Editing Iriya no Sora UFO no Natsu:Another Summer Break (1/2)

Iriya laughed in a high voice.

It may be for a mere blink of an eye, but Asaba definitely heard it. 

Iriya ran out from the toilet of the ghost station, spinning around and around in the midst of the evening sunlight, her legs quickly becoming tangled causing her to fall on her backside.

She looked up at Asaba who had hurriedly ran over,

“My head feels so light!”

Asaba laughed infectiously and Iriya bent double forwards at that.

“My back feels hot!”

Ah…that’s right, Asaba thought.

With the warmth of the setting sun penetrating through her summer uniform to strike her back, Iriya was fantastically fresh.

She had cut her hair.

Unflinchingly and in one stroke as well. 

Her waist length hair was shortened until it was now less than shoulder length.

“Do you like it?”

Asaba enquired to aid Iriya as he stared at that white hair waving in the wind close to her ear. 

Iriya nodded repeatedly while making an expression that she was greatly enjoying herself and then quickly shaking her head left and right while laughing like she was being tickled.

Well it’s inevitable for her to be excited at the feel of her now completely different hairstyle.

Asaba felt a sense of relief from the bottom of his heart. While it may have been pure white, suggesting that Iriya cut that long hair of hers took much courage from him.

Iriya drew back the hem of her outer garment.

“What?”

“I’m hungry.”

Iriya was just like a child at an amusement park.

This is just too wonderful, thought Asaba. Just two days after being liberated from Sonohara Airbase and Iriya was truly being happy.

“Well, let’s go then.”

The gauze on his nape was starting to itch after absorbing sweat.
 
Shifting the duffel bag strap that was biting into his right shoulder to his left, he rose and set off first. He surreptitiously scanned the surroundings as he ran. 

The ghost station of the countryside that wasn’t exactly a sightseeing spot stood elegantly in silence; the bus-stop where people would sit on the sun-baked benches, the telephone line extending from the phone box like an umbilical cord, the taxi boards, the half filled garbage dump, the converted bicycle parking lot. 

Asaba went over to the front of the juice machine, his left hand unconsciously grasping for the change return slot. 

Iriya, who was watching him from behind happily mimicked his actions.

She headed down an unknown road. 

He’d better do the right thing, thought Asaba.


Without any major reason, they decided to head south. Before dawn they had ditched their bikes, walked on a railway track covered in rust-colored pebbles that had been trampled into it towards a station of which its name they did not know, and were waiting on the platform for the first train.