“Leave it to me!” Takagi flashes a breezy thumbs-up in the video. “Buy me a meal, though.”
“Every single friggin’ one of you…,” I mutter sourly.
Asking Tsukasa was a mistake. I was planning to skip school today and spend the weekend—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday—in Hida. I went to Tsukasa yesterday and begged him for help, telling him that something had come up and I absolutely had to go see a friend, asking him to not ask questions and just let me use him as an excuse while I was gone.
“I came because I was worried about you,” Tsukasa says without a hint of penitence. “I couldn’t just leave you alone, could I? What are you gonna do if it turns out to be a badger game?”
“A badger what?”
What’s he talking about? My eyebrows knit, and Okudera-senpai, who’s sitting on Tsukasa’s opposite side, leans in.
“You’re going to see a friend you met online, aren’t you, Taki?”
“Huh? No, the online thing was just an excuse, and, uh…” Yesterday, Tsukasa was really persistent about asking who I was visiting, so I vagued things up and told him it was somebody I’d met on a social networking site.
Tsukasa gravely informs Okudera-senpai, “Frankly, I suspect it’s a dating site.”
I nearly do a spit take.
“It is not!”
“You’ve seemed really off lately, you know.” Looking concerned, Tsukasa extends a box of Pocky to me. “We’ll hang back and watch from a distance.”
“What am I, a grade-schooler?!” I demand, lashing out.
Okudera-senpai watches me knowingly. She’s absolutely got the wrong idea about this, too.
This is gonna be one rough trip, I think dismally.
“Approaching Nagoya,” a lazy voice announces over the train’s loudspeaker.
The exchanges with Mitsuha started out of the blue one day and ended just as suddenly. No matter how much thought I gave it, I couldn’t figure out why. After several weeks, it got harder to shake the suspicion they might just have been a string of extremely vivid dreams.
I’ve got proof, though. I can’t believe that the journal entries Mitsuha left on my phone came out of my own head. That date with Okudera-senpai could never have happened if I’d been myself. I’m convinced Mitsuha’s a real girl. Her body heat, her pulse, the way she breathes, her voice, the red light dawning over her closed eyes, the vibrant sounds in her ears—I felt all of that myself. Experiencing her life was so intense, it convinced me, If she isn’t alive, then nothing is. Mitsuha is real.
Because of that, the abrupt way it ended is making me oddly uneasy. Something might have happened to her. Maybe she came down with a fever. Maybe there was some sort of accident. Even if I’m overthinking things, at the very least, she’s bound to be worried about the situation, too. That’s why I decided to go see her in person. But…
“…Excuse me? You don’t actually know where she is?”
We’re in a four-person box seat on the express train Hida. Okudera-senpai sounds incredulous, stuffing her face with a box lunch she picked up at the station.
“…Right.”
“Your only clue is what the town looks like? You can’t even contact this girl? Are you kidding me?!”
I didn’t ask her to come with me. How come I’m getting blamed? I look at Tsukasa, willing him to say something. He does, swallowing a bite of miso cutlet.
“You are an abysmal tour planner.”
“This isn’t a tour!”
I lose it for a second. These two think they’re on some kind of field trip. I can read their expressions clearly. There’s just no help for this child. Why are they acting all superior, anyway?
“Well, never mind,” Okudera-senpai says. Unexpectedly, she smiles, throwing out her chest. “Don’t you worry, Taki. We’ll help you look.”
“Eeeee, it’s so cuuuute! Taki, look at this, looook!”
At the local station we finally reached after noon, Okudera-senpai gushes over the area’s laid-back mascot. It’s a full-body plush cow costume wearing a station employee cap. The camera on Tsukasa’s phone fires off click after click in the little terminal.
“You guys are in the way.”
As I glare at the local map posted in the station, I’m even more convinced that these two are going to be no help whatsoever. I’ll just have to find her myself.
