In the midst of this indistinct floating sensation, the comet shines in the night sky.
Without warning, it splits, and half of it comes plummeting down.
The meteorite strikes a village in the mountains. Many people die. A lake forms, and the village is destroyed.
Time passes, and another village grows up around the lake. The lake provides fish, and the heavenly iron provides wealth. The village prospers. Ages pass, and the comet arrives again. Once again, the star falls. Once again, people die.
This has happened twice since mankind settled on these islands.
People tried to remember it. They tried to pass on the knowledge to future generations, using methods that would last longer than letters. The comet as a dragon. The comet as braided cords. The fracturing comet as the gestures of a dance.
Once again, ages pass.
I hear a baby crying.
“Your name is Mitsuha.”
A mother’s gentle voice.
Then, with a brutal sensation, the umbilical cord is cut.
Even though we were all two who lived as one in the beginning, even though we were all connected, so humans are severed from the cord and fall into this life.
“You’re both your dad’s treasures.”
“You’re a big sister now, sweetheart.”
A young couple converses. Before long, Mitsuha’s little sister is born. As if in exchange for that joy, her mother falls ill.
“When is Mommy comin’ back from the hospital?”
The little sister’s question is innocent, but the older sister knows their mother is never coming back. Everyone dies. It’s inevitable, but it isn’t easy to accept.
“They couldn’t save her!”
The father grieves deeply. He has never loved anyone as much as he loved his wife, and he never will again. It’s both a blessing and a curse that, as they grow, his daughters look more and more like their mother.
“Taking over the shrine won’t do any—”
“What are you saying?! Why do you think we formally adopted you when you married?!”
The father and grandmother quarrel more every day.
“I loved Futaba, not Miyamizu Shrine.”
“Get out!”
Both the father and the grandmother are too old to change their priorities. The father can’t take it, and he leaves.
“Mitsuha, Yotsuha. From now on, you’ll be with your gran all the time.”
In a house that echoes with the click of ball-weights, the three women begin their life together.
The days are peaceful enough. Even so, the feeling that her father has abandoned her becomes an indelible stain inside Mitsuha.
These are…
…Mitsuha’s memories?
As if I’m being swept along helplessly by a storm-swollen torrent, I experience Mitsuha’s time.
Then come the days I already know, the swapped days.
Seen through Mitsuha’s eyes, Tokyo shines like an exotic foreign country. Even though we share the same senses, it’s as if we’re seeing completely different worlds.
“Lucky…”
I hear Mitsuha murmur.
“I bet they’re together right about now.”
It’s the day of my date with Okudera-senpai.
“I’m goin’ to Tokyo for a bit,” she tells her little sister.
Tokyo?
That night, Mitsuha opens the sliding door to her grandmother’s room.
“Gran, can I ask a favor…?”
Mitsuha’s long hair is chopped short. She isn’t the Mitsuha I know anymore.
“They say it’ll look brightest tonight.”
Teshigawara and the others invite her out. Let’s go watch the comet.
Mitsuha, don’t! I scream.
From behind the mirror. In the peal of the wind chimes. As the wind that stirs her hair.
Mitsuha, no, you can’t go there!
Run! Get out of town before the comet falls!
But my voice doesn’t reach her. She doesn’t notice me.
On the night of the festival, Mitsuha and her friends look up at the comet, now closer than the moon.
The comet suddenly splits, and its shards shine, becoming countless shooting stars. One massive fragment of rock becomes a meteor and begins to fall.
Even then, gazing at it, her only thought is, It’s beautiful.
Mitsuha, run!
I scream at the top of my lungs.
Mitsuha, run, please run! Mitsuha, Mitsuha, Mitsuha!
And the star falls.
Chapter Six
Reenactment
My eyes open.
In that instant, I know for sure.
I bolt upright, looking down at my body. Slim fingers. Familiar pajamas. The swell of breasts.
“It’s Mitsuha…”
The words slip out. This voice, too. This narrow throat. Her blood, her flesh, her bones, her skin. Everything about Mitsuha is warm and right here.
