Volume 1 - CH 2.1

Chapter 2 – The Wednesday Incident

1 – July 12th (Wednesday) – Three days ago

“July 12th, 12:59:12.” said Haruki Misora, holding her cell phone to her ear.

A thin wooden box lay on the wall next to Asai Kei. Its label revealed it to hold ore samples. A celestial globe, imitation vellum crumpled into balls, and other boxes with unidentified contents were strewn about. The two students were on top of the stairway leading up to the roof. The door leading to the roof was locked, with the landing being used for the storage of old classroom materials. Kei was certain that it was out of sight and out of mind for the vast majority of the student body. As such, it was his location of choice for eating lunch with Haruki.

Kei closed his eyes, trying to remember the last five minutes.

Five minutes ago, he should have been eating lunch with Haruki. Perhaps he was drinking tea, or making some kind of small talk.

But neither of those scenes were what flashed through his head. Instead, he was in the mountains, in front of an old shrine, chatting with a fair-skinned girl. He had never seen her before— wait, she was Nonō Seika.

Immediately, massive amounts of information burst into his head, in no logical order. Friday night’s dinner, tonight’s news broadcast, the conversation he would have with his classmate tomorrow after school. It included, of course, the request that would come in three days to save a particular cat. Kei remembered the next 72 hours of his life, up until 12:58:47 on July 15th, in the same span of time that he took a sharp inward breath.

Kei held his forehead as the vertigo set in. Sharp pains stabbed the back of his head. When he opened his eyes, Haruki was looking his way. He gave her a meaningful smile.

“It would appear we’ve reset.”

Such is Haruki Misora’s ability. It could be compared to rewinding time, but it’s more accurately described as restoring the world to a specific point in time.

Its effect is all-encompassing. Clocks, the sun, people’s memories, and even the cat that died on the 14th would now be restored to the way they were on July 12th. Its range is incomparable to any other ability in Sakurada, affecting the whole world.

However, as would be expected, her ability has a number of limitations.

A reset can only be performed on events that are “saved” in advance. Any save made will be lost after exactly 72 hours, and only the most recent save will be active at any one point in time. For example, if it had ever passed 12:59:12 on July 15th , this reset would have become impossible.

The greatest caveat of a reset is that its effect also includes Haruki, meaning her memories are also restored to the point at which she had saved. She can’t even remember if she has used her own ability. She remains doomed to the same decisions that led to her reset, unable to know why it happened, let alone that it ever did. While she contains a power like no other, it at the same time makes her uniquely powerless. Kei and Haruki became a team in order to solve this very problem.

Asai Kei’s ability lies in the perfect recreation of his past experiences, including all five senses. Anything that he has experienced once is permanently remembered.

By itself, it isn’t much more impressive than having a slightly better memory than the average person. But in the right circumstances, it becomes a most powerful skill. He has the ability to bypass Haruki’s reset, and retain his memories of the world as it was. He can remember up to three days in the future.

“Today” now meant July 12th. Haruki had just made a save, as Kei had instructed her to make a new save every 72 hours when the previous one expired. And so, Kei found himself on July 12th, at 12:59:12.

“We lucked out on the timing for this one,” Kei remarked. They would be out of options if they had saved after the cat died.

“That’s nice to hear.”

Haruki’s response was entirely detached.

For one half of Sakurada, ability users were an anomaly, something special. For the other half, ability usage was simply part of life, as natural as breathing. There were slight exceptions in both categories, but Haruki was in a category of her own. She simply didn’t care. Not about her ability, or anyone else’s. That by itself wasn’t strictly detrimental, as living without consideration for such things was arguably more normal. But Haruki’s indifference was not limited to abilities. She held no interest in the world, with only a few minute exceptions. She lacked fundamental desires, and lived with little purpose.

With an almost mechanical persistence, she asked her typical follow-up question. “Why did we reset?”

Making sure to keep up his smile, Kei responded, “We met a girl named Murase Youka on Saturday under the instruction of Tsushima-sensei.”

