Chapter 3: Whatever Happens, I’ll Just Reset
Part 1
Shuu joined the baseball team.
Well, the baseball club members were the stars of Karima High.
Our school went to a regional tournament, unrelated to Koushien**, about three times a year to play. Apparently we were pretty strong.
When I asked Shuu why he had entered the baseball team, he answered,
“Because the baseball team has a lot of rivals.”
Since baseball was popular, there were a lot of players fighting for positions, and therefore a lot of rivals. The more rivals there were, the more motivation he had. That’s the kind of person he was.
“On the other hand, Yuuto, you have no motivation. Remember in the long-distance race in elementary school, you placed ahead of me?”
“Not true, I do have motivation. It’s just that running track has no place in my goals for perfection.”
“What is this ‘goal of perfection’ you speak of anyway? Doing nothing?”
“I’m doing something.”
“But you’re not doing it with your all.”
He was perceptive.
As someone who always put his all into everything, Shuu could tell that I had effort to spare.
Because I had the reset b.u.t.ton, I could reset every time I encountered failure, and thus the people around me saw only the perfect side of me. So, naturally, they would think that everything came effortlessly to me.
I wonder what Shuu would think if he were to find out my secret. Maybe he’d look at me with scorn.
The time I spent idling around and chatting with Shuu had decreased considerably ever since he joined the baseball team.
I walked home alone.
Natsuki was on the girl’s volleyball team. I really thought she was the type to join the drama club, so it came as a bit of a shock. After all, she was uncharacteristically fond of superheroes. The other guys probably only noticed her cheerful personality and would never consider the possibility that she was an otaku, and even if they knew, their first guess would probably be that she liked anime or manga.
“Natsuki, why didn’t you join the literary club?”
Natsuki, Shuu, and I were all in the same cla.s.s.
“I thought of joining literary club, but most of the things you do there can be done at home, wouldn’t you say? So I thought it’d be better to do something that I can only do at school.”
“Then why volleyball? Why not basketball? And I heard they’re starting a girl’s soccer team this year, too.”
“Don’t tell anyone this, but it’s because the volleyball team’s weak. Even though they practice, they’re weak. The basketball team places pretty well at regionals. There’s a lot of demand for a soccer team, so they’re bound to have a lot of good players.”
“So what?”
“So I chose the volleyball team, the one with a promising future.”
“What promising future?”
“Well, it might have one, okay? I was thinking, if I tried really hard, I could get the volleyball team stronger and stronger.”
As expected, she was following the path of the superhero. She was so cool.
That’s why Natsuki stayed after school practicing with the volleyball team until dusk every day.
At our school, there were some days with no club, and so when cla.s.ses ended, everyone rushed home. To me and the others in the going-home club, being able to go home without doing club activities was kind of a privilege, but the world saw it differently. Those who were in clubs were the special and privileged.
It shocked me.
I had only been in high school for a short time, and I was trying to just slide by without losing my stoic countenance, yet I was shocked by this.
“Yuuto, you going home?” Natsuki asked.
It was a no-club day.
“Yeah, I am. I always do.”
“Help me with the cleaning.”
“Ehh.”
“C"mon please, help?”
Natsuki had a habit of putting a rising inflection in her voice when asking for something. I don’t know if it was just a habit or if it was on purpose, but regardless, it was a particular weakness of mine. I didn’t confess to her three thousand times for the fun of it, you know.
“Well, I guess.”
“You’re great, Yuuto!”
When I went over to help out, I found that everyone on cleaning duty was female, making me the lone male among them.
“Hashidate-kun, can I have that?”
“Hashidate-kun, move the desk for me please?”
“Hashidate-kun, help―”
It was heaven.
This was my kind of helping-out-with-cleaning. By the way, in high school, all the guys were just called -kun, without any sort of embarra.s.sment. There wasn’t any honorific-dropping, either. Of course, we still called the girls by -san.
We were such adults.
“All we have left is to take out the trash. Yuuto, lend a hand.”
“Now I’m just doing everything for you guys.”
Natsuki and I, along with two others, picked up the trash can and headed towards the incinerator. Said incinerator was down in a corner of the sports grounds, so the shortest way was to go behind the sports shed.
The baseball and rugby teams were both on the grounds, practicing. Only the second- and third-years of the baseball team were there; I didn’t see Shuu among them.
