!
The slanting rays of the setting sun spilled in. The lights in the Western-style restaurant were dim, candlelight flickered atop the candlesticks, and a priest played soothing music nearby...
To the sound of the music, pour less than a quarter—but slightly more than a fifth—of some 1982 Snow... Cola into a crystal-clear wineglass. Then wait quietly for several minutes, and the fragrance of instant noodles would come rushing at you—
What was a sense of ceremony? This was a sense of ceremony! Even a bowl of instant noodles without sausage could be made to feel like high-end Western cuisine. All one could say was, pickled mustard greens were damn delicious!
That wasn't showing off or being pretentious, merely a touch of sentimentality—young girls who had yet to experience much of the world were mostly sentimental creatures. And that sentimentality made them extraordinarily sensitive to all sorts of rituals. To them, it was an indescribable kind of romance.
That was why sentimental girls remembered so many things that boys considered dispensable. The simplest example was anniversaries—the bane of every guy's existence—
In truth, most girls remembered those things not because they wanted boys to do anything. Their sentimental nature simply made them want to reminisce about that past romance together. If a boy could remember:
"XXX, a hundred days ago, right here, I told you I would work hard to make you happy for the rest of your life. Today, I want to say the same thing again..."
Remembering that special day was itself a kind of ceremony.
Dates were much the same. Even though Sogo Doma had gone out with Utaha Kasumigaoka before, it had been in the name of gathering material—perhaps both of them could have regarded it as a date, but in the end, it still lacked