The Fourth Class Is Modern Chinese (Continued)

The new calendar had only just turned its first page.

The day after the New Year's shrine visit, I kept my promise to Yuihama and went with her to buy Yukino a birthday present. After buying it, I headed home alone.

The breath I exhaled looked whiter than usual, perhaps because I was breathing so deeply and heavily.

I slowly let out a breath into the cold air, my motion contrasting with my hurried steps.

Though it was only a single breath, it stretched into a long trail of white vapor, swayed for a moment, then vanished in the wind.

At that moment, the setting sun dyed the vapor red, then the flickering neon lights stained it blue. Before long, it melted into the darkness, as though all the sighs of the day had been condensed within it.

For example, the time I spent shopping with Yuihama, our trivial conversations, the distance between us suddenly closing—they all resembled the color of the sunset. If so, the unusual tension of running into Haruno and Hayama could be compared to a blue sky that refused to darken. Then, when Yukino and her mother appeared, what I felt was the darkness of night.

I looked up at the sky, as if searching beyond the descending curtain of night for a light in the far distance.

I didn't know what lay ahead of me, but I didn't stop because of that. I kept moving, little by little, toward where I needed to go, where I needed to return, and the answer I needed to reach.

I—we—had passed through the year like that and welcomed a new one.

Thinking about it, even though the new year had only just begun, I thought I'd done pretty well.

After all, I'd gone shopping with Yuihama, and the