The plan goes like this:
Since I don’t know exactly where Mitsuha’s town is, we’ll take the train to a spot that seems close to the scenery in my memory. From that point, all we’ll have to go on will be the landscape sketches I drew. We’ll go around showing the drawings to residents, asking if anyone recognizes them, slowly working our way north along the local line. There’s a railroad crossing in one of the scenes I remember, so following the tracks should work.
It’s a really vague approach, to the point where I can’t really call it a “plan” at all, but I couldn’t think of any other way. Besides, there can’t be that many towns built around lakes. I’m convinced I’ll probably find some kind of hint by tonight, though I’ve got no grounds for thinking that.
Psyching myself up, I take a confident first step, heading out to talk to the driver of the lone taxi parked outside the station.
“…This isn’t gonna work…”
I’m slumped at a bus stop, my head drooping.
All the confidence I had when we started asking around has completely caved.
After that first taxi driver gave me a blunt “N-nope, dunno,” we tried police boxes, convenience stores, souvenir shops, guest houses, diners, and everyone from farmers to grade-school kids, oblivious to how we probably looked, but our results were solidly negative. The fact that there was only one local train every two hours made it hard for us to get around, so we thought we’d try asking people on the bus. We boarded in high spirits but were the only passengers. I didn’t even feel like asking the driver at that point, and the last stop was way out in the middle of nowhere, with no houses anywhere in sight. The whole time, Tsukasa and Okudera-senpai cheerfully made the most of their day trip, playing word games, cards, phone games, variations on rock-paper-scissors, and eating snacks. Eventually, they ended up on either side of me on the bus, leaning against my shoulders and dozing peacefully.
Now, as the two of them guzzle cola in front of the bus stop, I sigh. They hear it and react together.
“Oh, come on, Taki! You’re giving up already?!”
“What about all our hard work?!”
I heave another sigh, so deep it almost brings my lungs up with it. Okudera-senpai’s wearing oddly gung-ho clothes meant for serious hiking. In contrast, Tsukasa’s in chinos like he’s just strolling around the neighborhood. At this point, both outfits really irritate me.
“You guys have been zero help…”
They both look innocent, as if to say, Oh, really?
“I’ll have a Takayama ramen.”
“One Takayama ramen here.”
“Uh, okay, then I’ll have the same, too.”
“You betcha. Three ramen!” says the middle-aged lady cheerily.
On our fruitless way to the next (abnormally distant) station, we found a ramen shop that was miraculously open and made a beeline inside. When the lady wearing a triangular kerchief told us, “C’mon in,” her smile seemed a beacon, not unlike the appearance of a long-awaited search party when you’re lost.
The ramen’s good, too. Contrary to its name, it’s perfectly ordinary ramen (I thought it might have Hida beef on top, but it was regular braised pork), but as soon as I eat the noodles and veggies, I can feel my body recharging. After draining the soup bowl dry and drinking two cups of water, I finally take a breather.
“Do you think we’ll be able to get back to Tokyo today?” I ask Tsukasa.
“Hmm… I don’t know. We may be cutting it close. Want me to check?”
Tsukasa apparently didn’t expect this but nevertheless pulls out his phone and starts looking up how to get home.
“Thanks,” I tell
him.
“Taki, you’re sure that’s all right?” Okudera-senpai asks.
She’s across the table from me and hasn’t finished eating yet. I’m not immediately sure how to answer, so I look out the window. The sun’s just barely caught on the edge of the mountains, shining peacefully over the fields along the prefectural highway.
“I can’t explain it, but it’s starting to feel like I’m on the wrong track,” I mutter, half to myself. It might be better to go back to Tokyo and rework my strategy. It would be one thing if I had photos, but expecting to find the town with sketches like these might have been asking too much. At least, that’s how it starts to seem when I pick up my sketchbook and gaze at it. It’s a completely ordinary country town, with the sort of houses you see everywhere scattered around a round lake. Even though it felt so solid to me when I finished drawing it, it looks like an anonymous, mediocre landscape now.
“That’s old Itomori, ain’t it?”
