2

What exactly was her goal?

She tagged along, claiming she needed to go to cram school, then she just hopped off the monorail with no further explanation.

It didn’t seem like she had wanted to talk about anything. Normally if Mio had something on her mind, it was pretty obvious.

As far as Eita could tell, she looked worried about something. But what that was, he didn’t know.

The only people who really knew were Mio and one other person… Komiya Ena, who was walking just up ahead of him.

Eita and Ena had taken the monorail to its last stop, Shounan-Enoshima, and were presently making their way along a long, straight bridge.

The Benten Bridge that led to Enoshima Island.

Waves crashed against support pillars below their feet. The bridge wasn’t constructed particularly high up, so it almost felt like they were walking right across the ocean, which was pretty nice.

The sea breeze ruffled Ena’s hair.

“So hey…” Eita began.

“Hm?”

“What was all that with Natsume?”

Their attitudes on the monorail told a whole story, but Eita wasn’t sure what it was about.

“You sure you wanna know, Izumi-senpai?” Ena asked, looking over her shoulder with a somewhat exasperated smile.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If you don’t know, then I won’t tell.” Ena turned back around and kept crossing the bridge with what seemed to be a happy bounce in her step.

“But I don’t know, which is why I want you to tell me.”

‘If you don’t know I won’t tell you’ was an absolutely absurd concept.

“I’ll tell you all about myself if you want. But Natsume-senpai is off limits.”

Ena shifted the goalposts, but at least in a way that made sense. Eita could agree It was wrong to talk about another person behind their back.

So Eita abandoned that thread of conversation, trying to change the subject. “So I guess we’re headed to Enoshima Island?” Ena had only told him where they were meeting, so he had no idea what kind of plans were on the docket.

“You’ll find out when we get there~” Ena answered in a singsong voice, without acknowledging him, as usual.

She was so good at putting up walls that Eita knew he wasn’t gonna get anywhere. All he knew was Enoshima Island was in front of them, and he was tired of staring at her back, so he caught up and walked by her side.

With a curt, “I’ll hold that,” Eita snatched the tripod from Ena.

“Thanks, that’s a real help!” The corners of Ena’s mouth turned up in a smile. “People would get real judgey if I was all lopsided carrying my stuff around.”

Ena was lugging around a rucksack, a camera, and her tripod until just a moment ago. Eita felt uncomfortable walking around with her empty-handed.

There were a lot of crowds around, which was to be expected of a tourist destination. Some families or couples were still heading to the island, and several were on their way out. There were even some foreign tourists hoisting around lots of bulky baggage that caught Eita’s eye.

“You know, you pay attention to the strangest details, Izumi-senpai.” Ena’s eyes stared intently at Eita, sparkling with some kind of delight. It made Eita feel really awkward.

“Nah, just the normal stuff,” he replied, trying to avoid her observant gaze as he pushed forward.

After crossing the Benten Bridge, they walked up towards the approach of Enoshima Shrine. A small slope packed with rows of charming little shops lay before them.

“We’re headed up to the top. Wanna take the Esca?” Ena glanced to the side.

The Esca was the local name for the escalator service that rode right up to the top of Enoshima Shrine, skipping the intense series of stairs.

“It’s alright, I’ll take the stairs.”

“You know there are a ton, right?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Then I’ll race ya.”

“No. Running is dangerous, and we’ll inconvenience other tourists.” Eita slowly and deliberately began to trek up the stairs.

“Ohh, ice-cold, Izumi-senpai.” Ena’s voice followed from behind. “Bet you’d take on a race from Souma-senpai.”

Eita kept going up, pretending he hadn’t heard. He made a short stop at the first shrine on the way up, Hetsumiya, introducing himself to the god residing there before making a single request and continuing on.

“What was that about? Another prayer for success, I’ll bet?”

“I already prayed for Natsume’s success on the New Year’s shrine visit.” Asking another god about it would be beyond shameless.

“I mean for your own success, Izumi-senpai.”

“…”

“You’re taking an entrance exam, right?”

“I need to be able to do that out of my own ability, or it won’t mean anything.”

“That’s such a you thing to say.” Ena burst out laughing.

“It was for your photography. I prayed for you to win the contest,” Eita said, carefully watching the stairs on his way up.

Ena’s face turned slightly surprised before another mischievous look took over. “I thought you didn’t care about the photography club, though?”

“Well, I can’t say that any more.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want all your hard work to go unrecognized.” Eita was too embarrassed to look at Ena as he shared his real, vulnerable feelings. He figured he was just aiming to get another round of teasing.

At least, he thought so, but that didn’t happen.

“Oh… thanks…” All he heard from Ena was a surprisingly meek mumble.

They began to get winded from the 254-step journey, so they didn’t have the luxury of casual conversation for the rest of the climb. They just continued onwards in silence.

By the time they finally got to the top, Eita’s legs were killing him. He really wanted to sit down, but Ena seemed completely fine, so he held it in.

“Alright, what now?” Eita spoke first, trying to act tough, but he had to take deep breaths to keep his composure.

“Not much farther to go. We’re headed down there.” Ena pointed towards a building that looked a bit like a lighthouse.

With a spring in her step, Ena led the way to the Sea Candle, the main landmark of Enoshima.

It currently had an open tulip garden display with vibrant flowers of red, yellow, pink, white and purple all in full bloom. Even though it was the middle of winter and there had been so much snow the week before, the landscape was covered in tulip flowers.

“Tulips bloom in winter too, you know.”

Eita’s preconceived notions that flowers didn’t belong in winter made the scene look all the more mystical.

“Tripod, thank you.” Ena swiped the tripod from Eita as he stood in a daze.

Ena immediately set up her camera in preparation for taking photos. She positioned herself relative to the direction of the sun, looked through the viewfinder, and clicked the shutter.

