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Chapter 1: One Morning, After Opening My Eyes

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Chapter 1: One Morning, After Opening My Eyes

Part 5

When I was left to myself, a feeling of loneliness washed over me, soon replaced by despair.

Without Shuu, who had been comforting me until just now, my good spirits lost their footing and crumbled like sand.

Jeez, s.h.i.tting my pants even though I was in middle school. Well, no, middle school has nothing to do with it. Just s.h.i.tting myself in front of other people.

For someone as obsessed with perfection and tidiness as myself, having that mask of tidiness so brazenly shattered was a huge deal.

How could I go on living and face tomorrow?

This was a black spot on my 14 years of personal history. No, to call it a black spot would be putting it too lightly. It was more like a brand burnt into my personal history, one I could never erase.

Pooman. That’s what they’d call me. And then, my past, one I would never be able to reset would follow me even as I graduated from middle school to high school. The fact that I had leaked in front of my cla.s.s would be known throughout the students, such that when meeting people for the first time, they would know the story, and address me as Pooman without a second of hesitation. Uwaaa! Why the h.e.l.l, even though I don’t know you at all, why the h.e.l.l do you know that I once s.h.i.t myself?

That calmness that I barely held on to had now deserted me, as uncertainty and chaos descended suffocatingly upon my heart.

Why did it turn out like this!! Why did it have to be this way!!

Why!!!!

All my life, I had…all my life? Yeah, my whole life. Until I died.

I had s.h.i.t my pants. In the cla.s.sroom. In front of everyone. In front of my parents. The Pooman.

I felt all the future words of scorn, sympathy, pity, contempt, wash over me in an overwhelming wave. Must all of this scorn continually wash over me until I die…?

I just want to disappear…

Or I could do it all over again. From this morning. No, starting from when I arrived at school. Even starting from the beginning of that cla.s.s would be fine. I want that thing that happened today, all those memories, to disappear even if I had to destroy that part of my brain…!

―Will you wish?

I got the impression that someone was talking to me.

It was the voice of a young girl, whispering close by my ear, quite as if she were speaking directly to my brain.

―Will you wish?

I heard it again.

I definitely heard it.

Someone was asking me something.

Where was this person?

I looked back over my shoulder and checked my phone, staring off into the empty s.p.a.ce, trying to locate the source of the voice.

―It"s pretty cramped, isn"t it?

What"s so cramped?

―Yuuto"s world is currently about 2 meters in diameter. He is writhing within this tiny circle. Inside of his small world, what will he wish for? What is the strongest desire in your heart?

"Who are you?!"

I looked around me, and noticed for the first time.

All color had disappeared from this world.

The s.p.a.ce all around me was entirely light and dark, defined only by black and white contrast.

No matter how many times I rubbed and blinked my eyes, the world around me remained monochrome.

"Eh? What, what"s this?"

I looked closely and saw that I myself still had color. It was only my surroundings that were black and white.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on?"

Some kind of thin crack had appeared before my eyes, slowly spreading out, giving the road I always took home the look of stained gla.s.s. The pieces of this mozaic kind of alternated between floating and sinking, and the world before me took on a peculiar sense of three-dimensionality.

Was the world destroyed or something...?

No.

It was I who had been destroyed. Something in my head had gone wrong from the shock of s.h.i.tting my pants.

A single shard of the mosaic flew out and fell far below me.

At that signal, the rest of the pieces succ.u.mbed to gravity one by one.

"Uwaah! Uwahh! Uwaah!"

The fragments of the mosaic beneath my feet were yanked out like teeth, and I lost my footing as the ground below me started to collapse.

I desperately made to cling to those fragments of the road I walked to school, but no matter how I grasped at those shards, they always fell away, evading my grasp, until I too, was flung softly into empty s.p.a.ce, falling alongside the fragments of reality.

Ah, it"d be nice to keep falling like this forever―

The instant that thought came to mind, my eyes met with a young girl seated on one of the falling pieces, floating in mid-air.

"Eh?"

The girl―she had color.

She had on a black vest and a white shirt, and short, red hair cut in a boyish look.

Her long legs, extending form her shorts, dangled lightly, as if she were bouncing.

"My name is Maki-chan."

