Chapter 1 — A Wonder Came to be Called a Wonder
1
Sakuta dreamed that day. He dreamed of days gone by… though it was actually only about two years in the past.
He dreamed of when he was in his third year of middle school, of the time ten days after three mysterious gouges had been carved into his chest and he had been taken to the hospital covered in blood… Sakuta had grown tired of looking at the doctor’s troubled face and left the hospital before boarding a train from the nearby station.
He didn’t care where it went and decided to just go to the sea because the TV show he had watched to kill time the day before had a character that had faded away at the beach. It seemed a fitting place to go with being in the doldrums.
That was how he came to Shichirigahama beach and walked through the surprisingly loud sounds of the crashing waves until he reached the water’s edge.
The sea breeze carried the scent of salt, and the early-afternoon sun was pleasant on his skin. There was a path towards the sun on the surface of the sea. Was the atmosphere clear past that far off distance? He could clearly see the horizon.
He stared at the boundary between the sea and sky for a while and then noticed someone next to him.
“Did you know? The distance from a person’s eye-line to the horizon is about four kilometres.”
The voice was barely there and had a weak timbre, but there was a cool purpose contained within it.
Sakuta remained silent for a while and glanced to his side. Standing there was a girl in high school uniform, holding her hair down against the wind. She was wearing a beige blazer and a navy blue skirt as she stood barefoot on the sand.
He didn’t recognise her face, and didn’t know her name.
Noticing Sakuta’s look, the girl gave a slightly playful smile. At the very least, there was no one else around. He could see an elderly couple walking their dog, but there was no other explanation than that the girl was talking to Sakuta.
“Are the people around here all like that?” He asked her.
“Hm?” The girl tilted her head, not quite understanding the main part of his question.
“Do they all just start talking to strangers out of nowhere?”
The area was a seaside tourist destination. Enoshima was to the west, and Kamakura to the East, so there might be the culture of being friendly to visitors to make them feel welcome.
“Ah, did I make you think I’m a strange person by any chance?”
“Nope.”
“Thank goodness,” the girl breathed a sigh of relief.
“I just think you’re annoying.”
“Calling a high school girl that is a taboo,” the girl pouted with her hands on her hips, apparently miffed, “annoying, lame, incapable of reading the atmosphere, those are the three great taboo insults for high school girls.”
“You’re an irritant then,” he revised.
“And that’s the fourth.” The girl gave a somewhat reproachful look before carrying on. “You look rather far from home, did something bad happen?”
“About earlier,” Sakuta answered, completely ignoring the actual question. It was probably this kind of attitude that a girl he had just met was telling him he looked far from home.
“Yes?”
Even with her question ignored, the girl didn’t frown and instead smiled cheerfully, her expression changing from the earlier pout.
“You were talking about the horizon,” Sakuta stayed before her, still discouraged, “is it really about four kilometres?”
“It’s surprisingly close, isn’t it?”
The girl picked up a twig from the beach and drew a circle in the wet sand. Atop that circle, she added a person that consisted of a circle and a straight line before finally adding a straight line that touched the circle.
“If you use the geometry that you learn in high school, you can easily calculate the distance to the horizon.”
Using the beach as a board, the girl wrote out an equation, but it was washed away by a strong wave. Flustered, she moved a step back up the beach.
Sakuta fell back into silence and stared back at the horizon. It had seemed so distant before, but now seemed strangely close.
“Now it’s your turn to answer my question,” she said.
The moment that she said that, Sakuta had decided to ignore it, but in the end, Sakuta ended up talking to her about why he had come to the see.
“I…”
He started by telling her that he had a sister, then that said sister had been bullied in middle school.
Once he opened his mouth, he couldn’t stop talking. He spoke of his sister getting strange cuts and bruises with the bullying, how he couldn’t do anything for his injured sister, and then eventually, even about the bizarre wound on his own chest. Finally, he finished by telling her about nothing going well… about how he had come here today to escape from the all-pervading sense of powerlessness that weighed on him.
It wasn’t that he wanted sympathy, and nor was it that he wanted comforting. He had in fact thought that the girl, who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, would recoil and leave once she heard. Those malicious feelings were what drove Sakuta to speak. That itself was just as the girl had said, Sakuta was far from home.
“So that’s what happened.”
Surprisingly, the girl didn’t show a hint of doubt, even once he had finished relating everything to her. She didn’t give him sympathy or try and console him. She didn’t even allude to the scars on his chest or seem to doubt that the tale was the truth, she just offered her right hand.
“I’m Makinohara Shouko, Makinohara Shouko is from the Makinohara in the ‘Makinohara Service Area’, and the Shouko in ‘a child soaring through the sky’. What’s your name?” Said the girl.
“I’m…” Sakuta opened his mouth reflexively, haltingly reaching to respond to her handshake, but before he could grasp her hand, the dream ended.
Sakuta’s hand that had moved in vain within his dream touched something. A round and soft sensation filled his hand…
From there, Sakuta noticed the warmth of a body on his own, the slightly damp skin against the right side of his body. The softness and weight of it brought a girl to mind.
As these thoughts danced vaguely through his head, he felt a tongue lick his lips.
He slowly opened his eyes.
There was a fluffy white creature in front of Sakuta’s eyes, a white-furred kitten that was licking Sakuta’s face with its rough tongue.
There was a reason for this, it was the cat that had come to live in Sakuta’s house a fortnight ago… on the last day of the school term.
He picked the white cat up off his face. However, he still couldn’t get up. There was another little one… well, calling her a little one wasn’t quite right, another large creature was lying across Sakuta.
She was a panda, or well, his little sister wearing panda pyjamas. She was fifteen this year, but still sometimes crawled into Sakuta’s bed like this.
Atop her chest was the Azusagawa household’s pet cat, Nasuno, who was a female calico cat. The source of the soft and round sensation in his hand was apparently the cat’s backside and Sakuta breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t accidentally groped his sister.
Sakuta removed his hand from Nasuno and pinched Kaede’s nose as it whistled slightly with her breath as she slept.
“Mgh.” Came a noise from Kaede’s throat as she made a pained expression, but she soon opened her mouth and maintained her oxygen supply. He considered covering her mouth too, but decided it wasn’t something he should do to his teenage sister.
“Kaede, wake up,” he told her instead.
“Ngh? Ah, Onii-chan, good morning,” she answered, suppressing a yawn as she rubbed at her eyes.
“How many times do I have to tell you to stop crawling into my bed?”
“Is it because you’ll awaken to a forbidden love.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s okay, I’ll sink to whatever depths you want me to.”
“It’s just because it’s too hot.”
It being summer, it was the time of year when the warmth of a person’s skin wasn’t the slightest bit pleasant. If anything, it was the season where you wanted to avoid contact as much as possible.
Of course, his older girlfriend, Sakurajima Mai, was an exception, and he would rather be in contact with her all-year-round.
However, the world wasn’t fair, and the days with no skinship from Mai continued and they had only been able to meet a few times since the holidays had begun.
Mai had gone back to show business and so was busy recording for TV dramas, adverts, and even modelling for the covers of fashion magazines, doing interviews and appearing at publicity events, so her days were filled with work.
She had said “Half of it I’ll be working” about the holidays, but her schedule had been filed in the blink of an eye and she barely had any time off.
“Hah…”
It was because of this that Sakuta would sigh dejectedly once or twice throughout the days.
“What’s wrong, Onii-chan?” Asked Kaede.
“Kaede, what day of what month is it?”
Kaede checked the digital alarm clock and then answered.
“It’s the second of August.”
“So we’re about a fortnight into the holidays.”
“We are.”
“And yet, I’ve not been able to have any fun with Mai-san.”
“Then do you want some fun with me?” She asked, suddenly moving her face close to his.
“No, I don’t,” Sakuta answered, pushing himself up past Kaede who still showed no sign of getting off of him.
“What’s displeasing about me!?” Kaede yelled, leaning forwards suddenly. She was awfully close to pushing him down, so Sakuta quickly got up off the bed.
“You’re being pretty desperate today.”
“That’s because I’m currently facing the largest crisis in the history of Kaedeism.”
“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“I need to master imoutodo as soon as possible!” Kaede proclaimed loudly, with a nod at her own words.
Just what was imoutodo? Sakuta wondered to himself. Well, it was made up of the characters for ‘little sister’ and ‘way’, much like ‘kendo’ was made up of sword and way, and judo was made up of ‘gentle’ and ‘way’, so maybe it was something similar? No, he decided, if I put them together like that, I can just see the organisations that deal with them phoning up to complain.
