“O-Okay! L-Let's eat!”

My trembling voice barely managed to come out of my mouth and reach the ears of the ones who were looking for us.

Sotoka was glancing at me intermittently, and so did I. Right now, it was almost impossible for us to look into each other’s eyes, but somehow I could tell that it was what we wanted to do, it was simply just too embarrassing.

“S-Shall we go then?”

“Y-Yeah…”

The way back to Sapphire’s car was awfully quiet, none of us dared to say a word. No, maybe we were actually able to say whatever we wanted too, but there was nothing to say.

No, again, there were a lot of things we could possibly say after something like that, but what were we supposed to say? There's no simple answer to that question.

When we finally arrived, Kasumi was swinging her hand into the air in order to welcome us back, Clair had a smug and shameless smile drawn on her face as if she was saying something like “I told you!”, and Saph was drinking something from a can she was holding in her hand.

There was a wood fire nearby. Being cooked around the fire, were six fish on sticks, and on the ground, wrapped in aluminium foil were a bunch of potatoes.

“Took you long enough, right? Did you do something funny~? Hahaha~!”

“Of course they did, Kasumi. Just look at their faces. Hehe.”

Kasumi and Clair started mocking us as soon as we arrid, so I tried to change the topic of the conversation.

“I-I see you managed to catch a lot of fish. What a cool senpais you are. Ha-ha.”

I said with an obvious fake and uncomfortable laugh.

“W-Where are the snacks...? Fufu...”

Following me, Sotoka asked a question that was also followed by her uncomfortable laugh. It must be obvious for anyone that nothing happened between us, or at least no what they were thinking of.

“These are the snacks! These white, fluffy, sweet and pure marshmallows! We'll put them on sticks after we eat those fish and potatoes! Or... Maybe we could eat them right now? What do you think, girls?!”

“What a glutton you are, Kasumi hehe! Sadly, we didn't manage to catch any fish, so Saph had to buy those five.”

“It had to be five since the one we threw at Saph’s face was really small. Haha~!”

“You brat, don't laugh or I'll abandon you here, right on the beach!”

“S-Sorry…”

Somehow Kasumi stopped herself from joking even further. Maybe she was actually being precautious?

“A-Anyway! What should we eat first~?”

Kasumi asked once again while glancing with shining eyes at the marshmallows’ bag. Of course, there was no single soul on earth that was able to say otherwise.

However, since it was a good time to start talking to Sotoka once again, I decided to ask her what she preferred.

“W-What do you want to eat first, S-Sotoka?”

“M-Maybe we should go with the marshmallows first, right?”

“Y-Yeah, those fish are quite big after all. Haha.”

“Well, I think you should be able to eat at least three of those, you know? Fufu.”

“W-What are you talking about?! If there's someone able to eat that much it’ll clearly be Kasumi, you know?!”

“W-What?! I-I might be the sports type, but I’m still a girl!”

We all laughed at that response and it felt like a burden was taken off our shoulders.

Since the fish were already cooked, we took them away from the fire and put them on a tray by the side in order to keep them warm.

Sapphire handed barbecue skewers to everyone and each one of us put a single marshmallow on it and placed it over the fire.

“Sweets are the best~!”

“You might be right. Hehe.”

“This was a funny day, right Eriko?”

“Y-You are right, Sotoka!”

Yes, she is right, but there is still a weird feeling deep inside my chest. A feeling that I’ve never felt before.