MaruMA:MaHon:SSS13

Murata x Yuuri

"How about Las Vegas?"

"Huh?" Shibuya answered with bloodshot eyes and a gloomy voice as he took one of my french fries. He quickly dips it into the onion dip. All while saying he doesn't eat french fries after I asked him 'what about the sauce?'

"Okay, okay, you're in a bad mood because you didn't get enough sleep."

"That's not it."

The reason he was in a bad mood wasn't only because he didn't get enough sleep. He was disappointed in his test scores.

As soon as the last of the final exams was over, Shibuya called me. From a friend's cellphone.

When he couldn't get to a payphone, he sometimes did that sort of thing. Thanks to that, the email and phone number of that classmate could always be found in my phone's call history without fail. In other words, my phone number was also in the other phone's call history several times.

"This is bad! If things go like this I'll be held back a year!" he yelled in a panic. I had brought him out to the station to have an intervention by telling him that there was something in this world called a make-up exam system to resurrect the defeated.

Coincidentally, my academic year had mostly ended last week. Compared to public schools, the schedule at private schools is faster.

"You can't blame me. I tutored you properly before the exams and even offered my room to you yesterday because you said your brother kept on butting in at home and you couldn't study. Despite that, what exactly did you do all night?"

"… Well your room is… too jam-packed with things."

"To think that you were so weak against temptation."

Shibuya groaned while lying prostrate on the table. He had spent all night entrenched in a new game console.

"You weren't like that before, right? Wasn't your room more suitable for studying for exams before?"

"I got a little bothered by that and tried rearranging. I cleared my mind, too."

"Even so."

"Anyway, what about Las Vegas?"

"What are you talking about? And what's up with you? Why are you saying carefree things like 'how's Vegas?' with all of these Rurubu and Mapple travel pamphlets piled up in front of you!?"

"The graduation trip."

As soon as he heard those three words, Shibuya suddenly picked up his head. I can no longer see the whorl of hair on his head that was in plain view a moment ago.

"Huh!? The graduation trip!?"

"You don't need to freak out so much. Don't you have a passport? You can have Elvis sing you 'Love Me Tender' in Vegas, you know. He'll be an impersonator, though."

"Wait a minute, Murata. Your school has a graduation trip at the end of the first year!? You don't go through second and third year before that or take any exams or do any job hunting!? Or are you forming travel plans for a trip two years from now?"

Planning events is the most fun part. Having my fun get rained on, my voice turned a little disgruntled.

"Alright then, the end of the year trip is okay too."

"Like I was saying, I don't even know if I can even pass this grade!"

"It's alright."

'How!?' he mouthed.

It seems like he's trying to say that my response sounded so irresponsible it took his voice away.

"Because you always have low self-esteem. But anyway, there are Bengal tigers there. You can see them 24 hours a day."

"I don't care about tigers. Forgetting that, how can you say that so decisively. It's a test I took."

Ignoring the picture in the guidebook, Shibuya leaned forward on the table. Right now, he might start asking God for an explanation even just for drawing a lucky fortune at a temple lottery."

"Whatever you say, you'll still pass. It's just that you're only focusing on the questions you couldn't answer so you don't realize how many you got right. You at least got enough to scrape together a passing grade."

"R-really?"

"That's what I think. Okay, so assuming I have airfare, I can just earn hotel fare and money for souvenirs over there. I'll definitely win at blackjack. That game is all about probability, after all."

"Aren't minors not allowed to gamble?"

"Oh, that's right. Shame. Then it's Switzerland. You and I were the only ones who didn't get to go last time. Ah, it's okay even if you don't get a part-time job. For the time being, I'll handle travel expenses."

"Wait!" Shibuya slapped his hand down on the table so hard the iced coffee almost bounced in the air. "Why are you talking about travelling all of a sudden? Because it's spring? Because it's the season? Or because you saw it on TV? You, did you write down overseas travel as a hobby!?"

I went too far. These emotions are hard to handle. If you don't know them then you won't want or yearn for them, but once you do, you can never let them go. Your biggest fear becomes being alone again. Friendship is like the drugs that that woman drowned in after losing everything trying to grab a hold of her dreams.

"… Was that too much?"

For the slightest moment, he almost asked what I meant. But, he immediately returned to his usual, honest expression.

"That's not it. It's really too much for you to take care of the travel expenses."

And then, after finally seeming to have calmed down, he spoke while taking a printout of the exam questions out of his bag and spread it out in between the guidebooks.

"Okay, let's go. Let's go somewhere. However, the schedule and departure are going to be after the make-up exams. And, our destination should be Izu or Hakone or somewhere a little easier for a first-year in high school to get to."

"Huh? I won't say anything bad about Izu or Hakone, but aren't places like that better for when you're older? We should go to Switzerland. Switzerland. Look, the Lion of Lucerne. And look, Matterhorn. It'll help you get a passing mark on your history make-up." I tap the bundle of pamphlets with my finger and try saying something like from a commercial. "Isn't it faster to just go see?"

"… You know, Murata," Yuuri says after taking the cap off of his red pen and putting it back on again in a meaningless gesture and sinking down into the prostrate position on the table he started out in. "What I'm worried about is math."

I wonder if I bought a guidebook for Greece.

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