A/N: I wasn't planning on continuing this, but it just sort of happened. The ramen bits and the promise referred to in this chapter come from Vol.5 of the LN. Unfortunately, the anime skipped over these parts (director must not be a sensei fan). Fortunately, I've been informed by my readers that the volume is translated.

Growing Up

Exams come like a disease. Even I catch it, staying up late to study math and science. I can ace liberal arts in my sleep – a skill Hiratsuka likes to attribute to her tutelage – but math and science have always held me back. It's not a problem with me but with the school system. The school wants to turn out well-rounded, mediocre members of society, but greatness has always been specialized. Beethoven never had to do math. Murakami never had to learn physics. And a house husband has no need for either.

All clubs are canceled in exam season. Without the Service Club, I see Yuigahama rarely and Yukinoshita never. A more convivial guy would've called it lonely. I've almost forgotten this sensation of freedom, of worrying about just my problems. Let others fix their own for a change.

The last class on Friday is Modern Japanese, Hiratsuka's class. The closer we get to exams, the more she bears down on us, a fact Tobe never ceases to complain about. He is complaining now in a voice loud enough for everyone – including Hiratsuka – to hear, about how he's never going to remember Yukio Mishima or Eiji Yoshikawa or Kenzo Tange, but he does remember Amy Yamada because she's cute. The other students sneak glances at him and laugh as they pack their bags. What a noble profession teaching is, I think as I head for the door, to squeeze knowledge into rocks. I will never be one.

"Wait up, Hikigaya," Hiratsuka says, clapping me across the back. I almost fall to the floor. She must be taking her frustrations about Tobe out on me.

"What is it?"

"Feeling hungry?"

The question surprises me so much I answer "Yes" without thinking. Lunch was only four hours ago, but I had eaten most of it in first period – you try to resist Komachi's cooking.

"Great! Let's go."

"Go where?"

She stares at me as if I am a particularly dimwitted child. "A restaurant, of course. Where else?"

No, that doesn't even come close to explaining anything. But she is already striding forward. I hurry after her, wondering what the occasion is. Last summer, in the heat of July, I saw a beautiful woman by herself at a wedding. She wore a low-cut black dress lined with fur, standing in a crowd of similarly-dressed guests, but she looked as out-of-place as a tarantula on a wedding cake. When I approached, she took me by the hand. We went to her favorite ramen stand, where she explained to me the intricacies of the noodles, the cooking style of the meat, the consistency of the soup – really, she was entirely too obsessed with ramen. But she promised to take me back again.

"That's after graduation, though," I think out loud.

"We're not getting ramen," Hiratsuka says, grinning. "We're still up for after you graduate."

"What's the occasion?"

"Promotion."

For a second there, I thought she had gotten married – a ludicrous thought, in retrospect. We head out to the parking lot. "Administrators like what I've done with the Service Club," she says. "They say it's a miracle that I've managed to give direction to troubled children. They mean Yukinoshita, of course. You're not on anyone's radar. They say it's finally nice to get an active, visionary, young teacher at the school."

She says the word young like a war veteran showing off a medal of honor. I pity her so much that I let the insult slide.

Hiratsuka's car is a sleek red sports car that, although I don't know anything about cars, I'm pretty sure is several levels above her pay grade. Either she has a rich family nobody knows about, or her terrible management of finances is another reason why she's unmarried. "Aston Martin," she says, petting its top. "I recently put in bi-xenon headlamps and a custom vinyl trim for the passenger seat. Pretty sweet, isn't it? Get in and don't touch anything."

Every person needs a hobby, I suppose. Alcohol and manga can only get you so far. It is the second time I've ever been in her car. Inside is as spotless as I remember, chrome coat gleaming in the sun, with none of the napkins or coffee stains or ragged upholstery like in my parents' car. I guess that's one advantage of being single without children. She hums softly as she drives, thumb tapping against the steering wheel, other arm braced against the windowsill where the wind catches her hair and tosses it behind us. The radio plays "Linda Linda" on low. We drive past Sougou high school and the arcade and the business district into a part of downtown I've never been to. Hiratsuka is rarely the most mature person, but in her car she is the most childish I've ever seen her. In the driver's seat, she displays a part of herself different from the guise of the teacher and different even from the bitter, lonely woman that seeps through the cracks. If she acts like this all the time, I find myself thinking, there won't be enough men left in Chiba for the other women.

We stop at a trendy-looking restaurant in the upscale part of downtown. "Ocean Table," the sign says in English. Dimly, I remember reading the name somewhere – in a magazine or online or perhaps my parents mentioned it in passing – and somehow I associate it with international food. It is a three-story building commanding a view of the harbor, the sort of place a guy will take a girl to impress her; come nighttime, the place will be more crowded than when seagulls flock around a washed-up carcass. Thankfully, it is still early afternoon, and quiet.