She suddenly introduced herself by name and flashed a grin at me, giving the feeling that this was some elaborate prank she was playing.

Seeing that I was rather taken aback, she continued,

"Well then, shall we replay?"

and clapped her hands together.

A white screen appeared in front of me.

Everything else around me became dark, and a buzzer sounded, signaling the start of the movie.

The numbers counted down, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.....start.

Just like one of those old movies, the film was in black and white.

The camera focused on a certain incident that I would rather not recall.

"Wh-what the heck, what"s going on..."

Displayed on the screen was my own self standing in front of the blackboard, gritting my teeth as I battled with my raging bowels.

"Stop it! Just stop!"

I cried out to whomever was controlling the movie.

The image of my writhing body, almost at its limit, hung over me.

"Stop!! I said, stop it!"

I waved my hands like a madman, trying in vain to break the screen. However, no matter what I did, the image stayed as if it were burned into my retina, refusing to disappear. Meanwhile, the me on the screen was doing an unsightly dance.

That other me eventually reached his limit and soiled himself, falling to his knees. The image was so real that I could almost smell it.

"Aa~aah!"

At the sound of Maki-chan"s voice, I snapped back to reality.

When I looked up, she was back to her bored self, swinging her legs more forcefully than before.

"Aw, geez! That was a let-down!"

She gave me a scornful glare as if she were mad, as if I bothered her.

Stop that! Don"t look at me like that! Today I"ve been glared at like that, tens, no, hundreds of times! Isn"t that enough? Don"t do that! Don"t do thaaaattttt!

"Is that all you have to say?"

She heard my thoughts?

"I was drawn here by a powerful wish, you see, but I guess all I got was p.o.o.p. It"s weird, why do you have such a strong wish when this is just about something like p.o.o.ping…"

Something like p.o.o.ping?

What, like this is just about something like p.o.o.ping?

"…Hold up, I can"t just let that go. What was up with that?"

I was p.i.s.sed off. I mean, to be told something like that, from a girl I had just met no less, was something I couldn"t just sit there and ignore.

"What the h.e.l.l, I mean, I s.h.i.t myself. Don"t you get it? I literally s.h.i.t myself, in cla.s.s, in front of everyone. Don"t you get how much that crushed my pride? And not only was my pride crushed, so was my inner self. Not to mention that it was cla.s.s observation day. That"s twice the number of eyewitnesses than it would"ve been on any other day. So me s.h.i.tting myself is a huge blow to others" respect for me, don"t you see? And you call that "something like p.o.o.ping"? Do you even know what that you"re talking about?"

I unleashed a barrage words telling Maki-chan just how off-target she was about my situation and p.o.o.ping.

And well, she just sat there listening, trying to stifle a smile, but in the end something that I had so much emotion about was something that I had to spit out one way or another.

"…well, the wishes of people vary greatly, don"t they? There are the terminally ill who wish to live just one more day, and there are people who, having soiled themselves, wish they would die…

With a half-smirk on her face, she continued.

"You know, I came here to hear out your wish, Yuuto. I came to hear you yell it out."

What the h.e.l.l is this girl saying?

"My…wish…?"

My wish? Then it dawned on me. I wanted to become like my big brother, tidy and perfect. What did she say I was supposed to do? Yell out my wish?

Now it was my turn to half-smirk.

"Maki-chan, what are you, some sort of G.o.d?"

I said. With a smirk.

Hearing that, Maki-chan turned to face me, not bothering to hide any of the scorn she held towards me.

What the h.e.l.l. Don"t give me that look again.

"Aah, perhaps you don"t believe me? Well, not just any old wish. That"s no good, I tell you. Earlier, you had an extremely strong desire, ringing from your inner heart and soul, that"s what I want to hear. That intense desire was what I was drawn to earlier, you see?

An intense wish, huh…what could it have been?

As if she were reading straight from the depths of my heart, Maki-chan continued.

"Didn"t you wish to start it all over?"

"Start over? Well, I guess I did want to start all over again. Alright, that"s what I"ll do, start over! I"d make a deal with the devil to make that happen! Make it so I never s.h.i.t myself in cla.s.s, R･E･S･E･T my whole day, how "bout it?"

