim, Izumi?"

When I asked Izumi that, she smiled wryly and shook her head.

"I can't swim. But I did go for a short swim in the sea with Mori-san a while ago."

Saying that, it was true that her feet were a little wet. Her white skin had a few drops of clear water on it.

"I see."

I looked back to the front again. A large wave came in, scraping off the mountain from the sand Izumi and Yuriko had made, and then it returned to the sea, foaming white.

"Somehow, I feel like I've been missing out all this time."

Izumi suddenly muttered. I looked at her, not knowing what she was talking about. Izumi was staring at Yuriko and my brother.

"I've been at home all my summer vacations until now. I didn't go to my mother's relatives' house, and this is the second time I've come to play at the beach. My mother took me once when I was in elementary school, but that was the only time."

"So, aunt Tomoko has been busy since before."

"Yes. However, I am grateful and respect her because she raised me all by herself. Sometimes I think about how lonely I used to be when I was in elementary school."

It was the first time I had ever seen Izumi being sentimental. Even though we lived in the same house, I had never been exposed to her inner life.

"Lately," Izumi said in a mumbling voice.

"I've been feeling that I've been intruding too much into Kenichi-kun's territory, or rather, into his life."

"No, that's not---"

The next words were already in my head, but embarrassment and shyness got in the way, and I retracted them once. There seemed to be a slight nuance of annoyance or loneliness in Izumi's profile as she looked at Yuriko and my brother.

Speak up. I scolded myself.

"I am glad I got to know Izumi. When I think that maybe we never would have met, it makes me feel lonely."

Izumi looked at me as if she had been jolted. The moment our eyes met, Izumi's body trembled for a moment, and then she quickly returned her gaze to normal.

"Yeah. I'm also glad to have met you and the others, Kenichi-kun. Although I still don't really know how to keep my distance from you......"

"---Just leave it as it is. Izumi is a person who pays a lot of attention to various things, so I think it's just fine for her to act a little careless."

I did not know if it was the right thing to say, or if I was replying to her concerns, but I said that as if I was trying to squeeze the words out of myself.

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"Yes," Izumi nodded.

"Thank you."

As soon as she said that, I felt so embarrassed by what I had said that my ears began to heat up.

The conversation stopped there, and silence fell. However, the sound of cicadas chirping like a shower, the joyful voices of people playing in the sea, and the repetitive sound of waves filled the silence.

A little later, I said, "I'm going for a swim," and headed out to the sea. I took off my sandals a short distance away from the black dampness of the waves and walked on the beach, it was so hot that I felt like I was going to burn the soles of my feet. When I stepped into the damp area, the sand crumpled and my body sank.

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When the sun began to set, we got out of the water, got ready to go home, and decided to walk along the beach for a bit. Yuriko was wearing a blue tank top, black shorts, and sandals, and Izumi was wearing a sleeveless one-piece.

The warm sea breeze felt good on my tired body after a day outside. The clouds over the sea were tinted a soft pink, and the city was dusky blue. From the surrounding trees, I could hear the chirping of cicadas and a hornbill. As I walked for a while, the darkness of dusk slowly thickened, and the shadows on the ground melted into the gloom.

In the car on the way home, Izumi and Yuriko, who were sitting side by side in the back seat, kept talking about something, but after an hour or so I couldn't hear their voices again. I was sitting in the passenger seat.

I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the two of them lying with their eyes closed and their heads collapsed. They were leaning against each other, Yuriko's head resting on Izumi's shoulder.

"Kenichi."

My brother called me over. He held the steering wheel in his dark-tanned hands, his gaze straight ahead. Occasionally, the light from the tunnel lights reflected off the silver jewelry on his wrist.

"What?"

"Have you thought about what I said the other night when we went out for yakiniku? I was getting a little worried when I saw you today."

So he whispered.

I glanced in the rearview mirror. The two of them still seemed to be sleeping peacefully.

"Don't make them cry," my brother continued shortly.

"I know," I replied in the same low voice. We can't stay in this relationship forever. I could already feel what Yuriko had said.

The vibrations of the car made me feel drowsy. The lights in the tunnel pass us by, front to back.

The two of them woke up just as we were approaching the city where we lived. First, we stopped at Yuriko's house, then back at the Sakamoto house, and then my brother got on his moped and headed back to his apartment.

Izumi, who had been asleep in the back seat the whole time, entered the house, rubbing her eyes, probably still quite sleepy.

When I went to bed that night, my body still remembered the rhythm of the waves. My consciousness, my body, was swayed by the waves in my memory.

The summer, in which so much had happened, was about to pass. As I closed my eyes in the darkness, many of the events of the summer came to mind.

I fell asleep in the early hours of the night and woke up in the early morning. I looked at the screen of my phone and saw that it was only just past five o'clock.

The room was dimly lit. However, the navy blue curtains were lightly bathed in light, and I felt a hint of morning.

I approach the window and open the curtains.

I looked out at the early morning, almost gray, pale blue sky, then opened the window and stepped out onto the balcony, propping on my flip-flops, which I use to hang the laundry out to dry. The morning air was chilly and refreshing.

The city was still asleep. I could hear the sound of cars driving in the distance, but the small echoes made me strongly feel the silence of the entire city.

Then I suddenly noticed a dead cicada lying at my feet. It was lying on its belly, its legs contracted, not moving an inch. The cicada carcass seemed empty, as if it had been squeezed out of everything.

August is almost over.

Although the sun still seemed to be shining strong for a while, the sun was setting much faster than it had been at the end of the rainy season.

I picked up the dead cicada. It was as light as paper. I tossed it toward the soil in the garden. I stayed outside for a while. The distant stars in the sky, which still had the colors of night, gradually faded into the brightness of the morning.

Even though we have entered September, the hot days are still continuing. But the cool early morning air made me feel that the summer was slowly slipping away.

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