IMPORTANT:
I edited this chapter to include the missing footnote.
Moonlight
〜Yae’s Side〜
“Kazu-kun?”
“Yae. What is the matter?”
Kazu-kun was nowhere to be found when I came out from the bath. Okaa-san and Otou-san said he returned to his room when I asked them, but I didn’t get any response. I searched the other places since his room’s light wasn’t on either, and he was on the veranda for some reason.
“What are you doing?”
“I thought I would watch the stars for a bit. As one would expect of being in the mountains huh. It is very beautiful”
There is a sky full of stars when I sit beside Kazu-kun and look up at the sky. It’s true that you don’t see this view often. I wonder if he didn’t turn on his room’s light because the stars are more visible if it’s dark.
“Beautiful”
“Furthermore, it is a full moon today. It goes for the stars as well, but the moon is beautiful1 huh, even more so than usual”
My heart jumped at the words that came out of Kazu-kun’s mouth suddenly. My face turned hot in one go. If ever there was a time I found the moonlight to be a hindrance, it would be now.
I look in Kazu-kun’s direction from the corner of my eyes, wondering what he meant by that. Kazu-kun is looking at the sky with a smile even though I’m looking at him. I think the words just now were also merely his thoughts.
His side face that isn’t conscious of me and how he said those toying words without even knowing my feelings infuriated me.
That’s why I reduced the distance with Kazu-kun, whom was slightly apart, to 0. And then, after taking Kazu-kun’s arm and wrapping my arm around it in a way where I’m embracing it, I hold hands with him.
“Ya-, Yae!? What is the matter all of a sudden?”
Perhaps he was surprised by my action, Kazu-kun turned his face in my direction. He finally looked over here. It’s a bit embarrassing, but I’m glad I did it.
“I felt like it. I can’t?”
“N-, no, it is not that you can’t……”
“I prefer it like this then”
“Got it……”
Kazu-kun said just that and ended up turning his face towards the sky again. But the moonlight is illuminating Kazu-kun’s cheeks, which have gotten slightly red. In other words, unlike just now, he’s conscious of my existence.
It makes me utterly happy when I think of that. And blissful. I hold the palm that’s bigger than mine tightly.
“Ah, it is a shooting star”
I feel bad for Kazu-kun, who says that excitedly, but the current me isn’t interested in seeing the stars or the moon. I’m only paying attention to the Kazu-kun beside me.
It’d be great if time stopped like this. I laid my head on Kazu-kun’s shoulder while thinking of something like that.
- 月が奇麗ですね (Tsuki Ga Kirei Desune). Literally, it means, ‘the moon is beautiful huh’.
However, there was an anecdote that, when Natsume Souseki (Japanese writer) was an English teacher, he was asked by a student to translate ‘I love you‘ from English to Japanese. He said, ‘Japanese people don’t say such things frankly’ and translated it to ‘the moon is beautiful huh’