Kei had promised Haruki that he would never lie about the events leading up to a reset. To this day, he kept that promise to the letter. It would be far too easy to lie and manipulate his way through resets, and Kei didn’t want to test those waters.

He explained everything step by step. The request to save a cat from an accident, the start of their investigation, and the girl they met just before they reset.

Once he finished speaking, Haruki gave a small nod. “So, we have until Friday morning to save this cat?”

“Yup, that’s what we know.”

“Does that mean we’ll be going to meet this Nonō?

“That’s probably our best bet. Let’s head to the shrine once school’s out.”

“Understood.”

As they spoke, Kei unconsciously rubbed his forehead. Just as usual, remembering three days of information took a toll on him, and his throbbing headache hadn’t subsided.

Haruki leaned to the side, and peered into Kei’s face.

“Are you okay?”

Haruki’s typically expressionless face was colored with an almost motherly concern. Her eyebrows were reflexively furrowed. The sight made Kei break into his first genuine smile.

“Yeah, I’m just feeling a little tired-” Kei broke off his sentence with a large yawn. “Too bad our lunch break will be over soon.”

✽

Haruki Misora returned to her classroom and sat down, nestling her cheek into her left hand. It was the perfect position to keep Kei’s seat, normally diagonally to her right, in the center of her vision. He had chosen to spend the remaining 10 minutes of lunch break chatting with his friend, Nakano Tomoki.

Haruki was stealthily eavesdropping on the two boys. They were discussing Schrodinger with very serious expressions. Haruki could only recall that Schrodinger was some kind of famous particle physicist, with a theory about a half-poisoned cat in a box, or something to that effect. However, the two boys weren’t talking about the fine details of a minute science. Instead, they were heavily engaged in an argument over whether Schrodinger was a cat person or not. Nakano started it by claiming he wasn’t, and Kei was hotly refuting him. Personally, Haruki had no investment in their squabble. But she still found herself silently rooting for Kei, a fellow cat lover.

On the outside, Kei seemed to be fully enjoying their conversation. But, due to the nature of his ability, he had undoubtedly experienced the entirety of it three days ago. They had reset, after all, and it wasn’t possible that he had forgotten.

In fact, he was undoubtedly using his memory to perfectly recreate the scene as it happened the first time. Be it facial expressions, word choice, or the ebb and flow of conversation, he was likely hard at work reconstructing each minutia of detail down to a T. He considered it his responsibility. After all, changing any details to the slightest degree had a chance of altering the future, and Kei didn’t want to change anything in his control.

Kei’s attention to these details extended outside of his social life as well. After a reset, he ensured that every way he lived his life matched the first timeline. He ate the same meals, slept and woke at the same times, and even listened to the same music. Even Haruki thought it a step too far that he would make sure the music he listened to in his personal time was exactly the same. But Kei was resolute in his desire to take no risks. He followed the script in his memory as perfectly as possible.

Will I be the only one to notice what Kei does? Haruki thought. Nobody ever knew the lengths that Kei took every day. He would never be recognized for all his hard work.

The nature of working with resets was inherently unjust. Something unfortunate would happen, and a request would be made, followed by a reset. Kei would stop the event before it ever happened, and the person who made the request would never know. They would simply take the good fortune and the happiness before them for granted, not knowing the difference. You can’t be thanked when nobody knows what you did.

Haruki found it absolutely horrible. Like a wind chime that went unheard, or a rainbow that was never seen. Kei’s plight was more unfortunate, and much more obvious, than either of those.

Why was it that Asai Kei chose this way of life?

Was it strictly for his club? No, he could not be forced to accept requests on behalf of the club, so his participation was voluntary.

Maybe if it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t be seen as dangerous, Haruki thought.

Indeed, Kei was only wrapped up with the Bureau due to Haruki’s ability. Without his unique ability to persist through resets, he would be left alone. He could probably live a fairly normal high school life if he decided to separate himself from involvement in resetting.

