AKI WAS CROUCHED ON THE SOFA in the Game Room.
And then – Kokoro walked in. She gazed at Aki as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She was staring at Aki’s school uniform.
‘Aki-chan, do you go to Yukishina No. 5 Junior High?’
Aki slowly followed Kokoro’s eyeline and looked down at her own uniform.
‘Yes,’ Aki said. ‘Yukishina No. 5.’
Kokoro’s eyes had widened with astonishment.
A few moments later, Masamune and Subaru came through the door, one behind the other. ‘It’s exactly the same uniform worn by the girls at my school!’ Masamune said, joining in the conversation.
We are all – all of us – at the same school.
Which means—
‘We could all help each other.’
Aki took Masamune’s words the most seriously.
Because, she said to herself, I’m the one who really wants help.
✦ ✦ ✦
THERE WAS NO ANSWER THAT day from Atsushi-kun to the message she’d left him.
No reaction to my desperate call for help. Aki realized for the first time that, though she knew his pager number, he’d never actually given her his phone number.
She’d told him all about her problems with her stepfather.
Atsushi had promised her he’d protect her, that he’d never let anything like that happen again.
But these guys – they’ll really help me.
They’ll stand up to it all with me.
✦ ✦ ✦
BUT ON THAT JANUARY DAY, when she’d gone over to the nurse’s office, wanting to support Masamune, truly wanting to do what she could, no one else had turned up.
It had been so cold.
Looking out of the window of the nurse’s office at the pale sky, Aki felt betrayed.
‘Ma’am, is it true that Aki has come into school today?’
Outside the door of the nurse’s office, she overheard the voice of Misuzu from the volleyball team.
It made her want to run.
The nurse was warming her hands over the portable heater and Aki had clung to her, weeping. ‘Please, tell her I’m not here. Even if they all come, please don’t tell them I’m here.’
Aki crawled into the small bed in the office, pulled the covers up over her, and lay there trembling.
She did know. She did. That she was behaving badly.
The other girls all had a good laugh, placing prank calls to telephone sex chat lines, but they acted as a group. No one ever did that sort of thing without the others.
I’m not like Misuzu and the others any more, not at all.
✦ ✦ ✦
I FOUND OUT THAT THE kids in the castle didn’t betray me, but that doesn’t make it any better.
The fact remains: we can’t see each other outside.
‘I can be a bit slow, and don’t exactly understand all that stuff about parallel worlds, but what you’re saying is we can never meet up in the outside world?’ Rion said.
‘Yep,’ Masamune nodded.
‘You mean we can’t help each other?’
‘That’s right. We can’t help each other.’
✦ ✦ ✦
THE MONTH OF MARCH WAS almost over.
Please, make my life a bit more tolerable.
Make my mother stronger.
Please kill my stepfather.
Please take me back to a time when the girls in the volleyball club didn’t all hate me.
If none of these wishes can come true, I’m going to stay in this castle for ever.
I made up my mind the day before it was all due to be over.
I hid inside the wardrobe in my room, and I waited for five o’clock to come and go.
✦ ✦ ✦
‘AKI-CHAN! AKI-CHAN, WHERE ARE YOU?’
I heard Ureshino calling my name, while he looked frantically for me.
I’m sorry, Ureshino.
Everyone, I’m sorry.
I can’t do this on my own any more.
I’m sorry you got mixed up in this.
I don’t want to go home.
I don’t want to go on living.
I just can’t bear it any more.
✦ ✦ ✦
AOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Aooooooooooooooooooooo!
I heard the howling.
An overpowering light began to fill the castle.
The wardrobe door was being pulled open.
A wolf, with its mouth wide open, was staring at me—
✦ ✦ ✦
‘DON’T RUN AWAY! COME OVER here! Give me your hand! Aki, please!’
‘Aki, keep breathing!’
‘Aki, it’s going to be OK!’
‘Aki!’
‘Aki!’
‘Aki!’
‘Aki!’
‘Aki!’
I suddenly notice the door is closed.
Someone is banging on it. Over and over, calling my name.
It’s – Kokoro.
‘It’s OK, Aki! Aki-chan! We can help each other! We can meet! We can see each other again! So you have to live! You’ve got to keep going, and grow up to be an adult.
‘Please, Aki. I’m … in the future. In the future, where you are too. Where you’re all grown up!’
The voice came closer.
In her confused mind, Aki suddenly thought, What the hell?
Kokoro sounded as though she was crying. Crying and pounding on the door.
‘The times we all live in – the years – they’re all different!’ Kokoro said. ‘We’re not in parallel worlds at all. We’re all students at Yukishina No. 5 Junior High, but we live in different time periods. We are all living in the same world!’
✦ ✦ ✦
IT ALL STARTED WITH SOMETHING Tojo-san had said.
When are you moving?
The first of April.
Very soon, then.
Can’t help it. Dad wanted to move in March, but the first of April is a Saturday this year so he has the day off.
This year.
Something about this statement stayed with Kokoro.
Come to think of it …
The other kids in the castle were living through different days of the week. They didn’t match.
Nor did the day of the week when the opening ceremony at school was held.
Nor did the holidays – like Coming-of-Age Day.
She should have considered all this earlier.
That the weather was different.
Their shopping centres were different.
As was the geography of their district.
As were their teachers and the number of classes in each school year.
But the entirety of their worlds was the same.
✦ ✦ ✦
SHE FIRST BEGAN TO NOTICE it when she was experiencing Ureshino’s memories.
That day in January when he thought he’d been stood up by them.
While he was waiting for the others to turn up, Ureshino ate his rice balls. It was a Sunday and he felt content, and contemplated the sky.
Just then Ureshino’s mother arrived. Someone was with her. A kindly-looking woman with tiny grey streaks in her hair. Wrinkles formed around her eyes when she smiled.
Ureshino called her ‘Kitajima-sensei’.
She was different from the Ms Kitajima Kokoro knew. But she knew instantly who she was. She was just much older than the woman Kokoro knew. In Kokoro’s reality, Ms Kitajima was a much younger teacher, with no grey hair or wrinkles.
As she considered this, she remembered something else.
They’d been hanging out in the castle and she was talking to Ureshino about Ms Kitajima.
She’s so pretty, Ms Kitajima, Kokoro had said.
Pretty? Ureshino seemed to have his heart set on any eligible female within sight – and Ms Kitajima would certainly fit the bill – and so this reaction was odd. Kokoro had wondered about it for a good long while.
In Ureshino’s reality, Ms Kitajima was not the attractive young teacher that Kokoro knew.
✦ ✦ ✦
SHE REALIZED THERE WAS SOMETHING about Masamune’s memories, too, that had bothered her.
They’re not going to bail on me. I know it.
He was talking to himself, not to anyone else. His voice was wobbly.
They’re gonna come. I know it.
The hand kept rubbing his back.
Something must have prevented your friends from coming.
In this memory, she had much longer hair than the Ms Kitajima Kokoro knew.
This was, again, an older Ms Kitajima.
Which is why she wanted to probe each of their memories.
To get them to show her how it was for each of them.
✦ ✦ ✦
SUBARU’S WALKMAN, FOR EXAMPLE.
Subaru took a music player out of his bag, connected to earphones, a model Kokoro had never seen before, and in the memory Subaru had been listening to cassette tapes. This player was far heavier and sturdier than anything she’d ever seen anyone carrying around with them.
✦ ✦ ✦
BUT WHAT REALLY CONFIRMED IT all for her was her experience of Fuka’s memory.
When she played the piano there was a calendar beside her, with the date of her summer piano competition marked in red.
The calendar year was 2019.
Not 2005, which was last year for Kokoro.