For starters, I stuffed three days worth of underwear and my sketchbook into the backpack. I figured it might be cold over there, so I put on a thick jacket with a large hood attached. Tying my usual good luck bracelet around my wrist, I stepped out of the house.
Because I left a little earlier than I usually do for school, the train was empty. But still, as always, Tokyo station overflowed with people. After waiting in line behind a foreigner dragging his luggage along, I bought a Shinkansen ticket to Nagoya and headed towards the Toukaidou Shinkansen ticket gate.
Then, I saw something that made me doubt my own eyes.
“W-Why are you here!?”
Beside the pillar in front of me stood Okudera-senpai and Tsukasa.
“Hehehe, we came!” senpai said with a laugh.
… What are you, a character from some kind of moe anime?
I glared at Tsukasa. He returned the look with a nonchalant face that seemed to say ‘problem?’.
“Tsukasa you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I asked you to tell my parents an alibi and to cover my shift at work, didn’t I!?” I yelled complaints to Tsukasa, who sat in the seat beside me, in as hushed a voice as possible. The free seating area of the Shinkansen was buried mostly with salarymen in their suits.
“I asked Takagi to cover for you at work,” Tsukasa responded casually. He held up his phone for me to see. ‘Leave it to me!’ with a big thumbs up, from Takagi. ‘But you owe me food.’
“G.o.d d.a.m.n it…” I muttered bitterly.
Relying on Tsukasa was a mistake. I had planned to skip school today, which gave me three days, today and the weekend, in Hida. As an excuse, I asked Tsukasa to tell everyone that I had some urgent need to visit an acquaintance.
“I came because I was worried about you, you know?” Tsukasa said. “I can’t leave you alone now, can I. What if you get caught up in some sketchy scam?”
“Sketchy scam?”
What is he talking about? As I raised my eyebrow at Tsukasa, Okudera-senpai leaned over from the seat next to him and peered at me.
“Taki-kun, you’re going to meet an internet friend?”
“Huh? Ah, not really… that was just an easy way to explain it…”
Last night, Tsukasa wouldn’t stop bugging me until I told him who I was going to meet, so I vaguely said it was someone I met on social media.
Tsukasa turned to senpai and said in a serious tone, “I thought it might be a dating site.”
I almost blew all the tea out of my mouth. “No!!”
“Well you’ve been really strange lately.” Tsukasa made a worried face as he held out a box of Pocky to me. “I’ll keep watch on you from afar.”
“What am I, an elementary schooler?”
Watching my irritated reaction, Okudera-senpai gave a curious ‘hmm?’. She definitely had some kind of misunderstanding too. This can’t lead to anything good, I thought dreadfully. We will soon be arriving at Nagoya. A voice from the speaker resounded throughout the train car.
My switching with Mitsuha had begun suddenly one day, and ended suddenly another. No matter how much I thought, I couldn’t come up with a reason. As the weeks went by, my suspicion that it had all just been a realistic dream grew and grew.
However, I did have some proof. I would never believe that the words Mitsuha left in my diary app had been written by my own hands. Also, I would never have planned a date with Okudera-senpai just by myself. There was no doubt: the girl named Mitsuha existed. I had felt her warmth and her heartbeat; I had heard her breathing and her vibrant voice echoing on my eardrums; I had seen the vivid red lining her eyelids. She was so bursting full of life, I was convinced that if she was not living, then there was no life anywhere. Mitsuha was real.
And because she was so real, when our switching abruptly stopped an extreme feeling of uneasiness had come over me. Maybe something happened to her. Like a fever. Or maybe an accident. Even if I was overthinking things, Mitsuha must be anxious at the situation too. That’s why I decided to go meet her directly. But, well…
“Huh?? You don’t know the place?” a shocked Okudera-senpai asked as we sat on the special express train ‘Hida’, stuffing our faces with station bento.
“Uh…”
“Your only clue is the village’s scenery? You can’t contact her? What is this!?”
Why was I the one being blamed when they just decided to follow me on their own? I looked at Tsukasa for some back up.
“Well someone’s bad at planning,” he said as he gulped down a miso katsu.
“I wasn’t planning on you guys coming!” My voice involuntarily raised to a shout. This was all just a fun little field trip to them. Senpai and Tsukasa both looked at me with faces that seemed to say ‘he’s helpless’ with a sigh.
“Well whatever,” senpai said. Suddenly her lips broadened into a smile, and she stuck her chest out proudly. “Don’t worry Taki-kun! We’ll help you look.”