Whilst his mind was occupied with that kind of pointless thoughts, the doorbell sounded. Looking at the clock, he could see it was ten o’clock in the morning, so he already knew who it was before he got to the door. There was only one girl that came at this hour.
“Yeah yeah, I’m coming,” Sakuta said, stifling a yawn as he went to greet his guest.
The visitor was a prim and proper looking young girl with a white dress that promoted her innocence all the more.
She was twelve years old and in her first year of middle school, but her polite bow and composed greeting, “Hello, sorry to intrude,” made her seem more adult and her general demeanour was polite and courteous.
She entered the hall and shed her shoes when the white cat came running from Sakuta’s room to curl around her… Makinohara Shouko’s feet, rubbing its back at her.
“We haven’t eaten yet,” Sakuta told her.
“Ah, then can I feed him?”
“Would you do Nasuno’s food at the same time?”
“I will.” Shouko smiled happily.
He showed her into the living room, the kitten running around underfoot.
“Onii-chan, come here a second,” Kaede beckoned him as they passed past his him. Sakuta went to the living room with Shouko, then came back to Kaede.
“What?”
“Do you prefer younger younger sisters?” She asked, seeming near tears.
“What’s with that question?”
“Are you the kind of person that prefers polite and courteous little sisters?” She continued, shooting furtive glances at the living room. Apparently, that was the largest crisis in the history of Kaedeism to Kaede.
“I’m the kind of person that prefers you as my sister.”
“R-really?”
“What did you think I’d say, I-”
“T-then what is Shouko-san to you?”
“…I wonder…”
Two weeks had passed since their shocking meeting. He had speculated a lot, but there were no answers to the existence of ‘Makinohara Shouko’.
Her face was too similar to just have the same name, and a family wouldn’t give siblings the same name. At the very least, she didn’t know Sakuta, so he thought that she wasn’t the same girl as he had met two years ago. But still, Sakuta couldn’t see the first year middle school student looking after the kitten as anyone but the second year high school student he had met two years prior from her appearance, to an unthinkable extent…
There was thus one possibility he could think of.
It was some form of Adolescence Syndrome. It was usually spoken of online as some kind of false supernatural phenomenon, consisting of urban legends like ‘a person suddenly disappearing from in front of you’ or ‘being able to hear people’s thoughts’. However, Sakuta knew that it was not a simple internet rumour. Sakuta had experienced two instances since the year had begun. The first was Mai’s and the other was his junior Koga Tomoe’s.
Perhaps something similar had happened with Shouko, though there was no way to know whether it was happening now or two years ago…
“Um, Sakutsan?” Asked the girl, turning around from where Sakuta was observing her and thinking.
“Hm?”
“I’m, uh, sorry.”
“What for?”
“For this little one,” she answered, gently stroking the kitten’s back as it ate. “I said I wanted to adopt him, but I haven’t been able to bring it up with my parents.
Nasuno came up next to the kitten.
“I’ll definitely speak to them about it, so please wait for a little longer,” she said.
That was the reason the kitten was in Sakuta’s home.
“Are your parents strict?”
“They’re very kind to me.”
“Are they bad with animals?” Sakuta suggested.
“I think they like them, they’re always just as happy as me when we go to the zoo.”
“Are they allergic to cats?”
“No,” she shook her head.
“Do you actually live in a restaurant?” He asked, maybe it was a consideration towards hygiene or customers with allergies themselves.
“Dad has an office job and mum is a normal housewife, we’re just a normal household.”
“I see,” was all he said, wanting to refrain from making it seem like an interrogation.
However, then Shouko spoke, “If I said ‘I want a cat’, then I’m sure they wouldn’t object.” Her face clouded slightly there. She was being oddly indirect, so though he was, of course, curious, Sakuta didn’t question her, if she could put it straightforwardly from the start, Shouko wouldn’t have picked this way to say it. “But, that’s why I can’t say it…”
He still didn’t really get what she meant, but answered with, “I see.”
“I’m sorry, you probably don’t get what I mean.”
“Yeah, not at all.”
Sakuta answered with what he’d been thinking and Shouko seemed to find something about it amusing as she started to giggle.
“Well, he can stay for a while. Nasuno’s happy with it too,” said Sakuta as Nasuno licked the kitten’s face, “and you can practice how to take care of a cat here too.”
“Right!”
“Oh yeah, have you chosen a name?”
“I have,” nodded Shouko with a sudden smile.
However, she didn’t continue and they both fell silent.
“Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“Eh? Ah, right… please don’t laugh?”
“Is the name that funny?”
“I-it’s not, I think it’s normal, but… It’s Hayate.”
The cat looked up at Shouko, looking at her in puzzlement, almost like it somehow knew they were talking about it.
“He’s like a white whoosh, so I thought of Hayate.”
“That works, he can be Nasuno’s Tohoku buddy.”
Apparently, the connection with the Shinkansen hadn’t come through, it wasn’t worth explaining, so Sakuta just waved it off.
Shouko then played with the cats for a while before looking up as something occurred to her.
“Um,” she began with a whisper and upturned eyes. Her gaze darted to the side, behind Sakuta… where Kaede was watching from the slight opening of the door. “Does Kaede-san hate me?”
“That’s just her normal reaction to people, don’t worry about it.”
“It does worry me though,” she replied with a reasonable point of view. And now she mentioned it, it was more relevant to Sakuta too.
“Kaede,” he called out, “have you finished what you were studying today?”
“There was some stuff I didn’t get, so I want you to explain it to me,” she answered.
“Come here then.”
Clutching her books to her chest, Kaede timidly came out into the room and immediately clung to Sakuta’s back.
“And how am I supposed to teach you anything like this?”
“Here,” she said, putting her book in front of his face. The pages were on factorisation, with the calculations written out in full and all the questions solved.
“I don’t get what you don’t get.”
“I don’t get when factorising will be useful in my life.”
“It’s useful when you take an exam for the high school you want to enter,” Sakuta answered with the one time he had found a use for factorisation.
“Got it,” said Kaede in understanding, writing ‘useful in exams!’ on the book. He wondered if she really did get it and if she would be fine with that answer or if she would ask for something more concrete, but Sakuta would have no answer for her. Sakuta himself wanted to know what use differential and integral calculus would have, and trigonometry for that matter. Who on earth thought that up? Sine, cosine, tangent…, While lost in his thoughts, he felt Shouko’s gaze on him.
“What’s up?” He asked.
“Can I do my homework here too?”
“Your summer homework?”
“Yes.”
“Sure, use this table,” he answered, gesturing at the table in front of the TV.
“Thank you,” she said politely before sitting and taking a print-out of her homework from her tote bag. Apparently, she was doing maths too, the sheet having a list of simple linear equations to solve, twenty in total. A little concentration should see the whole exercise done within fifteen minutes.
In spite of this, Shouko sat stiffly in front of the sheet, her mechanical pencil held in her hand. The first question was ‘3𝑥=9’, just dividing both sides by ‘3’ would give ‘𝑥=3’, but Shouko’s hands didn’t move an inch.
A minute passed like this.
Just when he thought she was about to start, Shouko stretched out a hand to her bag and took out her maths textbook. She then opened it to, of course, linear equations and began to read, her expression twisting in confusion.
“Want me to show you?” Sakuta offered, making Shouko raise her head in some surprise, “you look like you’re struggling.”
“I-I’m okay. I think I can do it.”
She resumed her staring contest with her textbook.
After about five minutes, she started working on the first question, dividing both sides by ‘3’ and getting ‘𝑥=3’.
She then looked up at Sakuta for confirmation and he answered her with, “Correct, well done.”
After that, she solved the questions smoothly, apparently now understanding what linear equations were and barely hesitating. But that itself was what Sakuta thought was strange. It didn’t seem like she had just remembered what she had learnt in class, but more like she had understood a question she had seen for the first time. She finished the questions without trouble in much the same way.
“Hey,” said Sakuta, causing Shouko to immediately look to him now that she had put the paper away. She still kept to the lessons of ‘look at people when they talk to you’ that were taught in elementary school. “Can I ask something strange?”
“Umm…” Shouko seemed slightly guarded and her cheeks were tinged red for some reason, “is it something perverted?”
“No, it’s not,” he told her.
“I-I see…”
He was curious about why she would think that, but getting distracted would make him lose the chance to ask, so he cut straight to the point.
“Makinoharsan, do you have an older sister?”
“I don’t.”
“Any relatives that look really similar to you?”
“I don’t think so…” The way she trailed off let Sakuta understand that she wanted to know why he was asking.
