“But… But, like…” Akira stuttered, seemingly unwilling to accept this explanation. “You’re not positive or anything, right?”
“…I mean, yeah, I can’t remember,” I said. “I don’t have any recollection of what happened between me falling to my knees in the classroom and me suddenly being back at my house again.”
The only reason I could speculate so calmly about the possibility that I’d bashed my classmates’ legs in was because I had no memory of it, and it was pretty hard to feel guilty about something you didn’t actually remember doing. But just thinking about the situation logically, I was about 80 to 90 percent sure I’d been the one swinging the bat.
“Well, then there’s no definitive proof that it was you!” Akira asserted.
“If you can think of another explanation aside from a timefreeze that makes sense, I’m all ears. It always took me more than thirty minutes to get back to my place from that school. No way the sun wouldn’t have gone down even a little bit in that time.”
“Mmmmm… Well, it’s definitely weird, I’ll give you that… But I don’t think we can say for sure one way or the other based on that alone.”
She still wasn’t satisfied with my hypothesis. What other supporting evidence could I give her? Was it possible I’d been through yet another timefreeze, or was it only this one and the one in junior high? What about back in elementary school? Had I had any similarly inexplicable experiences then? Moments where I felt as though I’d suddenly teleported from one location to another, or—
“…Oh. Hang on,” I said.
Could that have been one too?
“What’s up?” said Akira. “You remember something else?”’
“Y-yeah, I do. I think there might’ve actually been another one even before that, back when I was in elementary school…”
As Akira and I walked beneath a highway overpass, I could feel the slightest hint of winter’s premonition in its shadow.
“I think I must’ve only been in third or fourth grade, probably… But yeah, I specifically remember my parents having a fight this one particular day,” I said, trying to recall the specific order of events as I recounted them. “It was a pretty brutal one, and I didn’t want to hear it, so I was just cooped up in my room, feeling a little rattled. But then the next thing I knew, I was standing right outside the door of my uncle Kurehiko’s apartment. Almost like I’d just warped there in the blink of an eye…”
At the time, I was still pretty young, so I remembered feeling more relieved just to be away from my parents’ fighting than terrified and confused as to how I’d gotten there. Which was probably why I’d never really gone back and questioned it until now.
“And how does that have anything to do with the timefreeze?” asked Akira.
“Well, it’s pretty similar to what happened when I was in junior high, in that it’s another case of me being in one place one minute, then somewhere completely different the next. So I mean, who knows—maybe I just made my way over to my uncle’s place on foot while time was frozen. Kinda like you and I are doing right now.”
Interestingly, I’d had dreams that corresponded to both of these experiences recently as well, just over the course of our trip. I wasn’t sure if that was merely a coincidence or if the timefreeze was somehow drawing out these memories from me, but it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if there were some strange powers at work deep within my psyche as a result of this supernatural experience.
Akira still didn’t seem very convinced. “I dunno, man. If what you’re saying is true, then how come in both of these cases, you don’t remember a single thing that happened during the actual timefreeze itself? Like, that’s the most important part.”
“Yeah, I know… It doesn’t make much sense to me either.”
“Also, how come you never mentioned any of this before? Really not sure how I feel about you concealing that kind of information from me.”
“Look, I wasn’t concealing anything, okay? I just didn’t make the connection until now because I wasn’t hyper-analyzing any of this stuff. In case you didn’t notice, I really don’t like thinking about the past all that much, if I can help it…”
“…Oh. Got it.”
Akira’s dubious expression had now turned outright uncomfortable. Perhaps I’d done a poor job of explaining things; I felt bad for bombarding her with all of this information at once. Either that, or it just didn’t feel like a very credible argument to her in the first place. She was right that it would probably be a lot more convincing if I could remember a single thing that happened during the actual phenomena themselves.
“…My bad,” said Akira. “Sorry.”
“Huh? Wait, for what?” I asked.
“I dunno… Just for making you dredge up old memories and stuff.”
“Oh… No, it’s fine. I mean, we had to talk about it eventually.”
She had nothing to apologize for. If anything, I felt grateful to her for being concerned about me. In fact, I’d noticed her becoming a lot more considerate of my feelings lately. When I reflected on how far our rapport had come compared to when we first met, it was almost enough to make me start getting emotional.
“But if you’re right about all of this,” said Akira, “then that means our timefreeze has to come to an end sooner or later too, yeah?”
“Yeah, exactly,” I replied. “That’s basically all I was trying to say.”