And this time, it was feeling trapped and accidentally hurting one of the other kids in my group on my class trip.
When viewed on just a surface level, it felt pretty laughable to claim I felt true despair in any of these situations—especially compared to what happened to Akira. But for me, these had all been the types of unbearably stressful circumstances that made me feel like I didn’t even want to go on living any longer.
“And if we know that despair is the trigger,” I posited, “then it stands to reason that only the inverse can break us out of the phenomenon.”
“What, you mean, like…hope or something?”
“Something like that, yeah. At least, that’s my hunch.”
“Your hunch…? Sounds pretty flimsy to me…”
Akira’s shoulders slumped as though she’d lost all hope in me.
I was fairly certain that the timefreeze I’d experienced back in elementary school had ended when I arrived at the door to Uncle Kurehiko’s apartment. In my more childish mind, I was probably praying he could rescue me from the unpleasant smorgasbord of emotions my parents’ argument had left in me. Maybe when I reached the door to his apartment, it felt like I could see a light at the end of the tunnel, and that glimmer of hope caused time to start moving forward again.
The second time, I figured it was successfully exacting my revenge that had been the trigger. After beating them both with a metal bat, then fleeing the scene…I probably felt a certain sense of accomplishment, I supposed. Either that, or I felt like a weight had finally been lifted off my shoulders, and that emotion brought the timefreeze to an end.
“But whether it’s hope or not, I’m guessing it’s probably not a super strict set of criteria,” I said. “Especially if I was able to make it out of the timefreeze just fine, even back when I was in elementary school. So there’s probably no special trick or technique to it or anything—unless it’s just completely luck-based, which I also doubt.”
Akira folded her arms and hummed as she mulled this over. She still wasn’t entirely convinced. “But if it’s just finding a little something to be hopeful about, I feel like we would’ve certainly ended the timefreeze by now, right? I mean, we’ve been on the road for a month, and we’ve definitely had some good times along the way.”
“Yeah, which is why I’m kinda thinking we probably have to find a reason to be hopeful about something in particular.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“Like the future, for instance.”
Akira’s eyes went wide, as if my answer had caught her completely off guard.
“The future, huh…?” she repeated softly, her expression turning more and more conflicted as she scratched the back of her neck. “Damn it, I really hate that it sounds like you might be on to something here…”
Simply having a good time or being ready for the timefreeze to end was not the same thing as actually feeling hopeful about the future. And while Akira had made no secret of how much she hated the timefreeze and all its inconveniences, I hadn’t heard her say anything remotely optimistic in terms of things she actually wanted to do when we got out of it. It seemed she and I really were on the same wavelength, at least in terms of what was most critical here.
That said, if the condition for ending the timefreeze really was what I suspected, then it definitely did feel like a pretty flimsy requirement, just as Akira had said. Even more than that, it felt too lax. Like, what if one of us had suddenly decided to turn over a new leaf while walking right in front of a frozen car? The thought of time suddenly jerking back into motion while we were on the highway gave me chills.
“Well, I think I get the gist of what you’re saying,” said Akira. “But…I still want some time to think about it. Your suggestion, I mean.”
I couldn’t fault her for that. It definitely wasn’t a decision to make lightly—whether to live in the future or stay here in this world out of time. Both options had pretty severe implications, and I assumed the scales wouldn’t so easily tip one way or the other for her.
“Fair enough,” I said. “Let’s think about it while we walk, then.”
And with that, I headed off down the road. Regardless of what choice she made, we’d be better served getting back into an actual city than just standing around here in front of this old karaoke parlor any longer. Akira didn’t respond, but she followed me nonetheless. Once we’d walked without a word for quite a while, she broke the silence with a personal anecdote.
“So back when I was in elementary school, right,” she began, “I didn’t know how to swim at all. I was the only girl in our whole class who didn’t, actually. And anytime I tried, I’d just start flailing around like I was about to drown, and I felt super self-conscious about being seen by anybody whenever I was in the water. So as you can imagine, I always hated pool days in gym class.”
I listened attentively but didn’t say anything.
“Then in fourth grade, we had this swim test thing. Had to swim all the way across this twenty-five-meter pool using crawl stroke in order to pass, but if our feet touched the ground once, we had to do extra swimming lessons over summer vacation. I was so depressed at the thought that I couldn’t even sleep the night before the test—just lay there in my bed, wishing tomorrow would never come. Would’ve been a dream come true if time stopped for me back then. But obviously, the sun came up, and I had to take the test along with everyone else. And not only could I still not swim, but I was in even worse condition than usual from not sleeping a wink the night before.”
Akira let out a little sigh before continuing.