Kei just woke up from her slumber. “Nghhh… ahh! I had no idea inflatable beds could get this good!”
“You just need to enter the three-digit territory.”
Her eyes widen and her eyebrows raise visibly. “That thing is HOW MUCH!?”
“Welcome to the camping hobby. It costs a pretty penny if you get serious.”
I did spend quite a lot of money on my gear, but I’ve been upgrading my stuff along the way. The stuff I used back when I was a student was quite more humble.
“Are you loaded or something? You got fancy bikes and expensive camping stuff.”
“Mh, not really, I can’t complain about my salary, but it’s not like I’m filthy rich. In the end, it’s a ‘spend more to spend less’ situation, this stuff lasts a long time.”
She grabs her chair and sits close to me. “Actually, what even is your job? If you don’t mind telling me.”
Oh right, I don’t think I told her. I point at the book I was reading, “I work at Kotodama, the publisher. I’m an editor, but end up taking on other roles from time to time.”
Her face widens up again, but this time it’s out of positive surprise. “That’s so cool! So you, like, correct books and give advice to writers?”
“Well, that’s part of it. I mostly work with novelists, but also with many mangaka and cartoonists.”
“Whoa, it sounds so dope! Do you like working there?”
Maybe this is my entry point for letting her open up? Let me try. “I love it, I worked so hard to get there and every day feels different, I still have to get tired of it. When I decided on this career, it just… clicked. Like, that’s it, this is what I want in my life. Is it the same for you and cooking?”
This time, unexpectedly, her expression gets softer, even a bit sad, moving away from the surprise she had before. She takes a second to reply. “I don’t know, sometimes I wonder if that’s really it. If it’s a real passion or just a hobby.”
It’s not the reaction I expected, “is that what your father tells you?”
“He pisses me off!! But… no, unless it’s about the restaurant, he’s very supportive. He taught me so much, and he always looked so happy when I asked for his help,” she says with a faint smile. She still loves her father despite all of this running away from him. She looks at the lake, “the problem is just me.”

I never had second thoughts about my love for light novels and my work, and yet I feel like I can somehow relate to her. That’s not an easy matter at all. “I never thought about it. What even marks the difference between a hobby and a passion?”
“I’d love to know. Maybe what I’m missing is a reason.”
“A reason… mhh.”
She looks back at me, “what’s your reason for being an editor?”
Now that’s a question, I don’t think I ever really thought about it. “I… just like it? I wanted to be an editor, and I became one.”
“… Hah? That’s it?”
“Well… yeah. Let me think about it, I want to give you a proper reply.”
Kei chuckles a bit and takes some color back to her face, “it’s not that important! Well, do your best, it’s about time I go take a walk anyway~”
“Alright. Don’t forget your phone, in case you get lost.”
“Okay mom.”
And there she goes, I seriously hope she doesn’t get lost.
Let’s finish this book.

Yep, this is definitely a Sadanatsu Anda book. It was sooo good, I’m so glad they gave me a copy!
My son is looking at me eagerly, he must’ve realized that I’m done reading.

“Alright, I know what you’re waiting for.”

Just a second to change into my trunks and I’m finally floating over the lake. I’ve never been into sports, but I always loved swimming. I took non-agonistic swimming lessons since I was in kindergarten, and I kept going until the end of high school. After that, I started swimming a bit more casually, but I never really stopped. I crave the feeling of being one with the water, the detachment from the rest of the world I get as I dive as deep as I possibly can by just holding my breath. I never felt like a stranger to this world, but sometimes, even more than when I ride my motorcycles, water is the place where I feel alive the most. If the smell of the lavender field feels like an embrace, then the water wrapping around my skin feels like a firmer hold, somewhat harder to escape. Yet, like nobody gets to rule water, neither does it get to be my master, so I leave its grasp to breathe air again over its surface.
Kai, instead, just floats mindlessly, the water ain’t that deep for him, not metaphorically nor literally. Oh, to be such a cute furball.
As I let those thoughts happen naturally, almost subconsciously, I remind myself that there are some other matters that need my brain’s full attention.