“I met someone really similar looking to you before. Well, she was older than you… so I wondered if you had an older sister or something.”
“I’m an only child,” she told him.
“I see.”
“How much older was she?”
“Hm?”
“The person that looked a lot like me.”
“She was in her second year of high school two years ago, so if she went to university, she’d be a first-year… so probably nineteen this year.”
“Nineteen…” Shouko muttered to herself. Sakuta hadn’t thought the number would have any meaning to her, but she seemed to be saying it like it did. He was probably imagining it, he figured.
“What’s up?” He asked.
“Ah, nothing… I just can’t imagine myself in university, so I was just wondering what I’d be like.”
She’d only just become a middle-schooler, so that was probably normal.
“Don’t worry about it, I’m in my second year of high school, and I can’t either.”
“I think you should start thinking about that soon, Sakutsan,” Shouko corrected him shyly.
“Guess you’re right.”
They continued the meaningless conversation for a while before Shouko stood up just before midday, the same time she always left.
He saw her down to the ground floor and just before she left, promised, “We’re bathing Nasuno tomorrow, so you can practice with that.”
Hayate was still small so wouldn’t deal well with the water and regulating his body temperature, which meant that they would postpone bathing him.
“Look after Hayate then,” she said with a bow before starting to walk off with a small wave.
As he watched her walk off into the distance, Sakuta muttered, “So nothing new on what happened two years ago today either, huh?”
He paused for a moment and then boarded the lift again, saying “I guess I’ll talk to Futaba about it.”
2
After parting with Shouko, Sakuta left a little ahead of normal for his shift, heading to the electronics wholesaler building instead of going straight to the restaurant he worked at. He walked through the rows of the latest smartphones and rode the escalator straight up, without a glance at either the audio floor or the household appliances floor.
The general mood of the area changed as he reached the seventh floor, because this and the next floor were full of general bookshops.
The large floor had bookcases lined up on it, filled to bursting with books. The seventh-floor dealt in speciality books so had a large age range and a calm atmosphere, almost like a library. Sakuta walked between the shelves, checking them as he did.
He wasn’t looking for any book in particular, it was because when he had contacted Futaba Rio earlier to consult her, she had told him she was just in one of these stores and to come himself.
He couldn’t spot her anywhere. He had been sure that she’d be in the physics book corner, but the only person there was a girl with her hair up and a Minegahara High School uniform. With no other option, he took a lap around the floor. She really wasn’t there.
“It’s times like this a phone would be helpful,” he said to himself. He could email, phone, or even just message her and check her location in real time.
As he was passing by the physics section on his second loop, someone spoke to him from behind, “Azusagawa.”
He stopped and turned around.
“Are you trying to harass me? Just walking past like that,” said the girl Sakuta had spotted earlier, and on closer inspection, he could see that this was Rio.
“Futaba?”
“I guess the summer heat is getting to your head,” sighed Rio. She was wearing the familiar uniform, and of course, not being in school she wasn’t wearing the lab coat. But there was a separate reason that Sakuta had walked past her, even after having seen her twice.
Her hairstyle was different than usual. It normally fell casually about her shoulders, but was now tied up behind her, exposing the pale white skin of her nape that was completely untanned. Rio was always rather reserved, so that on its own was rather tempting.
“It’s too hot to wear it down,” Rio told him before he could ask, noticing his gaze. Even her reason was very much like her. However, Sakuta didn’t just have one question, the next thing he wondered about was her eyes. “I’m not wearing glasses because I’ve got contacts in today,” she answered before he could ask again.
With her hair up and no glasses, she was rather different from his usual impression of her. However, her disinterested answering of his question was just like her.
“Why the uniform?” He managed to ask, his last question. Rio wasn’t the type to advertise herself as a high school student during the holidays.
“I’m going to school after this.”
“Kunimi’s at work with me, so he won’t be there,” he told her.
“I’m the only member of the science club, if I don’t leave something behind, it’ll be abolished,” she told him with a reproachful glare. “What’d you want then?”
“Hm, yeah. About that-”
“Is this going to be another annoyance?” She asked as she took a book from the shelf disinterestedly, flipping through it. It was a quantum mechanics book that was far from Sakuta’s comfort zone.
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“So indecisive.”
“I met Makinohara Shouko.” He got right to the point.
Rio looked up from the open book at that point, surprise in her gaze. He’d brought her up to Rio before, Shouko was his first love that he had taken the exam to get into Minegahara High School to follow. She wasn’t at the school when he arrived. There was no trace of her having graduated or even being enrolled. With those bewildering circumstances, Sakuta had ended up lovelorn, and Rio knew all of this.
Because of that, he could understand Rio’s surprise with her next words:
“So she actually existed.”
Sakuta himself had thought they would never meet again, and hadn’t dreamt of meeting her in nearly a year.
“What’s more surprising is that she’s now a middle school first-year.”
“Huh?” Said Rio in shock, nearly dropping her book.
“When I met her two years ago, she was in her second year of high school, but when I met her again on the last day of term, she was in her first of middle school.”
“Azusagawa, are you sane?”
“Unfortunately.”
“It doesn’t add up then.”
If she was in her second year of high school two years ago then assuming that she went straight to university, it would be odd for her not to be in her first year there, but being in her first year of middle school was a regression.
“And you?” She asked.
“She doesn’t remember me… or rather doesn’t seem to know that we’d met.”
She had actually given a full ‘first-time’ greeting immediately after they met.
Rio fell into thought with a frown.
“Azusagawa,” she said eventually, only looking at him at the corner of her eye.
“Hm?”
“Do you think she might not just be someone with the same name that looks the same?”
“That seemed like the most likely thing, yeah,” answered Sakuta, having thought so himself. He had thought so, but also thought it seemed too coincidental.
“Apparently, there are three people in the world that have the same appearance.”
“That’s just an urban legend, isn’t it.”
“Yes, just an urban legend,” Rio answered, looking away. She acted completely unconcerned, like it didn’t really concern her, but something about it stuck in Sakuta’s mind because he couldn’t see any reason it would move her. Normally she would have bluntly mocked him at this point.
“Futaba?”
“The other possibility is that she is Makinohara Shouko’s little sister and introducing herself with her sister’s name for some reason?” Rio continued with no concern, so Sakuta gave up asking after it now.
“What kind of reason would that be?” The set-up for that was far too complex.
“Just ask her yourself.”
“If I ask too many strange questions, she’ll think I’m a weirdo.”
“And it doesn’t matter if I do?”
“I’m just saying I’d rather not.”
“It’s surprising to see you want to look good to anyone but Sakurajimsenpai.”
“Just making sure you know, but I’m not lusting after a middle-schooler.”
“That doesn’t matter. The other possibility I can give is that the Makinohara Shouko you met two years ago was through you seeing into the future from then… or something like that.”
“It wasn’t me that caused that,” Sakuta insisted. The future simulation was caused by Koga Tomoe’s Adolescence Syndrome. She was a student that went to the same school as him and was in the year below, his cute, peach-backsided kouhai.
“I don’t think it’s possible to categorically state that you weren’t the cause when you experienced it together.”
“In that case, my age doesn’t match up.”
“True, but… there’s been no harm now, has there?”
“Well, no.”
It was fundamentally different than with Mai and Tomoe. He didn’t know if this was Adolescence Syndrome, but nothing bad had happened yet. Rio closed the book and put it back, taking another from the shelf. Two girls in yukata walked past them. They were talking about some kind of reports so were probably university students here to find some reference book. Sakuta followed them with his eyes as they passed.
“Azusagawa, you’re staring,” Rio pointed out sharply.
“You wear that kind of thing to be looked at.”
“Probably not to be looked at by you though.”
“Is there some fireworks display on today?”
“Chigasaki has one.”
“Didn’t expect you to know.”
“It’s written over there,” Rio said, flicking her eyes to the wall at their side, where a poster advertising a fireworks display at Chigasaki overlooking Sagami Bay, two stations down from Fujisawa Station on the Tokaido line. It was listed for the second of August, which was indeed today.
“Oh yeah, we went to one last year.”
It the Fireworks Display in Enoshima, held on the night of the twentieth of August to get away from the summer heat.
“We did,” Rio agreed, sending an unimpressed look after the departing girls.
“You just wore normal clothes then, Futaba.”
“You did too.”
“Me and Kunimi were looking forward to it,” Sakuta said. It was around that time that he found out that Rio had feelings for Yuuma. Actually, it was that day that he became sure of it as he saw Rio staring at Yuuma’s face as he watched the fireworks. “You should have dressed up for it.”
