Strange Memories With You, My Dear

Chapter 02.02

Fate or Probability

Translated by KuroNeko
Edited by Omkar

Yuuko said as she strolled through the city, “It’s very nostalgic.” She hadn’t been here since she relocated to her present residence in Toshima Ward during spring break, right before starting junior high school.

“I used to live in the neighborhood down the street.”

She mentioned this while pointing in the direction we were now heading.

“You used to live fairly close to here.”

Since the school district was divided by a river that ran between my apartment building and the residential neighborhood where she lived, we had different elementary schools, although Yuuko’s house and mine were relatively neighboring.

“May I go look at it for an instant?” she said, so we went to look at the house.

I rounded the corner and entered the residential neighborhood. The street was relatively new, the tarmac was immaculate, and the homes were well-designed.

The house where she had resided was at the end of the block. It was a two-story house, and it appeared that other people were currently residing there. Flowers were planted in the front yard, a bicycle was parked in the corner of the parking lot, and curtains were put over the windows.

Yuuko murmured as she stood in front of the house, “It’s a little strange. It feels like a lie that I used to go to elementary school from this house every day.”

“Did you have any friends in the neighborhood?”

“On this street, there were no kids my age. I used to attend school with a girl who is one year younger than me sometimes… But I haven’t been in touch with her since I moved away.”

Yuuko turned to me after a few moments of staring at the house where she spent her childhood, saying, “Thank you very much, let’s go now.” Then I turned around and proceeded to the destination, a modest building with a cram school, while checking my smartphone’s map.

Yuuko’s residence was about a fifteen-minute walk away. On the first floor, there is a beauty salon and a sign advertising a law firm. The first-floor hair salon was glassed in and looked fine, but the building as a whole appeared to be older, with parts of the paint coming off. There was a shrine nearby, and the sound of many cicadas could be heard from the shrine’s trees.

We climbed the steps and decided to enter the building. The concrete staircase with a rubber non-slip surface was so small that if three persons lined up, the sides would already be crowded.

We climbed up the steps in a straight line till we came to a stop in front of a glass door with the words “Irisawa Cramschool” written on it.

As soon as I did, the faint sensation of déjà vu that I had previously felt grew stronger. I feel like I’ve got my hand on this doorknob a million times to get it to open. Even the chilly sensation of the metal doorknob returned clearly, as if it were a true recollection, as if it were real.

I reached for the doorknob. The sensation was precisely what I had been thinking about. Surprisingly, goosebumps appeared on my body.

“There is no doubt about that. I recall this location. I mean, when I arrived here, a lot of memories came flooding back to me.”

“I knew it.”

Yuuko exclaimed excitedly.

She gazed through the glass door with a peculiar and wistful expression on her face. I could see a counter right there, where a young woman sat, working on something.

“How about we don’t go inside?”

I said so. Yuuko nodded and returned my gaze from behind the glass door.

Then I walked the tiny steps once again and exited the building. It was too hot to be outside after the rainy season had ended, so I sat on a seat in the shade of a neighboring shrine and took a little rest.

It was 3:30 p.m. in the heat of the summer. As the bright sunshine streamed down from the beautiful blue sky, the cicadas chirped loudly to each other, shaking the ground. Yuuko was sweating despite the fact that she was sitting still, and she was continually wiping it away with her handkerchief.

“I’m going to buy something to drink from the vending machine; do you want anything to drink as well?”

“Milk tea is fine,” she remarked as I stood up.

I returned to the bench after purchasing a bottle of mineral water for myself and a cup of milk tea for Yuuko, which she had been drinking when we met at the amusement park the day before. When I offered her a 300ml plastic bottle with water droplets on the surface that had been nicely cold, she remarked, “Please excuse me. How much did it cost?”

“Don’t mind. The train fare for you to come here is significantly higher.”

Yuuko was reaching into her bag when I intervened. A round journey from her nearest station, Mejiro, to this town would cost around a thousand yen.