“Inami, mhh.”

Despite some crushes I had when I was a kid, I don’t think I’ve really been in love with anyone before. I had a girlfriend in high school, but that was nothing akin to true love: she was the one who confessed to me, and I didn’t want to fully reject her. I told her that the feeling was not mutual, but I wanted to try dating her and see if I would fall in love as I got to know her more. It never ended up happening, and I won’t do something like that again because I feel like it was very selfish of me, but there are no hard feelings between us and we’re still pretty close, she’s part of my group of friends with which I spend most of my “social time”, also at the lavender field.
My friendship with Inami, instead, just came to be naturally, without any of us actively seeking a connection with the other. I consider myself the selective type, I’m friendly with many, but friends with few, only with those I actually care about. The first times I visited her café I was just a client like another, then I became a regular, and it didn’t take long before we started being on a first-name basis.
I went to most of the events she organized at the café, lent a hand during some of them, and I always had a good time around her. We ask for and give advice to each other, and I think I can say with confidence that we each helped the other when taking important personal decisions. She’s the first person that pops into my head every time I need an opinion from someone I trust, I know I can always rely on her.
But like I said before, what do I know about Inami? She’s smart and creative, and very curious too. She’s funny and likes to joke around me, but my guess is that she’s unsure about her humor: when I first met her she would put more energy into it, now she likes to go for the dry or deadpan style with mixed results, wearing her emotions just comes naturally to her. She doesn’t vocalize them most of the time, but by looking at her face it’s easy to guess how she’s really feeling. Whenever she’s happy about something, she always smiles beautifully, yet she often tries to hide it. Inami’s smiles come in two forms: her full, large smile when she’s having fun and doesn’t mind showing it, one of those smiles that makes you smile back at her without even thinking about it, a smile that brightens the whole room; then there’s her soft smile, so thin you could miss it if you don’t look at her joyful eyes, somehow mysterious yet clear in its authenticity. No matter the way she smiles, it always warms me up a bit. Even just thinking about it right now, it’s enough to make me feel all fuzzy inside.
I don’t know if she has many friends, I never pried too much into this kind of stuff. Chiara and I are among her closest ones, that’s for sure. Maybe she’s a bit like me, a bit selective. I’m still unsure whether she’s more on the introverted or the extroverted side, she feels mostly extroverted to me, but I’m not so sure about it. If she were a complete extrovert, maybe I’d know more about her, and maybe she wouldn’t rely on me so much, but on her other friends too. So many things I feel unsure about when it comes to Inami, but the more I think about her, the more I want to know. I want to listen to her stories, her worries, her feelings, any of her thoughts, for hours, days, and even more.
Is this enough? Can I call this love? What is her to me? I still don’t know. I don’t know the first thing about love. I want to know more, about Inami, about love.
So is this just like any other friendship? No. No, it’s not, I know this much. I never felt this… strongly curious about someone.
Would my life stay the same if I didn’t see her anymore? No, and I don’t even want to think about it.
What if she were to get a boyfriend? What if she starts relying less on me? I don’t want that.
Are these my real feelings?

“Meow.”
“What is it?”

He’s looking at the shore: Kei is waving at us. That was a quick walk.

Kei’s eyes are sparkling, “man, I wish I got my swimsuit too!”
I get out of the lake, “you’re already done with the walk?”
“What do you mean ‘already’, it’s been almost two hours.”
Huh, so that’s how long my brain wandered. “I didn’t even notice.”
“So much for ‘bring you phone’ and then you didn’t check yours at all!”

I cover myself with a towel and we sit down on the shore. She starts showing me the photos she took along the way. She took a selfie with a deer and went to the forestry corps’ museum nearby, following a path in the woods. She took a photo of their motorcycles to show me.