Why does he insist upon utilizing resets? Haruki couldn’t help but pose the question, though the answer was plain to her.

It was because that girl had died two years ago. The girl that Kei described as “ like a stray cat”. Haruki was inclined to disagree with that description, but respected Kei’s judgment. Haruki didn’t think of her as anyone special. However, she knew that the girl was someone special to Kei.

At the time, the girl was fairly short for her age, yet quite slender. She was energetic and outgoing, with many friends, but was known for saying some very strange things on occasion. Perhaps she would have been described as eccentric. As far as Haruki was concerned, she wasn’t all that different from other classmates, but she did talk to Haruki more often than most people, and did indeed say strange things from time to time. Then, two years ago, as summer was giving way to fall, she died.

It was an accident. However, the accident was an outlier, as she died in a second timeline following a reset. Asai Kei had told Haruki Misora to reset, and that command led to the permanent death of someone special to him. His regret for that action traveled with him every day. It defined the person he had turned into.

Perhaps he saw his current utilization of resets as a form of penance towards the “stray cat” of a girl. Perhaps he wanted to save people with the very ability that killed her. He could be acting in solitude because he saw it as a personal responsibility, not for anyone else to get involved with. Had the girl’s death ripped such a large hole in him that he was willing to fill it with even the life of a single cat?

No, maybe that’s not it, Haruki corrected herself. She didn’t think he was the kind of person to equate values of lives and deaths. Shortly after her death, he had been searching for methods to resurrect her. The most obvious conclusion was that he had never given up on that goal. Sakurada was home to countless abilities, with more being generated every day. An ability that could revive the dead was more than possible.

If Kei wanted to revive her, he probably would in the end. Of course, Haruki had no idea how, but she had never seen any of his plans fail in the end. There was no precedent for this situation, but there was a part of Haruki that believed Kei could do anything.

Haruki would also be grateful if the girl was brought back. If she died from a reset, then that meant Haruki had killed her, in a way. She had probably cried for a long time over it when it happened. At least, she thought she did, but her memory of that time was strangely hazy. She must have cried, but it was hard to create a mental image of it. Perhaps there was some kind of problem with her memory. Regardless, her regret over that reset was baked into her mind. That she could not deny.

As Haruki was lost in thought over the girl who died two years ago, she found herself fiddling with the cat strap attached to her phone. She shifted her gaze to Kei once more, and realized that a female classmate had inserted herself into the conversation between him and Nakano Tomoki.

✽

Minami Mirai was a girl who never stopped emoting. She had big eyes and a bigger mouth, never-ending energy, and no special ability. She was always toeing the line, wearing flashy accessories while trying to escape the ire of the school staff.

Kei was busy arguing over Schrodinger’s preferences when she interrupted with, “Got a minute?” Just as he remembered, she put her hands on his desk, leaned in, and kept going without waiting for an answer.

“Are you free after school on Friday, Asai-kun?”

Friday. The day that the cat would get caught in a traffic accident. Said accident took place in the morning, however, so his after school plans were currently empty. Kei responded according to his memory.

“Nothing planned at the moment. You need me for something?”

“Yeah, I’ve got some stuff for U-Lab.”

Of course that was it. This wasn’t the first time she had singled out Kei for U-Lab. The U stood for Unidentified, as in UFO, and the formal “research society” was commonly shortened to “lab”. The full name for the U-Lab was the Research Society of the Unidentified.

Their name had to be breaking some kind of rule for proper research delegation. If something was already identified, then nobody would be researching it. You could call any research laboratory in the world a Research Society for the Unidentified if you wanted to.

Minami kept up her comically large smile. “Do you know about the Spirit Mountain, Asai-kun?”

“Only by name.”

Spirit Mountain was a common nickname for Mt. Tsukube, the low mountain that Kamisaki Shrine was built under. It was a common mountain named in stories of ghost sightings, hence its nickname. It was even rumored to have been named with a more foreboding kanji in the past, but there was no historical evidence to back that up1.

Following his memory, Kei responded, “What’s the deal with Spirit Mountain?”

