Promptober 2026 Day 15: Pearl
“It’s cooooo~oooooold.”
The circumstances that led me to be trapped in an old storage shed behind Tenmenhyakkaen Shrine during the New Year’s festival with no phone and no way to contact the outside world are utterly idiotic, and reflect poorly on two people who really ought to have known better.
We went to retrieve - and I’m quoting now - “a big, really big cardboard box that Gramps brought in the van last Friday. You’ll know it - got a big label on the side from the fish market - it’s just an old box, though, it’s not FROM the fish market, we just use that box to store stuff in because it’s the right size for a lot of things.” And, in the process of trying to determine which was the correct box, a helpful passerby saw that the latch (a very long, thick board) had been taken off the door of the store shed and replaced it.
I can only assume that’s what happened, anyway, because as I mentioned, we were inside the shed.
For the first forty-five minutes, it was at least a little funny. I mean, what kind of shoujo manga contrived-ass situation was this?
We tried beating on the door with our fists. We tried fishing the latch upward through the crack in the door with a wire. We tried shoving a couple of streamers out of a hole in the wall and waving them around. Nothing. The distant sounds of the festival parade explained why nobody could hear us, but still, you’d think someone would walk by.
I think around the hour mark was when both of us realized that we might be in real, actual trouble. The temperature was dropping. So was my mood. That wasn’t the worst part, though.
“Rikkiiiiiiiii… I’m cooooo~oooooold!”
The worst part was who I was stuck with.
“I’m gonna die in here,” Anon whined, pulling her knees up to her chest. She was sitting across from me with her back up against the back side of the shed. “I’m gonna die, and my corpse won’t even look good because I’ll be frozen solid. I’ll be blue. Instead of the pink one all our fans are going to call me the blue one.”
Instead of responding, I reached up and pounded on the door with my gloved fist a couple of times.
Breaking down the door was out of the question. We probably could have done it, but the entire reason we were here is because Tomori’s mother asked if she had any friends who would volunteer to help. We weren’t about to go damaging shrine property when we were being vouched for.
All we could really do was wait, and keep knocking, and try not to freeze. I was fine - I was still wearing my heavy winter parka with the fur-lined hood. But Anon had already changed into a kimono. She was wrapped in several layers of thick fabric, but without a coat, she was probably a lot colder than I was.
“I told you to grab your coat,” I muttered. “And you said–”
“I knooow what I saaaid.” She scowled.
“-we’re gonna be super quick, I’ll be fine!”
She stuck her tongue out at me, then hacked a dry cough into her mitten.
Distantly, I heard a taiko drum. After a few moments, a second one joined it.
I sighed, and a pool of vapor cascaded from my mouth.
Anon cleared her throat, then cleared it again. She made a face.
“Coughing something up?” I asked.
“No. It's just the cold air. It hurts my throat.”
“If you need to spit, I won't look.”
That actually drew out a chuckle, which quickly turned into another cough. “Gross,” she said. “You're such a boy sometimes, Rikki.”
I smiled faintly.
Wasshoi, wasshoi– all the way on the other side of the grounds, I heard the omikoshi chant starting up. I reached up and, in the spaces between the distant chants, banged the door again.
“Hey,” Anon said, when I was done. “There's actually– um…”
“Hm?”
“I wanted to tell you something,” she murmured.
Something about her voice made the skin on the back of my neck prickle. It was low, quiet, meek. Completely unlike her.
“...this a confession?”
“Confe– what? No!” Anon snorted, then wiped at her nose. “God. No. I'm going to tell everyone this, I just wanted to tell you first.”
I gave her a questioning look.
“Did you do your, like… your college stuff? The career survey, you know.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, yeah. A little while ago.”
“Us too. My mom found mine the other day when she was vacuuming in my room–”
“-your mom vacuums your room?”
“-and she read it.” She grinned humorlessly.
“Yeah? What happened?”
“She kinda… like… blew her top,” Anon said. “She thinks I'm not thinking seriously about my future. Because I said I wanted to… you know.”
I nodded.
“She's like– If you don't put Tokyo U on your list, I don't know why we bothered sending you to a fancy girls’ school.”
“...what, Haneoka?”
“Yeah.” She gave a dry chuckle. “I didn’t tell her that there were at least two fancier girls’ schools within walking distance of Haneoka. I didn’t really argue with her at all - there’s no arguing with her when she gets like that, you just have to let her get tired.”
I smiled faintly again and nodded.
“But– I don’t know,” she said. “It got me thinking. We’re gonna be third years in… what, four months?”
“Yeah.”
“Doing MyGO has been easy,” Anon said - then shook her head quickly. “I mean, not easy, but… we’re doing it. It all… feels like it’s working out.”
“It does,” I quietly agreed.
“But… you know, we’re probably gonna go off to different schools, right? Different parts of the city. Different train lines. Different routines. New people in our lives. Less time. Less–” she broke off into another fit of hacking coughs.
“Yeah,” I said again. “I think… it’s normal, right? Everyone’s probably thinking about this to a greater or lesser extent.” I paused to think, then amended my statement. “...well, Soyo, at least, is probably thinking about it.”
She chuckled. “Yeah. I think Tomorin is just charging ahead, and Raana-chan…”
“She’ll show up anywhere Tomori goes, so long as there’s candy, too.”
“Yeah.” Her chuckle was fading into a slow, sad smile.
I reached up and hit the door again.
Wasshoi, wasshoi. Bang-bang, bang-bang.
“She thinks I should quit the band,” Anon said. Her voice was very small again.
“Who– your mom?” I scoffed. “Are you kidding? She wants you to quit?”
“She wants me to… devote less time to extracurricular activities, and more time to other priorities,” she said, making airquotes. “But– yeah, that’s what it comes down to at the end of the day.”
“C’mon,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s crazy. You’re not gonna–”
“I know,” she said.
“I mean– aren’t your grades, like–”
“They’re fine. They’re better than fine.”
“Yeah, so what’s her problem, then?” I asked.
A little smile. A little shrug.
“So,” she said, “That’s where we left it. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
I nodded, then, with a frown, something occurred to me. “Why me?”
Suddenly, it was like she couldn’t look at me. She turned her head to look at the wall, instead, then looked down at her knees. “I thought.. ‘well, if I had to quit, Rikki’s probably the only one who wouldn’t be that upset about it.’”
The words settled like vapor in the frigid air.
For a minute or two, the shed was quiet - just the distant drums and chimes, and the smell of the frozen earth.