RONDselia

It was the beginning of August, and the orphanage implemented a new regulation that would make peer outings mandatory two times a month; they'd encourage kids to do them once a week. For me, I was okay with doing the bare minimum for maximum laziness. Nevertheless, I wanted to get one out of the way as early as possible.

One evening, I was in the dining room eating a snack. Ringomori was also there, on the other side of the table minding her own business. We didn't speak as we indulged in our own hobbies, but that was okay. Since meeting her on our birthday, we acknowledged and enjoyed each other's company by comfortably doing nothing special together; that was just the way we clicked.

The idea for my next outing came to me when a notification buzzed on my phone. It was from the social media account of my favorite rhythm game: D4Dream. I only used social media for news and my favorite idol band. The post was promoting a limited sale on their items at a mall in Sapporo; it persuaded me to go.

I submitted my outing registration form to the front office. I didn't particularly care who joined me, but a memory about the pie shop reemerged as I went to my room.

I'll hope for the best, I thought.

Not long after the submission, I was in the laundry room when a caregiver notified me that someone joined my peer outing.

"Really, who joined?" I asked.

Before the caregiver could give me an answer, a third party entered the room and answered for her.

"I… I did…" stammered a familiar voice.

I turned to see Ringomori upper half peeking around the corner of the doorway. She practically hugged the wall as she entered the room. The caregiver bowed and left us alone.

I whispered to myself, "Perhaps hopin' for the best does work."

Ringomori tilted her head.
"What...was that?"

"N-Nothing. A-Anyways, you've joined me yet again. Why'd you want to go to the mall with m-me?"

She raised her head and I connected with her golden peach eyes.
"Well…I want to buy something at the mall as well…so it works out for the both of us."

"I-I see."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone to open the calendar app.
"W-Well then, I was thinkin' we could go on this day. Is that okay?"

She leaned closer to me to confirm the date.
"That works for me."

"Great," I said as I opened the maps application. "We could meet at CLARIS and eat breakfast, then wait at the bus stop across the street. Sound good?"

She zoomed out on the application.
"Luckily the bus ride to the mall will be roughly ten minutes long."

Another caregiver happened to walk past us as we were discussing the peer outing. They poked their head through the doorway and said,
"Sorry to interrupt, but why don't you two leave together from here? Why meet somewhere else?"

His question stumped us. Ringomori and I faced each other with perplexity in our eyes, with a hint of mischief and fun emerging on our faces. We turned back to the caregiver and simply shrugged simultaneously. He looked at us with an eyebrow raised before leaving. I was certain he didn't understand our arcane dynamic, but that was okay.

Returning to the topic of the outing, I asked about what time we should meet at the pie shop. She responded with a giggle.

"Are you planning to show up late again?"

"Attackin' my lack of punctuality? That's low. I'll do my best to be on time."

She didn't say anything right away, but instead quickly faced me with a luminous face as if a light bulb activated above her head.
"Why don't we try to meet at an oddly specific time like, hmm, 11:17:25am?"

My head leaned to the left with my eyes looking right.
"...Why?"

"Well, I was thinking perchance you could remember the time better if it was something specific. It would also confuse other people who ever saw the time, which could be funny."

I gave her a second's chuckle, agreeing with her enigmatic suggestion. It was something else that only we had in common.

➼ ➼ ➼

The day of the outing was the coming Saturday. I woke up late because I didn't sleep well last night, not because I was excited for the outing, but because I simply wasn't tired...again.

Like most mornings, I desired to laze around all day, not even eating or showering but just laying in bed and failing to remember anything about my previous life. I would have done so if I didn't check the time and saw that it was 10:44:33am.

Oh shoot! I'm supposed to be meetin' with her in thirty-two minutes and fifty-two seconds from now!

I fell out of bed and sprung up with haste to gather my clothes and enter the shower. The cold water and urgency gave me the energy I lost from the lack of sleep. Once I finished, I outfitted myself in a T-shirt and joggers, put on deodorant, and packed my backpack with my wallet; the notebook and pens were already inside.

I left the orphanage at 11:07am, and it was an eight minute walk to the pie shop. The cloudless morning allowed the sun to heat up the city at a rapid pace, although the forecast did say it would get cooler later on. I was fortunate with stoplights and arrived at my destination.

I entered the pie shop and saw Ringomori already seated at one of the window tables.

She greeted me with a soft, "Good…morning," and I returned the same awkward energy. I took a seat beside her and before I could relax, she showed me her phone screen.

"You're two minutes and twenty-two seconds early, quite impressive," she commended me.

"Definitely better than bein' fifteen minutes late. We should order breakfast now."

We went to order breakfast, it was a quiet morning for the pie shop. I wasn't surprised to see the same cashier from before already having our orders ready on the monitor, waiting for us to confirm it. I never noticed before, but the tag on his uniform stated that his name was, "Ashikaga."

We paid for and received our food, then returned to the window tables. Our scheduled bus would arrive in ten minutes, so we had plenty of time to eat our pies. We finished in sync with the bus arriving at its stop.

We were the first passengers on the bus and sat near the back, Ringomori requested the window seat. We went deeper into the city until we arrived at the enclosed mall: Ario Sapporo mall.

➼ ➼ ➼

The first thing we did upon entering was look at the holographic map display to see what shops were nearby us.

"Let's start here, then just go with the flow and enter whatever shops interest either of us, yeah?" I offered.

She agreed, and we began our journey browsing.

Since a camera would make her stand out and cause a commotion inside a mall, Ringomori used her phone to timely record her experience. From what I saw, she didn't record the entire day – since she wanted to enjoy it to the fullest – and instead opted to record things that only interested her. I knew she did it in remembrance of her parents, but I internally questioned if the videos would ever have a greater purpose, but then again, who was I to question.

On the first floor, we window shopped through multiple clothing stores and an accessory shop that had necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. We also passed a sports store that was filled with jerseys of many worldwide teams.

"Do you still play sports, Vieira-kun?" she asked.

"I'm not that into sports, though soccer sometimes piques my interest. What about you?"

"I'm absolutely terrible. I'm always last in P.E. activities."

"I can kind of picture that, it's pretty funny."

We left the store and found ourselves at the far end of the first floor. We still had another side to look through, but I was becoming eagerly impatient about buying the stuff I came for.

In order to not bulldoze through whatever Ringomori came for, I asked out of courtesy, "Which floor is the thing you want to buy?"

"I believe it's on the second."

"Really? Mine is too, let's go now."

At the top of the escalators, without needing to discuss a direction, we made our way to an arcade section at the far east corner. I saw signs and posters about the goods I wanted to buy, and once we reached the arcade's entrance, I saw the name of my favorite idol band.

"RONDselia!" I exclaimed.

I noticed a harmony in my voice, and I turned to Ringomori to see her taking a photo of a RONDselia poster with an ear-to-ear smile.

That was when I discovered another commonality we had: The idol band.