Yuuko smiled reservedly and replied, “Thank you,” before opening the lid of the plastic bottle and drinking the milk tea. As the wind blew, the speckled pattern of sunlight pouring through the trees around the seat flashed every now and then.

◇

After the break, we dumped our drink bottles and proceeded to our next destination, a stationery store.

I noticed a sign that read Yoshida Stationery Store as I walked through the residential neighborhood, immersed in the searing heat emanating from the tarmac.

“Here it is.”

I muttered this when I came to a halt in front of the shop.

“Yes. I’ve had a couple dreams about getting a mechanical pencil here.” Yuuko murmured, opening the glass door to enter, as she opened her illustrated “dream diary.” There was a woman who appeared to be a shopkeeper and an elderly lady in a wheelchair behind the counter at the back of the shop, where different writing tools and office supplies were stacked up.

“Welcome,” said the lady.

I’d come here a few times with my friends when I was in elementary school, so my recollections of this site were stronger than my memories of Yuuko. However, when I walked into the store with her and was overwhelmed by the fragrance of the store, vague recollections surfaced, slowly but steadily building a firm vision.

Yuuko, who had been strolling around the store, came to a halt, smiled at me, and said, “There it is, there it is.”

“That’s it. See.”

When I drew near to her, Yuuko opened her dream notebook and presented it to me. The pink mechanical pencil she was holding now had slightly different features than the design in her notebook, but the most recognizable floral symbol remained the same.

“It was meant to have a bird on it…”

“Did you recall anything?”

I nodded.

“I was struck by the fragrance as I stepped inside the store just now… Just a nudge…”

As I mentioned, I looked at the product shelf and did a quick search, and it was easy to discover. I couldn’t help but exclaim, “Ah!” in delight.

“It’s real… The bird symbol…”

I took up the blue mechanical pencil I’d found.

“This. I recognize that as well.”

“I knew it,” Yuuko said.

As we were doing this, the lady at the store looked at us with interest or suspicion.

“I’ll buy this.”

Yuuko said happily.

“Ah, then I will too.”

Yuuko’s tenseness made me feel like I was having a good time too, and buying this mechanical pencil was more of a “memory” than a “evidence.”

When I paid the counter lady, she wrapped the pencils (which appeared to be good ones, costing a thousand yen apiece) in a thin paper bag.

We sat on a bench near the vending machine after leaving the stationery store, opened the bag, looked at the pencil again, and then put it in our backpack so we wouldn’t lose it.

It was already half past four o’clock. The temperature remained hot, but the sun was beginning to set in the west. I checked the distance I’d gone on my wearable device and found that I’d already walked about five kilometers since meeting her.

“Shall we call it a day?”

“Yes,” I said, and Yuuko agreed, too.

Yuuko and I walked to the nearest train station. We went to the station together, chatting the whole way, then parted ways at the ticket gate. She waved and walked down to the train platform, behind the ticket gate.

Then I returned to the road and walked home alone through the dying city. I sat in my room’s desk chair, took out a slightly weighted mechanical pencil from a paper bag, and gazed at it for a long time. While doing so…

Although Yuuko seemed to be enjoying this “collecting fragments of memories,” I still felt as though I knew nothing about the cause.

But it was fun to walk with her. To be honest, Yuuko was my type of girl, so I thought it would be reasonable to say that I’m “lucky” if she was the connection between me and her, whether it was a strange phenomenon or not.

After a time, when the room was becoming dark, I turned on the light and began preparing for the exam. The new mechanical pencil I’d just purchased felt familiar in my hand, as if I’d been using it for years, and it was the appropriate weight to write with. It was also composed of metal and appeared to be solid, so it would last a long time. Unlike inexpensive plastic pencils, the pen was unlikely to split apart and break in the pen case one day.

Because it had gotten into my hands through a mysterious phenomenon, I thought I should use it to study for examinations and important exams as a good luck charm.