Natsuki and I walked side-by-side, gripping the trash can. I thought perhaps she would tease me about all of the girls being cutesy around me during cleaning, but of course, as a man whose confession had just been rejected, I hoped that it wouldn’t happen. While we talked about nothing in particular, we walked towards the sports storage shed and noticed that the door was open about 50 cm.
At first I thought someone might have forgotten to close it, but seeing as the teams who were out on the field right now were the “Great Teams” themselves, I decided to just let sleeping dogs lie, and was about to walk past the shed.
“Fujiyoshi-kun…do you have a girlfriend?”
I heard an uneasy voice coming from inside the shed. A girl, talking to Shuu, no less.
“Nope.”
“Then please go out with me!”
“…Sorry.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not interested.”
“You…you think that badly of me?”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m just not interested in being in a relationship right now.”
“That’s so…”
I could hear the sound of a girl crying from inside the shed.
“Don’t cry. Dry your tears and find strength in yourself.”
Shuu… You really are a manly guy, a man among men. But that’s not something you should be saying to a girl who just now confessed and was rejected. Especially if you’re the one who did it.
I could never decide if he was really cool or just lame.
Natsuki gave me a push on the back, steering me away from the shed.
“That girl was the baseball club’s manager, you know.”
“Really? A first-year? Making a move on Shuu?”
“You didn’t know about it? She’s been trying to hint her feelings at him for a while, or so the rumors claim.”
“I didn’t know. Shuu never told me.”
“Of course not, if he did, that would be like bragging, right? And you know how dense our Shuu is.
"Yeah, you’re right.”
“…So Shuu doesn’t have a girlfriend then.”
“He doesn’t. That thing about him not being interested was true, huh.”
“Hmmm.”
I had the feeling that her “Hmmm” had a lot more to it, but I ignored that and dumped the paper trash into the incinerator.
After I arrived home, I collapsed onto my bed and held the reset b.u.t.ton up to the fluorescent light.
Not like I could enlighten myself to its true nature at this point.
I turned the box around in my hand.
Why had Maki-chan given this reset b.u.t.ton to me?
I had used this b.u.t.ton to reset my life thousands of times by now. I tried to recall all of those memories. There was a certain subset that I could remember, but most of them were buried under layers and layers of memories.
I read in a book once that humans retain all of their memories from the time that they are born. There exists in the brain a certain region called the hippocampus, which is in charge of memory. It’s a small part of the body but it plays a huge role.
So if all of my memories ever were stored there, then that must imclude memories from each time I reset. At least, all of my previous memories from my resets were stuffed in there somewhere.
…Huh?
The possibility entered my brain that by using the reset b.u.t.ton, I was in effect extending my lifespan. Even just by resetting a number of times in a month, I would be living longer lives than the people around me, in a way. In fact, since I’d already reset several thousand times, I had probably lived 2 or 3 years longer than my peers. However, my body was still that of a first-year high school student. Maybe if I had the body of a third-year instead, I would have more of a tough vibe.
I had been thinking of it as a positive side effect of life extension, but what if I were actually piling up mental years? As I acquired more and more memories, my brain would be more strained by them, so I wouldn’t be surprised if my brain were weakening.
No, wait a minute.
If I were really adding on mental years here, then I should be having no trouble in school at all. I’d probably be around the level of third year of high school, or even first year of college. If this hypothesis were correct, then I should in all probability be a genius who could go to college straight out of first year of high school…
Hmmm. What was actually going on here?
As I was pondering the true nature of the reset b.u.t.ton and what effect it was having on my life, the scientific magazine that I had dropped by my bedside (yeah, as I had reset over and over, I’d eventually gotten into stuff like scientific magazines) flipped open to an article t.i.tled “Time Machines and Parallel Worlds”. At that moment, my head started to hurt.
Aah, now I have a headache and I can hear ringing in my ears.
So that’s how I ended up sleeping with my head buried in the futon.
The next night, Shuu called me. That in itself was unusual.
The first thing out of his mouth was,
“I’ve entered a relationship with Natsuki.”
Seeing as I was already occupied by so many stressors, at first I couldn’t think of what to say.
I had kept my confession to Natsuki on the day we were accepted into school a secret from Shuu this whole time.
More like, I was trying to pretend that had never happened.
I had thought that I could just have a wonderful high school life and continue to be friends with Natsuki.
―entered a relationship with Natsuki.
I completely ignored the fact that he was using such an old-fashioned phrase. His words tore straight through me.
“O-oh?”
Somehow I managed to squeak out a reply.
