“All right, all right. I’ll tell you,” I said, taking a deep breath before I began. “So yeah, you’re basically right. I’m not here looking for money, or anything. My real wish isn’t even a thing, actually—it’s a little sister. That’s what I’ve always wanted… Er, wait—that came out wrong. It’s not that I’m wishing for a cute little sister or anything weird like that—I already have one… Or I guess ‘I had one’ would be more accurate. Her name was Karen, and while she could definitely be a real terror sometimes, she was a total sweetheart. Like, you wouldn’t believe how adorable she was. She and I used to go out playing together each and every day, and I can’t think of a single time we ever seriously fought over anything. Then five years ago, she died after falling out of a tall tree I helped her climb, and it was pretty much all my fault. And that, along with how shaken up we were by her sudden death, kinda tore our entire family apart, because she was definitely the favorite child—and the glue that kept my mother and father together, for reasons I won’t get into, though to be clear, I think the fallout was kind of inevitable; we were a pretty dysfunctional family from the get-go; anyway, Karen’s death hit me really, really hard, to the point that I still don’t feel like I’m really ‘over it’ to this day, or rather, I haven’t fully come to terms with it; like, yeah, I know she’s ‘dead,’ but for whatever reason I can’t connect the dots between ‘dead’ and ‘never coming back’ in my brain—like I’m still holding hope that she might come barging back in through the front door someday with a great big smile on her face, or something, though obviously, I’m not that stupid; logically, I know better than to think there’s any chance of her ever coming back—hell, we’ve got her ashes on our countertop, and I was there for her cremation, and I literally helped transfer her bones to the urn myself, but for whatever reason, my mind keeps playing these stupid tricks on me, holding out hope even though I know it’s impossible, and it’s just really, really hard, and… Well, you get the idea. So yeah. That’s why I’m trying to explore the Urashima Tunnel. Because I want my little sister back—that’s what I’m really after. Go ahead and call me crazy, but it’s the truth.”
Phew. That must have been the hardest I’d worked my vocal cords in years. It was just, once I started talking about Karen, the words came tumbling out of my mouth, regardless of my volition. Maybe somewhere deep in my subconscious, a part of me had been waiting for a chance to vent to someone about all these emotions I’d bottled up over the past several years. If so, then I couldn’t help but cringe at myself a bit for opening the floodgates on this virtual stranger.
Anzu simply stared at me in speechless surprise, eyes wide open, her mouth agape. It was pretty much the reaction I’d expected. I braced myself for whatever words of ridicule or disdain she might have for me. I was fully prepared for her to call me crazy, or pathetic, or even a creep. What I wasn’t prepared for was a muffled “Pfft” sound—followed shortly thereafter by wild and uncontrollable laughter.
“Ahhhh ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
Somehow, some way, she’d managed to perfectly subvert my expectations once again. This was not an appropriate time for laughter. Yet laugh Anzu did, and for quite a while to boot, to the point that she actually started to cry from how downright hysterical my tragic backstory apparently was to her.
“God, you’re such a weirdo,” she giggled, wiping the tears from her eyes.
Me?! I’m the weirdo here?!
“So have you told anyone else about this tunnel yet?” she asked.
“No, and I wasn’t planning to. I mean, who the hell would believe me?”
“Yeah, fair point.” Anzu still had the giddiest grin on her face.
Yet I still had no idea what she found so amusing about all of this.
“Hey, Tono-kun!” she said, suddenly hopping forward to get right up close to my face. Almost a little too close, actually. As my heartbeat quickened, the only thing my brain could focus on was how long her eyelashes were.
“Y-yeah? What is it?”
“Wanna team up with me?!”
“Huh? S-sorry, come again?”
“We could work together to unravel the mysteries of the Urashima Tunnel, and then we could both get our wishes granted! Two heads are always better than one, right?!”
“You…wanna work together…?”
I mulled it over a bit. My original plan had been to scare her off so well that she’d never bug me again, but this was actually a pretty decent idea in its own right. I didn’t know if she was prepared to take this as seriously as I was, but having someone else to help out would definitely expedite the process. If nothing else, I wouldn’t have to keep running back and forth in and out of the tunnel to figure out how things worked. Plus, I liked the cut of her jib; the idea of teaming up in pursuit of a mutual objective appealed to me, and she had showed a lot of initiative by making the proposal as the newcomer to the negotiation table. So, after weighing the pros and cons of both options, I ultimately decided to take her up on her offer.
“All right. Let’s do it,” I said with a decisive nod.
“Great! Then it’s settled!”
Anzu took a step back and curled her lips into a devilish little smirk, causing the wad of gauze on her cheek to bend ever so slightly. It was such a mischievous smile that I couldn’t help but feel like I was being duped somehow—not that I could really think of how she’d ever benefit from deceiving me in a situation like this. Though that reminded me:
“So hey, I was wondering—what the heck are you doing here, anyway?”
“Oh, right. There was something I wanted to ask you.”
So you followed me all the way here from school? Why didn’t you call out to me back in town and get it over with?
However, she addressed this quickly, almost as if she’d read my mind.
“But then after trailing you for a while, I guess I was having too much fun to want to blow my cover…” she admitted bashfully.
It seemed stalking people was her idea of a good time.
“Okaaay… So what was it you wanted to ask me?”
“Oh, I totally forgot. Sorry.”
“…You’re kidding me, right?”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“I mean, that was a pretty jarring experience just now. Is it really that hard to believe it might make me lose track of something that probably wasn’t all that important to begin with?”
So Anzu claimed, but I really did find it pretty hard to believe, considering she’d seemed cool as a cucumber throughout the entire process. Either she was lying through her teeth or she had truly forgotten—but I wasn’t about to press her on it, since I could think of no reasonable hypothesis as to why she might lie about this.
“Anyway… Do we have ourselves a deal or what?” Anzu extended her right hand toward me.
“Hm? Oh, sorry. Am I supposed to pay you now, or…?”
“What? No, silly. I’m not trying to extort you,” she shot back. Then her face relaxed into a warm and welcoming smile. “I’m saying let’s shake on it.”
“Oh… R-right, okay. That makes a lot more sense.”
While I still felt a bit of trepidation as to how fast this was all happening, I reached out a trembling hand regardless. Anzu quickly snatched it up and clasped it firmly with her own.
“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Tono-kun.”
“…Yeah, likewise.”
With that final gesture of goodwill, the two of us said our goodbyes to the Urashima Tunnel for the night. The entire way home, however, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been thoroughly bamboozled.