“…She’s alive…!”
I wrap my arms around my body, hugging myself. Tears spill over. Plump teardrops fall relentlessly from Mitsuha’s eyes, as though a faucet has broken. Their heat brings its own joy, and I cry harder and harder. Inside my ribs, my heart leaps. I bend my knees, pressing my cheeks against the smooth kneecaps. I curl up as small as I can, wanting to hug her entire body.
Mitsuha.
Mitsuha, Mitsuha.
It’s a miracle—one that might have been denied me forever, one that slipped through every possibility to be here.
“Sis, what’re you doin’?”
I raise my head at the sound of the voice. Yotsuha’s standing there in the open doorway.
“Oh… Little sister…,” I mutter, sobs strangling my words. Yotsuha’s still alive, too. She’s staring, dazed, at her older sister, who’s all tear-stained and snotty and feeling herself up.
“Yotsuhaaaaa!”
I rush at her, driven by an urge to scoop her up. “Yeep!” she gasps, slamming the sliding door in my face.
“Gran! Hey, Gran!” she yells, and I hear footsteps running down the stairs. “Sis finally cracked! She’s completely busted!”
Her voice echoes from downstairs as she runs wailing to her grandma.
…What a rude little girl. And after I crossed space and time to save this town!
The NHK lady is yapping cheerfully. I’ve just changed into my school uniform and come downstairs. It’s been a while since my skirt-clad lower body felt this vulnerable, and in order to shake the sensation, I’m standing tall and tough, glaring at the TV.
“Comet Tiamat has now been visible to the naked eye for about a week. It will be closest to Earth at approximately seven forty this evening, which is when it’s expected to be brightest as well. The astronomy spectacular that only comes once every twelve centuries has reached its climax, and various festivities will be held all around the…”
“Tonight! There’s still time!” I mutter. I’m trembling with nerves and excitement.
“Good mornin’, Mitsuha. Yotsuha went on ahead today.”
I turn around, and the old lady’s standing there.
“Grandma! You’re looking good!” Without thinking, I run over to her. She has a teapot on a tray, probably planning to enjoy some tea in the living room.
“Huh? …My. You’re…”
She pulls down her reading glasses and takes a good look at my face. Her eyes narrow softly.
“You aren’t Mitsuha, are you?”
“Wha…?” How?! I feel guilty, as if some crime I knew would never come to light has been exposed. Hang on, though. This might make things easier.
“Grandma… You knew?”
There’s no particular change in the old lady’s expression. As she speaks, she lowers herself into a legless chair.
“No. But watchin’ you lately reminded me. When I was a girl, I had some strange dreams myself.”
Hear that?! That’s awesome—this oughta be a quick conversation, then. Just what I’d expect from a Japanese
folktale family. I join her at the table, and the old lady fills a cup for me, too. Sipping her tea, she continues her story.
“They were very odd dreams. More than dreams, really. They were another life. I became a boy I didn’t know in a town I’d never seen before.”
I swallow hard. Exactly like us…
“But one day, they ended, just like that. All I remember now is that I had strange dreams. My memories of who I became in them disappeared completely.”
“Disappeared…”
My heart skips a beat, as if I’ve been told the name of a disease I’m fated to get. She’s right. For a little while, I forgot Mitsuha’s name. I tried to convince myself that it was all a delusion. The old lady’s wrinkled face takes on a tinge of loneliness.
“So treasure who you are now and the things you’re seein’. No matter how special it is, a dream’s a dream. It’ll disappear for sure someday, once you wake. We all had a time like that, you know: my mother, myself, and your mother.”
“That’s… What if…?!”
Abruptly, it hits me. This might be a role passed down through the Miyamizu family: the ability to communicate with someone living a few years in the future to escape the disaster that strikes every twelve hundred years. A shrine maiden’s role. Something the Miyamizu bloodline acquired at some point…a warning system inherited across generations.
“Maybe the Miyamizus’ dreams were all for today!”
