Then, finally, came the lightning crash. I yanked open every other drawer in my desk, then slammed them all shut. Finding nothing in there, I proceeded to rifle through my dresser, look under my bed, and reach around inside my purse like a thief gone mad. My bankbook was nowhere to be found. What was I supposed to do now? If someone broke in and stole it, and they had my identification stamp, they could drain my whole account, and then I wouldn’t have enough money to…to…
I wanted to start bawling loudly, right then and there. I held it in somehow and racked my brain as hard as I could. If a burglar had actually stolen it, there should have been evidence of a break-in, right? The apartment looked fine on the whole, and the front door was definitely locked. Which meant it must have been either my mother or my brother…and I had a bad feeling I knew which of those two it probably was. I pulled out my cell phone to call Akito, hands trembling. My finger paused a millimeter above the dial button.
What if—and this was a pretty big if—but what if I was wrong, and it hadn’t been my brother? Was I prepared for the wrath that might ensue from an accusation like that? He would do far, far worse than just kick me. There was no doubt about that. The thought scared me enough that I chickened out of making the phone call. As I stood there at a loss of what to do, a thought occurred to me. What if it hadn’t been stolen at all? What if my mom needed to borrow a little money or needed my account information for some business at the bank? There were several possible explanations that didn’t involve losing every last bit of my savings, and this thought calmed me greatly. Maybe I was fooling myself, but I had to focus on these slim possibilities so that I wouldn’t vomit then and there. I was determined not to look reality in the eye.
I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to get much studying done while this remained an open question in my head, but I couldn’t stand sitting around to do nothing, either. I ran out of the house. I ran frantically around town, as fast as I could, hoping the rush of adrenaline would somehow shake the anxiety from my mind. Less than thirty minutes later, I was officially winded, and my limbs were like jelly, so I sat down on the seawall to catch my breath. I spun around and looked across the ocean as I waited for my heartbeat to stabilize. The hazy silhouette of the mainland felt somehow farther now than ever before.
I might have just lost my one chance to move to Tokyo, I thought to myself, and then the tears came streaming down. But then, something magical happened. I heard a voice call out to me, so I turned around, and I saw him. Kanae was right in front of me. Not in a dream, but in the real world. He was here, in the flesh, and only an arm’s length away.
“Akari…?”
“K-Kanae-kun?!”
This unexpected reunion caught me so off guard that when I stood up, I nearly fell backwards into the ocean. Thankfully I didn’t, and it was because Kanae was there to catch me. He and I then went on to have a whole little dialogue, during which I did my very best to act like nothing was wrong. I didn’t want to ruin our long-awaited reunion by talking about my lost bankbook, or my abusive brother, or anything remotely depressing.
Weirdly enough, the more I talked to him, the less it felt like I was acting. After a while, I was genuinely enjoying myself again. It was as if hearing his voice was slowly refilling my cold, empty, desiccated heart with warm waters that soothed my soul. When he revealed that he did not, in fact, have a girlfriend back in Tokyo at the moment, I breathed such a sigh of relief that I nearly fell to my knees right in front of him.
“Have you decided what college you’re going to next year?” I asked him eventually.
“Yeah—U of I,” he replied. “But you knew that already.”
It was exactly the response I expected, but it was nice to fully confirm that I would need to move to Tokyo if I wanted to be with him again. That settled it. It was time for me to stop moping around and tackle my problems head-on. I said goodbye to Kanae and then headed back home. As soon as I arrived, I pulled out my cell phone and called my brother that very instant. I feared if I waited any longer, I might lose my nerve again. And I had to know where my bankbook was.
He didn’t pick up, which knocked some of the wind out of my sails. Still, I wasn’t going to give up that easily, so I planted myself on the living room couch and stayed there until my brother came back home.
When he returned to the apartment at long last, it was around nine o’clock at night. Mustering up all the courage I could find, I stood up and confronted him.
“H-hey, Akito? You wouldn’t happen to have my bankbook, would you?” I asked, trying not to sound too overly accusatory. He shot me a dirty look, then pulled both my bankbook and my authorization stamp out of his coat pocket and handed them to me. So it was him, I thought to myself, momentarily relieved that he’d fessed up so easily and returned it. Then I flipped the bankbook open, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. After a single withdrawal, my savings balance had gone from over 1,000,000 yen all the way down to a mere 1,200. I stood there, looking down at the numbers in abject horror as all of the blood drained from my face.
