The outline of the man standing in the shadow of the latticed window of the Kaido-do remained behind Shun's eyelids. That man with the terminal. The sound of leather shoes echoing on the stone pavement. The sensation of the air in Kuresomedori changing, just for a moment. The next morning, Shun was changing into his indoor shoes at the entrance of Hozumi-ga-oka High School, trying to organize what had happened last night. He tried to organize it, but it wasn't working. He had information. He had facts. But something felt missing, and he couldn't figure out what that missing piece was. As he walked down the hallway, it was a bit noisy in front of the guidance counselor's office. His homeroom teacher, Masayo Nishina, was dealing with a visitor with a troubled expression. It was a man in a suit with a calm demeanor. He was thin, his hair was neat, and he was saying something while offering a business card. In his hand was a folded map. Shun's eyes lingered there for just a moment. "Kuresomedori—Redevelopment Candidate District" The printed text was barely visible. Just one second. That was all the time it took, but he could definitely read those characters. The direction the man's terminal had been pointing last night, the red section on the map, and the school hallway connected in his head with strange lines. (It's come this far.) It felt like the air pressure had changed. Something he thought was far away had suddenly come to his feet. Shun returned to the classroom. A single flyer was placed on his desk. It had been distributed to every student's desk in the class in the form of a school-wide notice. "Falc Advisory LLC—Guidance for Residents on Regional Redevelopment Briefing Session" The moment he saw the company name, Shun's hand stopped. The flyer had a Chiyoda Ward address and listed the business type as consulting. On the surface, it looked like just a regional development support company. But Shun recognized the name. It was the name Lizette had mentioned last night. "Do you know about this?" Before he knew it, Akari was leaning in beside him. Her pale chestnut-colored medium-length hair swayed at her shoulders, and her bright emerald-green eyes were directed at the flyer. "I do." That was all he answered. After a brief pause, Akari spoke in a low voice. "...So do I." A small silence fell between the two of them. The other students in the class glanced at the flyer for a moment, and most of them pushed it to the edge of their desks. No one knew what it meant. That fact felt strangely heavy. —— When lunch break came, Aki declared, "Leave it to me." Aki, who had been duplicating the key to the rooftop, gathered the three of them on the rooftop and pulled out a folded piece of paper from his bag. It was covered in notes. "Falc Advisory LLC. Registered in Chiyoda Ward. It's listed as a consulting business, but I can't figure out what they actually do. They submitted a redevelopment permission application to city hall a week ago. And then the company president is——I can't read the characters." "Can't read them?" "My handwriting got too messy." "What's that about?" "It happens." Akari let out a small sigh. Shun quietly took the notes and spread them on the edge of the water tank he was using as a desk. First line. Second line. Third line. While classifying facts, speculation, and other information in his head, he rewrote them. Aki's information was scattered, but the material itself was complete. The priorities and chronology were jumbled, but if he arranged each piece in order, it would take shape. "I'll organize this." "But I gathered that information?" He shot back immediately. Shun looked up and simply said "Yes" before continuing his work. "You know, Shun is really competent at times like this." Akari murmured with admiration. "But I gathered that information?" "I already heard that." "No, I just wanted to say it again." Akari laughed softly. A small laugh, with dimples forming on both her cheeks. That one exchange lightened the air on the rooftop for just a beat. Eventually, Shun read the notes aloud. "What we know as fact: Falc Advisory LLC is a consulting company registered in Chiyoda Ward that submitted a redevelopment permission application to Hozumi-ga-oka City Hall a week ago. The application area includes the Kuresomedori district. Before a decision is made, a briefing session for landowners is mandatory. The person who came to school this morning was investigating the residential areas of the students." The laughter of all three completely stopped. "Kuresomedori is where Le Double is..." "Yes." The wind blew across the rooftop. The sky was clear, and the light of late autumn came in low. Hozumi-ga-oka Ridge was visible in the distance. Yet it felt as if only the area around the three of them had grown cold. The air that had been filled with laughter from Aki's antics just moments before became heavy with that contrast. The same three people in the same place, yet the quality of the space had changed. —— After school, when the three of them visited Le Double, Lizette was already waiting with hot water prepared for four cups. The low rotating sound of the coffee mill echoed. The seven clocks on the wall each ticked at different speeds. The sound of the second hands overlapping out of sync—a sound unique to this place. Lantern-style indirect lighting softly illuminated the wood grain of the counter. "All three of you today?" Lizette, with her flax-colored long hair loosely tied back and wearing a white blouse and apron, turned her sharp jade-green eyes toward the three. Her gaze was calm, but there was something in its depths that seemed to measure something. "I want to talk about Falc Advisory." Lizette's expression didn't change. She wasn't surprised. She made only one movement. Among the seven clocks on the wall, she looked up at the oldest one—the clock at the far left with a faded face—just once. Then