I look the old lady straight in the eye, speaking firmly. “Grandma, listen.”
She raises her head. From her expression, I can’t tell how she’ll take what I’m about to say.
“Tonight, a meteorite will strike the town of Itomori, and everyone will die.”
This time, the old lady’s eyebrows knit in unmistakable doubt.
“Nobody’d believe hooey like that.” That old broad says some surprisingly normal stuff.
I run down the hill to the high school, silently brooding to myself.
She believes the swapping dreams but not the meteorite strike. What sort of sense of balance does she have, anyway?
I’m really late, and there’s almost nobody around. The calls of the copper pheasants echo, piichik paachik, and it’s just another peaceful morning in town. We’ll have to do it ourselves, I think.
“There’s no way I’m letting anybody die!”
I shout it out loud, emphatically, as if hammering the resolution into my own mind. I run even faster. There’s not even half a day left until that meteor comes down.
“Mitsuha, wha…? Y-your hair…!”
“Girl, that hair! What on earth?!”
The second I enter the classroom, Teshigawara and Saya stare at my (Mitsuha’s) face, dumbfounded.
“Oh yeah, the hair? It was way better before, right?”
As I speak, I flip the shoulder-length bob away from the back of my neck. Come to think of it, Mitsuha lopped off most of that long hair of hers at some point, didn’t she? I prefer long black hair, so I’m not a fan of this… No, that’s not what’s important now!
“Never mind that!”
Teshigawara’s mouth is hanging open so wide, I can practically hear the sound effect for shock. Saya’s examining me searchingly. I look back and forth between them.
“If nothing changes, everyone’s gonna die tonight!”
The hum in the classroom stops dead. All our classmates’ eyes are on me.
“H-hold it, Mitsuha. What’re you sayin’?!”
Saya hastily stands up, and Teshigawara grabs my arm and pulls me. As they drag me out of the classroom, my head finally cools down a bit. I guess it’s only natural that they wouldn’t believe me. Maybe it’s like the old lady said, and it’s unreasonable to expect people to buy something like this out of the blue. I was so excited about swapping for the first time in ages that I convinced myself things would just work out somehow.
Hmm. This might be tougher than I expected.
…Or so I thought, but as far as Teshigawara was concerned, that was wasted worry.
“Mitsuha, is that for real?”
“Yes, it’s for real! Tonight, Comet Tiamat is going to split and turn into a meteorite, and it’s hugely likely it’s gonna hit this town. I can’t reveal my sources, but I got the information through a reliable channel.”
“That’s…a full-on emergency!”
“C’mon, Tesshi, what’re you lookin’ so serious for? Are you really that dumb?”
Naturally, Saya isn’t having any of it.
“What’s this source of yours, anyway? The CIA? NASA? What’re you goin’ on about? ‘Reliable channels’? You pretendin’ you’re a spy now? Honestly, Mitsuha, what’s the matter with you?!”
She couldn’t be more sensible. Getting desperate, I dump all the money out of Mitsuha’s wallet.
“Saya, please! I’ll pay, so take this and go buy whatever you want! Then at least listen to what I’ve got to say!”
I’m begging, and my expression is dead serious. Startled, Saya takes a long, hard look at me.
“But you’re always tight with your money… You’re really goin’ that far?”
Huh? She is? But she burned through my money like crazy!
Saya sighs, as if she’s resigned herself. “…I guess I’ll have to, then. None of this makes any sense, but fine, I’ll at least listen. Tesshi, gimme the key to your bike.” She sets off for the main entrance, grumbling, “This ain’t enough for more than a couple cheap sweets.”
Good. It looks like the amount wasn’t enough, but she believes I’m serious now.
“I’m goin’ to the convenience store. Tesshi, you keep a close eye on Mitsuha. She ain’t quite right.”
And so Teshigawara and I sneak into a room in the club building nobody uses anymore and put together an evacuation plan for the town.
The goal is to get all 188 families—about five hundred people—out of the danger zone before the meteorite falls. The first thing we think of is broadcasting an evacuation order.
