Meanwhile, my brain was whirring at light speed. There was something there, like a faint, glimmering light at the bottom of a fathomless void. Think, Kaoru. I knew it had to be something important. It felt like I’d finally gathered all the pieces I needed; I just had to find the right way to connect them, trying different combinations until something clicked. After racking my brain for a good while, I finally found the deduction I was groping for: everything we’d found in the Urashima Tunnel thus far had one thing in common. It was never things we found ourselves actively wishing for, it was only ever things from our past that—
Before I could finish that thought, I heard the sound of the front door being unlocked in the hallway. Evidently Anzu’s aunt had returned from her shopping trip. I looked up at the wall clock and saw that it was 7 p.m. I decided it was best not to tell Anzu my new hypothesis just yet. For one thing, it was still unconfirmed, and it would only make her go crazy with needless speculation.
“Well, I should be heading home,” I said, standing.
“Oh… Well, okay…” said Anzu, slumping her shoulders.
Ugh, don’t make that face. Now I feel bad.
“We should decide when we want to meet up at the tunnel again, though,” I suggested. “Any ideas as to what we should investigate next?”
“No, I’ve been thinking it’s about time to call off the investigations, actually. I mean, I can’t think of anything else we really need to look into,” she said, then straightened her shoulders and looked me dead in the eye. “No more test runs. I think we’re finally ready for the real deal.”
“Meaning…?”
“It’s time to get your sister back, and make me someone extraordinary. We’re gonna go in there and not come back out until we’ve both had our wishes granted.”
I gulped down the saliva that had pooled in my mouth. So it was finally time, then.
“Do you have a date in mind?”
“Yep. I’m thinking August 2nd.”
“All right. Sounds good to me… Why the 2nd, specifically?”
“No real reason… Just thought it’d be smart to give ourselves a good several-day buffer beforehand, that’s all.”
She had a point; there were a lot of preparations we’d need to make—not just in terms of what we’d need to take with us into the tunnel, but also in terms of being prepared for what might happen when we came back out. We agreed to settle on the particulars via text later, and with that, Anzu walked me to the entryway, where I slipped on my shoes and opened the front door to leave.
“All right. Guess I’ll see you later, then.”
“Hey, um… Tono-kun?”
“Yeah?”
Anzu looked like she was mustering her courage to tell me something, but she faltered in the end. “…Sorry. It’s nothing important. Get home safe, okay?”
“Will do. See ya.”
As I turned to close the door behind me, I caught one last glimpse of Anzu’s face. She looked just the slightest bit crestfallen, and a pang of guilt tugged at my heartstrings.
The week before the day we planned to venture into the tunnel, I was spending the morning happily vegging out in my bedroom when I got a text from Anzu.
“Kawasaki invited me to go to the festival with her. Any interest?”
This time of year, she could only be referring to the annual fireworks festival held in the next town over. It was the biggest local event around, with people coming in droves from all over to see more than six thousand individual fireworks lit in one gigantic spectacle of a show. I’d been there a few times myself, back when Karen was still alive, but I hadn’t realized it was the day. Though to be crystal clear, my interest in going was less than zero. I loathed big crowds.
I began to type a reply to Anzu’s message: “I think I’m good, but thanks.”
All that remained was to hit send, yet my fingers froze in place. Two lingering doubts gave me pause. The first was based on the way Anzu had phrased it: “Any interest?” as opposed to something like “Wanna come with?” Maybe I was reading too much into it, but it almost made it sound like she wasn’t all that interested in going if it was just her and Koharu, and would only accept the invite if I agreed to go as well. Knowing what Koharu had been through recently, I didn’t have the heart to turn her down, especially when she was already trying so hard to rebuild her social life from the ground up. The second reason I hesitated, though, echoed the feeling I got when Shohei asked me to get lunch with him and the calligraphy club guys—that this might be my last opportunity, so I shouldn’t let it go to waste.
“Man, I dunno…” I grumbled, rolling around restlessly on my bed. Then I heard the sound of the bathroom door opening downstairs. It was my father. I didn’t know why he was home on a weekday, but he was. Maybe it was to make up for some prior holiday that fell on a weekend, or maybe he’d used a day of paid time off. Either way, I didn’t want to interact with him whatsoever.
“…Guess that settles it.”
I deleted the message I’d composed and typed a new one: “Sure, I’d be down. Where and when do you guys wanna meet up?”
I hit send before I had a chance to second-guess it. There was nothing I hated more than having to deal with my father, so I figured I might as well go and at least try to have fun. Although in that case, I needed to get cleaned up so I could head out at a moment’s notice. I went downstairs to the living room, where I found my father seated on a floor cushion watching some mindless TV show. I took a deep breath before calling out to him.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hm? What is it, Kaoru?”
“I’m going out for a bit tonight.”
“Oh, uh… I see. How late do you think you’ll be?”
“I’ll be home before midnight, don’t worry.”
“You gonna need dinner?”
“Think I’ll get something while I’m out and about.”
“Fair enough. Have fun.”
I nodded, then headed straight back to my bedroom. Holy crap. I couldn’t believe I’d had an actual, civil conversation with my father without things immediately devolving into an argument. Though come to think of it, he’d been in awfully good spirits the vast majority of the time lately. Usually, he barely acknowledged my existence, but he had just asked me about dinner and even told me to have fun. He hadn’t said anything remotely like that to me since before Karen died. After our last stint in the Urashima Tunnel—when I told him I’d be staying at a friend’s house over the long weekend, then come back a day late—he hadn’t said a word in complaint. I tried to imagine what might have brought on this sudden change of heart; maybe something good had happened to him at work? I thought about it for a moment, then shrugged it off. It wasn’t worth overthinking.