Sakuta tried to get to sleep himself. But he was too conscious of her lying next to him to sleep at all.
3
Sakuta never did drift off. He spent the hours until sunrise listening to the sound of Mai breathing next to him.
He definitely got turned on a few times. But no matter how hard he stared at her face, Mai never woke up. Getting all worked up alone made him feel like a dumb kid. Other times, the idea that he was the only one sweating over this was just depressing.
Drifting off to sleep would have been much better, but between her lying next to him and the fatigue of the long trip, his body was all tense, and he never even felt close to sleepy. There was a heat wriggling deep within him that spent the whole night messing with his head.
And after several wasted hours, the world outside the curtains grew bright.
Mai woke up at half past six, and they said good morning. Then they got ready to check out. But since they’d brought almost nothing with them, Sakuta was ready almost immediately.
Mai wasn’t as quick. She insisted on taking a bath first.
This took a full thirty minutes.
When she finally emerged, she insisted she still had to get ready, so he was forced out into the hall. Totally unfair.
To kill time, he went back to the convenience store to buy something for breakfast. He took his time…
When he got back, they each ate a cream bun and were finally able to check out. It was well past eight.
They walked back to Ogaki Station and hopped on a train. Now they just had to ride for a few hundred miles. But unlike the day before, they took the Shinkansen from Nagoya, making for a much faster trip back to Fujisawa Station.
Sakuta was back at home before noon. Hooray for bullet trains. They were unbelievably fast.
They both stopped off at home and met up outside thirty minutes later.
Mai was waiting out front in her uniform when Sakuta arrived, stifling a yawn.
“You look so out of it,” she said.
“You’re beautiful again today!”
“Your tie’s crooked. Hang on.”
She handed him her schoolbag and then reached for his collar, fixing his clothes.
“Never imagined we’d be acting like newlyweds so soon. Thank you.”
“Your face is stupid enough. No need to act the part.”
She snatched her bag back and stalked away.
“Ah! Wait!”
He ran after her, and they strolled side by side.
The streets he walked every day felt like old friends. If he didn’t know better, he would’ve sworn he’d been away a whole week.
Even though they’d only left the day before.
Less than that, since he’d been so late for their date. Even that was already turning into a distant memory.
As he mulled that over, he found himself yawning. Staying up all night had taken its toll. He felt ready to drift off at any moment.
“Huh? Didn’t you sleep?” Mai inquired, peering at his eyes. They must have been bloodshot.
“And who’s fault do you think that is?”
“You’re blaming me?”
“You wouldn’t let me sleep.”
“Too excited?
“More nervous than anything, really,” he admitted, yawning again.
“You can be cute sometimes,” Mai said.
“You, on the other hand, have nerves of steel! You were out like a light.”
“I’ve been all over the place for filming my whole life. I used to sleep in the break room between setups. And…”
She broke off, looking like a kid who’d just thought of a great prank.
“Sleeping next to you is no big deal at all.”
“Good news! Next time I’ll have to try a few things.”
“You don’t have the guts to try anything.”
When they reached school, it was lunchtime.
Most students had already finished eating and were relaxing. Some kids were playing on the basketball court, and their cries drifted across the schoolyard.
School was always like this, but it felt like ages since they’d last been here—like their first day back at school after spring or winter break.
As they changed into slippers at the entrance, Mai said, “I’m going to poke around.”
“I’ll drop in on Futaba. Oh, Futaba’s one of the friends who remembers you…”
“Is that a girl’s name? I’m amazed,” Mai said, stopping in her tracks.
“That’s her family name.”
Still a girl, though…
“Right. Well, see you later.”
Mai went off down the hall. Sakuta watched her go. She went past a group of girls carrying notebooks, a middle-aged geometry teacher wheeling a slide projector, and a group of girls gossiping excitedly about a hot guy on the basketball team.
None of them paid Mai any attention. None of them even looked at her.
This didn’t strike Sakuta as odd.
It was always like that.
That was what it was like for Mai here.
The natural reaction toward seeing a problem no one wanted to engage. Everyone pretended not to see her. Acted like she was part of the air around them.
And when everyone ignored her, the result looked exactly like people couldn’t see her at all. Minegahara students had treated her that way long before it started happening everywhere. Long before Sakuta had started attending this school.
Mai slipped through the crowds.
Just like she slipped through crowds affected by her Adolescence Syndrome.
“……”
It felt like fragments of understanding were piecing themselves together.
Like Sakuta was starting to see the shape of the root cause.
Rio’s idea that the heart of the issue lay at school definitely felt right.
“Azusagawa.”
Sakuta turned toward the voice and found Rio standing behind him, hands thrust in the pockets of her white lab coat.
When she saw him, she yawned. This made Sakuta yawn back.
“Bad news,” she said.
He braced himself.
“Everyone but me may have forgotten Sakurajima.”
“……?!”
