8

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“I’ve got something to take care of.”

“I’ll be waiting for you back home!”

“Get home safe.”

“Will do!”

Hugging the present to her chest, Kaede left. On his own, Sakuta headed farther into the electronics store.

He checked the department guide, found what he was looking for, and took the escalator down to the first floor.

It didn’t take him long to locate it.

He was now in the smartphone department, surrounded by models in every color of the rainbow.

Several dozen minutes were spent on picking a provider, several more on a model, a lot more poring over contracts and paperwork and payment processing. The whole endeavor took nearly an hour and a half, but at last he had gotten what he’d come in for.

A palm-sized rectangular device.

A smartphone.

His phone.

“Will you be taking it as is?” the clerk asked, pushing a tray with the phone toward him.

“I will.”

He picked it up, feeling the slight weight on his palm. Then she gave him a bag with the empty box in it.

“Please come again!”

The polite staff saw him out, and Sakuta stepped out into the street. It was nine. Closing time.

As the staff bustled about locking up, Sakuta turned his phone on. He tapped the call symbol and punched in eleven digits from memory.

“……”

He held it to his ear, listening to it ring.

No signs of anyone answering.

After a few rings, it went to voice mail. A default message played.

“Mai, it’s me. Sakuta. I just bought a phone, so you’re my first call. I’m gonna meet up with Mitou next and was hoping to see you after that.”

With that, he hung up.

He pocketed the phone.

A moment later, it vibrated.

He took the phone back out and checked it. He’d received a text.

It was from Mai.

Got it. I’ll be at Shichirigahama.

He wrote back.

Thanks.

This time he put the phone back in his pocket for good and went up the stairs to the overpass.

It was after nine, but the station was still teeming. The temperature had dropped, and there was a chill in the air. Everyone was hustling by, eyes dead ahead, trying to get home.

Sakuta ducked into the station and found the coin lockers.

He took a single black pen out of his book bag, then shoved it and the smartphone packaging into an empty locker. By pure chance, it was the same locker Mai had used to stash her bunny-girl outfit.

That made him laugh.

Riding that wave, he emerged from the south side of the station.

He passed by the Odakyu Department Store, heading for the Enoden Fujisawa Station. He tapped his train pass on the gates and moved to the platform.

It was late, and there were hardly any passengers around. He walked slowly down the empty platform, listening to the echo of his footsteps. He’d always been here during busy hours, so this silence was novel.

He settled down on an empty bench.

Miori had said she’d be here at 10:50.

That was an hour and a half away.

Sakuta waited patiently, and a train came in. Green and cream, all retro colored.

The doors opened, and a crowd coming in from Kamakura spilled out, while the passengers waiting here got on.

From here, he could tell the train was still pretty empty. Hard to believe—it was normally jam-packed.

Departure time rolled around, and it slowly pulled out.

Another train came. And another. Time seemed to pass in dribs and drabs. Each train had fewer people getting on and off, and the stillness of the station deepened.

By 10:40, Sakuta was the only one left.

And then a train came in.

A few people got off.

And Sakuta spotted a bunny costume among them.

It was hard to miss that pink.

Ikumi was with him.

They spotted Sakuta and came across the platform toward him.

The bunny costume stopped right in front of Sakuta’s bench.

“Are you here to stop Miori Mitou?”

“Of course not. I’m here to see her off.”

“Ready to refute Adolescence Syndrome?”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“……”

The bunny went quiet, trying to gauge what that meant.

“Nor will I forget.”

“Then what’s the plan? Gonna leave the world rewritten?”

“I’m turning Adolescence Syndrome into fond memories.”

“……”

“That’s the right answer, isn’t it?” Sakuta said, looking right up at the bunny.

“I guess you’ll find out.”

The bunny took a few steps toward the gates.

Just as Miori came through them.

She tapped her train pass and stepped onto the platform.

“Hey, Akagi.”

“……What?”

A rare glimpse of Ikumi actually surprised.

“You said what you had to say to the other me?”

That made her look at the bunny’s back.

“I did. Told him I’d always hated him.”

“And?”

“He didn’t know what to do with that.”

A faint smile played around her lips.

“That must have felt good,” Sakuta said with a chuckle.

Miori caught up with him.

“You’re in a good mood,” she said.

“The train’s about to leave. This is the 10:50 for Kamakura, right?”

Sakuta got up from the bench and made to board the train.

“You’re coming, too?” she asked.

“I’m meeting Mai at Shichirigahama later.”

With that, Sakuta got on the Enoden before anyone else.

Sakuta and Miori sat together on the short bench at the end of the car. The bunny and Ikumi were in the other car, giving them space. He could see them sitting not far from the connecting door.

The last Kamakura-bound train left Fujisawa and soon stopped atIshigami Station. No one got on or off, so it pulled out again. The same thing happened at Yanagikoji, Kugenuma, and Shonankaigankoen.

Eventually, it stopped at Enoshima Station.

“Mitou, give me your hand.”

“Why?” she asked, but she held out her hand.

Sakuta took a black pen out of his pocket and wrote a zero on her palm—then the other ten digits, one at a time.

Miori watched the whole time.

When he was done, the train pulled out again.

Even then, she didn’t take her eyes off the number.

She only looked at him when the train pulled into the streetcar section.

“You bought a phone,” she said, sounding slightly miffed.

Sakuta pulled his new phone out of his pocket and showed it to her.

“The cheapest one.”

“You were so against it yesterday.”

That seemed to be the source of her disgruntlement.

“Take it up with yesterday me.”

“You are obnoxious.”

Miori cackled.

No one else was in the car, so her laugh echoed, hollow.

But she didn’t seem to mind.

When she was done laughing, she said, “Then I’d better tell you mine.”

Smiling, she took something out of her tote bag.