"Table for two," Hiratsuka says to the waiter, who, to his credit, doesn't bat an eye at an older woman taking a highschooler out to a meal. Perhaps he thinks we are related, though that is a difficult mistake to make since Hiratsuka is still wearing her white lab coat and I my school uniform. He seats us at a table in the far corner, the best spot in the restaurant, secluded and lonely, especially far from a group of noisy college students at the center.

I always have trouble picking out food at restaurants. There's so much variety – who's to say this is better than that? What if I order something I don't like? And always, it seems, someone else orders something that tastes better than mine. That's part of the reason I like ramen so much. The selection is small, and there are only so many ways you can vary noodles and soup. I glance through the menu, which also lists ramen – a disgrace, because the atmosphere here is clearly unsuited for ramen. Solitarily is the only way to eat ramen. No matter how expensive your ingredients are or how many stars adorn your chef's shirt, ramen will be tasteless among company. Whatever ramen Ocean Table professes to make will be inferior to even cup ramen.

Hiratsuka assures me that she'll pay for everything, and I almost order the six-thousand yen lobster dish. In the end, I order a seafood udon while Hiratsuka orders shrimp tempura. "And a Sapporo," she tells the waiter. Of course.

"If someone sees us," I say, "wouldn't that cause the wrong impression?"

"No chance. We're on the opposite side of the city from the high school, and this isn't the sort of place high school students hang out at, and even if they did, nobody eats at four o'clock in the afternoon."

She has thought this out surprisingly far.

"I should be studying."

"You'd rather study than have dinner with a beautiful woman like me?"

First of all, four o'clock can hardly be called dinner time. Secondly, beautiful is stretching it – though she can be striking in the right light. "I don't think a teacher should be telling a student to not study during finals."

She scoffs. "Don't try to blame me. We both know you're hopeless with the sciences."

Her confidence in me is inspiring. But a break is nice once in a while. I breathe in the smell of seafood and spices and just a hint of Hiratsuka's perfume. Too much studying kills the soul. Even a little bit of studying kills the soul. Standardized tests are terrible ways to gauge performance, didn't you know that? It's true. The Asahi Shinbun published an article about it recently. Standardized tests narrow the curriculum, lower creativity, and undermine student involvement in activities – my terrible science grades are evidence of how far ahead I am of the curve. Most students cram a few days before the test and forget everything the day after. Is that really what a school aims to accomplish? We should do away with them altogether. I say all this to Hiratsuka, who laughs and shakes her head.

"And how would you fix it, smart guy?"

"That's a question for someone else to figure out. It's called division of labor. I can't go around solving every problem, can I?"

She smirks. "You should be a politician."

"I already have a career I want to go into."

"House husband is not a career."

"I'm a pioneer."

She laughs, that most wonderful sound. "Good luck finding a college that lets you major in that. You're going to be graduating soon, you know."

"Still a year away."

"A year is a short time. Thought about where you want to go yet?"

Not in the slightest. There are always more immediate problems. And, if I'm being honest, I don't want to think about college. There is something terrifying about it. I can't quite pinpoint it, but it is akin to my fear of the basement when I was young. I hadn't quite grasped the concept of a basement back then. We used it for a storage room, but I only knew it as a place where things went to die. My stuffed animals, my broken bike, my trading card collection – everything ended up there eventually, and when I found them again months later they had changed. Covered in dust, bathed in half-light, there looked cold and sterile and dead and it was unthinkable that I had once loved them dearly. College must be like that.

"Well, there's still time," Hiratsuka continues. "I'm not here for counseling. But you're smarter than you think."

"I already think I'm pretty smart."

"I take that back. You're not as smart as you think, just smarter than other people give you credit for."

It is a strange blend of insult and compliment. I'm not sure which stings more. Outside the sky has turned dull amber. The laughter of the college students drift down from several tables over. It's impossible to believe that soon I will end up like them. But then again, I had the same feeling back in middle school toward high school students. The Service Club will no doubt be broken up once we graduate. There aren't enough troublesome students left to carry on the tradition. And what of us three? Going to the same college together is a fantasy present only in fiction, where the protagonists need to stick together to carry on the plot. Reality is never quite so convenient. The thought makes me sadder than I like to admit. It must've showed on my face, because Hiratsuka reaches over and squeezes my shoulder.

"You'll grow up to be a fine man. You have me looking out for you."

"That makes me even more worried."

She smiles and shakes her head. "Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. Food's here."

The waiter wheels out two steaming trays. I break open my chopsticks and remember that yes, I am quite hungry, but the seafood udon is disappointingly average. The soup is creamier than I like. The taste of black pepper is overpowering. There is also not nearly enough meat to balance out the noodles – a fault that every restaurant makes, those cheap bastards. Why give me an entire bowl of noodles and only three pieces of fish? You're not fooling anyone. To make matters worse, Hiratsuka reaches over and picks up a piece of fish.

