Let's Go Out!
"Waaaaah!"
Staring at the computer monitor, I had no choice but to let my mouth fall open — so wide a fist could have fit inside.
My jaw felt ready to come unhinged, so I snapped it shut. The shock from a moment ago hadn't gone anywhere, though, and I hopped down off the chair and bounced in place. This weekend, a huge animation event was being held.
It dealt mainly in children's animation; the adult-oriented shows, they said, would run in a different time slot. None of that mattered to me. What mattered was that a Little Magician Rumi booth was coming this weekend.
I climbed back onto the chair and went over the important details. I didn't watch the other shows anyway, so I scrolled past them without much care. After a few turns of the wheel, the information I'd been waiting for finally appeared.
I looked through the goods the Little Magician Rumi booth would be selling. A Rumi magic wand I already owned, this time with extra options added. A notebook printed with Little Magician Rumi — the same kind I'd used as a gate letter last time and then thrown away. And a Little Magician Rumi cosplay costume. That one I absolutely had to have. It was a perfect outfit sold nowhere else. I could probably track one down through other channels, but nothing else came close to the fidelity of what this booth was selling.
Faced with goods that precise and that finely made, I couldn't help but marvel. Miss this, and I would regret it for certain.
Buzzing with excitement, I glanced around. Bora was doing something on her laptop. Haru had just stepped out for a moment, saying she was going to grab something to eat.
I stole a careful look. The weekend... would it be all right to go out on the weekend? I didn't mind. But Bora and Haru were working adults, plain and simple. If I asked them to go out then, their day off would vanish, and I didn't think they'd be pleased. If someone told me to go somewhere on my holiday, I'd be annoyed too.
Even so... I still wanted them. I could always buy the goods later on the secondhand market, but I wanted Rumi merchandise that hadn't passed through someone else's hands. Things other people had handled just didn't feel right to me.
I turned it over and over, and in the end I had no choice but to open my mouth.
"Bo..."
But before I could even call Bora's name, my lips clamped shut. Bora and Haru went out to play on weekdays; I didn't think they'd ever gone out on a weekend.
"Mmm..."
In the end, I had to decide. I rose quietly and crept over to Bora's side. Coming up behind her where she sat, I wrapped my arms around her and spoke.
"Bora."
Focused on her laptop screen, Bora turned at the sound of my voice.
"Yeah? What's up, Hana?"
"Do you maybe have time this weekend?"
"The weekend? Why all of a sudden?"
"They said there's an animation event..."
I answered, waving my hands this way and that. A big animation event this weekend... and the Rumi goods there were something I wanted so badly...
Pressing my palms together politely, I begged her, pouring every bit of my desperation to go into the gesture. Watching me, Bora grinned.
"You want to go out that badly?"
She reached out and pulled me into a hug. Caught off guard, I squirmed this way and that in her arms until our eyes met dead on. Looking at me like that, Bora said, her gaze clear,
"You want to go out this weekend, right?"
"Yeah!"
Bora took out her phone and tapped around. Probably checking whether she had plans? Fortunately, from the look on her face, she didn't seem to have any. I felt anticipation swell. Somehow, it felt like I was actually going to get outside.
"All right. Let's go out this weekend!"
"Yay!"
I was so happy at her answer that I clung to her tight. Burying my face in her soft, squishy chest felt wonderful. Was this a woman's charm? I was flat, after all.
"Then you have to behave until the weekend, okay?"
"Yeah!"
For Rumi's goods, there was nothing I couldn't do. Behaving until the weekend was a piece of cake. I just had to act the way I always did.
Haru came in partway through, and it was settled that she would come out with us too. I showed them the gorgeous Little Magician Rumi mage costume and declared that this weekend I was marching to war to buy it. This was war — a fight over who got there first and claimed it. Show up late, and there wouldn't even be broth left.
Bora gazed at my battle plan with a thoroughly satisfied look.
It was only Thursday, and still the weekend refused to come. I waited and waited, and Saturday showed no sign of arriving. I was starting to understand why weekdays felt so long.
I listened to Bora extremely well. I washed my hands without fail, took my baths, and when ten o'clock came I turned out the lights and was asleep in a breath.
Didn't they say that even time at the Ministry of National Defense eventually passes? Time spent for Rumi passed too. No matter how slowly it crawled, it did move.
The weekend I had longed for and looked forward to finally arrived. My eyes snapped open at six in the morning. How long had I waited for today? The truth was, I'd nearly died last night from not being able to sleep. I lay with my eyes closed for nearly an hour, counting sheep — one, then two — before I could finally drift off.
I got up and went straight into the shower. It was a holiday, so the office staff weren't coming in. The hallway at six in the morning was utterly quiet. Quiet enough to sit an exam in, even.
I tossed my clothes roughly in front of the shower room. If Bora or Haru, who liked things neat, saw that, I'd catch an earful — but they weren't at work right now, so it didn't matter. I started washing myself beneath an incredibly scientific showerhead that produced hot water in a single second.
At my old place, even with the boiler running, it seemed to take ten minutes before hot water came out. Here, you just turned the handle and it came at once. That tiny difference made an enormous difference in daily life.
Standing under the hot water, I scrubbed every corner of my body. At first Haru and Bora had washed me, but I was so embarrassed that I begged and begged until I was finally allowed to wash myself. Showing my naked body to someone else was simply too shameful.
My hair was so long that even with my own shampoo it took forever. I had definitely cut it yesterday, and already it had grown this much. But it was everyday life now, so it wasn't especially inconvenient. I'd gotten the hang of how to wash it a little better.
Once my hair was done, I squeezed body wash onto a shower towel, worked up a lather, and soaped myself down. My body had definitely gotten smaller, and yet compared to when I was a man, shower time seemed to have nearly doubled.
Bora and Haru would be along soon, so I quickly toweled off and stepped out. I had to collect the pajamas I'd taken off earlier. If they saw them sprawled across the floor, I wouldn't be hearing anything nice.
I wrapped a towel roughly around my hair and dressed light. I ought to dry it with a hair dryer, but I was too lazy. Still, I couldn't go out with wet hair...
I was flailing around on the bed like that when Haru opened the door and came in.
"Haru!"
"Hana, you're up? You already washed?"
"Yeah!"
I got up on the bed and showed her my wet hair. Seeing it, Haru came into the room, picked up the hair dryer, and stepped around behind me.
"You didn't dry your hair properly again."
"I did!"
"Little lady, water is dripping from your hair."
"Ack!"
When she smoothly pulled away the towel I'd wrapped around my head, moisture ran down my hair in streams. I had tried my best to dry it, but my hair was longer than I'd expected and seemed to have soaked up a great deal of water.
As always, Haru brought a fresh towel and dried my hair. The strands dripping water vanished somewhere, leaving only hair that held just a little moisture — the kind a dryer could finish.
She brought the hair dryer over, switched it on, and dried my hair with careful attention. Wherever her hands passed, only silky, gleaming hair remained.
I closed my eyes and gave myself over to her touch. The warm breath of the dryer and Haru's hands gently kneading my scalp together were nothing short of paradise. This was the heaven good children got to go to.
Once my hair was dry, she finished with a brushing. Haru's hands moved like a ghost's. Wherever the comb passed, the hair shimmered.
Now I just had to get dressed and ready to leave. With time to spare, I flopped onto the bed spread-eagled. Haru lay down beside me and looked up today's destination on her phone.
It would be easier if we knew the lay of the land beforehand. I checked where it was on my phone too.