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The summer Koguma began riding a Cub.
The end-of-term exams ended without any particular hiccups.
It was the first semester of her second year of high school, and she didn’t have any concrete plans for her future. She took the exams after studying by looking over her textbooks and notes again, hoping that she didn’t get marks low enough where she had to take remedial classes. After marking her own exams, which she had never failed to do, she received marks that were slightly above the average in each class, as expected.
After tomorrow’s classes, the post-exam break which led to summer vacation would begin after the end-of-term ceremony.
After the exams, when homeroom had ended and the other students were leaving, Koguma was in the academic affairs office.
Koguma, who had no friends to ask each other to go to end-of-exam celebration parties, was in the staff room of the academic affairs office for a matter she had inquired about a few days ago.
Koguma decided to get a part-time job.
She didn’t have any trouble eating on her current scholarship stipend, but ever since she bought the Cub, things that needed money were increasing.
The Cub itself required only gasoline, oil, and a little extra equipment, but riding around on the Cub had given Koguma a wider range of activities, and she has come to see many things in the world, and has come to want many things.
Before she started receiving a scholarship. Even when she was living with her disappeared mother, Koguma was a girl with little desire for things.
Even now, her apartment had only a desk, some furniture, cooking utensils, and just a radio for entertainment. She had never felt much dissatisfaction or misfortune because of this.
Ever since she started riding, she had bought a few things she needed, such as a luggage box for the rear carrier and goggles to protect her eyes, but now that she had all the equipment she needed to ride, she was beginning to wonder about the things she didn’t know if she needed.
When she rode her Cub with her school loafers, her ankle bones would sometimes cling to the engine and make them feel hot.
That could be avoided if she was careful, but in the case she fell, she would want shoes that guarded her ankles and ankle bones rather than exposing them.
Koguma’s current watch was a digital watch she bought at a hundred-yen store, and since the buckle became loose and kept falling off, she often left it in her apartment without wearing it.
She could check the time on her phone, and she never had a problem with that, but she couldn’t take out her phone when she was riding on her Cub. She wanted a new watch.
She also thought it would be nice to have a jacket over her uniform so that her collar wouldn’t flap when she was riding, and a key ring for holding her Cub key, apartment key and luggage box key. There were many things that came to mind.
When she thought about it, all of those things were related to the Cub. Was the Cub an existence that instilled greed in Koguma, who lived modestly until now? Or was it the Cub that made it possible for her to see what she needed?
Either way, Koguma knew that she would need money to get what she wanted, so she inquired about part-time jobs at the school’s academics affairs office.
In the countryside of Yamanashi, which was far from the big cities, there were few job opportunities. If you went to a convenience store, you could find the Koshin’etsu edition of a part-time job listings magazine, but she thought it would be better to search widely to find a good job, so she contacted the academics affairs office, which helped students find part-time jobs and volunteer work, though they were few in number.
And so, Koguma was called to the office after school when she finished her exams.
The teacher in charge of general affairs told her that they had found the perfect summer job for her and sent out a job application.
The things written in the job application were a little unique but easy to understand.
Her part-time job was to transport documents. During summer vacation, she would come to school every morning to pick up various documents and deliver them to the staff room in their partner school in Koufu.
A joint teacher training was scheduled between the two schools during summer vacation. Among the necessary documents, there were many important documents needed that couldn’t be sent by email attachments or fax, and documents that they couldn’t spend several days sending by mail. This was a job of transporting them.
In the past, the teachers who were available drove the documents there, but a few years ago, they started recruiting part-time workers from among the students.
The pay was two-thousand yen per round trip, mainly two round trips in the morning and evening. All necessary expenses such as gas were included in the pay.
For Koguma, who rode her Cub all over the place, it was a godsend of a job. The income was not bad if she worked everyday. Going to school every morning was also not a burden for her, as she wasn’t in the habit of sleeping in on vacations.
Knowing that Koguma was living on a scholarship and couldn’t buy the things she liked, and that she had recently started going to school by Cub, the teacher introduced her to the best job for her.
Koguma was attracted to the details of the job. It was surely a much better paying job than the ones she could find in those job listing magazines she could buy at the convenience store. After thinking over it for a little bit, Koguma answered.
“Please give me until tomorrow to consider it.”
The day after the final exams. Koguma arrived at school earlier than usual, where there was a slightly lazy atmosphere because the post-exam break was starting tomorrow.
She greeted Reiko, who was earnestly staring at a topographic map from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan in the classroom, took off her gym jersey that she was wearing on top of her summer uniform of blouse and navy vest, and sat in her seat. The classes right after exams ended with no particular content.
Lunch break. While eating lunch with Reiko in the bike parking lot as usual, Koguma told her about the part-time job she was introduced to yesterday.
“Isn’t that being a courier?”
“Courier?”
Koguma asked back, and Reiko started to explain.
“The official name is diplomatic courier. It’s a job where you directly deliver diplomatic documents that cannot be entrusted to others for confidentiality reasons. Nowadays, it’s what shipping companies also call it small international mail.”
Reiko asked Koguma, who looked as though she didn’t quite understand.
“So, are you going to take the job?”
Koguma took a bite of the lunch on her lap before answering.
“Yeah, I think I’ll try doing it.”
Reiko looked at the lunch she was eating that was different from what she usually had rather than Koguma herself, then nodded.
It was a Koshu torimeshi bento. A boxed lunch sold at JR Koufu Station.
Before accepting the job of transporting the documents, Koguma decided to take a look at the actual course she would be riding along before deciding.
She had been to Nirasaki, which was a little more than ten kilometers from her apartment, and she knew that it wasn’t so far away that it would be a burden on her. But Koufu was twice that distance.
She wasn’t going there for fun. It was a job where she was entrusted with important documents and delivering them. She couldn’t just say “I quit” midway through it. If she got stranded due to an accident or her Cub breaking down, she would have to find another way to carry out the delivery.
This morning, Koguma left her apartment two hours earlier than usual and rode her Cub on the early morning road to Koufu Station.
She bought a bento at the station and returned to her apartment on Prefectural Road 17, a different road from the one she had come on, and then went to school right after.
In the parking lot, she looked at the number recorded on the Cub’s odometer. The round trip was a little over forty kilometers. It took her less than an hour and a half. On the way there, she rode along roads that had few cars in the early morning, and on the way back she rode along the roads when they became busy with the increasing number of cars commuting to work. Koguma confirmed that she could do this job.
The station bento that was considerably more expensive than her usual handmade bento was something like an expense to prove to herself that she made a round trip to Koufu. She might have become a bit bolder, over-optimistically calculating the money that would come in even though she wasn’t working yet.
After lunch break and the afternoon classes, Koguma said goodbye to Reiko as usual in the bike parking lot.
They didn’t have the kind of relationship where they invited each other out during vacation. The next time they saw each other would be in the new school term in September.
“Good luck with the job. I’ll also be riding around in the summer.”
“Mm, take care.”
After Reiko rode away on her louder-than-usual Postal Cub, Koguma went to the staff room to finish some simple procedures and start her summer job of transporting documents.
Starting tomorrow, Koguma will become a courier with her Cub.
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