Ice Cream

Even though our paths were rarely given a chance to cross, I'm still grateful that I came to know you. So when this chance will be over, I'll have something worth remembering in the days to come... ― Florence Joyce

xxxxxx

[Rinako]

One more hour had passed before Setsuji and I finished our dance practice. We also changed the song that we were going to use for the practicum so our final decision for the choice of song would be the one titled "When Love Finds You".

Right after the practice, Setsuji asked me for us to just wander around and walk leisurely for the rest of the day. Honestly speaking, I didn't know what this guy ate a while back and he asked me to go somewhere. But then, do I even have the right to complain? No.

So I just let him do what he wanted.

So there we were at the moment--right by the ice cream cart where Setsuji first took me or rather pulled me. I just thought this guy possibly liked ice cream so much. And he just wanted to have some company when it comes to the things he liked.

"It seems you've been coming here more often, Setsuji-kun. Does your face heat up too much these past days and you just wanted to cool it down?" Mr. Ice Cream Seller named Kawabata joked while handing the ice cream that Setsuji bought.

I thought this mister had a weird sense of humor. Since when could ice cream be used to cool down faces? And what did he say? His face heated up?

Like... blushing?

I soon looked at Setsuji. I wasn't sure if I should be confused or would just laugh at the sight that greeted me. It wasn't his face but his ears that had turned red.

"Oji-san... Will you stop joking around?" he responded to Kawabata-san who just laughed in return. "I just want to go here and buy some ice cream. You know that ever since I was a kid, the taste of the ice cream you're making has always been my favorite."

Well, Setsuji wasn't joking about that fact. Even before, during those times that I was still living here in Yakuramoto when I was a child, I would always buy ice cream here. I remembered that my half-brother would accompany me just for me to be able to buy this ice cream since my father would never allow me to go out without a companion.

"The taste of your ice cream hadn't changed, Oji-san. It's still delicious," I commented truthfully.

Kawabata-san smiled widely after I said that. "Wow! Thank you for saying that, Fuku-chan. My son would be happy when he would hear that."

This man was one of the few people who would call me "Fuku-chan" from my surname Fukuizumi.

"Fuku-chan? Is that your nickname?" Setsuji asked me with a frown.

"That was just one of my nicknames. Well as for you, I think your nicknames would go like this--heartbreaker, casanova, conceited, playboy, jerk, crazy, irritating, and idiot."

I couldn't help smiling when I saw Setsuji coughed as if he got choked or something. Seriously, this guy could be really weird when he wanted to. Since when could an ice cream cause you to be choked? You would just swallow it.

"It seems that Setsuji-kun had a really bad impression on you, Fuku-chan," Oji-san commented with a laugh.

"You have no idea how bad his impressions were to me."

Soon after, Setsuji was able to recover from that. "Is my image that bad to you? And you two knew each other? With the way both of you are talking right now, it seems that you knew each other for a long time."

"To answer your first question, yes. That's how your image turned out to me and you should've accepted it by now because some of them were already your nicknames in Uminaribara. And as for the answer to your second question, Oji-san and I knew each other for a long time now. I was born and had lived here in Yakuramoto before we moved to Yokohama 9 years ago."

Wow... I ended up telling that to him all of a sudden. But since he asked the question properly, I might as well answer it the same way, right?

"How come I didn't even know about that?" Setsuji asked with a pout while eating the ice cream he was holding.

To be honest, I thought I was looking at a 5-year-old boy at that moment rather than an 18-year-old because of the way he was acting. Seriously, this guy was a weird person.

"It's only obvious that you're not even going out of your hole," Oji-san said. "You're like a hermit with the way you're hiding in your family's mansion. I think that if you didn't have any plans to buy ice cream from me, you wouldn't even come out of the mansion."

"Hey! You're too much, Oji-san. Of course, I still come out of the mansion. It's just that I would always go to the tree."

I frowned just because I heard the word "tree" coming from him. "Tree? What kind of a tree? Guava tree? Mango tree? Pine tree?"

Setsuji faced me soon after. "You didn't know about the tree by the sea cliff? The one planted on the lot owned by the Miyahara clan and the Nakashima clan?"

A tree near the cliff? Wait a minute... Was that the same tree that caught my attention once before?

"There! That's the tree I'm talking about." And then he pointed a certain direction.

My eyes followed the direction he was pointing at. And I was right. It was the tree I saw before. The tree made me feel something weird and mysterious even though I only saw it from afar.

"But why are you staying there when you were a kid? And to think it was near the sea cliff," I inquired Setsuji when I faced him again.

"That certain tree is famous for its legend, Fuku-chan," Oji-san replied to me. "Though it was only famous to a few people who knew the legend since that tree was planted on the land owned by the clans of the roses."

Rose Clans-- that was the term used to refer to the two most influential clans in Yakuramoto since they were using roses as their flower emblems. The red rose was the flower emblem of the Nakashima clan while the Miyahara clan used the white rose as their flower emblem.

If I wasn't mistaken, both Setsuji and Seiho belonged to the Miyahara clan because of their mother-- the second youngest of the family's previous generation named Miyahara Rio. Well, she was already using Mitsuta as her surname.

"A legend? I never thought even trees had their legends."

"That was because it wasn't a simple legend, but it was also something that would make someone laugh if they heard about it," Setsuji responded in a somewhat serious tone. It was a tone that, to be honest, I wasn't used to hearing from him.

I frowned because of that. "What do you mean?"

"That tree near the cliff was said to have been planted because of a promise--a promise that two people who truly loved each other had uttered together," Oji-san explained.

"You mean... like a promise of love?"

Setsuji nodded. "It was a 500-year-old legend in our family. That tree was the proof that there is a kind of promised love that was said to be able to last till beyond eternity."

What? A love that could last beyond eternity? What kind of craziness was this?

But then, I asked myself. Don't tell me Setsuji believed in that?