As Ena immediately checked the image she’d taken on her LCD screen, her profile looked incredibly serious. She was completely zoned in. Not that she couldn’t be interrupted, but there was a kind of aura around her that made him not want to bother her.

So Ena went on taking photos… and Eita kept watching her and the field of tulips, the scenery looking like something out of a children’s picture book.

A lot of the people that passed by them were couples, commenting on the beauty of the tulips. Of course, as they got further away from Eita and Ena, they started talking about the girl engrossed in her photography and the boy left all alone. They were pretty evenly split between pitying him and mocking him.

Most people around seemed to just assume they were a couple. And Eita couldn’t blame them, since it’d be a little weird for two young people with no special relationship to go and view tulips together.

Eita started feeling uneasy, so he sat down on a nearby bench.

Ena was about 15 feet away, pointing her camera at a flowerbed of tulips. She had removed it from the tripod, this time holding it carefully in her hands.

She looked completely focused. Her profile was dignified and austere. She made for an even more attractive and animated subject than the tulips that surrounded her.

Eita hesitantly took out his phone, turning on the camera and setting Ena in frame. He pressed the capture button, a loud click played, and Ena’s image was memorialized for him on the screen. It looked just as great as he’d expected.

“Secret voyeur pictures, huh? Creepy…”

Eita looked up at the disgusted observation to see Ena watching him like he was a piece of gum spat on the sidewalk. “Yeah, you don’t get to talk about taking photos without consent.”

“Well, I’m doing actual photography, so that makes it okay.” Ena sat down on the bench as she voiced her counterargument. She shot a glance at Eita’s phone. “Wow, that turned out pretty good.”

“Modern smartphones are pretty impressive.”

“Not to mention you’ve got a wonderful subject.”

“I sure do.” He agreed quickly because he genuinely believed that, too. “So look, if you’re just gonna take pictures, then you don’t need me here.”

“Well, actually… I brought you here for this.” Ena swiftly brushed off Eita’s statement, pulling a notebook-sized picture album from her rucksack. She held it out to him. “I figured you gave me a picture, so the best thanks would be some of your own.”

Eita accepted the album, though he wasn’t really sure what she meant. He looked at Ena, his expression asking Can I open it? She nodded.

Eita pulled back the cover to find a picture of a high school entrance ceremony. More specifically, Kashiogawa Senior High’s. He could see Mio there in the foreground. And just a bit further back was Haruto’s head. The next picture showed Hazuki and Yoriko. They all looked a lot younger. They’d grown so much in their three years of high school.

The next page had a picture of Haruto from behind, helping prepare the baseball field in his practice uniform. Then there was a picture of Hazuki practicing the trumpet in the hallway. Then it was Yoriko, wearing her tracksuit and pouring water over her head from an outdoor faucet, likely taken in mid-summer.

There was Mio, her face tense as she delivered a speech for the student council election cycle.

Haruto cheering for the sports festival. Mio in a costume for the festival. Yoriko relaxing during a break in a tournament. Haruto up to bat in a summer tourney, with Hazuki playing trumpet in the stands…

All of the time Eita didn’t get to spend with them, compiled together into a single album.

“Did you take all of these?”

“The first few were by a senpai who’s already graduated. I couldn’t take the entrance ceremony ones, obviously.”

Ena was a year younger than all of them, so that was fair.

“This is… incredible.” Eita didn’t know how else to put it. He just thought it was incredible. Eita had never been there, but he felt like he’d become capable of sharing just a few of those past moments with Haruto and Mio.

“Did you wish you were in there, too?”

“Well… maybe for some of it…”

Everything in the album was from the past, which in a way made the moments even more valuable. There was no going back. No do-overs.

And it drove home the painful reality that he hadn’t been there with them. He wouldn’t find Eita anywhere in that album.

“But right now, I’m glad. It’s good that we moved back when we did.”

Both of those feelings were true at the same time.

“What makes you say that?”

“If I’d just stayed here the whole time, I don’t think I would have known how much I cared.”

If they’d always been close by, he wouldn’t have realized his depth of emotion towards them.

There were so many things he’d wanted to say, things he had to say… He’d mistakenly assumed he’d just have the time to tell them, and in many ways even now he hadn’t done anything about it.

And all that time slipped away as he assumed everything was just going to work itself out.

“So that’s why you’re taking an entrance exam? Because you know now?” Ena wore a grave expression. “And you’re running and training every day because you know now?”

Somewhere deep in her eyes was a glint of loneliness. But Eita didn’t know what it meant, so all he could tell her was, “That’s right.”

There was no point trying to hide from her any more. She knew all about his affection for Mio and his rivalry with Haruto.

“So why don’t you just go and tell Mio-senpai how you feel already?”

“Nah. If I want to do it at all, I have to do it this way.” 

Eita needed more confidence in himself. He couldn’t say anything without it, but he felt like he could with it. His strategy was roundabout at best, but he needed the process.

“Okay, then.” Ena stood up, irritation leaking into her voice. Something big had sparked inside of her… but Eita didn’t know what.

Ena stood before him, determination radiating from her gaze.

“Then I’ll make my contest conditional, too. If I win, I’ll tell Eita-senpai I’m in love with him.”

“…” Completely unprepared to process what he just heard, Eita could only sit there with his mouth gaping.

“Seeya!” Ena walked away, leaving Eita stunned and alone on the bench. He couldn’t bring himself to say or do anything as he saw her go.

“What was…”

Only after she had completely disappeared could he manage those two words. He slid off the bench as all his strength left him.

A beautiful field of tulips was spread out before Eita, surrounding the spectacular Sea Candle. But his heart wasn’t focused on those external stimuli.

“Isn’t that just… like…”

He couldn’t think of a single way that was any different than telling him outright…