“Huh?” I turn around and see the lady’s apron. She’s pouring water into my empty cup.
“Did you draw that, son? Say, can I have a look?” She takes the sketchbook from me. “This is a real good picture. Hon, c’mere a sec!”
The woman shouts back toward the kitchen. The three of us watch her, mouths agape.
The ramen shop owner comes out of the kitchen and considers the sketch, smiling a little. “Oh, yeah. That was Itomori, for sure. Takes me back…”
“My man’s from Itomori, you see.”
Itomori?
Suddenly, I remember. I start up out of my chair.
“Itomori… Yeah, Itomori! Of course, why couldn’t I remember that? It’s Itomori! It’s near here, isn’t it?!”
The couple looks mystified, exchanging perplexed glances. The man opens his mouth.
“Kid… You know about Itomori, don’t you? That’s where—”
Tsukasa interrupts loudly. “Itomori?! Taki, don’t tell me—”
“What, wait—? You mean, the one where the comet…?!”
Even Okudera-senpai speaks up, eyes wide.
“Huh……?”
I don’t understand what’s going on and look around at the others. They’re all watching me dubiously. The shadow of something that’s been trying to surface in my mind this whole time rustles stealthily, growing more and more ominous.
The cry of a kite trails through the atmosphere, lonely enough to freeze the blood.
A row of DO NOT ENTER barricades extends as far as the eye can see, throwing long shadows over the cracked asphalt.
A sign with vines tangled around it reads, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE DISASTER COUNTERMEASURES BASIC ACT, THIS AREA IS OFF-LIMITS. KEEP OUT.—RECONSTRUCTION AGENCY.
And below me lies Itomori, devastated by some unimaginable force and mostly swallowed up by the lake.
“…Is this really the place?”
Okudera-senpai walks up behind me, her voice trembling. Without waiting for me to respond, Tsukasa answers, sounding desperately cheerful.
“It can’t be! Like I’ve been saying, Taki’s confused.”
“…This is it.”
I tear my eyes away from the ruins below me, scanning my surroundings.
“It isn’t just the town. I remember this schoolyard, the mountains around us, the high school… I remember all of it perfectly!”
I have to shout the words to convince myself. Behind us is the school building, black and sooty, with some of its windows broken. We’re standing on the grounds of Itomori High School, looking out across the lake.
“So you’re saying this is the town you were looking for? The one where your friend online lives?” Tsukasa shouts, that parched smile still clinging to his voice.
“That’s not even possible! That disaster was three years ago. Hundreds of people died! You remember it, right, Taki?!”
At that, I finally turn toward Tsukasa.
“…Died?”
I meant to look at his face, but my gaze goes right through him, then through the high school behind him, only to dissipate into the distance. I know I must be looking at something, but there’s nothing there.
“Three years ago…she died?”
Abruptly, I remember.
The comet I saw over Tokyo three years earlier. Countless shooting stars falling through the western sky. I thought it was beautiful, like something out of a dream. I got all excited about it.
That’s when she died?
Don’t.
I can’t acknowledge that.
I search for words. For proof.
“That can’t be true… I mean, look, I’ve got the journal entries she wrote.”
I retrieve my phone out of my pocket. Spurred on by the inane fear that the battery will die forever if I take too long, I flip through it in a panic and pull up Mitsuha’s journal entries. They’re really there.
“…!”
I rub my eyes, hard. For a moment, the letters seemed to writhe.
“Wha…?”
First one letter, then another.
The words Mitsuha wrote begin dissolving into meaningless symbols. Before long, the text flickers like a candle flame, and then it’s gone. One by one, her entries disappear entirely. It’s as though an invisible man is holding down DELETE. As I watch, all her sentences vanish.
“Why…?” I ask very quietly.
The kite’s cry echoes again, high and distant.
