“I know, it sounds crazy,” she went on. “I totally get that. It was a hard pill for me to swallow too. But right now, I need you to hear me out.”
A hard pill for her to swallow? Had she been time traveling too? I was getting more and more confused by the minute, but I needed all the information I could get. It wouldn’t hurt to at least listen to what she had to say.
“…All right. Let’s hear it,” I agreed. Her grave expression finally softened a bit.
“Okay, cool. Warning you in advance, though: This is gonna get pretty convoluted. I’ll try my best to make it as straightforward as I can.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
“All right, so to make sure we’re on the same page here, the main thing you want to know right now is why you don’t have any recollection of the time period from 6 p.m. on April 1st to 6 p.m. on April 5th, right?”
“Y-yeah, that’s exactly it!”
I wanted to ask her how the hell she knew that, but it seemed like she still had plenty more to say, so I mentally shelved my questions for later.
“Well, the reason for that,” she explained, “is that your consciousness made a quantum leap between those two points in time. Still with me?”
“My…consciousness? Not my whole body?”
“Correct. This isn’t like one of those old cartoons. You didn’t accidentally step into a time machine and get physically sent forward or anything like that. Only your mind made the jump…or at least, that’s what I was told.”
I could feel a migraine coming on. That’s what she was “told”? How was I supposed to believe her if she was reciting something secondhand?
“Sorry, who ‘told’ you this, again?” I asked dubiously.
“Yeah, so like I was saying before… Actually, no. Let’s circle back to that later. For now, I should probably try to stay on track and explain things in order.”
Something didn’t sit right with me about how she seemed to be dancing around certain subjects, but I decided to keep my mouth shut and let her continue.
“So, I explained how you got into your current predicament. Now I’ll explain what’s gonna happen to you going forward. This part’s really important, so listen carefully,” she emphasized, and I nodded. “Okay, so here’s how this is gonna play out: You’re about to relive the past four days, one by one, in reverse order.”
“Um. How does that work?”
“Think of it like this: After every 24 hours, you’re going to be sent back in time 48 hours. Kinda like one step forward, two steps back. Oh, and it’ll always happen at 6 p.m. on the dot. You’ll repeat this process until you’ve filled in the entire four-day gap in your memories.”
“…Sorry, I think you’ve lost me. This is a lot to keep up with, is all…”
“Yeah, it’s pretty hard to explain in words… Here, gimme one sec.”
Akari picked up a thin branch from the ground and cleared off a large patch of dirt. Then, using the branch like a writing utensil, she wrote 4/1 (6PM) and drew a long arrow pointing down from it. At its terminus, she wrote 4/5 (6PM) and then used the branch to point at the arrow as she explained:
“So let’s say this represents the initial quantum leap you made, right? You shot forward from six o’clock on the 1st to six o’clock on the 5th. With me so far?”
“Yeah, and that’s why I don’t have any memory of the last four days… Go on.”
From there, Akari drew an arrow to the right, where she wrote 4/6 (6PM), then set the branch down and pulled out her cell phone.
“Okay, so it’s April 6th now, and in about thirty minutes, it’ll be six o’clock…and from there, you’re gonna get sent back to six o’clock on April 4th.”
Akari picked the branch back up and drew an arrow diagonally down and to the left, where she wrote 4/4 (6PM). According to the diagram, once I reached the end of the 24-hour period from the evening of the 5th to the 6th, I’d be sent back 48 hours to the evening of the 4th. I could see now why Akari had explained it as “one step forward, two steps back.” Thanks to the visual aid, it felt like I was finally starting to grasp the bigger picture here.
“And then from there,” Akari went on, “you’ll have another 24 hours until you make it back to six o’clock on the 5th, at which point…”
“I’ll be sent back to six o’clock on the 3rd…?”
“Yeah, exactly. See, you’re getting it!”
Akari proceeded to sketch out the rest of the diagram—repeating the one day forward, two days back pattern a few more times—until she’d made it all the way back to six o’clock on April 1st, then finished off with one last horizontal line from 4/1 (6PM) to 4/2 (6PM).
“So, yeah,” Akari said, setting the branch back down on the ground. “This is what I meant when I said you’ll be reliving the past four days in reverse order. We’ve been calling it the ‘Rollback’ phenomenon.”
“…Wait. Rollback?”
I had a fairly good grasp of the process at this stage, at least in concept, but the more I heard Akari explain, the harder it became to believe. Every question she answered only raised two or three more in my head.
“So, uh. Obviously, I have a lot of questions,” I began. “But I guess for starters: Why six o’clock? No, more importantly, how’d I get wrapped up in this weird ‘phenomenon’ to begin with?”
“I can’t say for sure…but I was told it might’ve had something to do with you touching the stone inside that shrine. It just so happened to be at six o’clock—there’s no special significance to the time, I don’t think.”
“Oh… Right, the shrine…”
I’d totally forgotten about that, to be honest. I stood up and went to take another peek inside the little shrine on the other side of the big cherry blossom tree. The hefty rock with the crevice in the middle was still there, exactly where I remembered it being. It hadn’t moved.
“But I don’t get it,” I said. “How could touching a stupid rock cause all this supernatural stuff to start happening? I mean, even if it did have some sort of ‘magical powers,’ let’s say…this reliving each day in reverse stuff is way too specific. It doesn’t add up.”
“…Well, this is my own personal theory,” Akari said, having walked over to stand beside me, “but do you remember that time in elementary school when they took us on a field trip up to the big shrine on the island to learn more about Sodeshima’s history?”
“Oh yeah… I think I do remember that.”
It was sometime in fourth or fifth grade. They brought the entire class out to the Sodeshima Shrine and let the resident Shinto priest teach us for the day. I could still vividly remember how cold the wood floors they made us sit on were.
“Okay, so call me crazy, but didn’t they mention something about how Buddhist monks used to make pilgrimages out to Sodeshima in the olden days to undergo some sort of trial…?”
“I don’t remember that at all, personally, but… Are you saying you think I might have accidentally brought some sort of ancient ‘trial’ upon myself?”
“I mean, it’s no crazier than any other explanation we’ve come up with, is it…?”
All right, now this is getting ridiculous.
“And what the hell am I being tested on, huh? By who? It doesn’t make any sense. For another thing… How do you know all of this, Akari? About the Rollback, and me touching the stone in the shrine… I never told anyone about that, so how could you know?”