"Is that really the point?"
In the living room, where the air was unbearably stiff, Aoko Aozaki suppressed her guilty expression and spoke with feigned nonchalance.
"Touko would never lure someone to Misaki for no reason. Even if he's just an ordinary person, she's probably set her sights on this place again!"
"Of course I know that, but that has nothing to do with you bringing me only a boxed dinner, does it? Don't change the subject."
"Whichever way you look at it, you're the one changing the subject."
Aoko Aozaki folded her arms, looking thoroughly disgruntled.
"I couldn't help it. Hearing such a bombshell about Touko out of nowhere left me no room to think about anything else. By the time I came to my senses, I was already at Shiroinu Mound.
Ten years ago, Misaki City had been nothing but fields and forests. Building homes on high ground was extremely difficult, and no one lived above a certain elevation.
There were residential areas, but they had mostly spread outward from stations surrounded by pastoral scenery.
Yet along the roads winding around the tall hills, far from those residential areas, traces of the past remained. Shiroinu Mound was one such example.
Dense forest concealed where the asphalt road led, leaving only a few mountain trails visible, while the vending machines deliberately placed along the road marked the boundary between the city and the mountains.
The scenery on the climb up that long, winding mountain road was beautiful, but making it part of everyday life only made it exhausting.
Having to climb such a steep road after changing buses twice was something Aoko still couldn't ignore, even after two years.
Thus, when she realized she had already reached the foot of the hill, she had no desire to go back