It was the night of the following day.
Around nine in the evening, the doorbell rang.
“Yeah?”
I already had a good idea who it was—ten out of ten, it had to be Minase. When I answered the intercom, the monitor flickered on, and sure enough, there she was.
“It’s me! Hey, wanna come with me to the convenience store?”
“That’s sudden. Wait a sec, I’ll be right out.”
“Okaaay.”
Her unusually obedient response came through the monitor, and I cut the call. The screen went dark.
I headed to the front door and opened it.
“Yo.”
Minase greeted me with a casual wave.
“You’re seriously going to the convenience store right now?”
Probably forgot to buy something, I guessed. Still, she could’ve gone by herself.
“I just wanted to drink some coffee.”
“You can drink that at home, can’t you?”
“Yeah, but sometimes I wanna have something decent for a change, you know?”
True enough. What she had at home was just regular coffee from a household machine. It couldn’t compare to the stuff brewed with professional machines. I often walked past the convenience store thinking about grabbing a cup but ended up skipping it. So, I kinda got how she felt.
“Nah, I’ll pass this time.”
I wasn’t really in the mood to go out.
I started closing the door, assuming that was the end of it—
“Oh, okay. Guess I’ll go alone then.”
“…Wait.”
I froze.
If I turned her down, of course she’d go alone. But it was already nine at night. Was I really gonna let her walk by herself at this hour?
“My bad. I’ll come too.”
“Oh, really?”
Minase blinked in surprise at my sudden change of heart.
“Just give me a minute to get ready. Don’t you dare leave without me, got it?”
I went back inside and shut the door again.
Three minutes later, I was ready—changed clothes, grabbed my wallet and phone, and stepped out. Since we were just going to a convenience store, I threw on something casual enough not to look sloppy.
We walked side by side down the quiet street.
“Were you… worried about me?”
She looked over at me and asked, almost teasingly.
Guess she figured it out. Not that it was hard to guess, given the way the conversation went.
“Of course I was. It’s dangerous walking alone this late.”
“It’s just a convenience store.”
She sounded a bit offended. Yeah, I could see why—being nagged like a parent by a classmate wasn’t exactly fun. So I decided this would be the first and last time I’d bring it up. Say my piece, but not push it.
“It’s not the destination that’s dangerous—it’s the road to get there.”
The store was just past the residential area, across the main street. The neighborhood was quiet; help wouldn’t be far if she shouted. But if she couldn’t even scream for help… the silence could be her worst enemy.
“If I can go with you, I will. So please, don’t go alone. I’ll just end up worrying.”
“Oh! So that means if I invite you, you’ll definitely come!”
“Don’t twist my words.”
She was basically using my concern as a bargaining chip.
“Okay, how about this—if you can’t come, I won’t go. Promise. But in exchange, lower your ‘do I wanna go with her’ threshold a bit, okay?”
In other words, we’d meet halfway. Felt like I was getting the short end of the stick, but if she started abusing the deal, I’d think of something then.
“Fine. Deal.”
“Actually, I invited you yesterday too.”
She said that casually.
“Yesterday? I wasn’t even home.”
“I know. So I ended up not going. I wanted to go with you, after all.”
I exhaled in relief. Still, she probably had gone out alone plenty of times before. Back when she was in the drama club, she often got home late after practice.
“By the way, where were you last night?”
“Hm? Oh, at work.”
I’d quit soccer last summer and found a part-time job to fill the empty hours. After leaving the club that had consumed my life, that job had become a perfect escape. I’d worked almost every day during the summer break, and now I just went in about three times a week so it wouldn’t mess with school.
“Wait, you work!? Where!?”
“That’s a secret.”
“Come on, tell me!”
She pouted adorably.
“If I tell you, you’ll probably show up there.”
I didn’t actually think she’d do something crazy, but still. I wasn’t in a position to casually invite friends to my workplace.
“What kind of job is it?”
“Also a secret.”
“Ah, I get it. It’s a sketchy job, isn’t it?”
“…How exactly did you ‘get’ that?”
“I dunno, just a feeling.”
Her tone softened immediately after tossing that accusation. Great, now I was being framed for something vague.
“Maybe I should get a job too.”
“Sure. Go for it.”
I nodded at her mumbled thought.
Since she’d quit club activities, she definitely had time. Whether she’d use that time to escape or to find something new was up to her. Either way, having that option wasn’t a bad thing.
“What kind of job do you think suits me?”
“How should I know? Figure that out yourself.”
Asking me wasn’t gonna help. She should decide based on what she wanted to do. Not that I had much right to say that—I’d just grabbed the first job listing I saw and somehow stuck with it till now. If she was serious, she should take her time choosing.
“A maid café, maybe?”
“That sounds sketchy.”
