“Er, yeah, sorry. Here, why don’t we start with the day I got here? April 1st. What sticks out most in your mind about me from that day?”
“That was several days ago now, Kanae… Well, you got in a bit of a fight with your sister,” she recalled, but that was something I already knew. What I really wanted to know was what I did after six o’clock that night.
“Right, Eri and I got into an argument, and I stormed out of the house. What did I do after that, though?” I pressed her.
“Sweetie, why are you asking me these strange questions? Shouldn’t you already know the answer to that?”
“Sure, of course I do… I was curious how much you knew or remembered.”
“How would I know what you did after that? You didn’t come home that night.”
“I didn’t?”
“No, don’t you remember? You called back here to say you were spending the night at a friend’s house. Really, dear—how is my memory better than yours?”
Aha. That explained the record in my phone history of me calling home that night. To be clear, I still had my grandmother’s house registered as “Home” in my address book, even after moving to Tokyo, because my father didn’t have a landline. But what was this about me spending the night at a friend’s house? I had no friends here in Sodeshima who would offer to let me stay at their place—or in Tokyo, for that matter. Sure, there was Akari, who I was fairly close with, but there was no way I’d spent the night at a girl’s house. So where did I sleep that night?
“Whose house was it, anyway?” my grandmother asked before I even had the chance. “Eri was wondering about it too.”
“Oh, yeah, um… Sorry, I’ll have to tell you later.”
“I beg your pardon? Don’t tell me you stayed the night at the house of some ne’er-do-well your father and I wouldn’t approve of.”
“No, no! It’s nothing like that… I don’t think.”
“You don’t sound very sure of yourself. You haven’t gotten involved in any shady business, have you? If you’re in danger, you need to tell us about it. If not me, then your father, at least…”
“Er, yeah. No, I get that. But I mean it—I’ll tell you as soon as I can, okay? Bye.”
“The bathwater’s ready, so feel free to wash up!” she called after me as I beat a hasty retreat from the kitchen. As I made my way toward the bathroom, I felt a sudden haze of anxiety roll over my mind like ominous black storm clouds.
After a quick hop in the bath, I returned to my bedroom. I spent my entire time in the tub trying to figure out where I could have possibly spent the night of the 1st but still couldn’t come up with anything. I’d never spent the night at a friend’s house in my entire life, as sad as that sounded—so for me to do so while I was already running away from home seemed almost unthinkable. There had to have been a very compelling reason why I couldn’t go back to my grandmother’s house that night, and the fact that the 1st was also the night Akito died made me wonder if perhaps the two things were related.
No, that couldn’t be right. Not if the body wasn’t found until the next evening. Still, I needed to find some answers as to where I was staying that night. I didn’t want to leave any questions unanswered before I made it back to the 1st, since then I could give saving Akito’s life my undivided attention. Not that I had any solid proof that the Rollback was going to take me back that far, I guess, but I wanted to be ready in the event that it did. I’d need to do some footwork around town once tomorrow hit.
I was about to jump in bed when I spied the notebook I’d left laying out on my desk. I flipped it open on a whim and took another look at the Rollback diagram I’d drawn in it earlier. Then a thought occurred to me: When exactly was the Rollback supposed to end? Akari’s diagram had finished off at 6 p.m. on April 2nd—and yes, that would be when I finished filling in the four-day gap in my memories—but what would happen after that?
I decided I probably shouldn’t think too hard about it, though; I wasn’t going to find any answers that way. For now, I needed some rest. My whole body felt extremely sore—maybe from helping out at the festival, if what Eri said was true. Obviously my mind didn’t remember doing any heavy labor, but my body sure did. I shut the notebook and snuggled up under the covers. In a matter of minutes, I was out like a light.
I was awakened by the sound of my cell phone vibrating. I reached for it with one hand, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes with the other. After my vision had time to adjust, I looked down at the screen and saw the name “Akari Hoshina.”
“Akari…?” I grumbled drowsily, then answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Oh, you did pick up! Hey, Kanae-kun! Sorry for calling you at this hour. You were probably asleep already, huh?”
“Yeah, I was… What time is it right now?”
“Oh, it’s about one o’clock. One o’clock in the morning.”
No wonder I still felt so sleepy.
“Why are you calling so late?” I asked, stifling a yawn. “Do you need something?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t say I need anything. I was just wondering if maybe, I dunno…” she mumbled, her voice growing quieter and quieter. I pressed the speaker right up against my ear, but even then it was too soft to discern.