85. Entrance Exams Over, Cohabitation Begins. And a Trip to Japan. (2)

This isn’t Aki’s and my first trip.

Until middle school, we went on family trips with both sets of parents, and in high school, we even took a one-night, two-day trip to Lotte Water Park in Gimhae together.

If I were to guess the number of times, it would be at least seven or eight, and if I included the trips I’ve forgotten, it would be close to ten without exaggerating.

Normally, I’d be used to traveling by now and wouldn’t be that excited.

But.

“Welcome. I’ll assist you with check-in, ma’am.”

“Ah, thank you~”

“Your luggage is here…. Oh, are you Korean?”

“Huh? A-ah, no. I’m Japanese. Japanese. Or more accurately, mixed race.”

“Ah, I see…. I apologize. You spoke Korean so well, I thought you were Korean.”

“Heh, it’s alright. I get that misunderstanding a lot.”

For some reason, this trip feels like it’s making my heart flutter more than any trip before.

Perhaps it’s because this is the first time Aki and I are going on an overseas trip, just the two of us.

Or maybe it’s because of that thing I jokingly said earlier, ‘Let’s shower together later.’

‘…Yeah, whatever.’

I know this is a foolish thought, a far-fetched fantasy.

Even I can’t argue if you say I’m conjuring up weird things in my head during our momentous first trip abroad together.

But what am I supposed to do when I can’t stop thinking about it?

Is it because other than k*ssing, holding hands, and hugging, we haven’t had any other kind of skinship? Even if I don’t want to, I keep having those thoughts.

“Woo-joo~chan, we need to put our suitcase here!”

“Huh? Ah, right.”

As Aki said, I placed our suitcase on the large scale.

Watching the kilograms change by the second on the weight display, I thought to myself:

Shower together, huh?

‘Shower together’ sounds nice, but isn’t that really just another way of saying we’ll be showing each other our bare bodies? In the shower, no less.

“The check is complete. The boarding time and gate number are on your boarding pass, so please find it. Thank you for using our airline~”

“Ah, yes. Thank you~”

“Thank you…”

‘…Should I just say it was a joke, even now?’

We haven’t even done anything beyond k*ssing yet, and going straight to showering together without any progress seems a little strange, doesn’t it?

And also, what if Aki doesn’t even want to shower with me, and is just reluctantly going along with it because I’m pressuring her?

Having finished my almost self-rationalizing – no, just plain self-rationalizing – thoughts, I glanced at Aki. Aki was looking at the information board hanging from the ceiling, searching for Gate 19, which was on our boarding pass.

“Number 19… Ah, is it over there? Woo-joo~chan, is that it?”

“…Aki.”

“Hmm, what is it?”

Aki turned her head and looked at me.

A look that seemed to ask if I had something to say.

I didn’t know what to say, so I hesitated for a moment, then awkwardly rubbed the back of my neck and opened my mouth.

“That thing I said earlier? About showering together? About that…”

‘It was just a joke, so you don’t have to worry about it too much.’

It was just then, the moment I was about to speak.

“Ah… really.”

Aki’s face flushed a little, and she glanced around quickly.

Then, she tugged lightly on my sleeve, making me bend down slightly, and, rising on her tiptoes, brought her lips to my ear.

“Atashi also remembers, so you don’t have to say it here…!”

“Huh? No, that’s not what I…”

“A-alright. We’ll definitely shower together tonight, okay? So let’s end this conversation here… understood?”

“……”

Eh?

I was intending to take back what I’d said, but instead, I’d received confirmation.

For a moment, my mind raced, thinking ‘Is it okay to shower together? Really? She doesn’t seem to dislike it that much…?’

“Honestly, Ujuu-chan, when you really look at him, he’s sneakily perverted…?”

Hearing Aki’s words, I stopped worrying.

‘No, I was trying to retract the shower thing…’

Why did she jump to conclusions herself and call *me* a pervert?

I felt wronged enough by the pervert comment that I definitely had to shower with her now. With that thought, a chuckle escaped me as I wrapped my arms around Aki’s waist.

“When we shower together later, can I take a picture?”

“Aagh, jeez!”

*Smack-*!

Aki gave my arm a satisfying smack.

* * *

Inside the airplane.

While we had time, we ate a simple meal and then found our assigned seats. Because the seats were reserved using family mileage, they were spacious enough for at least me to stretch out comfortably.

‘If I’d tried to save money and gone with economy, I’d probably be standing the whole way…’

If I want to travel with Aki again in the future, I’ll definitely need to book business class or higher, which means I need to earn a lot more money.

Thinking such pie-in-the-sky thoughts, I ordered our in-flight refreshments. In-flight refreshments, meaning just my and Aki’s drinks, but anyway, we each sipped our grape juice and sparkling water, waiting for takeoff.

“Aki, is Kansai where we’re going now?”

“Yeah, Kansai International Airport, to be exact. We’ll get off there and take the Haruka to my grandfather’s house in Kyoto.”

“So if we take the airplane, then transfer to the train, it’ll take almost four hours to arrive?”

“No, it’s not over when we get to Kyoto Station. We still have to take a taxi near Grandpa’s house. If you add up that time, the flight time, and the time spent on the train…let’s just say about five hours total.”

“Ah….”

I turned my head, glancing at the current time.

