Strange Memories With You, My Dear

Chapter 02.03

Fate or Probability

Translated by KuroNeko
Edited by Omkar

We would go about our “collecting fragments of memories” every two weeks or so.

We decided to go look for the “Green Space” in Yuuko’s notebooks one day in the fourth week of August, for the third time during the summer vacation, and on the day that this search would be the final of the summer vacation.

I couldn’t recall anything about it, but Yuuko appeared to recall going there with me, so I was certain she would remember if we went there, so I resolved to look for it.

“It should be in the apartment complex where Tomoki-kun lived.”

There were, however, a number of apartment complexes in the vicinity. It’ll take a lot of time to walk around all of these. We tried for a while on Street View on the internet, but neither of us could find the right location, so it appeared we would have to go there in person.

It would be hard to visit the entire city in a single day, so let’s just focus on this area for now. And if the girl had been one of our friends, she would have lived nearby.

When I said this, Yuuko nodded and replied, “Yeah.”

“Well, not here, I guess.” And after a brief walk around the grounds, we talked and proceeded to another location. 

In front of us walked a somewhat taller girl, dressed in a school uniform. The unusual uniform, with its light purple top and navy blue skirt with green and red checks, was from a school in this city called Irisawa Higashi High School.

I didn’t mind at all, but Yuuko suddenly tugged at the hem of my shit.

“Yukinari-kun, that person…”

“Eh?”

I stopped and looked back at her.

“I know her.”

Yuuko was holding the hem of my shirt and staring ahead.

“Minami-san…?”

Then, quick on her feet, she walked toward the girl in the uniform. I hurriedly followed her.

“Um, excuse me.”

When she called out, the person turned around with a “Yes.” She sported long black hair, huge eyes with single lids, and a mature demeanor. 

When I saw the person up close, I felt a strong sensation of deja vu, although it was considerably less than when I saw Yuuko.

So I was skeptical whether she was really “Minami” from my unknown memory. But Yuuko bowed her head flatly and cut the conversation short.

“Umm… Well, I don’t mean to be rude out of the blue…, but you are someone named Minami, right?”

“Yes, I’m, but…”

She responded suspiciously. Yuuko smiled at me, then talked a little quicker and resumed her talk.

“My name is Fukuhara Yuuko. ——Um, don’t you remember me?”

But she, uh… and awkwardly said

“… Have we met before?”

With a puzzled expression on her face, she peered at Yuuko and me from behind her.

“Didn’t we played together when we were in elementary school? We go to the pool, have dinner together, etc.”

“… Sure, I used to go to the pool with my friends in the summer, but…”

She clammed up a bit, then said apologetically.

“… I was there with friends from the same elementary school, so I don’t remember going with you guys…”

Yuuko returned my gaze with a perplexed expression on her face this time. But she instantly swung around to face front and proceeded to continue with her words.

“Um, I’m going to ask you something strange, but what is it that you feel like you know something that you’re not supposed to know——”

“Yuuko-san.”

I interrupted her by calling out to her and shaking my head slightly. Maybe she doesn’t have any “the unsual memories.” I figured if we explained the situation here any further, she’d simply think we were weirdos.

“Maybe you got the wrong person.”

When I said that, Yuuko looked a little sad, then said, “Sorry, it seems I got the wrong person…” And then she bowed her head.

“No…”

She shook her head with a puzzled look on her face.

I bowed my head, too, said I was sorry, and turned on my heel.

When we turned back, the person who appeared to be Minami had not moved from her spot and was peering at us with suspicion.

“… She didn’t seem to remember.” In a depressed, low tone of voice, Yuuko said.

But surely, it was someone named Minami, so Yuuko’s intuition must have been right.

I followed up by saying.

But then again, why doesn’t that person have the “memory”?

——Are there some conditions to it? I thought about it for a while, but still had no idea what to expect.

◇◇◇

We had visited four apartment complexes by the time it became dark that day, but we couldn’t find the “Green Space.”

It was late August, and the days were becoming shorter. A brown-headed cowbird’s chirping could be heard coming from the apartment complex where we had been exploring earlier.

“Sorry… I pulled you all around…”

After walking around for three hours, Yuuko was sweating a lot.

“No. There’s not much evidence, and it can’t be helped. Besides, I usually study for exams all the time, so it’s a nice change of pace to be able to walk outside like this every once in a while.”

“I see.”

Yuuko smiled.

Throughout the summer of “collecting fragments of memories,” I knew I wouldn’t be able to figure out what was causing this weird phenomenon, or even find a clue to it.

But, it seems that humans can get used to anything. Two months have gone since I met Yuuko, and my amazement at this phenomenon, as well as the eerie feeling I experienced, have dissipated, to the point that I no longer cared about figuring out the reasoning behind it.

