The tamagoyaki was slightly sweet. Akari brought it to her mouth without saying anything. Across the table, her father ate breakfast while holding the newspaper. An orthopedic surgeon, he always wore a suit by six-thirty in the morning and left the house by seven. That was the kind of person he was. Precise, courteous, never raising his voice. Her mother was the same. A former cram school instructor, she never let her emotions fluctuate greatly. Akari had grown up thinking that was "because they had refinement." But now, it felt a little different. "Didn't you say the mock exam results come out around next week?" Her father spoke without lifting his eyes from the newspaper. His voice was calm. Neither reproachful nor commanding. "Yeah, probably next week." Akari answered with a smile while pouring green tea from the teapot into her own cup. "Your teacher said it's better to move on the recommendation slots early." Her mother spoke while spreading butter on her toast. Her tone was also calm. Not critical, not anxious—just the manner of providing information. "Yeah. I'm thinking about it." She couldn't say she wasn't thinking about it. But what she was thinking about hadn't taken enough shape to put into words. So she chose words somewhere in between. Akari was good at that. Or rather—she thought she was. Her father took a bite of the tamagoyaki. There was a subtle pause. He said nothing. Her mother ate too. She also said nothing. "...Dad, the tamagoyaki—" Akari started to speak, then stopped. Salt and sugar. On the kitchen counter, placed side by side, two white containers. Their shapes were almost identical. Her father must have mixed them up. The sweet tamagoyaki had been made. But her father said nothing. Her mother said nothing. Akari said nothing either. The three of them continued eating the sweet tamagoyaki in silence. This is the culture of this household, Akari thought. Even when someone makes a mistake, they choose to swallow it quietly rather than point it out and disturb the peace. That's the kind of family they were. Not a bad family. Rather, calm and comfortable. And yet, something that had clung to her chest since last night seemed to grow heavier each time she looked at that quiet dining table. The image she'd seen at the cafe—Cafe Beyond Time and Space—hadn't peeled away yet. Her room ten years from now. Documents scattered on the desk. Eyes without vitality. A face as if she were simply carrying out choices made by someone else. Was that her? Was that the result of "doing well"? She still didn't understand why Lizette had answered nothing, even now that morning had come. Akari stood up with a smile and said "itadakimasu." Her father said "ittekimasu" without lifting his eyes from the newspaper. Her mother smiled and said "be careful." While putting on her shoes at the entrance, Akari thought: No one ever mentioned the sweet tamagoyaki. —— The classroom on an April morning looked slightly pale as it received the light from outside. The homeroom teacher was taking attendance in front of the blackboard. While listening to that voice, Akari moved her gaze a little more carefully than usual. Shun's seat was three rows from the window, fourth from the front. Diagonally behind her. She caught a glimpse of him. His uniform shirt was slightly wrinkled. His back was straight, but there was a quietness as if pulled down by gravity. His profile—whether he was looking out the window, at the blackboard, or at something distant—was impossible to judge. Akari lowered her gaze to the notebook in front of her. It wasn't that she wanted to "pretend yesterday didn't happen." But she didn't know how to handle it. Last night, Akari had tried several times this morning to "organize" what had happened at Cafe Beyond Time and Space, but it wasn't in a form that could be organized. Emotions aren't the kind of thing that can be put in a box and shelved. Shun had been there. He had quietly watched as Akari fell apart. He hadn't said anything special. But he hadn't left. That fact alone had settled into a place in her chest that felt strangely right, and she didn't know how to handle it. Class began. During Japanese class, the teacher wrote "Future Self" on the blackboard. It was an essay assignment. The instruction continued: "Imagine yourself ten years from now in concrete detail and write approximately five hundred characters." Akari's back stiffened for just a moment. She covered it with a deep breath. She ran her pen across her notebook. "Ten years from now." She couldn't write. If she did, she felt like she'd see it again. From the back of the classroom, someone said quietly, "Isn't this hard?" and the person next to them laughed. Akari laughed a moment later, "Right?" with a smile. The precision of that smile was high. In the seat diagonally in front, Shun was looking at the blackboard. His expression was unreadable. But the angle of his neck seemed to tilt slightly backward. Not so much turning toward Akari as quietly confirming her presence. It might have been her imagination. Akari wrote "Ten years from now" in her notebook and wrote nothing below it. —— The hallway after school was slightly cooler than the classroom. Shun was on his way back from Hozumi Oka Media Theque—a municipal library with 180,000 volumes located a three-minute walk from Hozumi Oka Station—and the coaster's crest had not left his mind since yesterday. A copper-colored, unfamiliar design. With help from librarian Tanabe, he'd spent about two hours searching through the heraldry database, local history shelves, and architectural decoration collections, but found no match. "If it's an old book, the staff at Gekiro in Kuresomedori might know more," Tanabe had said at the end. Those words still lingered in his ears. Gekiro—an antique bookstore on Kuresomedori. Maybe that's where he should look next. But honestly, Shun still couldn't quite put into words what he