A palm-sized rectangle. A smartphone.

The same model he had.

“You bought one, too.”

“The cheapest one.”

She made that sound like a boast on purpose. She punched in the number he’d written on her hand.

A moment later, his new phone vibrated once.

There was a(1)next to the phone icon on his screen. His call history now had a new eleven-digit number starting with zero. He registered that asMiori Mitou.

“Call me as soon as you get back.”

“It might take years to get Touko back in every world.”

“No matter how many years it takes, I’ll still be your friend.”

“……Right.”

Mitou chewed that over.

“Well, we did trade contact info,” she said, brandishing her phone.

The train passed the Minegahara traffic signals.“Next stop, Shichirigahama,”said a woman’s voice.

With the sound of grinding rails and wheels, they pulled into the station and quietly stopped.

“……”

Sakuta got up without another word.

He’d said what he had to say.

The doors opened.

Just as he was about to get out…

“Azusagawa,” Miori said, in her typical tone of voice.

“……”

He turned back.

“I uploaded the full version of that song. If you want to see me again, give it a listen.”

She flashed him a bashful smile.

From the heart, if a bit awkward.

“Then I’ll listen to it every day,” he said, his heart full of warmth.

He meant it.

“I’m outta here,” Miori said, with quiet strength.

“Yeah, you do that. I’ll be a bit more grown up when you get back,” he said, responding in kind.

He stepped off the train, and on with his life.

The doors closed.

He turned back and watched the train leave the station.

His eyes followed it as it rolled away.

He heard the warning bells of a crossing in the distance. The one by Minegahara High School. He’d heard those every day for three whole years.

One train car after another vanished in that direction.

A short, four-car assembly.

It wasn’t long before he couldn’t make them out anymore.

Only the sound of the bells in the distance.

And even that stopped while he stood there, breathing.

Silence settled over Shichirigahama Station.

Sakuta had been the only person to get off here.

And there’d been no one waiting for the train to arrive.

There were no staff at this hour.

So he was all alone in the station.

Standing on the platform, eyes on where the train had been, Sakuta stared off into the distance toward Kamakura.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood like that.

He only snapped out of it when a voice said, “She left, then.”

He felt that little hand on his again.

He looked down and found the knapsack kid.

She was standing with him on the platform, her hand in his.

“It was the right thing to do.”

“Even though you might not see her again?”

“It’ll work out.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“It’s just like the monsters on the ceiling when I was a kid. When you grow up, they don’t look like monsters anymore.”

“……”

The girl was giving him a strange look.

“So there’s no more monsters?”

“No.”

“Everyone goes away,” she said, hanging her head.

“……That’s not true.” Sakuta spun toward her. “I said it’ll work out, right?”

“……?”

“Even if it doesn’t look like a monster, the marks on the ceiling are still there. They never go away.”

Only your perspective changed. And that wasjusta change.

It didn’t mean the marks ceased to exist.

“The marks are still up there. I can look at them whenever I want and remember how I used to see a monster in them. So it’s time you also went home.”

He heard the railroad crossing again. He’d crossed that so many times in high school.

“You’ll be okay on your own?”

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“I have Mai with me. I’ve got Kaede and our parents. Futaba and Kunimi. Also Koga. Toyohama and Zukki. At college I’ve got Fukuyama, and I’ve got my students at the cram school. Akagi’s out there—and Makinohara’s moved back to town. It’s a regular party.”

A Fujisawa-bound train was coming in from Kamakura. That green-and-cream retro car was very Enoden.

“Don’t get lost again.”

The kid let go of his hand.

The train stopped, and the doors opened.

The girl skipped onto the car.

She turned back toward Sakuta.

“Bye-bye!” she said, waving with a smile.

“Yeah. Bye-bye.”

Sakuta waved back.

The doors closed.

The train pulled out.

The kid was still waving.

Sakuta kept on waving, too.

Until the train was out of sight.

Shichirigahama at night smelled like the sea.

The wind was singing.

Sakuta left the empty station, walking alone toward the ocean’s edge.

He went down that gentle slope. This familiar road led straight to the beach. Soon, he hit Route 134. He got to the light by the convenience store, the one that always took ages to turn green. But for once, he got the walk light right away.

Across that road, there was nothing else between him and the water.

He went down the stairs to the beach.

The sand gently caught his feet.

A beautiful moon hung in the night sky. That made it fairly bright, and Sakuta soon spotted someone standing on a little bridge over a creek that fed into the ocean.

“Mai,” he called, lining up with her.

“Strange. The view here already brings back memories.”

Mai’s eyes were off to the right, toward Enoshima.

“That it does.”

He glanced back and could still see Minegahara High. They’d both gone there, and the view was tightly knit to their time in high school.

That was all in the past now. Before they knew it, it had all turned into fond memories.

He and Mai were on the same page.

“So, Mai…”

“What?”

“I’m thinking about getting a teaching license. Gonna teach at a high school somewhere.”

“Okay.”

Mai’s voice was gentle and accepting. Then her gaze turned toward him.

“What kind of teacher?” she asked.

“The kind of teacher who’ll listen when a student is confused about a bunny girl only they can see. Even if I can’t see her myself.”

“You’ll be good at that.”

“Will I?”

“I guarantee it.”

“Well, if you guarantee it, I’ll have to put the work in.”

“……”

“……”

Their banter faded out. But their eyes were still talking.

“Sakuta.”

“What?”

“Happy birthday.”

“A bit late, Mai.”

“Next year, I’ll say it the moment the date changes.”

Mai took a step closer and put her hand in his.

Their fingers locked together as they stared out at the same ocean.

The same sky, the same moon.

The two of them were seeing the same things and taking the next step together.

Onto the sand they went.

Leaving two rows of footsteps behind them.

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