There were many more pressing issues that needed to be handled first. By the end of this month, I need to have finished reading a world history reference book, chose which university and department I want to go, and boosted my English deviation score, which has been slowly improving, by at least five points by winter.

I dropped Yuuko off at the station as usual. The temperature of the blowing wind has recently been steadily lowering, indicating that fall is on its way. The sky was a blend of dark purple and pastel crimson, and LED streetlights sensed the darkness and sparkled with white light.

“——What we found out, there wasn’t much. We had the chance to meet Minami, but she didn’t seem to have any memory of us.”

As we walked, Yuuko said.

“… Right.” I nodded my head.

We were getting closer to Irisawa Station. The cries of the screaming higgledy-piggledy were blended with the melodies of arrivals and departures, as well as the running sound of a train just entering the station.

“——But it was fun to visit different places.”

Yuuko muttered as she looked up at the dimly lit cityscape.

“It’s been so long since I’ve been able to walk around this city, it was like I was back in elementary school.”

I saw Yuuko off to the ticket gate, and she walked down the steps leading to the platform behind it after waving me off.

Suddenly, I began to wonder if my relationship with Yuuko might be severed in the future.

Once we lose interest in this phenomenon, we are, by nature, strangers who had no real contact with each other.

Things will become busier once school begins in the second semester, and as winter approaches, exam preparation will reach a climax. We shall no longer have the leisure to devote to such complicated matters.

Will everything that has happened become a strange memory about a strange event that happened at one point in my life and we will never see each other again?

Me and Yuuko have a strange relationship, brought together by a strange event. In comparison to my classmates, friends in the same club, family, and relatives, I felt that our bond is so fragile.

As I walked out of the station, I could hear the vibrant rhythm of the departing train, and the up train that Yuuko was to board was just starting up.

In the gloom of a late summer evening, I slowed my steps toward home and watched the train with my gaze until it vanished beyond the surrounding buildings. The gentle, clear chirps of fall insects sounded from the nearby grass as the sound of the train faded.

◇◇◇

The second semester of my third year of high school began.

A week following the summer vacation, our high school has a cultural festival. At this time of year, there are cardboard boxes, paint cans, and plastic sheets everywhere in the school building, and it is noisy due to the large number of students that remain after school to prepare.

The last high school-like event for the third years, and the humanities class, in particular, generally gets quite involved and excited about it.

Our stiff science class of physics and math electives, on the other hand, was made up of students who were not as enthusiastic about such things.

There was a notion in the air that why should I dedicate my precious time to the cultural festival, which had devolved into nothing more than an event for flamboyant fools at our school, at this f*cking important time of year, autumn, before the exam season began at the start of the new year. Not just the boys, but some of the girls were the same way.

Many of the students in this class were studious and focused on what they needed to do, with a clear sense of what they wanted to do. It’s not that they don’t get along, but they all don’t really care much about others. I didn’t dislike this individualistic atmosphere.

Our class decided to have a Western music café during a meeting before the summer vacation. Everyone agreed when one of the boys, who was a fan of Western music, proposed the simple idea of just playing Western music through an amplifier and selling beverages.

Previously, I had thought of the ultimately uninspiring idea of a “study room,” but I turned it down since I was scared that others would be angry with me.

We then talked in a scientific manner about how to finish the preparations in a timely manner while also making the operation more efficient.

As a result, we decided to place a massive amplifier taken from the music room at the back of the classroom, connect it to the music player, set up desks and chairs, stock up on ready-made food and beverages, and keep signage and other decorations as minimal as possible.

In contrast to the uninspiring idea time, the discussion about how to get through the festival season without spending too much time and effort was very exciting.

Class T-shirts were also to be made in order to give the class a “I’m motivated” vibe. However, we chose to keep things basic here as well. We choose a simply written “3-A” in white Gothic font on the chest of a regular navy blue T-shirt. It was quickly designed and ordered from the vendor by a guy who knew how to use graphic editing software.

So we were very efficient in our preparations (the schedule was set up so that we could complete all of the manual preparations in six hours if we calculated with a margin), and we didn’t have to spend time and effort on class presentations, but there was an extremely weird project at the overall event led by the Cultural Festival Executive Committee.

“Fortune Number,” The goal of the project, as it was called, was to find one person of the opposite gender in the school year who had a card with the same number throughout the term, and so on. They said that pairs with the same number will be at the closing ceremony together.

Our school, by the way, does not have the same number of boys and girls, therefore a small number of students will meet with the same gender. It was the buzz of the school, either as a “failure” or a “win-win” since it would make an interesting tale.

I wondered what kind of idiot thought up such an idea.