“Africa Twins, makes sense.”
“They look way better than…” - she points at the Busa - “that thing.”
Sigh, not again. “That’s a low bar to clear. My bikes all look way better.”
I seem to have piqued her interest. “Show me.”

I get inside the tent to wear more clothes, and I grab my phone to show her some of the photos I took with my bikes when traveling all around Sogna: some from when I tried camping in the middle of the woods with the Ténéré, my current adventure bike; one with a clear view of Mount Nicate in the background while on a road with the CB650R, my “daily” bike; a couple from the time when I visited a small rural village with a loaner Dorsoduro 900; and a photo from back when I had a Versys-X 300, my first motorcycle, at the same panoramic spot towards the valley where we stopped before arriving to the lake. She wanted to see more of the places I visited, and I told her many of the things that happened while traveling, the stories of the people I met, and how beautiful nature can be.

“It’s fun to look back at those memories and have someone who listens to them.”
“Don’t your friends listen to you? Wait, you have friends, right?”
“That’s mean, of course I do! I just tell them as we meet, we don’t look back to them.”
“Inami too?”
“Not often. We talk more about the time I’m not traveling.”
Should I tell her about Inami? I don’t think she would make fun of me for that. “I had some thoughts while swimming.”
“About why you like being an editor?”
Oh right, there was that too. “Erm, not really… but! I can think about it now.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it,” she sounds like she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.
“I do worry about it, though. I want to help you make up your mind in any way I can.”
She lets out a sigh, “alright then.”

What’s so great about being an editor? It’s fun. I get to read so many new stories, see great art and illustrations, and I help authors grow. I get to see the stories that they write at the stores and on bookshelves all around the world, people get obsessed with them and it makes me happy. They manage to publish their best work possible in the best shape it can be thanks to my help because, let’s face it, we all need someone to fix our writing and point us in the right direction.

“I think it’s that I love stories, and helping authors share them with the world in the best shape possible. Their success is my success, and success means that their stories get to reach everyone all across the world. That’s what I love about this job.”
She seems a bit confused. “Mhh… it’s about the others then?”
“Not necessarily, I have some selfish reasons too. I like reading stories, for example. I managed to get the book I was reading before its publication because I’m a huge fan of the author. There isn’t just one answer, but I’m sure that ‘I just like it’ is a perfectly valid one, you don’t need to have a reason or a justification for doing something you love.”
“Don’t need one, you say?”
“Honestly, no, you don’t. Having a precise reason feels so… restrictive? I’d rather not think about it and have fun.”
I see a change on her face, I’m sure she had a realization. “Yeah… yeah. Yeah! You’re right! I don’t need one! Was I overthinking the whole thing?”
“Maybe you were.”
Actually, an approach like the one I had with the Inami thing might help her.
“Try to break down your feelings a bit, kinda like a brainstorming, and tell me how you feel.”
She falls silent for a bit. Then her face brightens up in her usual, unique way, and stands up, looking at the lake like she’s talking to it and not to me. “I want to cook, for myself. It’s fun, it just comes naturally as breathing. And… it makes me happy when people like the food and praises me, but just cooking, working hard to refine the food I cook, learning new techniques, and trying them out, all of it is so much fun! That’s it!” and as she says that, she turns back to me and, with her largest smile ever, jumps over me with her arms open and hugs me tight. “Thank you, thank you so much, Rori!”
“Ouch! I’m glad I helped, but now are you gonna tell your father?”
She loosens the grip a bit and sits on top of my stomach (it hurts), and looks at me with the most determined face I’ve seen in a while, “of course I will! And this time I’ll make sure he understands, I’ll say it over and over again until he stops being a crybaby and finally starts paying attention!”
I feel like she’s emanating so much positivity that I’m absorbing some of it. “Be kind to him. And please get away from my stomach, I can barely breathe.”
She gets back up, “I won’t shout at him or run away, at least.”
She’s fired up, anyone could tell from kilometers away.

Licensed under Yozakura BY-NC-SA-NoAI 1.0