{WARNING: MAY CONTAIN FOOD PUNS}
...Man.
The sun's starting to set, and all I've got to my name is pocket change and a bag of soggy chicken nuggets.
"Hey," I turned to the boy next to me, with hair spikier than Kn*ckles the Echidna. "'Jello'! It's v...
I found Shun holed up in one of the train cars. I didn't expect Hisako to dismiss anyone else early, but the books laid out before him suggested he wasn't finished with tonight's studies. I knocked and entered the car.
"Homura-san. You're still up," Shun pointed out, moving aside his things so I could slide into the booth across from him.
"And you're still studying. Whatcha readin'?" I retorted. He allowed me to skim over the papers. "Genghis Khan?"
"It's a meat dish native to Hokkaido. I was hoping to eat it when we get to the city," Shun explained, and I realized he wasn't actually studying. He was planning his sightseeing.
I would've urged him to study or called him out on his slacking but decided he deserved a break. Hisako was already strict enough on the lot of us. "Is this also your first time in Hokkaido?"
"It is. I heard we're going to make a brief stop after the next exam, so I researched some popular attractions."
He proceeded to pull out a map from his textbook (was he hiding this from Hisako?) and point to the different parts he highlighted. If I didn't know better, I would've guessed he was more excited than even Yuki for this trip.
"What are you looking forward to?" Shun asked, leaning over the map.
"The food. Ice cream, gyoza, ramen..." I answered at once, listing the many treats on my fingers.
Before I could get carried away, though, another thought came to mind. "And I believe it's called a 'gacha machine'?"
"...A gacha machine?" Shun repeated, an unusual lilt to his voice. He failed to suppress the faint upturn of his mouth.
"Ah, is that weird?" I scratched my head, self-conscious. "We don't have any where I'm from, but once my friend brought a gacha toy back from the city for me. And I've been fascinated with the idea ever since." I can still recall the amazement I felt when Hibiki pressed the plastic dinosaur into my palm years ago. I treasured that toy—at least, until Shuu swallowed it and had to be rushed to the hospital.
Poor Ricky didn't survive Shuu's digestive tract.
Shun's smile grew before he lifted his hand to cover it, feigning a cough to mask his amusement. "I see."
So it was definitely silly of me to be excited over gacha machines if Shun of all people was laughing. Still, I appreciated his attempts to hide it.
I was soon distracted when the train exited the long tunnel we were traveling through. The pitch black darkness that lurked behind the window transformed into a very different sight: a brilliant sky of stars.
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My mouth parted in awe, my whole body scooting as close to the window as possible. "It's beautiful!" I marveled.
Without light pollution from the city, the Hokkaido sky evolved into a melody of colors. Vibrant blues and violets danced across the navy canvas, each star twinkling like a thousand fairies. It was as if someone inhaled a bunch of glitter and sneezed across the galaxy. The train clacked along the tracks at a brisk pace but the stars—they were constant. They followed us and illuminated every corner of the earth, blanketing the room in an effervescent glow.