“Hey! Apologize to all the maids in Japan!”
She scolded me sharply. Fair point. My bad.
While chatting like that, we passed through the residential area and reached the main street. It was only two lanes each way, not a major road. Cars passed occasionally, but right now, the intersection we stood at was dead quiet. It almost made me want to jaywalk.
The convenience store was diagonally across the intersection.
“Hey,” I said as we walked in.
“That coffee you want—it’s that big machine one, right? I’ve never used it before. What do I do?”
“Oh, really?”
She blinked in surprise, like she couldn’t believe I hadn’t tried it. I had thought about it before, but always skipped it in the end. Never seemed worth it.
“Okay, I’ll teach you. You want it iced or hot?”
“Iced.”
She brightened up suddenly, and I followed her lead. She brought me to the freezer, where she made me grab a cup full of ice and take it to the counter.
“By the way, if you want hot coffee, just tell the cashier. They’ll give you a cup—those aren’t on the shelf.”
“Got it.”
After paying, she walked me through how to use the machine. We poured the coffee, grabbed straws, and sat down in the eat-in area. Both of us had iced coffee.
“Ahh, so much better than what I make at home!”
She smiled brightly. Well, no wonder—she’d come all this way just for this. Coffee always tastes best when you’ve been craving it.
“What about you, Sakura?”
“It’s… exactly what you’d expect from a hundred-yen cup of convenience store coffee.”
Didn’t expect much, so I wasn’t disappointed either.
“You sound so unimpressed. Are you secretly a coffee snob or something?”
“Not really.”
I decided to leave it at that.
“Still, I didn’t expect you to have never tried one before.”
She easily shifted the topic.
“Do I really look like someone who drinks coffee all the time?”
“I mean, not that, but… everyone goes to convenience stores, right? Didn’t you ever stop by with your teammates after practice?”
Ah, so that’s what she meant—not that I looked like a coffee guy, but that it was weird for a high schooler to never hang out at a convenience store after school.
“You know where I spent my after-school hours? Soccer club. When we did stop by, it was only for juice or ice cream. Don’t lump us in with the delicate culture club crowd.”
With so many members, we had to be careful not to cause trouble. Buy, leave, done. If we ever annoyed a store enough that they called the school, the whole club would get chewed out.
“I guess that makes sense.”
Minase chuckled softly, agreeing.
“What about you? Did you stop by often after practice?”
“Yeah, since we used our voices a lot. I’d always get thirsty.”
Her words trailed off there. She quietly sipped her coffee. Maybe thinking about her old club. I’d quit after just five months—she’d stayed for a year. What she’d given up was probably heavier.
“Hey, listen to this!”
“Wha—what!?”
Suddenly, Minase started smacking my arm repeatedly. What happened to the sentimental mood from a second ago?
“So, our club… we always split up into little groups of close friends.”
I pictured it. Drama club probably had mostly girls, and small friend groups forming was just natural. Kinda like mini-classrooms. Soccer club, on the other hand, always moved as one big pack.
“We’d stop by convenience stores sometimes, but there were all these unspoken rules—like, if seniors were already there, we couldn’t go in. Or if they came after us, we had to leave.”
“That’s… surprisingly strict for a culture club.”
Small groups but weird rules, versus large groups who had to care about the store’s image. Yeah, both had their problems.
“Guess that’s why it didn’t suit me.”
She sighed softly.
“You do seem like the free-spirited type.”
“Yup. I bloom where I choose to bloom.”
Bloom? That was a strange way to put it.
“Well, thanks to quitting, we can just sit here and relax like this.”
“Exactly.”
She smiled, agreeing easily.
We both took another sip of coffee.
Silence.
Like I’d said, time flowed slowly. Peacefully. Back when I was in the club, I’d come home exhausted every day—never would’ve thought of going out again just to drink coffee at night.
It wasn’t so bad, honestly.
Then, suddenly—
Something clicked in my head.
It took a few moments to put that thought into words. Maybe it was the slow, quiet mood we were in. When the idea finally took shape, I looked at Minase.
She was looking back at me.
We were probably thinking the same thing.
And together, we said it:
“‘The Club-Quitters Alliance.’”
No explanation needed.
Basically, our newly formed “Club-Quitters Alliance” would be all about doing things we could only do because we’d quit our clubs.
“Got any ideas, Minase?”
“Go straight home after school.”
“…Seriously?”
That sounded like something a grade-schooler would say. True, it was something we couldn’t do before, but still.
“Well, we’ll figure it out as we go.”
“You always say that… but fine.”
At least we’d decided on a purpose. Like how the soccer club’s goal was to play soccer, the Club-Quitters Alliance’s goal was to make the most of our newfound freedom. We could think about the details later. After all, we had plenty of time now.
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