“Why would I have gone to all that effort to show off to you?”
“It would be to show Kunimi.”
Rio looked unhappily at him.
“Regardless,” she said, “it wouldn’t suit me.”
“Wouldn’t it?”
“It wouldn’t.”
“Ah, ‘cause yukata don’t suit big chests?”
With Rio, even her uniform made her size clear.
“That’s not what I mean,” Rio said, guarding her chest with the book in her hand, not wanting it to be seen too much.
“Then what did you mean?”
“I don’t need to answer you.”
“Why?”
“You already think you know, you’re just trying to get me to say it.”
“If you think you’re too plain to pull it off, you’re dead wrong.”
Her look asked him what he actually meant.
“I think wearing a yukata with your hair like that I think it’d be pretty nice.”
Her hair up like that seemed like it would go well with a yukata.
“Besides, you’ve tried wearing one before, right?” Sakuta asked.
Rio’s expression shifted into caution.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“The way you put it, you’ve probably got one.”
“What basis have you got for thinking that?” She asked, her question being much the same as an agreement.
“If you didn’t, then you’d have said so rather than saying whether it suited you or not with how you normally talk about things.”
Rio was always grounded in logic and reality.
“…You really are irritatingly observant with that kind of thing.”
“Don’t say it like you actually dislike it.”
“I have to, I really do dislike it.”
“How awful.”
Rio ignored Sakuta’s strained smile and pulled a book titled The Future of Quantum Teleportation.
“Forget it, I’m going,” she said, heading off to the tills.
“Thanks for the talk,” Sakuta called to her back.
3
As Sakuta parted with Rio, his shift was approaching so he headed for the family restaurant he worked at.
“Good morning,” he greeted the manager, who was standing at the till, before looking over the area. At this time of evening, there were few customers, mostly just groups of mothers taking tea, students studying for exams, and suited men working on laptops, all coming together to be a rather peaceful atmosphere.
Sakuta didn’t break stride as he stepped into the break area, he had to clock in and get changed after all.
Kunimi Yuuma, one of Sakuta’s few friends was sitting in a chair in the break room, having already arrived and had finished changing.
Yo,” he called, raising a hand as Sakuta entered.
“You get even more tanned?” Sakuta asked. They’d last met three days ago on a shared shift, Yuuma had already been tanned then, but his skin had grown darker.
“I am? Well, I went to the beach a couple of days ago.”
“With your girlfriend?”
“Yeah?”
“Ugh, so annoying.”
“What’s with that, you’ve got a ridiculously hot girlfriend too, right?”
“And she’s so busy that I haven’t seen her all week.”
“I saw her on TV yesterday.”
“Don’t worry, I see her on TV every day too.”
He didn’t know how many contracts she’d already managed to get, but she was often in adverts for soft drinks and new sweets. She was also on signboards for cosmetics and shampoos that made the best use of her beauty.
“Well, my condolences then,” Yuuma smiled mockingly at Sakuta as he came from around the lockers.
Just as Sakuta was about to start complaining:
“Good morning,” came a familiar voice from the hall outside. The footsteps, however, were rather unfamiliar as they approached, with refined clacking noises on each step.
After a second, Koga Tomoe entered the break room. The squalid area for the two boys suddenly grew much more luxurious. Tomoe was wearing a bright yukata, zori attached to her feet with cute straps, and a goldfish-patterned pouch hanging from her hand.
“Ack, Senpai!” Tomoe exclaimed in displeasure as she saw Sakuta.
“Did you come to show off your cute yukata?” Sakuta asked, she wasn’t on the shift list for this week, so shouldn’t be here for work.
“I just hadn’t put in my plans for next week so I came to do it,” she said, taking the blank schedule from the plastic bookcase on the table before opening it. She carefully seated herself on a stool, taking care not to ruin her yukata before filling in her plans for the next two weeks. They submitted their plans like this in the schedule and they were then combined into shifts. It could all be done on phones or the like, so Sakuta was extremely grateful for an analogue method like that.
“Kogsan, you look cute in your yukata,” said Yuuma naturally in place of Sakuta, who had said nothing.
“Eh? T-thank you,” Tomoe reddened and panicked slightly, glancing at Sakuta.
“Yukata suit you,” he offered.
“That’s harassment, Senpai,” pouted Tomoe even though he’d actually praised her.
“What’s that supposed to mean…?”
She’d accepted Yuuma’s praise so easily, but not his?
“You were staring at my chest.”
She covered her chest with the hand holding her pouch.
“How rude, I also took the balance of your hips and backside into account.”
“You don’t need to! Anyway, I don’t have a great chest I can rest on the obi, I’m just stumpy!”
She was just sulking about something.
Yuuma couldn’t help but chuckle as he watched them.
“When did you two get so close?” He asked.
“W-we’re not close!” Tomoe answered sullenly.
“Something happen?” Yuuma asked Sakuta with a sidelong glance.
“I made her an adult.”
“S-Senpai! Wha’cha sayin’!?”
“I see, you’re already an adult, Kogsan,” Yuuma added with a laugh.
“Even you, Kunimi-senpai…” she looked at him in betrayal. “I’ve got plans so I’m going. Excuse me, Kunimi-senpai.”
Tomoe gave a proper bow as she huffed and went to leave.
“Koga,” Sakuta called out to her back.
“Hm? What?” She asked, stopping to listen.
“Girls in yukata should keep an eye out when they’re around.”
“Senpai, that’s creepy, stopping me to say that,” said Tomoe, scrunching up her face in displeasure.
“That was just a joke.”
“What is it then?”
“I can’t see any panty lines so I wondered if you were going commando.”
“I’m just wearing ones that won’t show!”
“So a thong? Just like you.”
“I-I wouldn’t wear those! Hey, don’t imagine them!?”
Tomoe put both hands behind her back and covered herself.
“I’ve long since imagined it, so give up,” Sakuta said.
“Just so you know, they’re more complete ones, they’re like boxers.”
“Uwah, my dreams are dead, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Geez, don’t just go getting depressed after asking something embarrassing! I’m ‘censed! I’m going!”
“Ah, wait,” Sakuta called.
“You’re annoying, seriously,” Tomoe said, looking up at him with clear wariness.
“Careful if you get hit on.”
“Eh? Ah, yeah… thanks.”
“You’re cute after all.”
“Don’t call me cute,” she pouted at him.
“Okay, you’re super cute so be careful.”
“We’ll all be together so we’ll be fine. I’m gonna be late!”
This time Tomoe actually did leave, and it was just the two boys again.
“Hey, Sakuta?” Asked Yuuma.
“Hm?”
“What’s ‘‘censed’ supposed to mean?”
“Who knows?”
Sakuta followed Yuuma as they clocked in.
“Kogsan sometimes uses phrases I’ve not heard before.”
“They’re probably just ‘in’ with schoolgirls nowadays.”
Tomoe was keeping the fact that she came from Fukuoka a secret, so Sakuta gave her the help he could.
There was less footfall than usual that day, and the restaurant was quiet. It was probably because a lot of the people that lived nearby were at the fireworks display in Chigasaki.
At just past eight, a yukatclad family entered. Judging by their looks, they were on the way home from the display. The four or five-year-old boy was probably worn out from playing around in his hero-show patterned yukata and had his eyes half closed. There were other customers wearing yukata dotted about the restaurant too.
After taking their order, Sakuta went into the storeroom to get some straws to refill the drinks bar. He took a box down from the shelf and left the room to find himself face to face with Yuuma’s smile.
“Oh, there you are, Sakuta. Go to table five next.” Yuuma told him.
“Huh?”
“You’ll get it when you’re there.”
Yuuma’s smirk made him think that it wouldn’t be an enjoyable experience. He’d specified the table, so it was probably someone there for him, but no one that would visit to see him really came to mind. There was the newswoman, Nanjou Fumika, but that was about it, and she hadn’t shown herself for two or three months.
There was also Mai, but she had told him that she was coming back from filming in Kyoto tomorrow.
“I wonder who it is,” he asked himself as he headed over.
Table five was a booth table further in to the area. As he approached he could see a silhouette from behind. They had a small carry-on case next to them, with an old-fashioned design that would have shown up in movies at the time.
When Sakuta stood next to the table, the person looked up from the menu, and when she spotted that it was Sakuta, her imperious gaze softened slightly into a smile.
“Why are you here, Mai-san?”
Indeed, sitting at table five was Sakuta’s girlfriend, Sakurajima Mai. She was wearing more adult clothes than usual and had a light dusting of makeup. It might have been to hold her back, but the presence of a skilled actress flowed from her.