“Did you know the rumors about a vampire living there?”

“No…”

At least, he didn’t know until July 12th, when Minami told him.

“Did you know, Tomoki?”

“Well, it sounds familiar. Wasn’t that going around years back?”

Minami quickly turned towards Tomoki, despite his disinterested answer. Her tied up hair swished back and forth in front of Kei’s eyes.

“It’s not just a rumor. There have been victims recently.”

“Victims of the vampire? Was he sucking their blood or something?

“Probably. There have been stories of people fainting at the base of the mountain.”

“What does that have to do with vampires?”

Tomoki’s interest was waning as fast as his patience. Kei also wanted to extricate himself from the conversation.

Spirit Mountain this, vampires that. It was much easier to assume that it was the effect of one of Sakurada’s many abilities. Sakurada could be considered one of the worst places to try and spread this type of horror story. If there was really something fishy going on there, the Bureau would investigate and put a stop to it. A calm and orderly investigation would set any spirits or vampires straight.

“Why would a vampire be in Spirit Mountain, anyway?” Kei posited.

Vampires weren’t ghosts, after all. The discrepancy was annoying.

Minami folded her arms and turned her head towards Kei.

“Look, if you’re gonna tell a horror story, you have to have both. Ghosts and vampires are both important for the atmosphere. Just think of it like a field day, but at night and for the graveyard, okay?”

That made even less sense, but rumors were probably more believable when they were slightly less logical.

“So? You free on Friday, or not?” she repeated, poking out her index finger for emphasis. “Friday night is the new moon cycle, so it’s the perfect time to look for the vampire.”

“What difference does the new moon make?”

“Well, vampires are supposed to be strongest at the full moon, right? So, I think I could take him while he’s weak during the new moon.”

“Please don’t fight him,” Tomoki groaned.

Seriously, don’t, Kei agreed in his mind. Whatever was being called a “vampire” up there was undoubtedly a skilled ability user, if they really did exist. It wouldn’t be worth dealing with an ability so aggressive that it could be described as vampiric. Best to leave that up to the Bureau.

“Why do you want us anyway? Can’t you just go with other people in U-Lab?” Kei asked. What good would the club be for otherwise?

But Minami gave an exaggerated shake of her head. “No can do. The president said that they had investigated before and found nothing, so they aren’t willing to expend the manpower.

Tomoki tucked his hands behind his head with a sigh.

“Of course they didn’t find anything. It’s just an old, out of circulation rumor.”

“We can’t say that for certain. What if they were in hiding since then, and chose to come out just recently?”

As Minami made her plea, the school bell rang.

“Just think about it, Asai-kun. You can bring Nakano-kun with you too, if that’s what it takes.”

Without waiting for a reply, Minami returned to her seat.

“Can we not?” mumbled Tomoki.

Sifting through his memories, Kei recalled that he would formally decline her offer during Friday’s lunch period. Tsushima had instructed him to meet with Murase, so he had prioritized keeping his Friday afternoon schedule empty. After all, it would be bad manners to show up half-awake and inattentive.

Kei put his head down on his desk and closed his eyes, since the teacher was going to arrive five minutes late. Those five minutes would hardly count as quality sleep, but he could at least try to get some rest out of it.

Whenever he closed his eyes after a reset, a particular memory always sprang forth. Although, perhaps that was the wrong way to word it. It was less that it sprang forth, and more that it never went away. It was a memory of the girl who had died two years ago.

It was during their second year of middle school. The girl had a habit of asking Kei to join her on the school rooftop, specifically of the southern junior high building. Sometimes Haruki was up there, and other times it was just the two of them. Almost every time he went up there, she’d be sitting in front of the fence, her slender face pulled up, peering into the southern sky. Kei never did figure out if there was something in that direction or if she was just posing that way for show.

The girl always used a variety of strange metaphors and outlandish hypotheses in her conversations. Perhaps she found the world’s vocabulary too limited to properly express her thoughts. Perhaps her true intentions and desires were incapable of being conveyed with the thickest of dictionaries. At least, that was why Kei thought that she resorted to metaphors and hypotheses rather than plain words.

