Chapter 2. The Spring I Remember in Yellow

As I gradually grew accustomed to university life, I began to grow closer to my classmates.

Among them was one female classmate I felt particularly comfortable with.

She came from a nearby city, just as I did.

Perhaps that was why.

From the beginning, she felt somewhat familiar.

She was easygoing.

There was nothing affected about the way she spoke or acted.

Maybe that was why I felt more at ease with her than with my other female classmates.

When she learned that I struggled with mathematics, she even lent me a reference book she had been using.

It was just one book.

Still, I was grateful.

We spent time together with a group of close classmates.

We sometimes had lunch together or talked after class.

She was always part of that group.

We never did anything special just the two of us.

Even so, I liked having her around.

Whenever I saw her, I felt glad.

After talking with her and going our separate ways, I would find myself in a good mood for no particular reason.

When we walked together, I felt a flutter of excitement I couldn’t quite explain.

But at the time, I didn’t know what those feelings meant.

I didn’t even know what it meant to like someone.

I simply thought that being with a close friend made me feel good.

One day, she made a phone call home.

After finishing the call, she suddenly held out the receiver to me, telling me to talk to her mother, too.

I was caught off guard.

I had no idea what to say to someone I had never met.

Somewhat flustered, I took the receiver and greeted her.

Then, without thinking, I said jokingly,

“Hello, Mother-in-law.”

She laughed beside me.

Looking back, it was nothing more than a silly joke.

But at the time, I was rather embarrassed that I had said something like that to someone I had never met.

Little things like that brought us gradually closer.

She often wore yellow.

That spring, forsythias were in full bloom across the campus.

There was something remarkably fitting about the sight of her walking among the yellow flowers in her yellow clothes.

Whenever I saw her like that, my eyes would turn toward her before I even realized it.

Even now, when I think of her, yellow is the first color that comes to mind.

Perhaps it is because I remember that spring in yellow.

Then one day, she asked me to write a report for her.

I agreed.

After finishing it, we arranged to meet in front of the library so I could hand it over to her.

The agreed time arrived.

I waited for her in front of the library.

At first, I thought she was running a little late.

A few minutes passed, then a few more.

Still, she didn’t appear.

I had been waiting for quite some time when I heard a noise in the distance.

It was the sound of a student protest marching across campus.

Without thinking much of it, I looked in that direction.

And there, among the crowd, I spotted a familiar face.

It was her.

She was walking with the others in the protest march.

For a moment, I was taken aback.

Then I felt hurt.

I had been waiting for her at the place we had agreed to meet for quite some time. Yet she was marching along as though she had no idea I was there.

She could at least have told me.

I think that was what went through my mind at the time.

Looking back, perhaps it wasn’t something I had any reason to be angry with her about.

But I felt miserable.

I couldn’t even understand exactly why I felt so hurt.

I simply thought I was disappointed because she hadn’t kept our appointment.

Looking back now, perhaps that was when it began.

Perhaps that was when I started seeing her a little differently from my other classmates.

After that, we gradually drifted apart.

We hadn’t had an argument.

Neither of us had said that we felt hurt by the other.

Our lives simply began to take different paths, and we spent less time together.

I spent more time with other friends, and she was building a life of her own, too.

Then, at some point, we had become classmates again, nothing more.

At the time, I thought it was only natural.

Growing apart from a friend you had once been close to was something that often happened in university life.

Only later did I come to understand.

Why I had been glad whenever I saw her.

Why I had felt that flutter of excitement when I was with her.

And why I had felt so hurt after waiting for her for so long in front of the library.

Back then, I didn’t know.

It was simply one spring day when I was twenty.

A female classmate in yellow was walking among the forsythias,

and I liked her.

Without even knowing what that feeling was.