she began to speak quietly. "It was 1973." There was little inflection in her voice. But that very lack of inflection sounded like the careful handling of something that had been stored deep away for a long time. "Genichiro Doshima—an applied physicist—came to this place. He was the first human to physically measure the existence of chronolayer liquid—the liquid of possibility that seeps from the paths a person did not choose, the substance that dwells in this café's coffee. At the time, he was pursuing traces of quantum choice branching in his university laboratory, and he discovered that those traces gathered strongly in this place, so he came here." Shun listened quietly. Aki, unusually, didn't interrupt. "Doshima believed that chronolayer liquid could be used for human decision-making. As a tool to discern which choice was optimal. I refused him. He left. In 1981, he disappeared." "Disappeared." He repeated it shortly. Lizette neither confirmed nor denied it. She simply continued. "His successors are Chrono Falx—a group that means 'the scythe of time' in Latin, those who inherited Doshima's will—and they continue to move even now. Doshima's disciples reorganized the group in 2002 and continue their activities under the front name of Falc Advisory LLC. While displaying the sign of a consulting business, they are actually pursuing the extraction and use of chronolayer liquid. Their purpose hasn't changed. They desperately want to obtain the seven doors of this café—each housing a different type of choice possibility, with extraction efficiency of chronolayer liquid varying by door." After finishing, Lizette fell silent for a moment. It wasn't an explanation. It was the quality of something a being who had lived through long years had taken from the depths of her memory and laid before the three of them. In Shun, the memory of last night and the words of now quietly connected. The words "once erased a human being" and the disappearance of Genichiro Doshima were trying to link to the same place. But Shun didn't voice it. There was a sense that the part Lizette hadn't spoken of wasn't something to touch yet. Akari's body had stiffened slightly. Her fingertips overlapped on her knees. It was the moment when the three of them first truly understood that Le Double was a place that had been targeted for a long time. —— As the three of them walked on the stone pavement of Kuresomedori after leaving the café, Aki came to a slight stop. "I'm going to investigate a bit more. Falc has an office in the building near the north exit, right?" "Are you going alone?" "I'm just going to see the area nearby. I won't go inside." "You say you won't go inside." "I won't!" Aki turned on his heel. His footsteps echoed on the stone pavement as he walked toward the entrance of the alley. Watching his back disappear around the corner, Shun and Akari were left alone. Naturally, it happened that way. The two of them naturally headed toward the walking path along the Kuseigawa River. As they began walking side by side, the sound of the river came to them. The water sound of late autumn was lower than summer, quiet and still. The orange-tinted river surface broke the evening light and rippled. The cherry blossom trees along the walking path had already shed most of their leaves, and only branches drew thin lines against the sky. At first, Akari tried to continue talking about the redevelopment. She started to mention the application area and the date of the briefing session. But as she looked at the river, the direction of her words changed. A long silence continued. Only the footsteps of two people fell regularly on the walking path. "Hey, Shun." Akari's tone of voice changed. Not the light, cheerful tone, but something lower, unadorned. "I can't stop thinking about what I saw at the café." She spoke while looking at the river surface. "Ten years from now. Me in that room. I thought I was choosing my path properly, but somehow... I had such an empty face." Shun said nothing. He simply walked, keeping Akari's profile in the edge of his vision. "I always thought I was deciding my own future. My grades are good, I've researched, I've thought about it. But I realized at the café. The choices I was making were all ones that would make my parents feel at ease." Akari's voice cracked slightly. "If I decided everything myself and got it all wrong, I couldn't blame anyone. But if I just did what my parents expected, at least no one would get hurt. I think I was making that calculation. Without even realizing it." Their feet naturally came to a stop. The river flowed slowly. A single dried leaf drifted on the water's surface. Shun looked at Akari's profile. Her emerald-green eyes were directed at the river. Not smiling. But not dark or frightening either. It was the face of someone who had finally voiced something. (Not many people know this face.) Many people know the bright, sociable Akari. The one who quickly gets along with anyone, whose smile is dazzling. But not many people have heard this voice, looking at the river in this moment. Shun searched for words. There was an urgency that he had to say something. It felt like he needed proper words. But the more he searched, the less they came. He couldn't find words that matched the weight of what Akari had shared. Shun's hand moved slightly. A few centimeters toward Akari's hand. It stopped. Unable to take her hand after all, Shun looked forward and spoke. "Just knowing that you're afraid of it puts you far ahead of me." He spoke without looking at Akari. He had tried to choose words directed at Akari, not about himself. But at the same time, he didn't realize that those words were also something toward himself. There was a silence. Akari turned her face from the river toward Shun. She looked at him for three seconds. A small, warm light was kindled in the center of Akari's chest. It was similar in tem