"Oh, don't give me that look," she says. "You can have some of mine, if you want."

I decline. Fried shrimp and noodles go together like bacon and ramen – I've seen it once, at the convenience store. On impulse I bought it, because nothing with ramen in it can truly be bad. Oh, how wrong I was.

"My friend always bragged about how her boyfriend took her here every weekend," Hiratsuka says, tugging a shrimp tail out of her mouth. "She's always going on about how great the place was. Well, the food's not that great."

So that's why she chose this place that is so ill-suited for both of us – instead compromising for this deserted twilight hour. I can identify. Some people just can't understand the need to be alone. "How do you know? You've never tried it!" they will exclaim about mixers, karaoke, parties, clubs, reunions, weddings. The correct answer is, of course, that you don't need to experience something to dislike it. Otherwise we will be chowing dirt and guzzling oil to see if we like the taste. But there are people who still cannot understand, and for those nothing less than experience will testify. So we go to karaoke and clubs and weddings and trendy restaurants, and when we get back we can look them square in the eye and say, "See?" The disappointment on their faces is never worth our effort. But we will have proved it to them at last, and, perhaps, also to ourselves.

"It's all about the glamour," I say. "Ocean Table could serve food scraped out of the bottom of the trashcan and people will still eat it. That's why I don't trust popular restaurants. If you really want to eat good food, you need to look for the street stands, the hidden cafes, the back-alley joints. They know that they can't attract customers by looks alone, so they give their all to their food."

"Agreed." She leans over, jabbing her chopstick at me. "I went to Arira Ramen the other day. Ibuki magazine rated it the number one ramen restaurant in Japan. Not even close."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Alright, it wasn't terrible. They had good meat, if nothing else. But you'd expect more from the number one restaurant, won't you?"

"Then what do you consider the best?"

"You'll find out. After graduation."

She smirks. Despite knowing that it is exactly the kind of reaction she anticipates, I am curious. Located deep in the Chousei mountains, Arira Ramen has what Ibuki magazine calls a homey, rustic taste, with none of the fanciness of city restaurants. No miscellaneous spices, no exotic ingredients, no elaborate cooking tricks. Arira raises their own cows and slaughters them weekly for maximum freshness. For their soup, they use purified spring water from the nearby waterfall. In lieu of Disneyworld and the Taj Mahal, Arira Ramen had been on my places to go before I die. What can be better?

"I'm looking forward to it," I say, and for a moment I've never wanted anything so much in my life.

The sun has dipped below the horizon. Already outside is dark except for the glare of headlights. It seems only minutes ago that we left the school beneath a bright red sky. In Chiba winters, night comes quickly and overstays its welcome. We turn down the waiter's offer of dessert. "Enough calories for one day," Hiratsuka says with a grimace. For someone who professes the food's not that great, she has managed to clean her entire plate. I'm tempted to order something to prolong our stay, but I am not hungry either, and certainly not for whatever dessert Ocean Table concocts. The restaurant is getting noisier; more people have started arriving. I'm glad we will leave before the rush.

The ride back is quiet. Hiratsuka doesn't like to speak when she drives, as always, and that is fine with me. Eating has made me sleepy. But near the end of the ride, when we are rounding into the residential district, she says, "Hope you had fun, Hikigaya."

It would be too embarrassing to admit I did, so I grunt.

"I wanted a moment to ourselves," Hiratsuka says.

"Huh?"

"I know you're busy with exams. But once exams end and summer starts, we won't have an excuse to see each other again. So I thought we could celebrate now."

"I hardly think a promotion is thatimportant."

"You're one year closer to graduation." Her voice is soft, as if she's speaking into someone's ear. I close my eyes. The car hums below me, providing percussion to Hiratsuka's wordless tune. One year left, both short and long.

The best and worst thing about life is that it's inevitable. Soon I will be back among pencils and paper. Our interlude is over. I miss it already. Hiratsuka's promise looms over the horizon like the first flashes of lightning before a storm, riding on the last wave of clear summer skies. We are both inexperienced and perhaps too eager for our own good. For all my complaints, I would say my life now is idyllic. Routine is certainly underrated. But graduation and college and growing up thunder in the distance, and even from all the way over here I can feel the tremors. The future is a terrifying squall. Hiratsuka herself is the most terrifying thing of all. She walks the earth like a storm deity, uprooting lesser mortals and throwing them into clubs they would much rather not be in. Lesser men will flee in fear, while I – well, I'm also a bit terrified, truth be told. But part of me yearns for the tempest all the same.

A/N: I realized that I messed up the timeline this chapter (thanks to the reader who pointed it out). Finals are held in June, during summer, but this story is set during winter for some reason. I'm too accustomed to the college schedule where semester finals can be held in winter -_- Unfortunately, I don't like to make major revisions after I already put it up, so the chapter will remain as is. But to clarify: This chapter is set in the summer.