His brow furrowed. That was bad news.
“At the very least, Kunimi doesn’t remember her.”
“Really?”
Rio wouldn’t make something like that up. This wasn’t a laughing matter, and Sakuta knew she wasn’t the type to joke about things like this in the first place.
But he couldn’t stop himself from asking. He desperately wanted it to not be true.
“When I mentioned her name, Kunimi was just confused. ‘Who was that again?’ he asked. I haven’t exactly asked anyone else, but…”
Sakuta looked around, searching for someone else to ask. The need for that soon passed, though.
Mai was running back toward the entrance. Out of breath, flustered—pale with fright.
When she caught her breath, she looked him in the eye.
“You can still see me?” she asked.
“Yes. Clear as daylight,” he said, nodding.
The tension drained from her face.
“Thank goodness…”
She sighed with relief.
But why?
Why could Sakuta and Rio see her but nobody else? Why had they forgotten Mai?
At the least, yesterday it wasn’t just the two of them. Yuuma, Tomoe Koga, and her friends had all been able to see Mai.
“Right, Tomoe Koga!”
Sakuta ran off alone, headed for the first-year classrooms.
He poked his head into each room on the first floor, finally locating Tomoe in the fourth room he tried. Class 1-4. She was with the same friends as the day before, eating lunch by the windows, their desks pushed together.
Sakuta went right over to her.
One of her friends saw him first and made a startled noise. They all turned to stare.
“
Crap, the guy from…,” Tomoe said, then stopped herself.
Sakuta planted himself near their desks and asked, “Do you know Mai Sakurajima?”
Tomoe Koga and her friends all looked at one another and started whispering.
“What is this, Tomoe?”
“I—I don’t know!”
“Sakura…who?”
“Who the…?”
“You saw her yesterday at the Enoden Fujisawa Station,” he said.
They looked at one another again and then shook their heads.
“How do you not know her? She’s a famous actress!” Sakuta took a step forward. “Think about it! The really beautiful third-year… You met her!”
When he took another step closer, Tomoe looked frightened.
“You have to remember!” he demanded, putting his hands on her shoulders.
“I—I don’t know her!” she shouted, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Please!”
“Ow!”
He realized he was squeezing her shoulders.
“Stop it, Sakuta.” A voice in his ear. Mai’s hand on his wrist.
He slowly let go of Tomoe.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what got into me.”
“O-okay…”
“I’m really sorry. Excuse me.”
Apologizing again, Sakuta headed for the door, his feet heavy.
“Azusagawa,” Rio said. She’d trailed behind them and was beckoning him from down the hall.
“What?”
When Rio didn’t move, Sakuta left Mai’s side, moving over to Rio.
“I might have an idea,” Rio said, quietly, so only he could hear.
It looked like she was hesitant to say the rest.
“Tell me.”
“Azusagawa…did you sleep last night?”
That question was the start of her explanation.
After school that day, Sakuta and Mai went back to Fujisawa Station together and parted ways there.
Even at a time like this, Sakuta had a shift at the restaurant. He couldn’t exactly call in sick. “You should go,” Mai said.
He worked until nine, rubbing his tired eyes. On the way home, he stopped in the convenience store.
He did a circuit of the interior, scoping out the shelves.
He found the energy drinks on a rack near the registers, under the gelatin drinks.
They ranged in price from two hundred yen to the cost of a large beef bowl. He even found one that was over a thousand yen. He couldn’t tell what the difference was or what was in them.
He grabbed three at random, along with some caffeinated mint gum and tablets, then took it all to the counter.
It came out to just under two thousand yen. Between the round trip to Ogaki and the room at the business hotel, his wallet was feeling really light. There was almost nothing left in it.
But this was no time to get stingy.
He remembered Rio’s words.
“Azusagawa…did you sleep last night?”
“Not a wink,” he’d replied.
This was clearly what Rio had expected. “Neither did I,” she said.
“……”
Unsure what she meant, he waited for further details.
“I’m only working backward from the results, but I think that’s the reason. I wasn’t with Sakurajima or anything.”
“…No.”
“You remember how I told you about the Theory of Observation?”
“The Schrödinger’s cat thing?”
“I thought it was ridiculous at the time,” Rio said. She looked down the hall at Mai. It seemed like she was unsure how to act around Mai or if she should bring her into this at all. She was clearly rattled by the whole situation.
“Seeing it for myself… It’s scary.”
“Adolescence Syndrome?”
“No, before that even happened…the way the whole school treated her like air.”
“Yeah.”
“And the way I usually read the room, accepting that as the way things should be. I never even doubted it.”
“It works in the first place because nobody questions it. If anyone felt like they were doing something wrong, I’d hope the whole thing would fall apart.”
Knowing it was wrong, understanding how awful it was, realizing how pathetic they were being, grasping how crappy this behavior was…not that many people could do that and proudly say, “We’re ignoring our classmate!” Anyone who could was messed up.