was trying to investigate. Did he want to research the coaster's crest? The cafe itself? Or—did he want to confirm why he had been drawn there in the first place? The coaster's texture was in his bag. He'd started carrying it in the inner pocket of his uniform. He didn't remember when he'd started doing that. When he turned the corner of the hallway, the door to the guidance counselor's office came into view. And Akari was standing in front of it. He recognized her immediately. Light chestnut-colored medium-length hair. Inward-curling ends. He could only see her back, but he recognized her immediately. Akari was standing in front of the door, holding something in her hand. Paper. Shun intuitively understood it was a new version of the career survey form. White paper. The abundance of blank space where nothing was written came through somehow, even from behind. Several students passed by further down the hallway. The voices of third-year students heading to club activities faded into the distance. Akari turned around. Their eyes met. For a moment, Akari's expression froze. Just for a moment, a fraction of a second. But Shun saw it. Then her smile returned. A bright, well-paced smile. Dimples appeared on both cheeks. "Oh, Shun. Library?" "Yes." "I see." There was a pause. The edge of the paper Akari was holding was slightly creased. She might have been gripping it unconsciously. "Sorry for showing you something weird yesterday." A bright voice. Bright eyes. But the color deep in her eyes was slightly different. Not an apology, but a defense. She was trying to cut off the conversation with the words "sorry." Shun felt it. Normally, Shun would respond with "Don't worry about it." That would be the words that least disturbed the air. Or he would nod silently. That's what he'd chosen to do. But today, different words came out of his mouth. He was a little surprised himself. He hadn't prepared them. It was just that he'd seen the thinness of the defense within Akari's "sorry"—and covering it with "don't worry about it" somehow felt wrong. "It wasn't weird." Just four words. No explanation, no comfort, no addition, nothing. Just that, falling into the hallway. Akari stopped for a moment. The muscles of her smile lost their strength for just a moment. Her eyebrows moved slightly. The shape of her mouth began to change into something other than a smile. Her emerald green eyes captured Shun directly— And then another expression covered it. "...Thank you." Short. She said only that, then looked away slightly. She looked at somewhere on the hallway floor. Three seconds of silence. From further down the hallway, the voices of students could be heard. Club activity commands. Someone's laughter. But for just those three seconds, they seemed to fade away. For Shun too, probably for Akari as well. Click—the door to the guidance counselor's office opened from inside. "Akari, did you come about the survey form?" Homeroom teacher Nishina appeared. Forty-two years old, glasses, soft voice but sharp eyes. He held a clipboard in his hand, with a large number of filled-out survey forms clipped to it. "Oh, yes! I'll go write it!" Akari raised her voice a notch. Bright and brisk. She said "sorry" and walked quickly away from the hallway. Her chestnut-colored medium-length hair swayed. Nishina said "then by Monday" as he closed the door. Shun was left alone in the hallway. It was quiet. In the slanted light coming through the windows of the after-school hallway, dust drifted slowly. Someone must have opened a window slightly; the smell of a spring evening drifted in. A smell unique to Hozumi Oka in the evening—a mixture of river and grass. He'd said "it wasn't weird." Even though the words had come from his own mouth, it still didn't feel quite real. But Akari's expression had changed—for just that moment, her forced smile had come off—that fact alone remained certain in his chest. Small, but certain. Shun adjusted the strap of his bag and began walking down the hallway. It was when he stepped out of the school entrance and felt the evening breeze that he realized: being able to choose his own words was a sensation he'd had for the first time. —— The front of Hozumi Oka Station at night had a different face than during the day. The neon sign of the station building "Hozumi Square" cast orange light, and waves of people heading home never ceased in the rotary. Light leaked through the convenience store glass, and the smell of fast food drifted on the wind. The usual smell of Hozumi Oka at night. The man in the suit stood in front of the convenience store at the north exit of the station. He appeared to be in his early thirties. Slender, with neatly arranged hair. He held a convenience store coffee in one hand and unfolded a piece of paper in the other. A map. Handwritten notes were written in the margins. His gaze alternated between the map and the direction of the south exit. No one paid attention. He blended in with that kind of scenery. The man took a small device from his pocket. Smaller than a smartphone, with no screen. Only a crude-looking terminal with a liquid crystal display showing numbers. He pressed a button, and numbers appeared on the display. The man pointed the terminal toward the south exit. The numbers increased. He walked a few steps south. The numbers rose further. The man checked the liquid crystal while raising his gaze. Beyond it lay the street leading to the old town—in the direction where Kuresomedori lay. The man put the terminal back in his pocket. He took out the notebook he'd removed and wrote hastily. A series of numbers and short symbols. He closed the notebook and took a sip of the convenience store coffee. His expression didn't change. The crowd at the station front maintained its usual bustle. People leaving. People going out. People walking while looking at their smartphones. No one knew what had been in this man's hands. Th