Of course, the customers in nearby seats were all muttering simple impressions like ‘is she the real thing?’, ‘her face’s small’, or ‘huh, she goes to family restaurants’.
“I thought you were coming back tomorrow?” Sakuta asked.
“There were a lot of veterans there, and I didn’t have any slip-ups either, so we finished early.”
“I see, so you came back a day early so you could see me sooner?”
“I did,” said Mai, turning aside Sakuta’s minor provocation with an impish smile. “The hotel was already booked so I could have stayed another night and had a nice trip home, but I got my manager to buy a ticket for the bullet train. Are you happy?”
“So happy,” said Sakuta monotonously.
“What’s with you?” Mai frowned at him, perhaps displeased at his reaction. Sakuta pretended not to notice and opened his order terminal.
“If you’re ready to order?”
She stared at him silently.
“I’ll take your order,” Sakuta pressed with a customer service smile.
“What are you sulking for?”
“I’m not sulking.”
“You clearly are.”
“And whose fault do you think that is?”
“That’s, um…”
“Um?”
“…I’m sorry,” Mai apologised meekly after a moment, “I’m well aware I’ve been an awful girlfriend that’s been neglecting her boyfriend for work just after they started dating.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say awful, but…”
“But?”
“But I am looking forward to your apology.”
“Fine, I’ll do something for you,” Mai allowed.
“Even something perverted?”
“Just a little.”
“I’ll forgive you then.”
“Don’t get carried away,” she said, grinding her foot into his under the table as she kept a straight face, listing out her order.
Sakuta put it all into the terminal before murmuring so only Mai could hear, “I’m really happy you came back early for me.”
“Moron, you should have said that first,” she said, her tone angry, but with a happy smile, “what time are you working to?”
“I’ve got half an hour left. Man, I want to see you home.”
It was half-past-eight now, and he finished at nine.
“I’ll wait after I finish eating, then.”
“I’ll call you when I’m done then.”
“No slacking off then, get back to work.”
“You were the one that called me.”
After voicing his complaint, Sakuta returned to the storeroom to finish his job from earlier.
Sakuta worked assiduously for the next thirty minutes and so could clock out bang on time.
“I’m going on ahead,” he called out as he finished changing and exited into the main area just as Mai was settling her bill. If he was a little later, Mai might have left on her own. They left the shop together.
“Mai-san, here,” said Sakuta, offering a hand for Mai’s carry-on as they left.
“Thanks.”
As he started pulling it along, they walked side by side.
“Is she coming every day?” Mai soon asked unconcernedly, like she was discussing the weather.
“Hm?”
“Makinohara Shouko-san.”
“She is.”
“Don’t ask when you already know what I mean,” she said, lightly pinching his cheek.
“Does it bother you?”
“Of course it does, the girl you met as a high school girl is now a middle school girl,” the aghast expression on her face all but saying ‘I’m hardly going to be jealous of a middle school girl’.
“I wish you were eaten up with it though,” Sakuta said.
“With what?”
“With jealousy, of course.”
“You’re not lusting after a middle-schooler when you have me as your girlfriend, are you?”
“I might just fall to the path of the lolicon under the pressure of a life with no dates if I don’t get a wonderful reward from you.”
“I’m letting you carry my luggage aren’t I?” She looked back at the case, “It’s got my underwear in.”
“Can I open it?”
“So you know, they’ve been washed.”
“Didn’t I tell you that I prefer them washed?”
“You didn’t?” Unfortunately, Mai’s expression was surprised.
“It isn’t the underwear themselves I want to see, it’s your embarrassment while I can see them.”
“I wouldn’t get embarrassed by something like you being able to see my underwear.”
“I can look then?”
“Enough of that, back to the point,” she told him.
“I wanted to flirt more with you though, it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other.”
“You can do that as much as you like later,” Mai said with a sigh.
“Ehh, but I wanted to now,” Sakuta whined.
“Fine fine, I’ll hold your hand.”
“We’re not a middle school couple, that wouldn’t satisfy me, would it?”
“Ah, okay then,” Mai said, withdrawing her hand. Sakuta reached after that hand and took it rather than answer. Mai immediately intertwined her fingers with his, squeezing gently.
“This is fine, right?” She asked.
Sakuta didn’t answer.
“What are you going so quiet for?”
“I just thought you were super cute,” Sakuta answered.
“I know that,” she said shortly, but she seemed somewhat embarrassed as she looked away, “So?”
She directed the conversation back to the original topic, still facing forwards. Of course, this was asking about how things were going with Shouko.
“She comes every day to look after the cat.”
“Anything strange happen?”
“Not really.”
“Did you figure anything out?”
“I talked to Futaba earlier, but nothing. She just shot me down saying that she’s probably just someone with the same name.”
“Of course. I think the same… Besides, is she that similar to the girl you met?”
“She’s younger than I remember, so I couldn’t say for sure, but well, if she keeps growing I guess so. Her personality seems rather different though.”
Maybe it was because she wasn’t used to him, but Shouko now felt much more reserved than then. The high school girl from two years ago hadn’t felt that way at all and was quick to close the distance between them.
“Hmm,” noised Mai ambivalently. She hadn’t known the girl from back then, so just listening to Sakuta talk about her didn’t entirely help.
“I shouldn’t worry about it unless it’s causing harm like it was with you, that’s what Futaba said at least.”
“Okay, if you’re fine with that,” she said, not really agreeing at all.
Mai’s mouth then opened for a second as she stopped.
“Mai-san?”
“Isn’t that Futabsan?” She asked, pointing at a nearby convenience store.
The high school girl walking out with a carrier bag was indeed Rio. She was wearing her school uniform when they met earlier, but was now wearing a baggy t-shirt and a pair of trousers. Her hair was no longer tied up either and fell in its usual artless way about her shoulders, she was even wearing her glasses again.
“What’s she doing…?”
Looking closely, he could see that the bag she was carrying was flat-bottomed, so had a box of food inside. When he noticed that, a sense of unease suddenly welled up within him. Rio normally wasn’t the type to participate in the city’s nightlife, so her walking around the business district after nine at night was odd. Besides, it would take a while for her to get food from the convenience store by Fujisawa Station as she had rather than one stop up on the Odakyu-Enoshima line where she lived in Honkugenuma which also caught his attention.
More than anything, the amount of attention she was paying to her surroundings, seeming to try and avoid people, which actually made her all the more noticeable.
“Mai-san, mind if we make a stop?” He asked.
“Going to interfere?”
Her tone was condemning, but she was the one that followed after Rio first.
Sakuta and Mai followed Rio back towards the station to a seven or eight storey building, seeing her enter it. Looking up at the building, they could see that there was a bank, a bar, and a net cafe in there. Amongst them, the bank was closed and the staff at the bar would turn her away, so they knew her destination.
However, even the net cafe had a curfew for high school students of ten PM. Her time would be limited, but the meal made it seem like she might be planning to stay the night.
“Mai-san, would you wait here?” Sakuta asked. Taking a celebrity like her in would cause far too much of a tumult.
“I’ve never been in one,” she said, apparently set on going in with him, and brooking no argument.
With no choice, he and Mai boarded the lift.
They rode the lift up to the seventh floor and, after waiting for the automatic doors to open, entered the net cafe. The harsh pressure of the lighting transitioned into a chic and calm set of interior decorations.
“Welcome,” said the receptionist in her twenties, her tone fit the atmosphere of the cafe as well. Even as she looked curiously at Mai as she peered about curiously behind Sakuta, she continued, “how much time would you like?”
There was a list of costs on the counter, with the costs for ‘three hours’, ‘five hours’ and ‘until morning’ listed one after another.
Sakuta pointed at the top row saying, “This please.” The first thirty minutes was two hundred yen, and then the costs increased with the amount of time used. They were only there to look for Futaba, so thirty minutes should be plenty.
He finished paying, buying Mai’s time as well and accepting the two vouchers.
Mai herself was in the drinks corner, looking at the ice cream machine.
“We can have one once we find Futaba.” Sakuta told her.
“How much are they?”
“They’re free once you pay the basic usage fee.”
Well, strictly speaking, the cost was included. There were carbonated drinks, oolong tea, orange juice, and a coffee maker and espresso machine. There was a similar lineup to a family restaurant, and it had an ice cream machine so was better if anything.
Sakuta went as if he was going to move to the seats and wandered into the inner area. The centre of the space was filled by bookcases with manga lined up on the shelves. As if surrounded by them, there were rooms with numbers written on each.