Following her typical format, she began.

“Let’s imagine that the language you know and the words I speak are completely different,” she said, on a bright and sunny summer day.

“What good would imagining that do?” Kei asked in return.

The girl looked up and squinted in the sunshine, as if tickled.

“It would help us understand each other, you could say.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“Necessary? I’m not sure how to answer that. But we’ve got nothing to do, so let’s imagine. For all you know, it’ll be interesting.”

Kei couldn’t think of a way out of it, so he nodded. It was embarrassing to remember, but he hated nodding back then, perhaps because he felt like he was weak for giving in to what other people wanted. Now, he knew that things didn’t work that way.

“Fine. Whatever. So, the language I know isn’t the one you speak, right?”

“Mhm. Now, despite that, can we still have a conversation?”

He tried to consider it seriously. Normally, he would scoff at such a question, but the reason he didn’t was that somewhere, deep in his heart, he held a deep respect for her. He never would have vocalized it, but looking back, it was obvious. He saw her as a much greater person than himself. Or at least, he wanted her to be.

What if the words she spoke were from an entirely different language?

Kei decided on his answer. “We couldn’t communicate. It wouldn’t be a true conversation, just two people in their own one-sided conversation.”

“But, you were able to answer my question just now.”

“Because I understand the words you’re saying.”

“Assume that you don’t. What if even these very words were from a different language, one that just sounds very similar to the language you knew?”

That’s stupid. It’s really just a trick question, Kei thought, frowning. Yet nonetheless, he thought things over again, using the framework of her suggestion.

“Raise your right hand,” he told her.

Once she heard him, the girl put her right hand in the air. It was a very slender hand.

“Put it back down slowly.”

Her hand slowly went back down.

“Even if it’s another language, you still knew what I meant.”

“That was just a coincidence.”

“If even that much could be a coincidence, then we’d never realize that we spoke different languages.”

“You’re right. We would just continue to talk back and forth, when in reality, neither of us actually knew what the other was trying to say. We would be deceived by coincidence, having a completely unrelated set of exchanges.”

Kei could hardly imagine anything more unfortunate than to be convinced that you truly understood someone, never realizing that nothing they said ever really got through to you.

“If that was the case, we definitely couldn’t communicate. We would just be stuck in our own little worlds, self-satisfied with our personal conclusions.”

As Kei replied, he considered that this “imagination” may have been the girl’s form of advice, or even warning. If you can’t accept other people’s words at face value, then you’ll never truly be able to communicate with them. It was the perfect warning for someone in his position at the time. He was a very self-righteous person, no stranger to shutting others out on principle alone.

However, as Kei considered the purpose behind their conversation, he couldn’t help but feel disappointed. He wanted more from her than some cheap advice or filler conversation.

Kei studied the girl’s profile. She was staring up at the sky, like always, as she shook her head slightly. Then, she suddenly locked eyes with him, as if to catch him off guard.

“Despite all that, I believe in my ability to communicate with you.”

Her tone was brazen and confident. She had always managed a natural air of quiet and composed confidence around herself.

“I may not know your language, and we may have misunderstandings. But even so, I believe that I could understand you, and you could understand me.”

“As if. That would take a miracle.”

“But you didn’t know any languages when you were born. Are you saying that you’ve never made a single mistake in language comprehension throughout your entire life?”

Kei knew that wasn’t true, and yet he couldn’t force an answer out.

The girl smiled. “If miracles like that couldn’t happen, then there would be no need for language in the first place.”

It was a memory of a sunny summer day from two years ago.

But it was hardly two weeks later that the girl died.

1 Mt. Tsukube is initially written with the characters “尽辺”, the first meaning to run out of a resource with the implication of having used it all for one cause, and the second meaning “border/boundary”. The second, rumored name replaces the first character with “憑” which is used for spiritual possessions or hauntings.