Sunday would have been April 1st, but I hadn’t seen Akari that night—she told me so herself—which directly contradicted the officer’s eyewitness testimony. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him that night, or maybe Akari was the one who got it wrong… I knew I had to get to the bottom of this mystery, but before I did anything else, I needed to regain my bearings. Having ascertained my location, I reached for my cell phone to check the time…
“Yeah, like I said, I really don’t know what happened to him…”
…But then I noticed the lady sitting next to me. She was a slender young woman, maybe about twenty years old, with long hair that had been dyed blonde and a couple of different ear piercings. She had a dog leash in her hand, attached to the collar of a Shiba Inu sitting at the foot of the bench. She must have stopped for a breather while out on a walk with her dog. I recognized her from somewhere—she was the same lady who’d rescued me from that angry drunkard at the Ocean’s Bounty Festival. The thing was, I felt like I knew her from someplace else long before that. Who was she? I thought about it some more as I stared intently at her profile, until finally I was able to put a name to the face.
“Wait a minute. Hayase?” I asked.
“Yeah? What is it?” she said, turning to face me.
Now that I got a good look at her face from straight-on, I was sure of it. She was Saki Hayase, Akito’s high school girlfriend and student manager of the baseball team. I couldn’t quite tell at first because she’d dyed her hair from its natural black color, but it was her, all right. Now the question was: Why on earth were she and I sitting on a park bench together? What had we been talking about? It wasn’t like she and I had ever interacted before.
“…Um, hello? Did you want to ask me something, or…?” she asked impatiently, furrowing her brow.
“Oh, uh… No, sorry. Don’t mind me.”
“Why so skittish all of a sudden? If something’s on your mind, just say it.”
She was being awfully friendly—and I already knew from the way she came to my rescue at the festival that she was probably a very good person, even if she did look like a bit of a punk rocker now. Since I was getting a little sick of beating around the bush to try to avoid suspicion at this point, I decided to ask her point-blank:
“Sorry, could you remind me what we were just talking about?”
“Huh? Are you serious? You asked the question, and you weren’t even listening to the answer? We were talking about Akito, remember?”
We were? Had she and I been recounting old stories about him or something? I found it hard to believe that I’d go out of my way to ask one of his old girlfriends about him, but I had no way of knowing what my intentions were. More than anything, though, I wanted to know whatever it was she had just told me.
“Right, right. And what were you telling me about him, exactly?” I asked innocently, not expecting it to be a major problem. It was a shock when this caused all of the emotion to drain from Hayase’s face in an instant. Her eyes turned sharp as daggers.
“You’re really gonna make me repeat all of that, huh?” she said, with a sort of soft-spoken anger to her voice. Her imposing demeanor won out over my curiosity, and I quickly backpedaled.
“N-no, it’s okay. I think I got the gist. Sorry for being annoying…” I said, bowing my head in apology. Thankfully, Hayase’s expression softened quite a bit after this, and she leaned back against the bench as heavily as if she’d finished running a marathon.
“It’s just…not a very pleasant subject, you know?” she said. “I’d rather not talk about it more than we already have.”
Okay, now I was really curious. Why did the Rollbacks always seem to happen right in the middle of important events and conversations? I wished my future self had left me a note or something saying I should try to be alone in a quiet place whenever six o’clock rolled around. Hopefully I could at least remember to do that next time.
“Mmnngh!” Hayase moaned, stretching her arms up over her head. “Okay, I think that’s enough talking for one day. Now don’t forget, you still have to hold up your end of the bargain! I’ll be expecting you bright and early tomorrow!”
“Wait. Did we make a deal or something?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“Uh, yeah?” she nodded. It was obvious that she was starting to have concerns about my short-term memory, but she thankfully gave me a refresher anyway: “You offered to help out at the festival, remember? My family’s liquor store runs a big booth there every year, from sunup to sundown. Only problem is, we’re a little shorthanded this year…but you said you already knew that, which was why you offered to help us out in the first place. That’s the only reason I’m here talking to you right now. There—did that refresh your memory?”
