I waited for quite some time. Nothing happened. Akari’s little hand remained firmly clasped within my own. I opened my eyes and turned to my side, only to find her hanging her head with her shoulders trembling.
“Akari…?”
A sound came into focus at last. Sobbing. Akari was crying, and I didn’t even realize.
“It’s not fair…” she whimpered through the tears. “Why’d you have to do this to me, Kanae-kun…? How am I supposed to die when you say stuff like that…? I can’t do it… I can’t…”
I nearly fell to my knees right then and there. The words “I can’t do it” washed over my entire body like a wave of relief. All the tension built up inside me started to subside, and my legs went limp. Oh, thank goodness. Akari chose to live. I was happy enough to burst into tears myself.
“…C’mon, let’s go back inside the railing,” I suggested.
Akari complied, throwing her leg over the railing as she wept. Once both of her feet were back on solid ground, I turned and hoisted myself up onto the railing as well. A powerful gust of wind picked up at that exact moment and knocked me off balance. Uh-oh. I desperately clutched for purchase at everything in reach, but my hands were too slippery with sweat. My body tottered backwards, and my stomach dropped.
I’m gonna fall.
It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The railing receded before me while the skies above expanded before my eyes with a tremendous whoosh. My body bent further back, sealing in the realization that I was about to die as it did so. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel a lick of fear. Maybe it was because I mentally prepared myself to die a moment ago, or maybe I felt satisfied after achieving my goal of saving Akari’s life. Either way, all I felt in that instant was that if the universe decided to kill me off here, then so be it. I did what I came here to do, so fate was welcome to take my stupid life. As I came to terms with my fate, however…
“Kanae-kun!”
Akari reached out and grabbed me by the hand. The sense of weightlessness vanished altogether as she gripped my right arm with both hands. She held me far more firmly, far more imperatively than she had when she stopped me on our way to the bar last night. She hauled me back over to safety on the other side of the fence, whereupon she and I both fell to the ground—me directly on top of her, in an accidental aggressor position. Her face now mere inches from mine, I saw my reflection in her wide-open eyes.
Now, here, the belated fear of death hit me like a truck. Had Akari not grabbed my hand when she did, I would have been gone forever. I shuddered at the thought, and my legs got weak enough that I couldn’t lift myself up off the ground.
“H-holy hell, Akari. You just saved my—”
Before I had any chance to thank her, she wrapped her arms around me from below and pulled me in close. I was now quite literally on top of her. I could feel her heartbeat pulse against my chest.
“Oh, thank god… I was so scared you were gonna fall…” she sniffled between sobs, her breath hot against my ear.
“Thank god” was right. We were both still here, still breathing, after one near-suicide and one near-fatal accident. As far as I was concerned, that was nothing short of a miracle. How could I not be ecstatic about that?
“Hey, Kanae-kun…?” she whispered in my ear. “Remember what you said to me earlier? About how you’ll never break another promise to me again…? Did you really mean that?”
“One hundred percent. I’ll never betray your trust again. I swear.”
“Okay then… See, there’s this one little thing I want you to promise me.”
Akari pulled away from me. We both sat up straight, facing each other directly. I lowered my gaze from her tear-drenched eyes to her trembling lips. They shaped sounds together to form six little words:
“Make me a happy woman, okay?”
“Oh, you bet I will,” I said, then wrapped her up tightly in my embrace. Akari hugged me right back, and we both sat there in each other’s arms while the faded melody of Greensleeves rang out over the island. It was already six o’clock. I braced for the worst—but even after the chime was over, no Rollback occurred. Time was back in its proper order, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I was living in the present again. The future awaiting Akari and I was a total enigma, but one that she and I would face together, hand in hand.
It was now April 3rd, the day after Akari’s suicide attempt at Sodeshima High. On that bright and sunny afternoon, I made my way down to Sodeshima Harbor. The warm sunbeams upon my face heralded the beginning of spring, promising that winter’s lingering specter would soon disappear from the last few shady pockets that lent it sanctuary.
In truth, this was the second April 3rd of my seventeenth year on earth. This time, I intended to take it slower than the last. Nothing happened at 6 p.m. last night, leading me to believe that the Rollback was over. While I never gained a proper understanding of its mechanics or what triggered it, the 6 p.m. thing was a rigid rule throughout the phenomenon. I felt safe in assuming the phenomenon had truly ended.
That wasn’t a guarantee that I was free from its clutches altogether. I knew that. Still, I figured it wasn’t healthy to live in constant fear of otherworldly time hiccups; I would cross that next bridge if and when I came to it. It wasn’t like I could do much to prevent it, so why stress myself out in the meantime?
I soon arrived at the harbor and made my way to the ticket office. Inside, I found Akari sitting on one of the benches, wearing a knit sweater.
“Wow, you’re here early,” I called out as I approached. She turned to look up at me.
“Yeah, sorry. I felt antsy all morning…” she said, fidgeting with her fingers down near her belly button. A fragment of darkness endured in her expression, but I sensed none of the instability from when we were up on the rooftop yesterday.
“Well, don’t push yourself,” I said. “If it gets to be too much for you, we can always quit and go home.”
“I think I’ll be okay. Especially since you’re coming with me… And I’ll have to face him sooner or later.”
Akari’s voice was tense with either fear or trepidation, or perhaps a combination of the two. We were on our way to visit Akito at the hospital he was staying at over on the mainland. It was Akari’s idea. She called me up this morning and said that it was something she couldn’t avoid forever if she wanted to go on living. I thought that was a mature way of looking at it and agreed to go as her escort. Admittedly, I had my reservations about this meeting between a victim and her abuser, but they were siblings. It wasn’t like they could realistically go the rest of their lives without talking to one another, at least not until Akari graduated from high school. Some amount of reconciliation was necessary, I assumed.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “If he tries anything funny, I’ll put a stop to it.”
“Yeah, okay… Thanks,” she said. A little of the tension left her shoulders.
I checked the big clock inside the waiting area. The ferry was supposed to arrive at any minute, so I got in line at the ticket window. After paying for our fare, I walked back over to where Akari was sitting. Our boat arrived a short while later, so we stepped aboard and embarked on our little voyage to the mainland.
We left the ferryboat and got on a bus that took us all the way to the hospital. After checking in at the front desk, they gave us Akito’s room number. We went up the stairs, down the hallway, and around the corner, before eventually arriving at his hospital room. As we stood in front of the door, I looked over at Akari out of the corner of my eye. She looked pale and was biting her lip with a frown. Her hands shook slightly. When she noticed my gaze, however, she turned toward me with a forced smile.
“Ah ha ha… Sorry, I guess I’m more nervous than I realized.”
“You still wanna do this?”
“I mean, we’re here now. I can’t turn back.”
“…Okay then.”
I took her hand and held it tight. Akari recoiled in momentary surprise, then gave my hand a brief squeeze in reciprocation. She took a deep breath, knocked lightly on the door, and then opened it without waiting for a reply; it was a shared hospital room with multiple occupants, so she must not have felt the need. Akito’s bed was on the right-hand side, over by the window. Still holding hands, we walked in and made our way across the room to the privacy curtain partitioning his bed away from the rest of the patients.
“Hey, it’s your sister,” Akari said. “We’re coming in.”
No reply came, but someone was clearly in there. Akari slid the curtain aside and walked in, and I followed suit. Sure enough, Akito lay there in his bed, wide awake. He had an IV drip hooked up to his arm.
“I didn’t say you could come in,” Akito scoffed, glaring at Akari. He noticed me enter right after her, and his eyes widened a little in mild surprise.
“Hey, you’re…Funami, right?” he asked.
“That’s me,” I said.