I glare at Yotsuha. We’ve changed into T-shirts and just left the shrine office entrance.

After the harvest festival, to close out the night, the two of us attended a banquet for the local men and women who helped with the festival. Gran was the hostess, and Yotsuha and I poured sake and made conversation.

“How old are you now, li’l Mitsuha? What?! Seventeen?! I see… Havin’ a sweet young thing like you pour for me makes me feel young again.”

“Yessir, go on and roll the years way back! Here, go ahead—drink some more!”

We entertained almost desperately, wore ourselves out, and they finally turned us loose just now, saying, “You kids can go on home.” Gran and the other adults are still at the shrine office, carrying on with the banquet.

“Yotsuha, do you know what the average age was back there, in the office?”

On the grounds, all the lights on the shrine approach are out, and the cool sounds of insect songs echo all around us.

“I dunno. Sixty?”

“I did the math in the kitchen. It was seventy-eight. Seventy-eight!”

“Huh.”

“Now that we’re gone, it’s ninety-one in there! They’re pushin’ a hundred. They’re in the final stage of life. The underworld might send a reaper for the whole place!”

“Hmm…”

What I’m trying to get at is that we should bail on this town ASAP, but Yotsuha’s response is terse. She seems preoccupied with something else. Well, she’s just a little kid. She wouldn’t understand her big sister’s agony. Giving up, I look at the sky. The vast expanse of it is filled with dazzling bright stars, shining transcendentally, as if human lives on Earth are none of their concern.

“…That’s it!”

As we descend the shrine’s long stone stairway, side by side, Yotsuha suddenly cries out. She’s wearing a triumphant expression, as if having found a cake someone hid from her.

“Sis, why don’t you chew up a whole bunch of that sake and use it to pay your way to Tokyo?!”

For a moment, I’m speechless.

“…You’ve got quite the mind to come up with that.”

“You could send snapshots and ‘makin’ of’ documentary videos with it and call it ‘Shrine Maiden Sake’ or somethin’! I bet that’d sell!”

Should I be worried that my nine-year-old sister sees the world like that? Still, I realize Yotsuha is actually concerned about me, in her own way. Aw, she really is cute, I think, a little more fondly than before. Okay then, maybe I’ll give this sake business idea some serious thought… Wait, can you just sell sake on your own like that?

“Well? What do you think, Sis?”

“Hmm…”

…And that’s all I have to say.

“…Wait, no! It’d be against the liquor laws!”

Wait, was that the problem? I wonder, and when I come back to myself, I’ve broken into a run. All sorts of incidents and feelings and prospects and doubts and despairs are jumbled together inside me, and it feels like my heart’s about to explode. I run down the steps, taking them two at a time, slam on the brakes under the torii gate on the landing, and suck in a huge lungful of chilly night air. Then I expel the cluttered mess in my chest along with it.