Let alone Rio, there were no other customers there either, apparently, everyone was in their individual rooms. The only noise was the periodic clack of keyboards. There was no way to know where Rio was like this.
He thought about asking the receptionist, but of course she wouldn’t tell them anything about another customer.
“If you remember her number, you can phone her,” Mai suggested, holding out her bunny-cased phone to him. Even as he took the phone, Sakuta’s gaze was focused on Mai’s other hand.
She was holding a shallow cup with a coil of soft-serve ice cream. He’d said ‘once we find Futaba’, but she hadn’t listened at all. That was just like her.
She used a small plastic spoon to scoop up some of the ice cream and held it in front of Sakuta’s mouth.
“Here, open wide,” she said.
Just as she said, he opened his mouth, thinking it would be a trap, but she really did feed it to him.
“Is it tasty?” She asked.
“It is,” he replied, prompting a satisfied smile from Mai as she filled the spoon again, moving it to feed Sakuta once more.
“Didn’t you make it because you wanted to eat it?”
“I just ate earlier, so I’m full.”
“So that’s how it is?”
“What? If you don’t like this you can eat it yourself?”
Apparently, Sakuta finishing it was a foregone conclusion, in which case, he’d rather she fed him.
Wordlessly, he opened his mouth and Mai forced all of the ice cream left onto the spoon and then into his mouth.
He felt a sharp spike of pain through his head like when he ate shaved ice. When Mai saw that, she muttered, “There’s no helping you,” and returned to the drinks corner and brewed him an espresso.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
He blew on it and once he had downed the whole drink, he binned the paper cup and returned the coffee cup to the slot. Once done with this, he punched in Rio’s phone number to Mai’s phone.
The call connected in the middle of the second ring.
“Yes?” Answered Rio’s voice warily. Probably because of a phone call from an unfamiliar number.
“It’s me.”
“Why are you calling from a mobile?”
“I borrowed Mai-san’s.”
“If you’re going to show off, find someone else,” was her reply, mixed with a sigh. It was her usual reaction, but was too natural and didn’t seem to be close. “What did you want then another annoyance?”
“Am I just synonymous with annoyance to you?”
“That’s right, your existence is an annoyance.”
“Hey-” Sakuta began to retort as a door opened behind him.
“…Sakuta, look,” said Mai, poking his shoulder.
Sakuta turned unconcernedly and met the gaze of the customer just leaving their room. In that moment, an uneasiness filled his body.
It was Rio. The person Sakuta was looking for. She wasn’t holding a phone, and nor did she have an ear-piece in. His ear was filled with the sound of someone talking.
“Azusagawa, what’s wrong?” He heard from the phone.
The Rio in front of him, however, had only looked at him in slight surprise and not moved her lips in the slightest.
“Ah, sorry, Futaba, the phone’s flat, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Ah, okay. I don’t mind if you don’t exactly rush.”
“See you.”
He touched the screen as he moved the phone from his ear, ending the call before raising his eyes from the phone and meeting Rio’s gaze again.
She immediately went back into the room.
“Ah, wait!” Sakuta called. Heedless though, Rio firmly shut the door. He moved to the door she had shut herself behind and knocked lightly.
“Futaba?”
No reply came.
“You can’t pretend you’re not there in this kind of situation.” He told her, prompting the lock to rattle and the door to slowly open.
Rio exited. She was without a doubt Sakuta’s friend Futaba Rio. She was wearing baggy trousers with large side pockets and a similarly loose T-shirt with a striped tank top beneath.
“Was it me you were on the phone to?” She started off with what would sound like an utterly bizarre question but was perfectly valid in this situation and something Sakuta himself wanted to ask.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Then there’s no use trying to hide it.”
Rio’s tense expression twisted in defeat.
Rio had said, “Let’s talk outside,” so Sakuta returned his and Mai’s vouchers to the receptionist and left the building. Rio stopped in between the JR station building and the passageway to the Fujisawa Enoden Station. Then began to talk detachedly.
“There are two of me,” she started with.
Rio watched the people walking through the passageway as she rested both of her hands on the handrail.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what I said, there have been two Futaba Rios since three days ago.”
He understood what was being said was absurd. He understood, but couldn’t bring his mind to deny it. On the phone earlier he had been, without a doubt, been talking to Rio. The same Rio he knew so well. And then there was another Rio in front of him, a Futaba Rio.
“Is it Adolescence Syndrome?” Asked Mai.
Rio turned back and spoke: “Though I’d rather not admit it.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“If I did, I’d have already dealt with it.”
“Well yeah, you would have.”
A question suddenly came to mind as he listened. Her hair around her shoulders and her glasses marked her as having a different outfit than the Rio he had met at lunch.
“So I met the other one at lunchtime?” He asked.
“I haven’t met you today, so yes.”
“I see…”
“That fake is such a nuisance. She’s just going about my life at home, so I can’t even go home myself, my parents finding out would be bad in several ways.”
“Yeah,” Sakuta answered.
Her parents probably wouldn’t be able to understand suddenly having two daughters.
“On top of that, the fake is going to school and throwing herself into club activities.”
“Futaba was wearing her uniform when I met her and said she was doing club work after that.”
“That just makes going out even more dangerous. If anyone that knows me sees me, it’ll be awfully inconvenient. I’ve just got to hide for a while.”
“So that’s why you were in the net cafe. That’s a bit of ”
“I don’t have the money to stay in a hotel,” Rio added, not sure how long he’d carry on.
“Are you a moron?” Asked Sakuta.
“It’s humiliating to be called a moron by you,” said Rio.
“Just call me straight away.”
Rio’s sarcastic smile faded as she seemed to notice that Sakuta was actually angry, and she couldn’t answer.
“Think about it, you’re a high schooler, right? And you were thinking of staying in a net cafe for days at a time? Are you sane?”
The rooms might have locks, but that was no guarantee of safety. It might be fine for a male, but something might happen to a girl. There were men that would aim for a girl that had all but ran away from home. It might be because of a serious reason, but Rio’s choices were too reckless.
Besides, the staff would have eventually noticed she was a high school student and she wouldn’t be able to continue like that forever. They might contact the police, who would then do the same to her parents, outing her in one fell swoop.
Rio seemed to be regretting what she’d done and was just looking wordlessly at the ground.
“Say, Futab-ah!” As Sakuta was about to continue, Mai poked Sakuta’s head from the side.
“Mai-san,” he turned to her, “I know you’re bored without the attention, but this is import-ow ow ow!”
This time, she yanked on his ear.
“She can’t just call you that easily,” Mai told him, her eyes telling him that he didn’t get anything, “You don’t understand any of this,” she finished, saying it verbally too.
“Umm, what do you mean?”
“Let’s say that she did and explained everything to you, what would you do?”
“Well, let her stay at mine.”
“You’re a man too though.”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“You probably know her quite well, would she call up a boy and ask to stay at their home?”
“Honestly, I doubt it,” he answered honestly, gaining a large sigh from Mai.
“That’s what men are like.”
“Sorry,” he apologised.
“That’s what you’re like.”
But, you know, Futaba’s a friend, I wouldn’t do anything weird.”
“Hehhh, so you wouldn’t have any perverted feelings if a girl that had just gotten out of the bath was in your room.”
“I would.”
“Don’t just jump in with an awful answer like that,” she jabbed him in the forehead.
“Well, of course imagining her in just a bath towel would give me sexual feelings.”
“I didn’t tell you to imagine her,” said Mai with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
Rio herself was looking at him with displeasure in her gaze.
“Of course, you were the model I imagined, Mai-san.”
“That’s fine then.” She answered.
“Fine.”
Ignoring Sakuta, Mai turned back to Rio.
“You’ve been found out, will you rely on Sakuta?” She asked her. Her tone was not quite pushy, not quite gentle as her adult nature suddenly came to the fore. She was only a year ahead of them in school, but at times like this, Mai’s seniority and composure really showed. “If you keep being stubborn now, Sakuta will just think you’re being childish.”
He didn’t know if she didn’t want that, but Rio let out a small sigh and looked at him.
“Azusagawa.”
“Sure you can.”
“I didn’t even say anything yet,” said Rio, breaking into a smile now her nerves had settled.
“So then, Mai-san.”
“What?”
“Futaba’s staying at mine for a while, is that okay with you?” He asked, just to make sure.
However, Mai’s answer was, “No.”
“Huh?”
He really didn’t get what she meant, she herself seemed to have been pointing Rio towards staying with Sakuta, gently cutting off any means of escape for her.
“Why are you surprised?” Mai asked.
