Chapter 4 – Rolling Stones

1

The heat of the golden brown toast brought the butter pat to a delicious, melted sheen. It was an absolutely beautiful sight every morning. Watching the center of the toast soak up the melting butter was a daily event for Mio, but that morning was slightly different.

The plate of toast was certainly in her field of vision, but all her focus was on the phone beside it.

The instant a new LINE message came in, her finger was tapping away to open the phone she’d left atop the dining room table. She was communicating with various friends from class.

The group chat consisting of her, Sanae, Momoka, and Mayuko was being filled in with messages like Good morning!, Winter break should be longer, I can’t wait to see you all!, and so on. Mio sent her own message with a flick of her finger. See you all at school.

“Manners, Mio!”

Mio’s mother sat across from her, looking less than pleased. Given her daughter was paying full attention to her smartphone while picking up a corner of toast to try and take a bite, that was fair enough.

“I know,” Mio pouted, reluctantly pulling her hand away from her phone. But that five-inch screen still remained her only focus.

“What’s got you so distracted? A boyfriend?” Her older sister, Mina, teased her. Mina had already finished breakfast, and was sipping from her coffee mixed with plenty of milk.

“Hold on, are you actually dating someone?” Her mother’s shock clearly showed.

“Is that true, Mio?” Even her father stopped silently reading the newspaper to join in, looking a tad confused.

Talking about that kind of stuff with family was embarrassing, no two ways about it. Mio shoved the rest of her toast in her mouth, as if indicating she’d be physically unable to respond. She chugged all the milk from her glass, chewed several times, and swallowed everything all at once, simply saying, “Thanks for breakfast,” before zipping away from the table.

After changing into her school uniform, Mio stepped out of the house just past 8 AM. All the houses in the neighborhood had stripped off their New Year’s decorations, so the town’s atmosphere had gone back to normal.

There was a man leaving his house dressed in a suit. A few elementary schoolers here and there. A group of middle school friends goofing off and running around. All the normal sights of morning time.

She could hear the sounds of a morning sports practice from the middle school sports fields located near her house. It sounded like the baseball team.

Mio made her way down a narrow slope that stretched behind the middle school property, an old shortcut that let her spy on the grounds. She could see the white school building all the way on the opposite end.

It was the same local middle school that Mio herself had attended. The same place Souma Haruto and Izumi Eita had attended. The place seemed smaller to her now, maybe because she had grown in the three years since graduating there.

She’d never be able to go back to those times. It wasn’t that she wanted to, but even so, the immutable fact was that time marched onwards. She had to wonder if it would feel the same way after graduating high school. The way things were, she was just constantly glued to her phone screen every morning after waking up, so regrets seemed inevitable. She already wanted to start over.

Mio opened her LINE app, her eyes brushing across a group that hadn’t updated in quite a while. It was a fairly new group created near the end of the year. A group consisting of Souma Haruto, Izumi Eita, Morikawa Hazuki, Inui Yoriko, and Natsume Mio.

The last message had been sent on December 31st. None of the other four had made any contact since the night of the New Year’s shrine visit. Then, in a flash, their brief winter break ended, and it was January 9th, the first day of the third trimester.

Going to class would guarantee seeing her classmates Haruto, Hazuki, and Yoriko.

It was even possible she’d run into Eita, since they were now schoolmates in the same grade.

A part of her wanted to get the face-to-face meetings over and done with. Another part of her felt so awkward that she wanted to avoid any contact at all.

She wished she could get a read on their feelings through LINE first.

As she drowned in all her thoughts, the main gate of Kashiogawa Senior High came into view. It was only a short walk from Mio’s house.

Students funneled into the main gate, and Mio was pulled right alongside them.

It was the first day of the third trimester, and the air was tense with an excitement befitting the New Year. Classmates were checking in with each other to see how the last two weeks had gone. Everyone was just a little more self-conscious, ultimately making the atmosphere even more excitable.

As Mio changed into her indoor shoes near the entrance, she heard a few murmurs that were outside of the regular conversation. She lifted her head to figure out where it was directed, spotting a boy down the hall in a gakuran uniform. It had to be Izumi Eita.

“Who’s that? A transfer student?”

“What else could it be?”

Similar gossip could be heard all around, but it wasn’t like anyone was terribly invested. Everyone just wanted to talk about the sudden new infiltrator in the school, and see if anyone had extra info.