Three years ago in October, right around this time of year, Tiamat, a comet with a solar orbital period of twelve hundred years, made its closest approach to Earth. It was a satellite on a grand scale; its super-long orbital period put Halley’s Comet’s seventy-six to shame, and it had an orbital radius of 10.4 billion miles. Not only that, but it was projected to pass within roughly seventy-five thousand miles of Earth—closer than the moon. The tail of this shining blue comet would stream across the dome of the night sky for the first time in twelve hundred years. The mood of the entire world was festive as it welcomed Comet Tiamat.
Until the very moment it happened, no one anticipated that the comet’s nucleus would split in Earth’s vicinity. Or that a rocky mass about 130 feet in diameter was buried in its icy core. The comet fragment became a meteorite, plummeting to Earth at the devastating speed of almost twenty miles per second. Tragically, it struck Japan—a residential area called Itomori.
The town happened to be holding its autumn festival that day. The collision occurred at 8:42 PM. The point of impact was near Miyamizu Shrine, which must have been lined with festival stalls and teeming with people.
The meteorite instantly destroyed a wide area, centered on the shrine. The destruction wasn’t limited to houses and the forest. The impact gouged a huge hole in the ground, forming a crater nearly half a mile across. One second later, magnitude 4.8 tremors rocked locations three miles away. Fifteen seconds later, the blast wind tore through, inflicting enormous damage on the greater part of the town. The final death toll was more than five hundred, a third of the town’s population. Itomori became the site of the worst meteorite disaster in human history.
Since the crater had formed right beside Itomori Lake, water rushed in, ultimately creating a gourd-shaped body of water, New Itomori Lake.
Damage to the southern side of the town was relatively light, but even the thousand or so residents who escaped injury moved away, one after another. In less than a year, the town was having trouble functioning as a municipality. Fourteen months after the meteorite fell, for all intents and purposes, Itomori was gone.
—These are textbook facts, and of course, I knew most of them already. Three years ago, I was in middle school. I remember actually watching Comet Tiamat from a hill in my neighborhood.
…But that’s weird.
It doesn’t make sense.
I lived in Itomori as Mitsuha, several times, right up until last month.
That means that what I saw, the place where she lived, wasn’t Itomori.
The comet and my swapping with Mitsuha had nothing to d
o with each other.
It’d be normal to think that. It’s what I want to think.
However, paging through books in this city library near Itomori, I’m hopelessly confused. For a while now, in the deepest corner of my mind, someone’s been whispering, This is where you were.
Vanished Itomori—Complete Records
Itomori—The Village That Sank in a Night
The Tragedy of Comet Tiamat
I flip through tome after tome with titles like these. The photos of bygone days in Itomori unmistakably show places I’ve been. This is the grade school Yotsuha goes to. Miyamizu Shrine is where their grandma is the chief priestess. This pointlessly big parking lot, the two snack bars right next to each other, the convenience store that looks like a barn, the little railroad crossing on the mountain road, and of course Itomori High School… At this point, I recognize all of them clearly. Seeing those ruined streets with my own eyes has sharpened my memories.
It’s hard to breathe. My heart is struggling, beating irregularly, and refuses to calm down.
It feels as though the vivid photos are silently absorbing the air and any sense of reality.
Itomori High—Final Sports Festival
The photo above the caption shows high schoolers in the middle of a three-legged race. The pair on the end seems familiar. One has straight-cut bangs and braids. The other girl’s hair is bound up with an orange cord.
The air gets even thinner.
I feel as though hot blood is oozing down the back of my neck, but when I wipe it away with my hand, it’s transparent sweat.
“—Taki.”
I look up. Tsukasa and Okudera-senpai are standing there. They hand me a single book. Foil letters in a weighty font are stamped on its thick cover:
Itomori Comet Disaster List and Catalog of Victims
I turn the pages. The victims’ names and addresses are given by district. I run my finger down them. I keep turning pages. Finally, my finger stops on names I recognize.
Teshigawara, Katsuhiko (17)
Natori, Sayaka (17)
“Teshigawara and Saya…”
As I murmur, I hear Tsukasa and Okudera-senpai suck in their breath.
Then I find the names that prove it all.
your name. Page 7