After the opening ceremony on the first day of the two-day festival, cards with ribbons to wear around one’s neck were handed. My card was emblazoned with the number 125 in huge blue letters.

Aside from working on class entertainment (carrying beverages to seats, collecting money, etc.), I spent the festival with a group of four other students in the same class, wandering around the school and discussing in an empty classroom, which was an uninspiring way to spend the festival.

I didn’t need to find a card partner; I was just going to hang out with my buddies for the closing ceremony as needed.

On the second day of the festival, though, I was simply wandering down the corridor by myself.

It was an unintentional hoax.

Sometimes the god of probability does exactly what we don’t want it to do.

The likelihood of this becoming a reality at this school, which has roughly 200 boys and 200 girls each grade, is about one in 200.

Mineko was walking from the front with a group of girls from the same grade, and the card she held on her chest read 125 in large red letters.

Mineko, too, came to a halt with a firm “No way!”

The girls around us, who were Mineko’s friends, noticed that we had the same number on the card that Mineko and I wore around our necks and shrieked in high spirits, “Oh, match!”

“And if I’m not mistaken, Nakayama-kun and Mineko are ex-neighbors.” “It’s fate.” “Minako, it’s going to be a love triangle between you, Sato-kun and Nakayama-kun.” Mineko was being cheered. 

I had no clue how she felt about it since Mineko instantly regained her composure, laughed and said something like, “Stop it” and began frolicking with the tension of the kids around her.

I hadn’t seen Mineko in person since we shook hands and left amicably on the day we retired from club activities around three months ago.

◇◇◇

The two-day festival had come to an end, and the closing ceremony was still going on in the gymnasium, with the lights down.

Before the closing ceremony, each student’s name, class, and number were announced for those who had not met someone with the same number throughout the time, and two persons with the same number were matched up to attend the closing event, which was virtually obligatory after all.

Mineko is seated right next to me, her legs curled at an angle, facing toward the stage. There is an award ceremony for the class whose presentation received the highest assessment in a questionnaire on a special website made by members of the organizing committee.

“How are things going with Sato-kun?”

Since we hadn’t had any conversation, I kind of asked that. Mineko turned her gaze from the stage to me.

“Yes, well, we had one fight over summer vacation.”

“A fight? Why?”

“It’s just a little thing that doesn’t even have a clear reason. We were talking on the phone when I said something that upsetted both of us, and things became tight, and we didn’t speak for nearly a week.”

“Was that all right?”

“Yes. We both apologized and the matter was settled. That day, we were both in a bad mood.”

“Is that how it is?”

When I asked about it, she gave me a knowing look and replied, “That’s just the way it is.”

Hmm, I said, and looked at the podium during the closing ceremony. The principal critiqued the event as a whole and expressed his gratitude to the committee members.

We fell silent again for a while. But, as though to break the stillness, Mineko added, “Nakayama-kun?” 

“Are you going to continue to do track and field?”

I shook my head.

“I probably won’t do it. After the last tournament, I’ve made up my mind. I’m sure that I’ll be able to study what I want to study when I go to college, so I’ll prioritize that and do my best.”

“I see. Have you decided what school you want to go to?”

“For the most part. But I haven’t narrowed it down and haven’t prioritized it yet.”

“That is, after all, still the fact. I’m like that too.”

When the principal’s talk ended, there was a round of applause. I clapped my hands with those around me, although having barely heard the speech.

Then suddenly she changed the subject.

“Nakayama-kun, you got a girlfriend?”

I was taken off guard, and my agitation almost showed in my expression and demeanor, but I took a deep breath and addressed the question again in a flat tone of voice.

“Why?”

“How is it going?”

She pursued rather than responding to my cross-examination. Mineko and I shared a neighborhood, so I wondered if she had  noticed me  walking with Yuuko during the summer vacation. The image of Yuuko sprang to mind. To begin with, it was hard to adequately explain her connection with me to a stranger who was unaware of the circumstances.

“——It’s kind of complex.” I said.

“Ha? What do you mean by complex?”

“I mean, did you see me walking with a girl during summer vacation?”

“I saw.”

I knew it, I thought.

“Cute girl with a short cut. I thought you had a girlfriend.”

Yuuko in light clothing, whom I had seen numerous times over the summer vacation, flashed across my thoughts. And I was a little saddened by the thought of never seeing her again.

“I met her a few times, but I’m not even sure if I can call him a friend.”

Hmm, Mineko murmured.

“I’ll support you; let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”

She said as she tapped me on my shoulder.

“Thanks.”

It was strange to be told that by someone who had previously rejected me, but now that we were friends again, I chose not to worry too much about it. This realization assured me that I no longer harbored romantic feelings for Mineko.

Then I said, “I hope things work out for both of us,” I said, trying to cut the conversation short.

