Date Her Instead Vol. 2

Chapter Eleven: Uptown

A couple weeks into summer break left Haruna constantly sitting around. Her mother complained about her own laziness, but there wasn't much that could be done about it. After all, Haruna only had a couple of friends she could hang out with, and one wasn't even in town. At this point, she thought she'd even take conditioning for her club over just wasting away on her couch.

It was at that thought that Haruna's phone rang. Answering it, she was surprised by who had called. "Hi Haru-chi," the sultry voice said. "Hey Jasmine-chan. What's up?" Haruna asked, confused. It was true that Haruna and Jasmine were friends, but their main connection to each other was through Chiyo. If not for her, then Haruna and Jasmine probably would've never even spoken to each other. So because of that connection, when Chiyo was missing, the two of them didn't tend to hang out together on their own.

"Wanna go uptown with me tomorrow?" Jasmine asked. "I hope it's not to pick up guys..." Haruna thought, then responded. "Sure, I guess. Where should we meet?" "How about my house? We can go to the bus stop from there," Jasmine said. Haruna sighed. Jasmine's house was definitely closer to the nearest bus stop, but it was also in the opposite direction that Haruna went from the school. To give a geographical layout, Iwanai Municipal High School sat southwest of the main part of town. From there, Haruna and Kanako lived about a quarter of a mile northwest of the school, while Michi, Itsuki and Mayu were all relatively south of the school. Chiyo and Akio lived directly west of the school (so when Chiyo meets up with Haruna in the mornings, it is a little out of the way) and finally, Jasmine lived to the northeast-ish direction of the school. From that point, going further up would take a person to the main roads and businesses of Iwanai, essentially downtown.

The problem was that there was a bit of a transportation gap in between where the school was and where, well, everything else was. For one, the nearest bus stop was around 8 to 10 blocks away depending on the location one was coming from, potentially farther. The other typical form of public transit was a train, but most stations don't sidle up right next to a school. Besides, that problem didn't really matter much considering there were no trains in Iwanai to begin with. The nearest station was Kozawa Station, which was about a 20-25 minute drive away. So left with little other choice, until they could get to the main part of town, people either walked everywhere or somehow found a ride.

"If that doesn't work I could always call a ride service or something. Although, they're not very reliable. Actually I think there's less than 10 of them in the city..." Jasmine trailed off. "No, it's fine. When Kanako and I went on that fake date a while back, we walked all over the place, so it's whatever," Haruna said. "Ohhh, right, your fake date that ended in disaster," Jasmine commented. "Look, do you want me to go with you or not?" Haruna shot back, not caring to be reminded of her past failures. "Yeah, yeah, no need to get all huffy on me Haru-chi. Let's say tomorrow at 10. Sound good?" "Yeah, sure," Haruna agreed, and that was the end of the call.

Tossing her phone down beside her, Haruna thought for a moment about hanging out with just Jasmine. "It's not like I don't like her," she said to herself. "We just never do this. I don't even remember the last time we would've, if we ever have." Of course, part of the reason for their lack of hanging out was because Jasmine normally had a steady streamline of boyfriends. "Come to think of it, last summer she was with a different guy every week. I'm pretty sure one of them even took her to some island."

Haruna also realized that Jasmine hadn't said what exactly they'd be doing uptown. "I just hope it's nothing out of my comfort zone," Haruna thought, now beginning to dread the coming day. Knowing there was nothing she could do about it now, Haruna spent the rest of her time lying around like she had all summer.