This story is part of the Wanderer series.
Stopping under the tree, Nozomi bent forward and grabbed a hold of the branch, pulling it out from under the snow. Giving it a look, her face flashed with disappointment at its leanness before she tucked the branch under her arm with the rest of her findings.
Gazing around the snowy landscape, her eyes eventually fell onto Chiara scavenging nearby with her head bent down towards the ground, similar to herself. With a sigh, she started walking towards her.
“Find anything good?” Nozomi asked as she approached.
Looking up, Chiara shook her head. “They’re all wet from the snow,” she griped.
“Yeah, same with mine.”
Chiara took stock of her findings, adjusting her arm to cradle the meager little branches against her chest better. “We’d be better off cutting a branch from one of the trees, but Karin forbid us from doing that. Dead trees and fallen branches only.”
Nozomi tilted her head back, eyes wandering upwards. “What if we did it anyway? Just one or two small ones? It’s not like anyone can tell, right?”
Chiara looked at her in alarm. “She would definitely know! Don’t risk it!”
Shoulders dropping, she sighed a long, mumbling sigh. “Finnneee…”
Hugging close to the steep wall of the mountain, close to a pool of water, was Karin. She stood on dry land under a small, trickling waterfall, leaning to her side, towards the pool, with her head out front. Her long, smooth hair hung straight down from her head, swaying as her hands gracefully ran through them, one after the other. Her head was shallow in the waterfall, only under it just enough for the water to run down the back of her head.
Nozomi and Chiara slowed to a stop before the treeline, both silently staring and wondering what Karin was doing. As Chiara scrutinized her further, she noticed Karin, with her head face away from the mountain, was eyeing them.
“… She’s noticed us…” Chiara muttered.
Nozomi uttered a closed-mouth gasp. Then, she quickly shouldered up. “Well… Nothing more to it, then. I’m going to her.”
As they both approached Karin under the falls, she leaned outwards from the water and started to squeeze her hair with her hands, wringing it dry.
Nozomi was the first to speak as they convened. “What are you doing?” she ignorantly asked, beaming a smile.
Expression unchanging, Karin continued to stare at Nozomi and Chiara as she squeezed her hair, eyes dropping down to their arms. “You could not find very much, I see.”
Flashing a look of shame, she let out an embarrassed chuckle. “It’s hard. Everything I found was wet.”
Karin did not return her excuse. Opening her palms back up, she ran her fingers through her hair once more with one hand while crouching down to fetch a dark cloth near her feet. The two girls watched in awkward silence as she patted the top of her head dry with the cloth. Eyes drifting away towards the pool, Karin was clearly not in the mood for conversation. Regardless, Nozomi spoke up again, her curiosity unwilling to abate.
“What’s it like to have long hair?”
Glancing back at Nozomi, her expression conveyed both the strangeness of the question and her annoyance at Nozomi’s persistence to talk with her.
“It requires discipline to maintain it,” she replied in a patronizing manner.
The edge in her voice was lost with Nozomi. “Do you have to wash it more often?”
“No more often than you should be washing it.”
Lowering the cloth from her head, Karin folded it up in her hands. Nozomi thought deeply for a few seconds.
“But… how do you wash it when you’re traveling, and not at a hot spring like this?”
“There are plenty other locations you can wash at,” Karin pointed out, as if it were obvious. “And I can weave my own water if I need to.”
Nozomi’s eyes lit up in realization. “Oh… Yeah, I guess you can.”
Chiara, who had been silently listening to the conversation, watched as Karin started to run the fingers of one hand through her hair again. Eyes lowering, she then glanced at a strand of her hair hanging near her cheek, turning her reflection towards herself.
“How much more work can it get?” she mumbled aloud to herself.
Blinking, Karin’s eyes whisked over to Chiara, her sharp ears catching her rumination. She eyed her carefully, discerning where her thoughts were.
Not hearing Chiara, Nozomi continued on. “Why did you grow it so long?”
Straightening herself, brows slightly furrowing, Karin first answered the question with a confounded expression. “Why…? It is only natural.”
Nozomi too responded with confusion, subtly tilting her head to the side and shining wide, naive eyes. “But… other girls keep their hair shorter.”
“That is their choice.”
Turning with one last stroke of her hand through her hair, Karin started to walk away from the two girls, crossing behind the waterfall and towards the snow on the other side. Perking up, Nozomi hastily made after her.
“Ah…! Wait!”
Glancing up, Chiara shook off her thoughts and followed after the others.