“Why so polite?”

Mineko laughed at that.

The last words of the closing ceremony were delivered on stage by the head of the executive committee. I stood up shortly after that, as soon as the closing ceremony was over. Mineko, who was standing next me, said, “I have an appointment with Sato-kun,” and gave a small wave of her hand.

“Yes.” I nodded, and instead of attending the forthcoming after-party, I returned to my classroom, grabbed my bag, and left the school building, which was still adorned in a gloomy manner.

It was 6:30 p.m., the sun had already set, and it was nearly night-time. The sky was a dark, pale ink color, and there was a chilly breeze blowing. In the distance, low vibrating sounds and cheers can be heard from the gymnasium, where the band was performing for the after-party. Suddenly, I noticed low, floating gray clouds in the open sky above the land.

As I took the train home that day, phrases like “fate” and “probability” circled in my head.

That day, I met Yuuko, maybe with no more unusual probability than a beautiful day and that number being together today. However, when I thought about what was happening to her and me, I felt convinced that it was more than a coincidence.

When I got home, I changed into my loungewear and read a physics book. Despite the fact that the book is based on quantum theory and deals with topics that I am interested in, I was unable to concentrate on the reading and the content did not sink in. I sighed as I laid the book down on my pillow, having read roughly 10 pages.

Picking up a phone that was nearby, I activated my calling app. I kept seeing the name “Fukuhara Yuuko,” and after much hesitation, I touched it.

It was the first time I had approached her for no apparent reason. I felt an unquenchable want to hear her voice for some reason.

After the sound of the line connecting, Yuuko’s voice came through the speaker, she was holding it to her ear.

“Nakayama-kun? What happened?”

“No—It’s just that I wanted to talk to you.”

“What?”

Yuuko said, then.

“Did you remember something?”

“Ah—That’s not it…”

“Eh? Isn’t it something to do with ‘the unusual memory thing’?”

“Yes, It’s a little different…”

“Hmm?”

I could hear her, and she seemed dubious. I could imagine her craning her neck over the phone.

I wanted a normal relationship with Yuuko, not a special relationship based only on the fact that we both experienced a strange phenomena. Now I was more interested in Yuuko than in the unexplainable events that happened to us. I had gained a sincere desire to get to know her better over the course of the summer’s “collecting fragments of memories.”

“Hey,” And I cut to the chase.

“I wanted to know more about you.”

Yuuko was deafeningly quiet on the other end of the phone. I worried when I realized my words had been too abrupt. When it comes to anything like this, I like to stew over my thoughts in my own head before acting on them, as in Mineko’s case.

Then I heard a small voice say, “Uh huh.” And then…

“Can I ask you one question?” The word came back to me.

Doubtful, I had no choice but to answer, “Yes.” Yuuko went on.

“Do you remember going camping in the mountains with me?”

“Mountain?”

For a time, I attempted to recall if I had that memory in my head. But I didn’t recall that.

“That being said, it seems like there is. But I don’t seem to have a clear memory.  Maybe I just don’t remember, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in my dreams…”

That, Yuuko said.

“Why?”

“——If that’s the case, it’s fine.”

Eh? A voice leaked out. It was now my time to be puzzled and at a loss for words. As I pondered what she was on about, a faint image of a bonfire, a night sky full of stars, and for some reason, a crater in the moon surfaced from deep inside my thoughts.

“Ah.” I faintly gasped.

“What happened?”

“I’m starting to recall a few memories. Such as bonfires and the moon. But it’s difficult to tell if that was a mountain or not…”

Then Yuuko said in a panic.

“Wait a minute, don’t remember any more.”

“Why?”

“By all means.”

I twisted my head, trying to figure out what she was saying. I, on the other hand, had no idea. As I reflected about it, some of the images that had been floating around in my head disappeared, as if lost in the fog.

Despite my suspicions about Yuuko’s panic, I thought that since I had already phoned her, I should ask her what I wanted to hear, so I said boldly.

“Can I come over to your place at this time to see you again and talk ?”

“Yes, okay, it’s all fine.” She replied with a panicked tone that did not seem to have worn off. She appeared to be attempting to shift the subject, but because we had promised to meet again anyhow, I thought that was OK with me. Then Yuuko continued, “I’m sorry, my mother called me for dinner.”

“Okay, sorry to call on such short notice.”

We exchanged “see you later” just before hanging up the phone. I took my phone from my ear, closed the calling app, and left it next to my bedside book.

My heartbeat was fast as I laid in bed with my eyes closed. When I reflected on our chat, I realized I had made a strange phone call, but at the end of the day, I was delighted since we had made arrangements to meet again. I don’t see her anymore now that the summer vacation is over and done collecting the memory pieces.

That’s what I was thinking.