Mio hadn’t seen Eita since New Year’s Eve. There was no other contact, and of course no apology. Other than the little apology he mumbled as he left, anyway.

Mio doubted that either of them was particularly happy with how that situation was resolved. She knew that she was at least feeling a little unsettled. But it was hard to say whose court the ball was in. Arguably, she had never responded to his apology, so… she just hadn’t been able to get over it.

“How did it end up being my fault?” Mio asked, following Eita with a resentful stare. But he just walked upstairs without ever noticing.

“Morning, Mio.”

Mio turned around as someone called her name from behind, finding Mayuko and Momoka. “Morning.”

“What is it, didja see Souma over there?” Momoka tucked herself behind Mio, using her as a wall to peek over into the hallway.

“Wait, what?”

“Aww, guess I was wrong.” Momoka put on an overly dejected expression.

“Where’s all this coming from?” Mio had never told either of them about her one-sided crush.

“Oh, yeah. I got this for you. Ta-da!” Ignoring Mio’s question, Momoka pulled a small paper package from her school bag, handing it to Mio. Inside was a small cloth amulet, the kind purchasable from a shrine to give good luck. This one boasted that it would help with Academic Success in embroidered letters.

“Thank you… You prayed for my success in exams?”

“Of course I did! Mayu-chan’s got one for you too.”

Mayuko took out a similar white package as Momoka pestered her. Her package, however, contained an amulet claiming to give Success in Love, and the back of the amulet’s wrapping was labeled from the Shirahata Shrine.

That was the shrine that her group of five alongside Haruto had promised to go for their New Year’s shrine visit. Of course, everyone else had canceled at the last minute so that Haruto and Hazuki could go by themselves. But the amulet Mio was holding was from that very shrine.

“Mio?” Momoka looked at Mio questioningly.

“Oh, yeah. It’s nothing. But, um, why success in love?”

“Come on, like everyone’s not talking about it.” Momoka smiled with an apparent smugness.

“That’s a kinda scary look you have there.”

“Oh, Sanae! Happy New Yeeeear!” As Sanae came through the entrance, Momoka bounded away towards her.

“Mio.”

“Hm?” Mio turned towards Mayuko to find the other girl looking right into her eyes.

“You know you can tell us about anything that’s on your mind, right?”

“…Huh? Um, right, thanks.”

The warning bell rang for homeroom, so the four quickly made their way to class.

The first thing Mio heard as she entered Class 3-1 was Haruto’s boisterous laughter. He was in the middle of the classroom, sitting with his classmates Saruwatari Junpei and Ishigaki Rikuo. They were all at their desks toying with their phones and making a general nuisance of themselves.

“I never get any rare pulls!”

They were evidently playing some kind of mobile game.

“Well then, you just gotta get good, right, Rikuo?”

“You will eventually. It’s just luck.”

“Fine then, you guys can use all your luck up here! I’m saving it for entrance exams!”

The boys were all chatting like usual, laughing, joking, and snickering over something or other.

As Mio watched Haruto go on like he normally did, she felt someone else watching her. It was Hazuki, looking all the way from the back of the classroom. Hazuki looked a little conflicted, but it would be weird for Mio to just walk up and start talking to her, so she just sent her an agreeable smile.

“Happy New Year, and good luck until graduation. C’mon, sit down.” Mio’s homeroom teacher, Watanabe-sensei, came in class from behind her.

Mio made sure to get right to her seat, as instructed.

Watanabe-sensei gave a brief explanation of the day’s schedule. There would be a quick homeroom, followed by the opening ceremony, then everyone would return to homeroom for a short time before dismissal. Mio heard everything that he said, but none of it was really registering in her mind.

When the LINE messages had stopped coming, Mio was more or less expecting the worst. It only made sense, really. But she just didn’t know how to respond to that distressed look on Hazuki’s face, and had even less courage to try and talk to Haruto while he was acting so oddly cheerful.

Haruto made a sarcastic quip about Watanabe-sensei’s weak delivery, just like he normally would. The class rumbled with quiet laughter.

Mio wished she could just laugh along. But she couldn’t. With nowhere else to look, she just ended up staring down. Then suddenly, she felt her phone vibrate from inside her uniform.

She figured Mayuko or Momoka was messaging, so she sneaked a look under her desk. Her mouth popped open in a silent “o”, and she froze.

She had just received a LINE message from the last person on Earth she’d expected.