After we run through the inevitable ridiculous ideas—We’ll take over the prime minister’s official residence! Or the Diet Building! Or the NHK Shibuya Broadcasting Center, or at least the NHK Gifu-Takayama branch office!—we start talking about how not everybody in town will be at home with their TVs or radios on and how even more people will be out and about because of the autumn festival tonight. Then we fall silent, thinking.
“…The disaster alert system!” Teshigawara shouts suddenly.
“Disaster alert system?”
“Hunh? Don’t go tellin’ me you don’t know. There are speakers all over town, remember?”
“Oh… That thing that starts talking out of the blue every morning and evening? Who was born, who’s having a funeral, that sort of thing?”
“Yeah. You can hear that all over town for sure, whether you’re inside or out. If we send the order over that…!”
“Huh? But, uh…how? That comes from the town hall, doesn’t it? Would they let us broadcast stuff if we asked?”
“Pssh. No.”
“Then what do we do? Hijack Town Hall? I mean, I guess we’d have a better shot at that than at taking over NHK, but…”
“Heh-heh-heh.” With a creepy smile, Teshigawara types something into his phone. Geez, this guy looks happy.
“We can do this!”
He holds out his phone to me.
Superimposed frequencies, it reads, and below is an explanation.
“Wha…? Is this for real?”
Teshigawara flares his nostrils and nods proudly.
“Uh, Tesshi… Why do you even know stuff like this?”
“Well, I always fantasize before I fall asleep, y’know? About destroyin’ the town, overthrowin’ the school, stuff like that. Doesn’t everybody?”
“Huh…?” That weirds me out a bit. But, no—this is…
“This is awesome, Tesshi! It just might work!”
Without thinking, I throw an arm around Teshigawara’s shoulders.
�
��H-hey, don’t get too close!”
“Huh?”
Whoa. Even his ears are red.
“What’s this? Tesshi, are you embarrassed?”
I look up into Teshigawara’s face from below, grinning at him. Well, well, Mitsuha, you’re not to be taken lightly, are you? C’mon, c’mon! I press my body against him some more. Here you go—have a freebie! We’re sitting side by side on an old sofa, and Tesshi’s already right by the wall, so he’s got nowhere to run.
“Hey, Mitsuha, cut it out!”
Teshigawara resists, big body squirming. He’s a guy, for sure… Well, so am I. Then, abruptly, Teshigawara jumps up, climbing onto the back of the sofa, and yells, “I told you, knock it off! A single girl your age—that ain’t proper!”
“Ha…”
Even his buzzed scalp is red. He’s sweating bullets, and his eyes look almost teary.
“Ha, ha-ha-ha! Tesshi, you’re such a…!”
In spite of myself, I crack up laughing.
He’s a really good guy, and I’m positive I can count on him.
I thought of him as a friend before, but I’d like to meet him and the others for real and talk to them as a guy soon. Me and Mitsuha and Teshigawara and Saya. If Tsukasa and Takagi and Okudera-senpai were there, too, I know it’d be a blast.
“Sorry, Tesshi. I was just so happy you believed me…” I’m biting back laughter, and Teshigawara’s sulking. “Will you help me think up the rest of the evacuation plan?”
I smile at him. Tesshi’s face is still red, but even so, he nods seriously.
Once this is over, I’ll come see this guy, too, I think, feeling a little bit dazzled.
“A-a-a…a bomb?!”
Saya yells. She’s eating a mini shortcake from a clear plastic wrapper.
“Technically, they’re called water-gel explosives. They’re kinda like dynamite,” Teshigawara tells her, sounding proud. He’s crunching away on potato chips, and I’m noshing on chocolate drops. Saya bought a ton of convenience-store food and spread it all over the desk, so it sort of feels like we’re having a party.
Teshigawara and I are standing behind a map, outlining our carefully engineered evacuation plan to Saya. I almost want to play some energetic music to set the stage. Something percussive and a bit unhinged—something that sounds like a strategy meeting.
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