“‘Why’ is what I’d like to ask you,” he said, truly not understanding it.
“Are you really asking that?” She asked, her gaze seeming to call him an idiot. No, there was no ‘seeming’ to it, her gaze was calling him an idiot. “I’ll ask you then… if I said a male friend was staying with me, would you be okay with it?”
“I don’t even want to imagine it, seriously.”
“Right?”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
But what would they do about Rio now? He folded his arms in thought, almost mockingly, Mai smoothly said, “That’s why I’ll be staying too.”
“Huh?”
“Come on, let’s go pick up Futabsan’s things,” she said, walking back towards the net cafe without waiting for his reply.
Rio and he exchanged looks before following after her.
“That went surprisingly well,” Rio said with a glance at him.
“Don’t look at me like I’m whipped.”
“Well done, you got it,”
“This kind of thing makes relationships go well,” Sakuta defended.
“Making excuses like that, how fitting for a low-life.”
Sakuta followed after Mai while feeling Rio’s scornful gaze wash over him.
4
When Sakuta arrived home, he explained the situation to a sleepy Kaede. Skipping past Adolescence Syndrome when it would come up, he got her agreement to have Mai and Rio stay.
“You brought another new girl home…” Kaede murmured.
“My reputation’s awful, huh?”
“B-but, I’m your little sister, so I’m prepared to accept that you’re like that as well.”
Kaede was nervous at first, but her wariness towards Rio soon faded. She seemed to find a sense of security in Rio’s relatively subdued nature, and she was already used to Mai with her having come over on several occasions, so that was probably a big part of it.
With Kaede’s agreement, they now had to decide the order they would bathe. Kaede had already done so, so it was between Sakuta, Mai, and Rio.
“I’ll go last,” Sakuta suggested, purely out of the kindness of his heart, but Mai and Rio both reacted in distaste.
“I feel like I’d get pregnant,” Mai said.
“Mai-san, what logic are you working on there?”
“I’ll go home for a while to deal with my luggage, so I’ll have a bath there. I want to get a change of clothes too.”
She declared unilaterally before leaving.
“You’re first then, Azusagawa.”
“I see, so you think that I’m a pervert that would get aroused over bathwater that a girl had soaked in?”
Going out of his way to protest it wouldn’t help, so Sakuta bathed first. After ten minutes in the bath, he came out into the living room to switch with Rio, who was sitting meekly on the settee.
After a while, he realised that he had forgotten to leave a towel out for Rio and took a laundered and folded towel into the dressing area.
The steam in the air told him that Rio was already in the bath behind the door.
“Futaba,” he called out to her, garnering a large splash in return.
“W-what?” She asked in an unusually flustered voice. Apparently, she had recoiled at his call and taken refuge in the bath water. Maybe she thought he would open the door or something, not trusting him at all.
“I’m leaving a towel here.”
“Right.”
“Do you have a change of clothes?” He asked.
The things they had retrieved from the net cafe were all contained in a large tote bag.
“I do.”
“If you don’t, I can lend you a bunny suit or panda pyjamas.”
“I just told you I do.
Of course, she wouldn’t wear the bunny suit, but Kaede had many spare sets of pyjamas so he’d really like to see Rio wearing them.
“I can wash the clothes you were wearing earlier, right?”
The washing machine had Sakuta and Kaede’s washing in it, he tossed Rio’s shirt in too and switched it on. It filled with water and started going about its work.
“I’m capable of wa… Wait, that sound, it’s already going?”
“It’s filling now.”
“T-the underwear?”
“Hm? Are you the type that doesn’t like her washing in with guys’ underwear?”
Unfortunately, Sakuta’s underwear was in there too.
“I-I was talking about mine!”
“I’ll need to hand-wash them, right? I know that.”
The bra and panties that Rio had been wearing today were in the basket, and Sakuta reached out his hand to the soft-looking pale yellow fabric.
“You don’t know anything! Don’t look at them! Don’t touch them! Get out!”
“This is my house.”
“I meant of the changing room.”
“All that aside, are you okay?”
“I will be once you leave.”
Sakuta gave up on washing the underwear and sat down with his back to the washing machine with a slight grunt of effort.
“What are you settling down for out there?” She asked.
“I was asking about your Adolescence Syndrome.”
Rio probably knew that as well, her long silence before she answered was proof of it.
“…I don’t really know.” Was her eventual, unsure response, with a somewhat reserved tone.
“Is that all?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing really, I just wanted to hear your frank opinions.” The situation was making even Sakuta’s skin crawl, and he wasn’t the one affected, there was no way that Rio didn’t feel anything about this.
“I’m… a little scared,” she said, shifting in the bathwater.
“Only a little?”
“When I was alone in the net cafe, I was really scared,” she answered, her voice shaking with the memory of those emotions.
There was another of her. She was trapped in fear of a situation that no-one had experienced, of course she would be scared.
“But is all this even possible? I mean, one person becoming two?”
Sakuta remembered a rumour of something like that spreading for a while when he was in elementary school. The rumour of a doppelgänger and that you’d die if you met them, the very picture of an urban legend.
He didn’t feel like laughing at it in this situation though.
“It might be, if quantum teleportation holds true in the macroscopic world.”
“The word quantum just makes me twitch.”
“And teleportation?”
“That’s a thing in sci-fi stories, right?”
“No, it actually happens.”
“Seriously?”
Teleportation was a term that was solely confined to stories for Sakuta.
“We talked about quantum entanglement before, yes?”
“Yeah, something about distant particles sharing stuff?”
He certainly did remember talking about two particles becoming entangled and sharing information instantaneously.
“Right, so if I were to adapt that to this situation and put it simply… Say that there was an information framework that I was made up of.”
“That’s simple?” He interjected, already feeling the twitches.
“Now say that framework was instantaneously transmitted to another location.”
“So like the information of you in my bath getting transmitted to school?”
“That works. The framework at school becomes definite when it’s observed by someone, so becomes the Futaba Rio that you know,” she explained.
“Observation theory, huh.”
“I’m impressed you remember.”
“Well, I keep hearing about it.”
In the quantum world, everything was defined by observation, until then, everything was just a probability… apparently.
However, his understanding of it was just the surface level, he didn’t really feel like he truly understood it. Bringing teleportation into it now had no difference from saying ‘magic exists’ to him.
“But at that point, two of you wouldn’t be able to exist, would they?”
Quantum teleportation was different than copying something.
“That’s true… I’m impressed you realised without it being explained.”
“Well once it’s observed, it’s not a probability, so it can’t be in both places? If the framework is observed in my bath, you’re there, and not at school, yeah?”
“I really am surprised, you actually understood it,” she told him.
“I had a good teacher.”
“But yes, you’re right. I actually haven’t seen the other me.”
“Eh?”
“So when you ask if there’s two of me at the same time, I can’t state conclusively there are. I just think there’s something that looks the same as me in a different place, doing different things. My room and phone match that hypothesis, there were changes and marks that I don’t remember making.”
“So if I keep observing you, another you can’t exist?”
“If you were the observer that defined my existence, maybe. Strictly speaking… it might be that ‘as long as the one if being observed, that observer cannot observe the other’…”
“Hm? I don’t get it.”
“It’s talking about multiple viewpoints. In this situation… Sakurajimsenpai could see the fake outside.”
“Right.”
“It’s possible that if she then brought that fake here, in the world you and I can see, the fake wouldn’t be here. Conversely, in the world that Sakurajimsenpai could see, I wouldn’t be here.”
“…That seems ridiculous,” said Sakuta, and it really did.
“It is. In that situation, with the worlds that you and Sakurajimsenpai see not agreeing, it would create a paradox.”
“But when we met at the net cafe, I was talking to the other you on the phone, and you were right in front of me.”
“Were they really me?” She asked meaningfully.
“It was you.”
“Definitely?”
“Well, I couldn’t see her for sure.”
“So you can say that it wasn’t ‘definitively the same existence as me’. In other words, the me on the other end of the phone had undefined factors.”
“So you could exist at the same time?”
“This is all supposition in the end, just one possibility. It might just be pure chance that I haven’t encountered the fake. I can’t discard the possibility that other people can see both of us at once.”
“Then you really can’t go out carelessly.”
In one way or another, letting the students see that there were two of Rio would be an issue. It would need some kind of explanation, and he didn’t think they’d be able to pass themselves off as twins.
“Ah,” he realised, “but that quantum teleportation thing? Wouldn’t have the same memories and consciousness whichever of you was observed?”
