I could feel my tone getting more and more impatient as the questions kept piling up one after another. In the face of my frustration, Akari simply looked at me—gently, with a hint of genuine sympathy in her eyes—as if I were the one in need of condolences here.
“I heard it from you, Kanae-kun,” she said.
“From me?” I balked.
“That’s right. Everything I’ve told you here today, you explained to me yourself. In a past you haven’t experienced yet.”
Her words came out measured and slow, as if to make sure each and every syllable hit home. I closed my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose, and let out a long, lingering sigh.
“Sorry, I need some time to think about all of this…”
After all those exhausting mental gymnastics, I felt like I needed a cigarette—and I’d never smoked before in my life. I tried my best to fully digest everything that Akari had told me. All of it was still hard to swallow, but I would need to take it one bite at a time.
The “Rollback” phenomenon, huh?
I was familiar with the term, of course, since I’d learned it earlier today from one of my dad’s old notebooks. It was obviously a computing term, but it felt oddly apt for the concept of being sent backwards to previous points in time. Akari claimed that I was the one that explained all of this to her, which presumably meant that I came up with the name for the phenomenon. There were still a lot of aspects to this that I couldn’t completely wrap my head around, but now I finally felt like I’d done enough mental organizing to free up some of my brain’s processing power.
“Sorry,” I said, “but I’ve gotta be honest: I’m having a lot of trouble coming to terms with the whole quantum leap idea and you claiming it was me who told you this stuff. On the other hand, I know you’d never lie about something like this, so I’m gonna try my best to take you at your word.”
“Thanks. I really appreciate it,” she smiled. Her warm expression reassured me.
“…Man, talk about bad timing, though, am I right? The one week I’m back in town, and we get sucked into some otherworldly bullcrap. Not to mention, you must be busy enough as it is, what with your brother’s funeral and everyth—”
I trailed off, because at that exact moment, the final piece clicked into place inside my head.
The Rollback phenomenon.
Akito’s death.
Think about it, Kanae—if you’re already gonna be going back in time, then…
“…Hey, uh, Akari?” I asked. “Remind me, when exactly did Akito pass away?”
“Sometime between midnight and two o’clock in the morning on April 2nd,” she said matter-of-factly, as though she’d been anticipating that question. “That’s what the autopsy said, at least.”
Okay, sometime between 12 a.m. and 2 a.m. on the 2nd. Got it.
Akari claimed I was going to relive everything from 6 p.m. on the 1st through 6 p.m. on the 5th—and Akito’s death fell well within that period. Assuming Akari wasn’t wrong about any of this, that presented a very interesting possibility.
“Does that mean we could prevent Akito’s death from ever happening…?” I asked.
“…Sure does,” she replied. Then she looked down at her feet for a moment, scrunching her face up pensively before looking back up to stare directly into my eyes. “Kanae-kun, I…I want you to save my brother.”
Her words were so crystal clear in their conviction that they knocked me off guard, and it put me in a bit of an awkward spot. Keep in mind that I was still only half convinced that all this Rollback stuff was even possible… Hell, maybe not even twenty percent convinced. It was hard to jump up right away and say “Sure, I’ll save your brother’s life for you!” when I still had so many unanswered questions. But then, I couldn’t bring myself to say no, either. Whether any of this was true or not, I couldn’t leave Akari in the lurch during her time of need. I had to believe in the sincerity I saw in her face.
“…All right. I’ll do whatever I can,” I said at last. Akari nodded emphatically.
“Okay, so I told you the approximate time of death—between midnight and 2 a.m. on the 2nd. He died of alcohol poisoning, and his body was found in the empty lot behind the old tobacco shop.”
There was only one tobacco shop in all of Sodeshima. It was a small, seedy place down a narrow side street, and I knew exactly where it was.
“What was Akito doing there? Do you know?” I asked.
“The police thought he might have been, um, ‘relieving himself’ in the empty lot. They found some traces in the vicinity that supported that theory, I guess…”
Welp, that must have been an uncomfortable question for her to have to answer. I felt kind of bad for asking. Still, if she was right about all this Rollback stuff, then saving Akito’s life shouldn’t be very hard at all. All I’d need to do was make sure he didn’t drink any alcohol that day. Hey, even if I couldn’t do that, I knew exactly where he would be and when. Now that I thought about it, I’d never actually repaid the favor to him for saving me from those bullies back in the day…which made this the perfect opportunity to do so. Right now, I was the only one who could save Akito’s life.
“Okay, Kanae-kun. It’s almost time,” Akari said as she looked down at her phone. I followed suit and checked my own. It was 5:57; if Akari was right, the next Rollback would occur in three short minutes.
“Let’s see… So you said I’m gonna be sent back to six o’clock on April 4th next?”
“Yeah. Pretty sure.”
“Pretty sure?!”
“I dunno what you want me to say, Kanae-kun. I don’t have any proof of this stuff. I only know what you’ve told me yourself, like I said.”
“Right… Well, fair enough,” I relented. I could tell that hounding her about it wouldn’t do either of us any good.
“…I can tell you right now, though, that the Rollbacks do occur. Or at least, you’ve given me more than enough reason to believe they do,” Akari said. Her voice was as earnest as could be.
Just then, the wind picked up. A few anxious moments later, it sent a cloud of cherry blossom petals spiraling through the sky like a kaleidoscope of tiny butterflies. The swirling pattern of pastel-pink blossoms shone beautifully against the amber evening skies. There was no doubt about it—these had to be the most gorgeous blossoms on the entire island. I stood there for a while, gazing up at them in a state of zen, until I heard what sounded like sobbing beside me. I turned to look and saw Akari covering her face with her hands, her shoulders quivering. The sound of soft weeping leaked out from between her fingers. It didn’t sound like she was crying—she was crying. And this time, it was plainly evident that these were no pollen allergy tears.
“A-Akari? You all right? Is something wrong?”
“Hic… N-No, I…I j-just…”
“Wh-what’s gotten into you all of a sudden…?”
And yet, before I had the chance to learn the reason for her tears, we were interrupted by the six o’clock chime. The sorrowful starting notes of Greensleeves announced to us both that the time had come and my anxiety accelerated.
“…Listen, Kanae-kun…” Akari said, practically choking the words out as she lifted her disheveled, tear-drenched face to look unflinchingly into mine. “I trust your judgment. So please… Take care of past me, okay? The rest is up to—”