Special
Thirty minutes later, Yukari turned into a bundle of red as she clung to me and pinched my sides outside of her parents’ eyes. She could only resort to that when she couldn’t stop her mother from telling me stories about her. Embarrassing stories.
There’s that one time when they brought her to the beach during her 9th birthday. She apparently stepped on a starfish that wriggled under her foot. She got scared of how squishy and ticklish it was. Since then, she began carefully staring down at the ground just to make sure that she wouldn’t step on one again. And it became a habit that she brought back at home or everywhere else.
I guess that explained why she would sometimes remain fixated on the ground when we were walking together. I thought she was just too embarrassed. Turns out there’s a story about it.
Well, I never asked her about that and I just assumed that reason.