“Wh-wh-what have you done…?” I asked. My voice shook in disbelief.
“Pfft,” my brother spat, as though he’d accidentally swallowed a fly. “Just borrowed a little money, that’s all. Dinged some dude’s car the other day, and he forced me to pay for the repairs. Turns out he’s actually a bigshot gangster, so I didn’t really have a choice.”
My mouth hung wide open. I was at a complete loss for words, and yet somehow, the worst was yet to come.
“C’mon, don’t be like that,” he went on, “you and I both know you probably weren’t gonna get into that college anyhow. Besides, if you’re really that dead set on moving to Tokyo, why don’t you get a job at a strip club or something? Plenty of ’em over there.”
“A…a strip club?!”
“Yeah, or a hostess bar or something, I dunno. Anyway, hey, I was gonna head over to the bar real quick. Could you lend me five hundred? I know you’ve got at least that much left in your wallet.”
Never before in my life had I known that when your anger surpasses a certain threshold, your blood quite literally runs cold. It was like one of those science experiments I’d seen on TV was being recreated inside my head. That one where they dip a rose petal into a vat of liquid nitrogen, then pull it out, squeeze it, and it shatters into a million pieces. That pretty much exemplified what happened to my sense of reason in that instant.
“Graaaaaaagh!” I wailed, grabbing my brother by the collar with both hands. “How?! How could you do such a thing?! Why do you have to ruin my life at every possible opportunity?!”
“Hey! Let go of me!”
“Do you know how hard I had to work to save up all that money?! I worked myself half to death! But you wouldn’t know a thing about that, would you?! You don’t know the first thing about me!”
“I said get off me!”
My brother ripped my hands from his collar and pushed me away. I fell backwards, my back slamming hard against the floor. A stinging pain shot through my spine.
“It’s not like you know anything about me either!” my brother yelled as I lay there, grunting in agony. “The world’s taken everything from me! My dad, baseball—everything I ever loved! I never did anything to deserve that! So why shouldn’t I get to take a few things back in return?! Isn’t it only fair?!”
“Why are you asking me…?! You’re not the only one who lost their father here, you know! Just because you can’t play baseball anymore, that doesn’t give you the right to steal other people’s hard-earned money…!”
“Don’t lecture me, you little brat!”
My brother clenched his fists and moved in closer. I looked up at him towering over me and saw no trace of sanity left in those eyes. A chill ran through my entire body. I scrambled in vain to get away, crawling backwards along the floor, and then heard my cell phone vibrating on the floor beside me—it must have fallen out of my pocket when I hit the ground. The screen displayed the caller’s name: Kanae. I grabbed the phone without a second thought and answered it as fast as I could.
“Kanae-kun, you’ve gotta help me!” I cried.
“Hey! Who said you could answer that?! Give it here!” my brother barked, snatching the phone out of my hands and ending the call. “Damn you. Tryin’ to get me in trouble…”
He threw the phone on the ground, then pointed one finger straight at me.
“You’re never getting off this island, you hear me? So just shut up and do as I say like a good girl,” he hissed, his spittle spraying out across my face. He stormed out of the apartment without another word. As soon as he was gone, I broke into an uncontrollable bawl, right there on the ground, as if I’d finally been broken beyond repair.
I FOUND MYSELF STANDING in front of the miniature wooden shrine looking down at the cracked stone housed within as Greensleeves blared out from the loudspeaker behind me. I took a step back to look up at the resplendent cherry blossom tree above and the darkening sky behind it. Nearby were a few pieces of rusty old playground equipment. There was no doubt about it—I was back in the abandoned park again, right where this all began.
I reached for my cell phone and checked the date. Sunday, April 1st, 6 p.m. I’d made it all the way back to the day I first arrived in Sodeshima, the same day that Akito lost his life. After five long and confusing days, I’d get to see how the rest of April 1st played out. I knew exactly what I needed to do next. I’d head over to the Asuka Tavern, stop Akito from drinking by any means necessary, and that would be that. It shouldn’t be difficult at all, and I had plenty of time to get over there.
However, I couldn’t get what Hayase had told me right before the Rollback out of my mind. It kept gnawing at my chest like a sharp fishbone caught in my throat.