Like the ringleader of the group that bullied Kaede. She’d totally been all, “What’s wrong with it?”
With Mai, the original cause lay with her. There was a moment where she chose to blend into the air, and those around her reacted to that, accepting it.
Her desire to disappear had turned her into air—but only after she started acting the part.
“But that’s exactly why the school is our best clue,” Rio said, as if reading his mind. “To Sakurajima, this school is the box, and she’s the cat inside.”
“……”
Nobody looked at Mai. Nobody tried to look. Mai was observed by no one, so her existence was indeterminate…and thus, she was disappearing. She wasn’t gone—but it was like she was. If no one could perceive her, it was the same as if she didn’t exist.
A chill ran down his spine.
He knew exactly what Rio was trying to say.
The cause was here at school, within the students’ collective consciousness. Their disinterest in her was now entirely unconscious. She didn’t even register in their minds. Rio was saying that these feelings—if they could even be called feelings—were the trigger that activated Mai’s Adolescence Syndrome.
How could you change people’s unconscious feelings? They weren’t even aware a problem existed. They didn’t think the problem was a problem. And there were nearly a thousand students like that at Minegahara High.
How could he turn their disinterest to interest?
“……”
It was like he was facing into the darkness, and it was about to swallow him whole.
This was the true nature of his fear. The true cause. The true form of the enemy Sakuta had to defeat. The air he couldn’t see but knew existed. The same air that, not too long ago, Sakuta had said was pointless to even try fighting against.
“But if the school is what started everything, why are people who have nothing to do with school unable to see Mai, either?”
“Maybe Sakurajima herself took what happened at school into the world outside.”
He had to admit that was possible, both when he first met her at the Shonandai Library or when she went alone to the Enoshima Aquarium. Mai had been acting like the air, and he’d felt like she was causing this herself.
But that wasn’t true now.
Mai no longer wanted to disappear. He could be sure of that. She’d made up her mind to go back to work, and while she’d made it sound like a joke…
She’d asked:
“If I started shaking like a leaf and, through my sobs, said, ‘I don’t want to disappear!’ what would you do?”
She’d said:
“Not when I just got to know this cheeky young boy who makes me actually look forward to school.”
She clearly meant both these things.
“Even if she didn’t spread it herself, this kind of behavior is infectious,” Rio said. “Everyone’s expected to obey unwritten rules, and information can reach the other side of the world in seconds. The world we live in makes it happen.”
If he tried to argue the point, he was sure he could find something. Rio herself knew there were all kinds of holes in her explanation. But part of him understood that was the nature of the times they lived in. And the benefits of it…came with drawbacks.
“……”
So Sakuta couldn’t find it in himself to argue. Frankly, at this point, Sakuta didn’t see the point in discussing just how the phenomenon had spread. The reality in front of them was all that mattered.
&nb
sp; When he said nothing…
“Getting back on track…” Rio continued with the last part of her explanation. “If perception and observation are key, then I think it makes sense that sleep—where the consciousness is inactive—would be the trigger for losing these memories.”
While he was awake, he could still think about her. See her. But the moment he fell asleep, there was no way to be conscious of her. The ability to perceive her was naturally weakened. And while his consciousness was turned off, he would get infected by this anomaly.
“……”
He shivered, thinking about the night before. If he’d fallen asleep there, he might have already forgotten Mai…
He went home, chewing caffeinated gum. He also drank his first ever energy drink. A strange sweetness, clearly different from other sugary beverages. A bit of a medicinal aftertaste.
Sakuta hadn’t really hoped for much, but he felt the effects immediately. He was awake again, his mind clear.
“What are you drinking?” Kaede asked, seeing him throw the bottle in the recycling. It was already eleven. Kaede was normally in bed by now, and she looked really sleepy. Her eyes were half-closed. He was pretty sure the only reason she was still up and about was because he hadn’t come home the night before.
“I’m not sleeping till I make up for what I missed out on yesterday!” she’d said.
So he spent a bit of time talking to her. Mostly about books she’d read.
Kaede started out insisting she was going to stay up all night, but in the end, she and the cat were asleep on the couch before midnight.
Sakuta picked her up and carried her to her room. The interior was covered in books. The shelves were full, their contents spilling into stacks on the floor. He had to pick his way through them to the bed.
He laid her down, said, “Sleep tight,” pulled the covers over her, and turned out the light. He shut the door softly behind him.
Sakuta went to his room, tossing back a handful of mint tablets. His mouth and nose felt chilly.
He had something he had to take care of while his mind was still clear.
He sat down at his desk and opened a notebook. He wasn’t trying to study. Midterms started tomorrow, so he probably should have at least a little, but his grades were a secondary concern.
Right now, he had to prepare for the worst.
He tapped the end of his mechanical pencil twice and started writing.
Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai, Volume 1 Page 14