“She confessed to me.”
“No way!”
It took a few moments for him to regain his composure after my unexpected outburst of shock, but then he laid out the events of the day’s evening for me.
Today had been a club day, so as usual Shuu had stayed late after school to practice. Natsuki had done the same thing for her club, so they ended up b.u.mping into each other as they set out to go home. Their houses were in the same direction, so they ended up walking home together.
Natsuki looked like she had something on her mind, and when questioned by Shuu, she had blurted out “I like you,” apparently.
After thinking for a bit, Shuu had responded with an “Okay.”
“B-but Shuu, didn’t you say that you have no interest in that kind of stuff?
"Hm? I don’t recall ever saying that to you.”
Memories from the conversation I overheard the day before yesterday flashed through my head.
“But it’s true, right?” I retorted.
“Yeah, it is, but Natsuki’s different.”
“Different?”
“I’ve got mountains of things before me that I have to give my all to overcome. So as I see it, it’d be in my best interests not to be involved in love affairs. But if it’s Natsuki, it’s fine, I think.”
“Why?”
“I imagined myself trying hard alongside Natsuki, and found it to be quite plausible.”
Shuu and Natsuki were certainly the type to mutually inspire each other in both clubs and school.
And in that regard, Shuu’s decision was certainly not out of line, and neither was Natsuki’s a.n.a.lysis of the situation, and as their friend, I felt admiration for them.
I hung up and sat for a while in shock.
I could easy imagine Shuu and Natsuki trying their best alongside each other, but I could not for the life of me include myself along with them.
I took the reset b.u.t.ton in my hand, and thought carefully.
The confession had been on the way home today, so then I should…
I applied pressure to the red b.u.t.ton.
―Reset. The world wavered.
The point I had chosen to return to was lunch break of that same day.
I had Shuu come with me, to a place where there would be less chance of anyone seeing us. Underneath the stairs.
“Hey.”
“What.”
“I’ve been wanting to discuss this with you for some time now. Today felt like a good day to do it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Before we graduated from middle school, I confessed to Natsuki. She rejected me.”
“Rejected you? Why? You two get along, don’t you?”
“Being friends and going out are two very different things. I could never go out with you, she said.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I thought you might be angry.”
“No, I think it’s ridiculous. I can’t imagine why’d she say no.”
“That’s good, I’m not asking you to be angry. I mean, I’m not angry either.”
“No, I’m angry, too. You should be more angry about this, not to mention have more faith in yourself as a man.”
“I do have faith in myself.”
“Then why don’t you at least try to make her give you a chance before walking away?”
“Would you do that if you were in my position?”
“Well, I have no interest in being in a relationship.”
“Really? What would you do if Natsuki confessed to you?”
“I’d say no. I have no interest in being in a relationship, and I can’t forgive the fact that she blew you off like that.”
“Hey, I’m doing just fine.”
“Okay, even ignoring what happened between you and her, I’d still refuse.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
That’s how our secret conversation went.
We returned to the cla.s.sroom in silence.
While looking down at those people with club activities, my club-activity-less self waited in the cla.s.sroom until sundown. The wait was excruciating.
That’s because I had waited here many times already. I had found, by trial-and-error via resets, the best timing for me to play my hand. Waiting was unavoidable.
This time was the same as all the others.
The bell rang, and everyone packed up to go home. Pretty soon, Natsuki would b.u.mp into Shuu, and they would head home together, and then Natsuki would confess to Shuu. And if all went well, the pieces of my grand scheme would fall into place…
I moved to a cla.s.sroom on the first floor from which I could see the school gate, and peeked outside from the gap in between the drawn curtains.
I could see Shuu and Natsuki walking together, and exited the cla.s.sroom so that I could follow them.
Leaving a bit of distance, I tailed them. After we had walked for about five minutes, Natsuki stopped. Shuu looked behind him, over his shoulder, and said something.
Smack!
All of a sudden, Natsuki slapped Shuu in the face.
I’m sure you know how I felt at the moment. All according to plan. Goal achieved. It was a s.h.i.tty thing to do to Natsuki, but it was for the sake of my perfect life.
Natsuki ran the rest of the way home, crying. I looked at her silhouette retreat farther and farther away.
She’d be fine, since she was Natsuki. Tomorrow she’d be back to her old cheerful self. Just like the time she rejected me, she would continue greeting us as she always did.
I watched Shuu head off to his own house, and then left.
That night, Natsuki was killed.