Wait a minute… Waaait a minute. Things were starting to come together. Eri mentioned that I was helping out with a booth at the festival during the last Rollback. This must have been what she was talking about. But why did I offer to help out at the festival? That seemed extremely uncharacteristic of me, especially when I was already wrapped up in a supernatural phenomenon.
“Sorry, just to clarify: I offered to help you guys?” I asked.
“Yeah? That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time…” Hayase answered.
She seemed pretty suspicious of the way I was acting at this point, but it didn’t sound to me like she was lying about anything she said. I could only assume that I had offered to help her out, which seemed like an awfully irresponsible thing for me to do when Akito’s life was on the line…but I didn’t have much of a choice now. Maybe I could even learn a thing or two about what we’d discussed here at the park today while I was helping her out tomorrow.
“Right, of course. I remember now. Guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“Okay, phew! Boy, for a minute there, I was starting to think you hit your head on something and forgot all about it! Ah ha ha!”
Hayase clapped me on the back as hard as she could, and I actually winced because of how much it hurt. The little dog at her feet barked, stood up, and started wagging its tail impatiently, ready to resume their walk. Hayase obliged and stood up from the bench, then turned to face me.
“Okay then! I’ll see you on the temple grounds tomorrow morning at six o’clock sharp! Wear some clothes you don’t mind getting dirty, and don’t be late!”
Wait, did she say six in the morning?! Man, maybe I should’ve faked amnesia to get out of it after all…
After waving goodbye to Hayase, I headed back home and sat down on my bed upstairs. It was half past six—6:30 p.m. on April 3rd. I needed to hurry and figure out what went down on the night of April 1st. The officer claimed he’d seen me with Akari, while Akari claimed she had no idea where I’d been after we said our goodbyes down at the seawall. Obviously, these stories weren’t consistent with one another, which meant either the officer or Akari wasn’t telling the truth. It would be easier for me to assume the officer was simply mistaken if Akari hadn’t also been acting a little strange when I first asked her about it, which sowed some seeds of doubt in my mind. At this point, I didn’t know who to believe—and the only way to know for sure was to determine if Akari was telling the truth or not.
Easy enough to say, but how exactly was I supposed to do that? I couldn’t ask her the same question again, because she would probably give me the same answer. Should I try to mislead her into revealing it another way? If I could smoothly pivot the conversation topic to that night, and Akari didn’t contradict her previous alibi, then I could be relatively certain that the officer had simply seen two other teenagers who weren’t us. I didn’t like having to be conniving about this one thing, but it was probably the least confrontational option, so I decided to go with it.
Right as I made up my mind, I felt my cell phone vibrating in my pocket. It was Akari. Perfect timing, I thought to myself as I answered the call.
“Hello?”
“Oh, hey, Kanae-kun. Sorry, I was really busy and couldn’t pick up the phone. What’s up?”
“Huh? You called me.”
“What, no… You tried to call me, like, an hour ago, didn’t you?”
“I did…?”
I had no memory of this, but then I thought about it and realized that an hour ago would have been around 5:30 p.m.—prior to where I ended up after the last Rollback, and therefore something I hadn’t experienced yet. I didn’t know why I had called, and there was really no way for me to find out, but that didn’t matter too much right now, because this was the opportunity I was looking for.
“Oh yeah, so hey—there’s something I wanted to talk to you about, Akari. Is this a good time?”
“For me? Yeah, of course. What did you want to talk about?”
“Okay, so here’s the thing…”
It was then that I realized I still hadn’t come up with a plan as to how I would segue into the subject of the night of April 1st. Crap.
“Kanae-kun? Are you still there?”
“Y-yeah, sorry. So listen, um…”
I needed to think of something, and fast.
“…Would you be interested in going on a picnic at all? I was thinking it’d be really nice, what with the cherry blossoms in full bloom and all.”
“Huh? A picnic?”
I could practically see her puzzled expression from the other end of the line. Heck, I was pretty baffled by it, myself—why, oh why had that been the first thing my mind jumped to? Was I for real right now? “Hey, Akari! I know your brother died, but do you wanna have a picnic?” It was more than a little insensitive…not to mention stupid.