As such, it seemed unlikely that Chika’s theory about the two of us being able to personally affect each other’s worlds was correct. We continued trying out things that we normally didn’t do, but very few of them seemed to be reflected across worlds. For the most part, our lives were so incredibly different that we were unable to detect any real pattern to these mutual effects. The theory that we had previously considered about proactive actions having an effect on the other party also seemed to be incorrect. Attending school while wearing my shoes on the wrong feet, stocking up on a ton of snacks that I didn’t normally buy, and going out of my way to pet Tanaka’s dog all seemed to have no effect. Though when I met up with Chika two days afterward, I got a rip in my sock, there did seem to be the subtle crossover effect of her buying a pair of replacement shoes on that same day.
The heck was that supposed to be?
In other words, we still basically knew nothing. We had wasted the past two months.
A waste—a true waste. Indeed, I could think of this time as nothing but absolutely, positively wasted. I couldn’t even appreciate all the things we’d done for the sake of fun, not when we’d made absolutely no progress whatsoever. Having fun wasn’t what mattered here. An impertinent feeling like “fun” didn’t mean anything. It had to be rejected.
I was beginning to feel like it was time to tell Chika my true purpose and how I really felt. In meeting her, I’d hoped to obtain something that would give my life some real meaning, something that I didn’t think of as dull. So I didn’t want to use our time just getting to know each other, but to find that something as quickly as possible before we could no longer see one another again. If I told Chika that, she would probably do all that was in her power to help me. If she were, say, to start introducing me to one element of her world’s culture after another, I might even find that something straight away, optimistically speaking.
Lately, that idea had been floating persistently at the front of my mind. What I hadn’t been able to do… What I hadn’t been able to do was…
I didn’t want to believe that this was weakness, pure and simple.
I wanted to believe that it was not just that I was afraid that Chika would let me down.
I wanted to believe that, but at present I could not deny the fact that I simply was afraid of letting her know the calculating way I thought about our meetings, and that she’d hate me if she found out. I couldn’t ignore that I was just another basic person, scared of losing the friendship I had found with an intelligent, imaginative resident of another world. Thus, I could only keep fumbling for some sort of meaning in the fact that we had met, that we were getting to know one another in itself, as we slaved away the days with these experiments.
It wasn’t until Chika asked, “What’s up? Is there something in my eyes?” that I realized I had been staring dully into them. Thinking it would be rude to hastily avert my gaze—and perhaps to protect my own fragile sense of pride—I let my eyes slowly drift to the dust-caked floor.
“Sorry, no, I was just thinking.”
“Is it rude to stare into people’s eyes in your world?”
She was merely asking me a question of values. Sweat ran down my spine as if I was being accused of some wrongdoing.
“It’s not necessarily rude, but just like you asked, if you stare at someone for too long they might think that there’s something on them, so you shouldn’t do that. That’s why I apologized. Is that not the case in your world, though?”
“Sometimes in my world, you stare at someone for a while when you have something you want to say to them but can’t manage to get the words out. What were you thinking about?”
“I was just wondering whether there really isn’t any way for us to actually taste these.”
“True. I guess if I somehow got pulled into your world and had to live there, I’d be stuck eating tasteless food forever.”
I knew by the narrowing of her eyes that this was a joke. I could imagine by the gradation of her eyes, so much more vivid than her usual expression, but it was nothing but my imagination. No matter how I strained my eyes, I still couldn’t see her nose and mouth.
Tonight, we both sat in chairs in our respective spaces, two body widths closer than usual. The reason for this was that we were experimenting with tasting foods from each other’s worlds. If that was all there was to it, we could have just sat in our usual positions and handed each other the food, but a problem arose when I tried to hand Chika a CalorieMate bar. The bar passed right through her hand, falling onto the bench. Likewise, I couldn’t interact with the invisible solid food object that Chika had prepared either. Mysteriously, however, we learned that if we got close and Chika brought the food directly to my mouth, I could eat the food from her world. I didn’t understand the rules behind this, but I ate it anyway.
As I tried to process the taste, a sensation I had felt before returned in stark recollection. No matter how I chewed or swallowed, I could taste only the absence of nothing. Just as with the odor-producing device from before, my brain could make no sense of the actual flavor. The texture that I could sense reminded me of something—macadamia nuts, maybe? I conveyed this, and then it was time for Chika to try the CalorieMate from my hand. I didn’t want to collide with her invisible face, so I held my hand out and waited for her mouth. By degrees, her eyes came closer to my hand. I felt her cold breath on my fingers, and finally the CalorieMate grew shorter. She had already informed me previously that she did indeed have teeth.