Golden Time:Volume1 Chapter3

Golden Time 1: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Tada Banri was talking on the telephone.

It was Saturday morning. The overly sunny station platform had few people on it, and nobody but Banri was sitting on the four-seat bench. Squinting like a dirty-looking old man in the bright sunshine, he went all the way to the very last seat to sit down. He set his small nylon sack down by his knees. I was standing by Banri’s side, trying to stick my ear to the other side of his cell-phone, by the transmit light.

He speed-dialed his mother, but in the middle of the first ring what came out of the telephone speaker was his dad. When Banri heard that voice, he flinched slightly. A little brusquely, he said, "I can’t hear you well, hello hello, it’s me, Banri." "Ah, oh", he could hear his dad answering in roughly the same brusque voice. "Mother?", Banri asked, and his father replied, "In the kitchen. Wait while I go get her." Speaking quickly to his father, Banri said, "No, that’s fine. I’ll be staying one day at the club training camp. That’s all."

In front of the bench where Banri was sitting, in spite of it being Saturday, the suited forms of three salarymen were approaching. Banri panicked and lifted up the bag that was illegally occupying one of the seats, putting it on his lap.

"OK then, until next time I call!"

"Oh", answered his father, and quickly hung up, as if in a race to hang up the phone. From such a short conversation, Banri was suddenly exhausted. It was only his father, but even so it had been tense. He didn’t understand why he should feel that way. Still, Banri wondered what his father must be thinking about after a call like that.

Or would his feelings be hurt, despite the distance?

Nonchalantly acting like he was combing his bangs, Banri’s cool!, he snuck a look at the armpit of his T-shirt. Finding nothing changed, he smiled. Safe. He let out a sigh. The other night, suddenly his father was asking him over the phone, "What’s up? What are you doing? Has nothing changed?", asking him all sorts of things. The next three minutes were worrisome. Awkwardly hanging up the phone afterwards, sweat had been running down his arm all the way to his elbow. The mysteries of the human body... while muttering such things to himself, kneeling on the floor, he was sticking layers of facial tissue in his cold wet armpits, three at a time. That was one miserable scene.

In the end, none of the three companions sat down at the bench, but rather amused themselves standing around and talking not far from Banri. Banri decided to put the bag he was holding back on the next seat. But one of the salarymen jerked... seemed to squirm, or maybe jumped when he picked up the bag again. But he didn’t sit down. He wasn’t about to sit, but rather it seemed he was only switching his briefcase from his right hand to his left.

Banri eventually put the bag back up on his lap, and once more opened up his cell-phone. The train still hadn’t arrived, and he hadn’t received any texts from anybody. I took the seat next to Banri, and together with Banri looked over at the small screen on the phone. Fiddling with the buttons little by little, he wrote a note.

My form is not seen, not by Banri, not by anybody. Not father, nobody here knows what I am doing.

Wham, at that moment, the bench suddenly shook hard. Banri’s face snapped up. It had occurred to the three guys to all sit down at once.

Nobody in this world even noticed my existence.

* * *

"Kaga-saan"

It had just turned noon when they arrived at the main gate of the campus.

When she noticed Banri’s hand waving, her beautiful face lit up, pale white like the moon in broad daylight. There weren’t any lectures on Saturday, and there weren’t any students in sight, so it was much quieter around than it was on weekdays.

"Good afternoon, Tada-kun"

"Did the older girl show up?"

"Not yet, it seems. Though the expected time is coming soon."

Kouko gracefully raised her slender wrist and looked at her delicate watch. Eyelids hidden by her long eyelashes, flickering transparently with a pearl-like sheen, Banri was completely captivated inside of ten seconds. Absolutely dumbstruck. Again today, Kouko was flawlessly beautiful.

An orange-colored one-piece silk dress wrapped in a large cardigan. High-heeled sandals with plenty of beads. Pretty toenails lined up and carefully painted beige. A small carry-case. In her pierced ears were brightly glittering diamond drop earrings. Banri had no idea what to make of her hair-style. Her hair was braided and wrapped loosely around her head, raising her bangs like a headband. One loose lock of hair softly escaped, curving down her neck, and even that looked like a carefully prepared accessory.

A perfect beauty, Kaga Kouko. And Banri liked beautiful people. He could declare that with pride.

Of course it was the right thing to come. While shyly smiling, he averted his eyes about five million light years from Kouko’s face.

Having been invited by the upperclassman from **** Girl’s College during yesterday’s encounter, Banri and Kouko were going to participate in the ‘All-Around Intercollegiate Club’ to participate in a freshmen welcome outing.

From one day to the next, it was really sudden. You could probably say, in fact, that to Banri it was a puzzling development.

Yesterday the upperclassman had taken them to a café, certainly an crowded hole in the wall, and then they’d been served café-au-lait in bowls. Drinking, he thought ‘This is a café-au-lait bowl?’, but it sure was cool! Agreeing on that point, even Banri kept up with the conversation.

Certainly after that, what started was a perfectly normal conversation about life as college students. Get all your first year language credits by home study, you should get a part time job, by the first year summer break a person could have a relationship, it’s been difficult for any student to find a job this year, and so on.

Irregardless of whether they were interested in the subject matter, her talk was inconsiderately long. Eventually having gotten tired, Banri was politely nodding yes to everything. Kouko looked like she had gotten tired too. Before Banri knew it, along with the already silenced Kouko, they got to where they just answered on demand, "Yessir", "Yes", "Is that so?" or laughed.

Before they noticed, three hours had passed. Completely surprised that outside the window it had gotten completely dark, "Then we’ll meet tomorrow at the main gate, at ten-fifteen, OK!", indicated for the first time that they were actually committing to do something.

<~~8% Completed~~>

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