It’s around noon now, so if it takes about five hours to get there like Aki said, I’ll arrive around 5 PM. But unpacking, showering, greeting everyone, and having dinner there… It’ll be night before I know it.

Practically losing a day, I guess. Well, it’s a two-night, three-day trip, so losing a day is alright. Besides, it’ll be better for both of us to rest up today from the moving fatigue.

Anyway, the main event is tomorrow morning. With that thought settled, I leaned back in my seat and took Aki’s hand.

Aki teased, “Hehe, did Uju-chan want to hold my hand~?” but she didn’t pull away, and so we held hands affectionately for the hour and forty-five-minute flight to Kansai International Airport in Japan.

As soon as we arrived, we went through immigration and then took an escalator to the second floor of the airport, where Aki exchanged the Haruka train ticket she’d bought in advance for a physical one.

The exchange was done at a ticket vending machine, and Aki, fluent in Japanese, handled everything, so there were no particular difficulties. The only problem, perhaps, was the sheer number of people, which meant we spent more time waiting.

The autumn foliage festival ends in early December, so I thought there wouldn’t be many people at this time, but it was unexpectedly crowded, probably because it’s a famous tourist destination.

So, it took a while to exchange the train ticket, but the train’s departure time was fixed, so whether we exchanged it late or early, the waiting time was the same anyway.

“Hey, the train design here is Hello Kitty?”

I don’t know the exact name. The overhead rest had a Hello Kitty cat drawn on it, and the Kitty was plastered right on the platform’s information board when boarding the train.

Aki gave her characteristic smile, stroking the fabric with the Kitty ill*stration.

“Uju~chan. Can you take a picture of me? So Kitty and I are in it together.”

“Hmm, okay. Just a sec….”

This is where a silent camera is useful again.

Aki says it’s impolite to make loud noises in public places in Japan and that you’ll get stares, so I used a silent camera app to take a few photos of Aki sitting in her seat.

The model is so pretty that any photo is a masterpiece. I admired the photos I’d taken.

“Wow, cute….”

“Hehe, right? Kitty is cute, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, Kitty is Kitty, but…. Aki is really cute too.”

I don’t know why it’s so endearing when she puts her right hand in a V-shape to her cheek and smiles.

I carelessly let my true feelings slip, and Aki’s cheeks turned a little red.

“Ah, you’re saying strange things again…!”

“It’s not a strange thing! You’re really cute. Look, this. How cute….”

“……Eep, Uju~chan, stop it! No saying cute!”

“Excuse me. Ticket inspection.”

I was humoring Aki’s cute antics when I heard someone clear their throat. I turned to see a person in a neat uniform and hat. Looked like the conductor.

“Yes. Here you go.”

I presented the ticket. The conductor took the tickets for Aki and me, seemed to examine them for a moment, then nodded as if everything was in order, stamping them with a red seal before returning them.

“Here you are. Enjoy your trip.”

“Yes, thank you~”

Taking back the ticket, I turned it over in my hands. Back in Korea, everything’s done with mobile tickets and scanning QR codes, so I’ve never actually seen a ticket inspection before. Seeing it actually punched and stamped like this is kind of fascinating.

“Kind of amazing, isn’t it?”

“…What’s amazing?”

Aki wore a sullen expression.

I think she thinks I’m making fun of her when I keep calling her cute, cute. I absolutely don’t mean to tease her, I’m just honestly saying what I think, but even the fact that she misunderstands is adorable, so I just snickered to myself and reached out my hand.

“It feels like just a few years ago you were still a first-year high school student, and now we’re high school seniors coming to Japan together, y’know? That’s what’s amazing.”

“Well, we kept postponing it and postponing it, but we did end up coming after graduating…”

“But we still came, didn’t we? Like this, together.”

“……Hmph.”

I gently took her hand, and though she pretended to dislike it, she quietly squeezed back.

I knew Aki was cute…

“Looks like we’ll arrive around evening, so what do you want to do tonight?”

“First, we’ll say hello to Grandpa, then unpack, and rest a little…then we’ll go to the onsen.”

“Onsen? There are onsens in Kyoto, too?”

“There are onsens almost everywhere in Japan. There’s onsens in Kyoto, Tokyo, Hokkaido, it’d be faster to find the places that *don’t* have them, I reckon.”

“I see. But which onsen are we going to? Do you happen to know a place?”

“Yeah, I do. A place my grandma runs, a ryokan. It’s not too far from Grandpa’s house. Less than 20 minutes by taxi, I should think.”

“Ah, really?”

Aki’s grandma runs a ryokan.

I wondered if I’d heard it before but just forgot; it was the first time I’d heard that her grandma was a ryokan owner, and I was a little surprised. I did remember that her grandfather was a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, though.

“But is it okay if we go late? Don’t ryokans have check-in times and such?”

“They do, but it’s okay for us. ‘Cause I’m there. They’ll let us in just by looking at my face, I wager?”

“Ooh, dependable…!”

As expected of the granddaughter of a ryokan owner. I playfully whistled softly.

“……Hehe.”

Aki seemed pleased by that, and she smiled prettily, and just then, the train jerked slightly and began to move forward.

“It’ll take a while to arrive, so do you want to take a nap?”

“Uuung, let’s. …*haaam*.”