“Hello there!”
“…Hi…”
“You look quite lively today!”
“Your eyes clearly don’t work, then.”
Lively, after pulling an all-nighter playing video games? Well…okay, maybe. My headache and red eyes certainly made me feel alive. For my trouble, I’d made it all the way to the desert. Adachi and I had never gone to a desert in real life, but Hino probably had.
“After all this time and effort, I’ll reach the final boss any minute now.”
“You are not even close.”
“Wait, really?” Oh no. Any more all-nighters, and I’ll kick the bucket for sure.
Yashiro slid onto my lap. “Ho ho ho! You appear to be enjoying yourself.”
“Well…yeah, I guess.”
I liked how it felt to travel freely, so perhaps this was my type of game. Alas, Merchant Nagafuji was gradually losing steam in terms of combat; she’d now been relegated to picking up coins.
“I appreciate your bringing me this, although I don’t know why you chose this moment.”
“You don’t?” she asked, tilting her head. “It was a birthday gift.”
“Whose—oh.” I counted back two days on my fingers. Right. I was always forgetting my own damn birthday. “You could’ve said so, you know.”
“Heh heh heh!”
“That wasn’t your cue to laugh.”
“Happy belated birthday, Shimamura-san.”
“Thanks.” I recalled a previous conversation about birthdays, and what I’d said at the time. “Happy birthday to you too,” I replied. It was an expression of everything I felt toward her.
But I digress.
“Hmmm…” I came to a stop in front of a pyramid. “Are you craving any particular snack?” Knowing her, that was the only sort of birthday gift she’d want.
“If you are offering, then may I have a donut?”
“A donut? Yeah, sure.”
That had been the first treat I ever gave her—my first mistake, feeding a stray. I could only wonder what would’ve happened if I’d refused to share. I’d have no console now, so the TV would be off, and I’d be alone in the dark. Given Yashiro’s penchant for destiny, though, that outcome had probably been impossible from the start.
“I give you a donut, you tell me one of the secrets of the universe. That was the deal, wasn’t it?”
“Accounting for inflation, I will now require two donuts per secret.”
“Who taught you economics?”
“I would still appreciate a single donut, of course.” She was surprisingly willing to compromise.
I didn’t have any questions about the universe, per se, but what I wanted to know most at this particular moment was: “Will I find Adachi again?”
Perhaps, to me, Adachi was the universe.
“Yes,” Yashiro replied instantly. “In every universe, Shimamura-san will inevitably find her Adachi-san.”
I seemed to recall her mentioning something along those lines long ago. “So other Shimamuras will see her, but not me?”
“The living cannot meet the dead.” She stated that matter-of-factly; it felt viscerally wrong somehow, coming from her of all people. “I learned that from the television.”
“I should’ve known.”
Yashiro and common sense just didn’t mix. And she was wrong, wasn’t she? I considered telling her about the illusionary Adachi. Would that make me look crazy?
“But of course, that only applies to the dead.”
“Huh…?”
Something told me that Yashiro meant more than she was letting on, but I couldn’t work out her implication. Old age had done my brain no favors. Was she trying to say that I could see Adachi in my memories, or something cerebral like that?
“Well, whatever.” We’d expressed our gratitude to one another, albeit indirectly, and I was satisfied. “So are you able to visit those other Shimamuras?”
“I am able, yes. However, it requires some time.”
She spoke so matter-of-factly that I wanted to roll my eyes, but at this point, I didn’t even think of questioning her.
“Well, if any of us Shimamuras can’t find our Adachi—or vice versa—you should go check on her sometime.” Even if meeting Adachi was destiny, one incarnation of me was bound to slip up, and that thought was unsettling. “It doesn’t feel right for any version of us to be apart.”
After all, there was no “Adachi and Shimamura” without both of us.
“That sounds…fun.” Yashiro lowered her hood and grinned up at me. Maybe this would give her some actual purpose, rather than leeway to sit around doing nothing. “Very well, then. Do we have a deal?”
“Yep.”
“Now for the donuts.”
“Already?!” Honestly, I shouldn’t have been surprised, knowing her.
As I reached out and tousled her hair, she beamed back innocently…and I was oddly relieved that she was still cold to the touch, like the moon hanging in the sky.