“Yeah? What’s up?” I stopped walking as well so I could turn to face him.
“You sure you’re not overdoing it lately? Seems like you’re pushing yourself a little too hard.”
It was like I’d taken a bullet to the chest. Why would he say such a thing? Was it really so obvious that I was overexerting myself? I choked back the urge to ask such questions and instead played it off like I had no idea what he was talking about. “What do you mean? I’m not pushing myself at all.”
“…Well, okay. Sorry for jumping to conclusions. C’mon, let’s go home,” he said and started walking down the sidewalk again. I stood there for a moment in the dark, watching his lonely silhouette grow further and further away from me, before chasing after it at a brisk jog. I caught up to him in no time at all, yet from then on, I increasingly felt that there was no way for me to close the distance between our hearts. It was like the real Kanae had long since gone somewhere far, far away from me, some place that my hands could never reach.
A few weeks passed. One day during lunch hour, I was innocently eating my food when one of the girls who always sat around my desk asked a very leading question.
“So tell us, Akari—are you and Funami, like, a thing, or…?”
“Wh-what?! N-no, we’re not dating!” I blurted out in adamant denial. It was only after the words had left my lips that I realized my mistake. Praying dearly that Kanae hadn’t heard any of that, I shot a quick glance over to his desk, but he wasn’t there. I scanned the rest of the classroom as nonchalantly as I could, but thankfully, he was nowhere to be found. I allowed myself to breathe a sigh of relief.
“Really? But you guys walk home from school together every day, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t automatically make him my boyfriend.”
“I dunno… Seems pretty couplesy to me. I’ll say this, though: you’ve sure got an interesting type, Akari. I mean, what do you even see in that guy?” she asked, grinning from ear to ear.
Even back then, I knew that there were many different types of smiles that people used for many different types of occasions. Smiles of elation, smiles of relief—sometimes people smiled simply to let the other person know they weren’t a threat. This girl’s smile was one that I recognized on sight; it was the wry smirk of someone who was mocking me for their own amusement.
“C’mon, tell us the truth,” she urged. “Have you guys kissed yet? Or have you gone even further than that?”
My face went beet red as I pictured what she was suggesting in my head. And then I got angry. It wasn’t that I hadn’t ever imagined myself doing those kinds of things with Kanae before—but the fact that she had the gall to broach that subject so casually, as though he and I were puppets dancing for her entertainment, flooded me with fury. How dare she spit on our lifelong friendship like that? I kept my cool nonetheless, not wanting to make a big scene, and simply told her calmly but firmly:
“Read my lips: me and Kanae-kun? Not a chance. We’re just friends. There are zero feelings there, believe me.”
The second I finished laying down the law, I heard someone walking up behind me, the soles of their slip-ons squeaking against the linoleum floor. I turned around to see Kanae standing right behind me. I was too horrified to even speak. When had he come back into the classroom? Had he heard that entire exchange? He was clearly uncomfortable, judging from the way he immediately broke eye contact with me and turned to scratch the back of his head. Then he spoke up, and my worst fears were confirmed.
“Yeah, you heard her. We’re just friends. Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said, then immediately went back to his own desk and sat down.
The girl who’d been prodding me said only one word: “Bor-riiing,” then lost interest and went back to eating her food. I picked up my chopsticks again as well, but it was hard to keep eating. None of the things I put in my mouth had any flavor anymore.
When school got out that day, and I was done with practice, it finally came time to head home. Kanae and I made the same old casual small talk we always did as we walked back together, but our conversation that day was extremely vapid; far more so than usual. It was like I was merely stringing words together to fill the silence, and I assumed Kanae could see right through it. Still I kept on, frantically running my mouth.
I knew I needed to apologize for what I’d said during lunch and clear up that misunderstanding ASAP. The only thing keeping me from doing so was my fear of the potential implications, because telling him I didn’t mean what I said in class would be akin to admitting I really did have feelings for him. I’d basically have to ask him out, right then and there, or lose my chance forever.
What if he said no, though? The thought alone made my heart feel like it might split in two. There would be no going back from that; even if I cleared up the misunderstanding, it would only cast an awkward shadow over our friendship forever if he said no. I couldn’t bear that. Ugh. What did I ever do to deserve this? I found myself wishing we could go back to those carefree days in elementary school, before all of this stupid social drama. I was lost in my internal languishing when Kanae called my name.
“Akari, listen,” he said. There was a weight to his words that told me things were about to get serious.
“Wh-what’s up?” I asked, bracing myself for the worst.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
My heart raced. What could it be? Was it about what happened at lunch? Wait. What if he was about to confess his feelings to me? Like, “I need to take back what I said earlier,” or something like that. God, I would be over the moon! I’d probably kiss him right then and there. Granted, I knew I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up—but when he did drop the bomb, it was far beyond anything I ever could have imagined.
“I’m thinking about moving to Tokyo,” he said. “Not until the end of next year, of course, but I still wanted to give you a heads-up.”
My mind immediately went blank. It went so blank that it took me a while to even register the word “Tokyo.” That was…the capital city of Japan, right? Thinking back on it now, I was pretty sure the initial confusion was just a product of my mind dissociating itself from reality. I stood there, dumbfounded, while Kanae explained the rest.
“Long story short, my dad offered to let me come live with him over there a while back. And I mean, you know how much I always wanted to move back to the big city, right? So obviously I said yes. Well, not that it’s set in stone or anything yet. I still need to figure out what high school I’d be going to and whatnot…”
Then Kanae looked at me, as if to say, “What do you think I should do, Akari?” But did it even matter? If I told him I didn’t want him to go, would he stay here with me in Sodeshima? Probably. Kanae was too nice to abandon someone like that. To be clear, I didn’t want him to go; I wanted him to stay right here with me forever. I wanted us to be able to sit and talk and drink Cheerio and watch the sun go down together until we were both old and wrinkly. I knew that I couldn’t ask him to abandon his dreams for my benefit, even in spite of all that, so I tried my best to fake a smile.
“If that’s what you wanna do, then I say go for it. You’ve got my support, anyway.”
“…You mean it?”
“Of course! Besides, a smart guy like you deserves to be in Tokyo. It’d be a real shame for you to be trapped here in Sodeshima your whole life.”
“…Well, all right. If that’s how you feel, then I guess I’ll just have to study real hard,” he said with a slightly apologetic smile.
I tried to build him up with a nonstop barrage of reassurances, like “C’mon, you’ll be fiiine,” and “I know you can do it,” and “If there’s any way I can help, say the word.” But in truth, I was only saying these things because I knew I’d break down and cry the moment I stopped talking. Not long after we said our goodbyes, the six o’clock chime rang out over the island—the melancholy notes of Greensleeves reverberating in harmony with the sorrow I now felt inside my heart.
SHOOT, I’M ALL OUTTA TIME, I thought to myself—but the Rollback had already occurred, and the officer I’d been talking to a moment ago was nowhere to be seen. What I saw instead was a bunch of children at play, swinging on swing sets and building great big mounds in a large sandbox. This was clearly a park, and not the one in the abandoned part of town, but Central Park, where I’d met up with Akari the night before. I was sitting on a bench beside the main walkway. Behind my back, I could still hear Greensleeves, but the tune was a fair bit louder now than it had been before the Rollback. Assuming the phenomenon was still keeping to the same pattern, then this was Tuesday, April 3rd, at 6 p.m. I’d jumped back yet again, deeper into the past, but that one little sentence the officer said still lingered in my ears.
“You guys were hangin’ out late on Sunday night too, weren’tcha?”