I yelled out. I was half crying by the time I got to the end of that little speech.

Maki-chan nodded, satisfied.

"Strong indeed. If you so wish, then I can let you start over."

She waved her right hand over my head, making cards pour, one after another, out of thin air. The way she made them flow out of a crack in the air made me think, where did she learn that trick? The cards were a little like playing cards, a little like tarot cards; one side had a complex pattern on it, while the other had some sort of design, kind of like a drawing―

She waved her right hand, fwoosh, from left to right, lining up the cards. The movement seemed so natural that I couldn"t help but wonder if she were actually a magician.

The cards were pattern-side up, such that I couldn"t see what was on the other side.

"This is your whole life."

This time, she swept her hand from left to right. She seemed to be having fun. The cards flipped to the back sides, still lined up neatly, as her hand pa.s.sed over them.

My life was depicted on those cards.

From my birth, to when I first stood up, to my first words, to me following after my brother, to walking with this girl, my childhood friend, to school, to playing with my friends…my whole life was laid out in front of me like a row in Sevens.*

Maki-chan picked a single card from this array, and held it up to the light. Monochrome light shone through the card such that I could see right through the center of it. This one was a memory from my elementary school days.

"Do you remember?"

I remembered. It was during lunch when I was in 1st grade. For some reason I couldn"t bring myself to eat the carrots in the stew, so my teacher had gotten mad at me, and I had been left along in the cla.s.sroom, with three carrot slices that I could not put in my mouth. I had been on the verge of tears. It was then that my cla.s.smate, Sugita Natsuki, gallantly appeared, taking the spoon from my hand and scooping the carrots into her mouth in an instead. "It"s lunch, let"s go play," she told me, and pulled me along by the hand. I had seen my inability to eat carrots as a major hurdle on the road to perfection, but Natsuki thought of the matter as no big deal and simply pulled me along. I felt like I should express my thanks, but couldn"t for the life of my figure out how exactly; what came out of my mouth was,

"You"re amazing, to be able to eat carrots."

It would"ve been better to say something more clever, with more substance, but at that time, it was all I could come up with.

"Well, they"re pretty yummy. And sweet,"

She replied, grinning.

We stopped in the hallway, changing our shoes as if we couldn"t waste another second, and raced off to the school yard. Once there, we wormed out way into the circle of our cla.s.smates, and until the bell sounded the end of our lunch break, we played away, as if in a dream.

From that day on, I tried my best to be able to eat carrots. If I could bring myself to eat them, then I felt that Natsuki would smile at me once more, and praise me for it…

I looked down at my life laid out before me. There were only as many cards as I had memories. It seemed that if I picked up one out of these countless cards and shined light through it, I would be able to experience that memory, like I what did a few minutes ago, clear as day.

Maki-chan peered close at my face and inquired,

"Will you wish? Will you not wish?"

I saw my image reflected in her large eyes.

Will I wish…huh.

My only wish was still only to become like my brother. To be perfect, and―

With the events of today, those efforts had all gone to waste.

If only that hadn"t happened. If only I hadn"t made the wrong choice.

This life is no good.

I want redo it.

I want redo it!

"I found it. I found your strong wish."

Maki-chan reached out both hands and placed them over my heart. Then she slowly sunk them into my body, grasping my heart. She nodded her head curtly with a "Hm!", as if she had been making sure that it could still react, then slowly withdrew her hands. In her hands was a b.u.t.ton.

"This b.u.t.ton will grant your wish. It will switch out your memories."

"Switch out my memories…like it"ll make me forget?"

"There is a set amount of memories you can retain. Therefore, if you ever want to switch out your memories with past ones, press the b.u.t.ton. If you wish strongly enough, it will happen."

Maki-chan placed the b.u.t.ton in my hand.

"See, your life will go as you please!"

The cards, having been neatly lined up, suddenly flew up and scattered. I saw my memories raining down.

Amidst the flurry of cards, Maki-chan stayed sitting as she was; even as she dissolved, she remained floating in the air. She seemed as if she had lost all interest in me, instead looking towards tomorrow and the day after, while humming a tune.

The monochrome world faded to a bright white.

I could feel my consciousness spreading out as I fell into a deep slumber.

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