an unexpected friend

When I passed through between narrow tables and went to the door, I dropped my books to the floor, one of which bumped into a boy’s head, and he yelped with pain.
“Oh, sorry,” I said.
“Do you call that an apology?” the boy exclaimed impatiently.
“Will you please be quiet?” someone said, and I decided to go out of a reading room with the boy and to say I was sorry when we reached the library entrance. But once again I made a mistake.
“What are you doing here? Have you skipped school today?” I asked.
“Of course not. Classes are being suspended due to the flu,” he replied, “even in the rainy season. Do you like summer constellations?”
He looked at one of my books which I borrowed from the library. We concluded that we were both interested in astronomical observation. I parted from him at the library entrance.

On my arriving home, I heard my dad grumbling again about a supermarket on the main street.
“I’m sure they are harassing,” dad said.
Dad ran an ice cream parlor, but the business has fallen into difficulty these days. He supposed this was a conspiracy that the supermarket has admitted. I was not sure, but I understood the reason why he wanted to say so, because…
“Because they still have it in for Yoshio,” dad said, and I sneaked away from the living room.

I, Yoshio, broke up with Harumi to whom I had been engaged about a decade ago. Harumi was a daughter whose parents ran the supermarket on the main street, so if anything wrong happened, that could be her family’s fault. I’ve been tired of talking about that.

At that night, I received an e-mail from the boy I had met at the library. At first, I supposed he wanted to see my DVD collection, but he wrote that he had twisted his ankle on his way home, and he was at a loss what to do because his parents didn't come home until the next day. I went to the living room and looked for a first-aid-kit when my dad asked me if I got injured. I answered him that I was going to bring cold compress to the boy I met that day, and then he said:
“If the boy suffers a sprained ankle, you should bring a bucketful of ice to him.”

Dad and I carried the bucket full of ice and headed for the main street. As we were close to his house, the street became wider and brighter, because there were many streetlights for heavy traffic. And there was an uncomfortable silence between us because we were in front of the supermarket on the main street: it was Harumi’s house.

Harumi’s son, whose name was Haruo, was so delighted when he saw me that he couldn’t realize dad and I felt embarrassed as I entered into Haruo’s room. We put ice and water into a water bag, wrapped it around Haruo’s swollen foot, and waited twenty minutes. Haruo and I chatted about shooting stars which observed in that year, and after a short while dad said in a low voice:
“In the past, people used to take care of children as a team in our town. That’s not the way we do things around here today.”

Haruo looked up at my dad’s face and didn’t understand whether that was a good sign or not.
“Come to our ice cream parlor whenever you will,” dad continued.
“Where? I’ve never seen an ice cream parlor in this town,” Haruo said.
I let out a little laugh in spite of myself, and dad glared at me.

Since then, Haruo and my dad were on good terms. I couldn’t guess what dad had been thinking when he had said that. Sometimes I asked my friends what they were thinking about my dad’s remark. Many of them looked at me awkwardly and said:
“That's not the way we do things around here.”
(668 words)