It was a retrospective diary of sorts, starting the day he met Ichigyou Ruri and ending with her accident. He recorded every bit of information he could recall about everything that happened over those weeks and months.
Sensei was going to revisit the past—or, rather, a record of it as it existed inside AllTale. Once he made it inside, this notebook would prove extremely useful. His knowledge from the future would be essential to saving her life.
He scribbled down everything he could recall on the notecards, even details that seemed meaningless: what he’d eaten, whether he’d taken a bath or not. Sometimes these little facts would lead him to a more important memory. Better to be thorough now than regret his sloppiness when it was too late.
Slowly, bit by bit, he pieced together the story of their time together like a puzzle.
Remembering her put a smile on his face. Making that notebook was a lot of fun.
Naomi hit the enter key. This would be the 140th experiment.
It was another failure.
Sensei tumbled from his chair. He was used to the pain by now; by the time he hit the floor, he was already thinking about what he’d tweak for next time.
Reaching up to grab his chair, he tried to stand…
He couldn’t.
Naomi pulled himself into a sitting position with his arms and stared down at his legs. He tried to spread them apart and his right leg kicked out to one side.
His left leg didn’t move an inch.
The air conditioner was spitting out warm air today.
“They call it monoplegia, I guess. My left leg’s permanently paralyzed.” The sheaf of medical documents clipped to the hospital bed swayed slightly in the current. Outside the window, snow was falling.
“I’m glad it was just a leg, though,” Naomi continued quietly. “If I lost an arm, it would have slowed everything down a lot more.”
There was no reply.
“Also, it affected my nerves. That means I’m getting closer. I’ll have to be careful to avoid any more accidents like this...but once I dig through the data from that experiment, I should be almost ready.”
Naomi’s gaze dropped to the floor.
After a moment, he spoke again—not to Ruri, or to anyone else. Not even to himself.
“God, I hope so.” He paused for a moment, his voice even softer. “I miss her so much.”
Sensei hit the enter key.
Another failure.
Naomi hit the enter key.
Another failure.
Sensei hit the enter key.
Another failure.
The 336th experiment.
Naomi hit the enter key.
The world went white before his eyes. There was a flash of light; an instant later, he was flying through a rainbow tunnel at a ferocious, terrifying speed.
When he emerged on the other side, the first thing he saw was a long chain of torii gates.
He couldn’t stop. He was thrown out of the tunnel at the same velocity he’d traveled through it. The world spun violently as he flew through the red gates.
As he finally started to slow…
Naomi saw himself standing on the stone path.
2.
SENSEI OPENED HIS EYES.
He was sitting in the waiting area of a hospital hallway. A glance at the clock told him he’d nodded off for five minutes or so.
In that brief time, he’d had a dream. He’d seen flashes of memory, from the distant past to the present, and he’d dreamed about Naomi.
He’d tried to shake the boy off, but he couldn’t get rid of him that easily. He’d probably remember Naomi until the day he died. Naomi would keep glaring at him resentfully forever. He couldn’t exactly want him to stop, either. The boy had every right.
He deserved this. And worse.
“Katagaki-san,” called the nurse, her face bright with happiness. “She’s awake now.”
3.
ICHIGYOU RURI GAZED down at her hands. Her wrists were so terribly thin.
It felt like looking at a stranger’s body.
She was sitting up in her hospital bed for the first time in years, but the expression on her face wasn’t exactly cheerful. From the moment she woke up two days earlier, she had been thinking constantly, trying to understand what had happened to her.
Ruri glanced across the room. At the side of her bed, a young man with a cane artfully arranged a bouquet of flowers with his one free hand. Most of what she’d heard so far had come from him, and from her doctor at this hospital.
They told her that she’d been struck by lightning at a fireworks show ten years ago, and that she’d been in a coma ever since. They told her it was now 2037, and she was twenty-six years old.
The young man said he was Katagaki Naomi, and that he was twenty-six as well.
It was all very hard to believe. It was the kind of story you might find in a novel, but certainly not in real life. How had she suddenly recovered after spending ten years in a coma? The doctors just called it a miracle, which didn’t answer any of her questions.
Mentally, Ruri was still a sixteen-year-old girl. She didn’t remember anything from the long period of time when she’d been sleeping. But she could remember events from a decade in the past as if they’d happened yesterday. She’d been a member of the library committee. They’d just held a used book sale.
And she’d just started dating Naomi.
Their relationship had only just started, and it wasn’t particularly different from their friendship. They hadn’t even gone out anywhere together yet.
Well, supposedly they’d gone to a fireworks festival together, but Ruri couldn’t remember anything about it. The doctor had said it was perfectly normal for her memories from right before the accident to be vague. She considered this, and found that there were a few small, fragmentary images lurking in a quiet corner of her mind.
She remembered a bridge, swirling clouds, and winds as intense as a hurricane. And she remembered Naomi performing some sort of magic spell.
Ruri had to assume that she’d dreamed that part; it was just too unrealistic and bizarre. But when the doctor insisted she’d gone to the Uji River, she couldn’t help tying that to these strange memories.