If the observation simply defined the location, then once they returned, the information wouldn’t change from being ‘Futaba Rio’. If they had separate memories and consciousnesses then there would have to be two existences calling themselves ‘Futaba Rio’.
“This is just a hypothesis, but…” Rio began before trailing off, making the washing machine sound all the louder.
“Futaba?” He pushed the conversation gently on.
“If… If I myself was the existence observing ‘Futaba Rio’, but there were two consciousnesses of me performing that observation, that might explain this.”
“Is that like a split personality?” Sakuta asked.
“There’s not that much separation I think.”
“If that was the case… why?”
“I told you that I didn’t know about that.” Rio insisted.
“Did you have a big shock, or were you under some kind of stress?”
“You can ask that kind of thing oddly easily. Even I’ve heard of that kind of thing causing damage to the consciousness and memories though.”
Sakuta had experienced something like that before when Kaede was bullied two years ago, he had seen the intense stress at the time being a negative influence on physical health.
“Well, I’ve talked a bit about it before, yeah.”
“…About your mother?” Asked Rio in a voice that seemed unsure of how to ask. He had talked to Rio about his mother’s reaction to Kaede’s bullying before, and how she had been taken to the hospital.
“That’s right.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine, I was the one that brought it up.”
“Right… Now, Azusagawa.”
“Hm?”
“I want to get out, the heat’s gone to my head.”
“Got it,” Sakuta answered, still sitting in front of the washing machine.
“That means get out,” came Rio’s fed up voice. It echoed around the bathroom, doubling how unhappy she sounded. Sakuta rose without complaint.
“I’ll leave, but you can stay as long as you like.”
“…Uh, sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Thinking that it was just like her not to simply say ‘thank you’, Sakuta left the changing area and firmly closed the door.
As he did, the doorbell rang as Mai returned.
“Right, right, on my waaayyy,” he called.
When Rio was done in the bath, the next topic was who would sleep where. Sakuta and Kaede lived in a two-bedroom flat, there were only the two beds, one in each of their rooms. They did have bedding for a guest so could comfortably house three.
“I think that Mai-san and Futabsan can use Onii-chan’s room, and Onii-chan can sleep with me,” Kaede suggested.
“Denied,” said Sakuta, brushing the suggestion aside. In the end, Kaede was in her own room, Mai and Rio would use Sakuta’s room and the guest bedding, and Sakuta would crash in the living room. It was a reasonable conclusion… but then again there weren’t really any other options to begin with.
“Good night.”
Once the two doors had closed, Sakuta turned the lights off and lay down in front of the TV.
There was still a faint light from the LED bulb on the ceiling, and the hum of the fridge filled the silence. Even lying there with his eyes closed, he couldn’t immediately fall asleep.
After a while, he heard a door open, his own room’s judging by the direction of the sound. The footsteps, that Sakuta had originally thought were heading to the toilet, approached Sakuta, before finally stopping next to him.
And then, he felt someone lie down next to him. He didn’t think Rio would ever do something like that, so he opened his eyes, thinking it was probably Mai.
Just as he thought, Mai’s beautiful face was near his as he lay on the floor. Even the dim light let him clearly see the contours of her face, and see that she was somehow enjoying herself.
“Mai-san?”
“Hm?” She asked, even her voice was in high spirits.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m looking at your face,” she answered.
“Well, I can see that.”
“I’m looking at my boyfriend’s face.”
That was just unfair, his heart thudded within his chest, waking him up even more.
“Heart skipped a beat, huh?” Her eyes sparkled teasingly at him.
“You seem in a good mood, Mai-san.”
“I finally got to spend some time with my boyfriend, and I’m even staying at his place, of course I am,” her act had some poorly concealed mischievousness, and her eyes had a spark of dissatisfaction. The very moment he noticed that, Mai reached out her hand and pinched his nose.
“What about Futaba?” He asked with a nasal voice.
“She’s sound asleep. I doubt she’s been able to sleep well for the last few days.”
“I see.”
Staying in a net cafe for several days certainly would wear on a girl’s mind, and he had a feeling Rio would be particularly sensitive to that.
“So you’re more worried about Futabsan than me when I’m right in front of you.”
“It was just because you seemed in a bad mood, so I thought I’d be serious…”
Apparently, that was a mistake too.
“Hahhhhh, and I thought we could go on a date seeing as I have the entire day off tomorrow,” said Mai as she turned away, finally releasing Sakuta’s nose,
“That’s why you came home a day early?”
Mai didn’t confirm or deny his thought, just stared at Sakuta in displeasure, so he was sure he was right.
“Why are you talking like we can’t now though?” He asked.
“Well, you’re going to be looking into Futaba’s issue, right?” Asked Mai, hitting the nail right on the head.
“The ‘fake’ should be at school for the science club tomorrow I think, so well, I was going to see what was going on.” He admitted, knowing there was no use in trying to hide it. He wanted to check whether there really were two of Futaba Rio.
“See, I knew it.”
“On that note, I have a favour to ask.”
“No,” denied Mai before he even finished speaking, “you’re just going to ask me to watch the ‘real Futabsan’ while you go to the ‘fake Futabsan’.”
“That’s my Mai-san, you know me so well.”
Taking the real Rio to school and putting them both in the same place would be the fastest method, but that carried risks with it. If someone witnessed it, it would cause issues and a panic.
There was also Rio’s hypothesis that it would be impossible to see them together. That coupled with the urban legend about doppelgängers as well meant that he felt it would be better if they didn’t meet each other.
“Don’t be so happy about it,” she said, pinching his cheek.
“Ow, ow.”
“Don’t enjoy that.”
“So yeah, please, Mai-san.”
Mai fell silent and released his cheek.
“Then we’ll be even.”
“For you abandoning me for a while?”
“That’s right.”
“Ehhh.”
“Of course we will be.”
“As thanks, I’ll do anything you ask, so leave the apology as an apology.”
“I’m lying next to you now.”
“I’d prefer something that rhymed with ‘amiss’.”
Mai seemed utterly shocked.
“Oh, did you not get it?”
Of course she got it, it was because she did that she was shocked, after all, ‘a kiss’ rhymed with ‘amiss’.
“It’s not like it’d need to be an apology if you chose the time, place, and mood properly, I wouldn’t mind you taking the initiative.”
Mai’s eyes had an impish glint about them as she started, but by the time she finished, she looked away in embarrassment.
“Mai-san?”
“W-what?” She asked, forcing herself to look up at him.
It’d be okay now. It’d probably be fine. If it was, Mai would just scold him, and that was a reward for Sakuta in its own way, so there was no reason to hesitate.
Their gazes locked.
A second passed, then another… then after a third, Mai’s eyes fluttered shut.
Sakuta leaned forward to kiss her, and at the same time, Mai tilted her head forwards slightly in embarrassment. Because of that, her forehead was further forwards than her lips, and both of their foreheads collided with a thunk.
“That hurt,” said Mai with a sulky glare.
“It’s because you looked down in embarrassment.”
“I-it’s because you’re too greedy,” she complained at him, sitting up.
“Mai-san?”
“That’s all for today,” she said. He couldn’t really see her face, but he had the feeling it was dyed slightly red.
“Ehh,” having it be put off after coming this far was painful.
“It’s because you suck.”
“Uwah, that hurts. I’ll lose my confidence as a man and end up scared of women.”
“That won’t happen,” Mai denied flatly.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I’ll let you practice until you can do it well.”
“…Mai-san.”
“What? You don’t want to?”
“I really love you.”
“I know,” she said. Her tone sounded bored, but there was a smile on her face as she looked back at him. “Good night then,” she finished, standing up.
“Right, good night.”
Mai went back into his bedroom with a small wave and Sakuta closed his eyes as the door shut,
Though that aside, he didn’t think he’d sleep soon. Asking him not to get worked up by Mai’s words and actions was unreasonable. There was something else bothering him as well.
Rio went through his mind, the Rio he had talked to at lunchtime, and the Rio in Sakuta’s bedroom.
The Rio sleeping in his room called the other a ‘fake’. If he could agree, then maybe he wouldn’t be bothered by it, but Sakuta had a different impression.
They both seem like Futaba Rio, he thought to himself.
If one was a fake, they could just get rid of them, but he didn’t think the situation was so simple, and that was what was bothering him.
But if both were real, that would cause problems, at home, at school, and probably even with society itself, they wouldn’t be able to accept that there were two Futaba Rios. Sakuta could feel it in his bones, so his heart wouldn’t settle.
“Ahh, damn. Remembering Mai-san in her bunny outfit is definitely the best at times like this.”