Back then, Subaru and Aki had said:
Coming-of-Age Day is the fifteenth, isn’t it? I didn’t think it was a two-day holiday.
The opening ceremony’s one thing, but I thought Coming-of-Age Day would be the same for everyone.
‘So back in Aki’s time they hadn’t yet linked holidays with weekends? I’d heard that that’s how they used to do it.’
‘Is that really what happened? They moved the holidays?’
‘Yeah. It’s the Happy Monday System …’
‘Happy Monday?!’ Aki exclaimed, then burst out laughing. ‘What a silly name. Kokoro, are you playing games with me?’
‘No, I promise I’m not! I didn’t make it up. It really exists!’
Kokoro wasn’t used to being laughed at, and rose to defend herself. But at the same time she thought, Good – Aki’s quickly getting back to her feisty old self again.
‘One more thing – back in your day, Aki and Subaru, you went to school on Saturdays, didn’t you?’ Fuka said.
Kokoro was startled. The system of two days off per week.
Until third grade in elementary school, Kokoro’s school had every second Saturday off. And she’d really enjoyed having an extra day off every other week.
Once Aki had mentioned how she and her boyfriend had been stopped by a truancy officer while they were out in town. Kokoro had thought it was because they looked as if they might have been about to cause trouble, but the real reason was that in Aki’s time they still had lessons every Saturday, and she should have been at school.
When it came to this, Aki and Subaru’s reactions were different.
‘What? Saturday is going to be a day off?’
‘Yes,’ Aki said, ‘that’s what they said – one Saturday a month would be off, but I haven’t been to school much so I wasn’t really thinking about it.’ She carried on thinking aloud. ‘So in the period you’re in, Kokoro, you never go to school on Saturdays? Wow – so we really are living in different times.’
‘Yeah,’ Kokoro nodded, and suddenly had a new thought. ‘For you people, are there still No. 2 and No. 4 junior highs in Minami Tokyo City?’
‘What do you mean?’
Fuka answered, ‘They aren’t there any more, because the number of children in the area has dropped.’
When Kokoro had made the visit to the alternative School, the teacher in charge there had said the same thing.
She’d said that after the cosy, relaxed atmosphere of elementary school, there were plenty of kids who had trouble fitting in when they started junior high. Especially with No. 5 Junior High, since it had grown so huge due to the reorganization and merging of schools.
Back when Aki had mentioned possibly repeating a year, Kokoro had asked if she planned to move to another nearby school. And Aki had said, You mean, like No. 4 Junior High? At the time it had struck Kokoro as odd, since there wasn’t a No. 4 school any more.
‘Seriously? Is that right,’ Ureshino unexpectedly chimed in. He was staring at them, eyes wide. ‘I always wondered why our school is called No. 5 when there’s no No. 4. Now I see. The schools all have odd numbers now, so I thought maybe even numbers were unlucky or something.’
‘Isn’t that an insult to all the even-numbered schools around the country?’
Aki let out a long sigh. ‘The whole thing is so weird,’ she said. ‘You guys are about the same age as me, and we’re all so alike, but Kokoro, you and Ureshino – everybody, in fact, apart from Subaru – you’re all from the future.’
‘It feels strange to me too, to think you’re from the past, Aki. I just can’t get my head around it.’
‘Come to think of it, though, you and Rion are from the same year,’ Subaru said suddenly.
He was right.
And now they knew the full story, it explained the uneasy feeling Kokoro had had earlier, that there were just too many dropouts from the same school.
And how though he was also from 2006, Rion, who was actually studying abroad, was still included in the group.
‘I think it’s because I really wanted to go to Yukishina No. 5,’ Rion muttered. Exactly as the Wolf Queen had said to him before. ‘Maybe she summoned me here because I wanted to make friends in a Japanese school. To let me meet Kokoro.’
‘We really might have met,’ Kokoro said. Rion raised his head. Kokoro explained, ‘In the nurse’s office back in January, at the beginning of the third semester.’
It warmed Kokoro’s heart to think that she and Rion were from the same period. Hawaii and Japan – if only the distance hadn’t separated them, she might really have met Rion in the nurse’s office that day. And yet if he hadn’t gone abroad to school, Rion might have been an ordinary kid attending Yukishina No. 5, and would perhaps never have been invited to the castle. You never knew how chance could change things.
‘Well, we’re all going to forget all this anyway,’ Kokoro said.
Even if Rion came back to Japan and they passed each other on the street, neither would remember who the other one was.
The very thought was painful to her.
‘Wolf Queen.’ Fuka turned around and looked at the Wolf Queen, who had been sitting silently in front of the fireplace for some time. ‘How much time do we have left?’
‘I’ll give you just under an hour,’ the Wolf Queen said, as if thoroughly bored by them all now. They watched as she got to her feet, the hem of her dress swishing.
‘So you’d better get ready then.’