Once we got out of the school, we started walking through the road, heading to the bus stop

Since we live in the countryside, the road was wide, without sidewalks and covered with gravel instead of pavement. 

It's a five minutes walk to the bus stop, but with the soft wind caressing our checks and the relaxing sound of the trees nearby it hardly feels like that, and the walk ends in the blink of an eye.

Sadly, we can't take any detours. The buses here have a really tight schedule so we were right in time to take the one at 19:30, or else we should wait for the one at 20:30. Worst case scenario is that, if somehow we miss that bus, there's no other one to take us to our homes. Luckily, that hasn't happened yet.

"It must be great to live in those kinds of places where you don't need to care about the bus schedule and stuff like that."

I looked at Sotoka while she said those words. Indeed, caring about time could be bothersome sometimes, but is not that bad once you get used to it.

"We could go wherever we want without caring about what time it is, Eriko!"

"There's some charm in those words, Sotoka. But this town has its own charm too!"

I said those words while opening my arms to the sky. The moment when I finished them, a bus that had clearly had better times stopped right where we were.

We greeted the driver and took a pair of empty seats. It's not like there are many people on the bus at this hour, but there weren't many pairs of empty seats next to each other so we ended up taking a pair that was almost at the end of the bus. Of course, I sat on the window seat.

“Yeah, that's true. This town has its own charm too.”

Sotoka said while looking through the window.

The closest hill was covered in a dim orange light while the farthests looked silhouetted against the sky. There was a calm countryside breeze entering through the bus’ windows. The crickets were singing their summer song and the clean sky was about to start giving a place to the stars to shine.

I can't imagine myself living in one of those big cities, surrounded by buildings, glass and concrete. I know that there's a lot of good points living in those kinds of places, but I’m pretty sure that I won't be able to handle the noise and the people.

“Now that I think about it, cities are really messy places, right? I think I'll get lost every single day if I lived in one of those!”

“Knowing you, you might be right, Sotoka. Haha~”

“Oh, come on!”

She said with a pouting face while giving me a soft hit with her elbow right on my lower ribs.

Sotoka is right, big cities are messy places. Even the landscape is different. There's no trees, no animals, no crickets, no countryside breeze and no hills covered in grass and flowers.

There's a growing, heavy and nostalgic feeling in my chest just by thinking about the possibility of leaving this town surrounded by hills and sea. So I ended up repeating myself to ease my heart.

“Indeed, this is a great place to live.”

I leaned my head in the window and Sotoka leaned hers on my shoulder.

“Are we going for those ice cream then, Eriko?”

“Of course! I’m dying for a strawberry flavored one!”

“I think I'll go with the peach one. Fufu~”