It was the fall of his first year of high school. He’d been invited to the tobacco shop by Kiyomizu, a boy one year his senior who he rode on the train with, who said, “Lots of cool guys hang out there, so why don’t you come by sometime?” Higuchi was an outgoing underclassman of whom the second and third year students were very fond. He often hung out in their classrooms during breaks in the school day. The tobacco shop in front of Fujioka Station was where the high school students in their blue blazers and dark red neckties always whiled away the time before class in the mornings. After being invited there by Kiyomizu, Higuchi went to the tobacco shop almost every morning.
“He’s laconic and difficult, and you never know what he’s thinking.”
Higuchi’s first impression of upperclassman Imai Hisashi, who was one year ahead of him (and whose family owned the tobacco shop), was that he wasn’t very sociable. Higuchi was mostly attracted to the tobacco shop because of all the people who gathered there, and the music that was always playing.