Chapter 7: A Clue

“I’m home.”
I opened the door to our apartment.
It was a tiny place on the second floor—basically just a kitchen, a living room, and a closet.
The walls were thin, and it was the kind of neighborhood where my underwear sometimes disappeared from the laundry line outside.
That happened less often after Dad moved in, though.
Most of the time, it was just me and Mom.
That was my life.
“Welcome home, Momoka. Dinner’s ready, so eat whenever.”
Mom greeted me while washing dishes in the kitchen.
“Okay. I’ll eat later.”
“And wash your hands when you get home.”
“Okaaay.”
I quietly rushed into my room.
It had originally been one room split into two, and all that fit inside was a study desk.
That was my room.
I had something far more important to do than wash my hands.
I pulled the novel out of my bag.
On the final page, written in pencil, were four characters.
待ってる
Wait for me.
Kameyama-kun.
No doubt about it.
Yes.
Yes!
UOOOOOOOOOOOH!!!
So this was what it meant to feel like you were floating up to heaven.
There was something besides me that proved Kameyama-kun had really existed.
I hadn’t realized how reassuring that could be.
After all, the memory was already a year old.
While I was crying in the classroom, I had even started wondering if maybe I had gone crazy.
Maybe that kiss had been some kind of dream.
Maybe none of it had ever happened in reality.
Those thoughts had just started swirling around in my head.
“But this is...”
I looked at the message again, more calmly.
Wait for me.
Where?
What kind of ridiculously short letter was this?
No signature.
No salutation.
Not even a seasonal greeting.
If it were me, I’d reply like this:
Dear Kameyama-sama,
Half the year has already passed, and once again I find myself reflecting on how quickly time moves. I can only assume that you have been sent flying into some bizarre world line.
Please, whatever you do, don’t suddenly reappear when I’m already an old woman.
I would die.
And under no circumstances are you to marry anyone other than me. For that possibility, I will now leave you every unlucky word I can think of.
Bored. Shallow. Panic. Fade. Busy. Pain. The end. Fall. Decline. End. Chip. Grieve. Wither. Collapse. Erase. Break. Last. Cool. Leave. Die. Mournfully. Throw away. Funeral. Cease. Scatter. Fall over. Mourn. Outrageous. Wash away. Lose. Pass away. Tears. Grow cold. Illness. Come undone. Perish. Lose. Short. Tear. Be defeated. Fall ill. Split. Bad. Lose. End. Return. Cut. Refuse. Rip. Leave. Abandon. Run away. Let go. Separate. Fray. Unravel. Go back. Divorce. Divorce. Part. Grow tired. Thin. Shun. Hate. Cool off. Estranged. Endure. Cry. Grow cold. Quarrel.
Please take care of yourself. I want to see you soon.
Sincerely,
June 6, Reiwa 6
Signed: Hamori Momoka
To: Kameyama Hiroki
Respectfully submitted.
It had turned into a curse letter.
I closed the notebook I had been writing in.
“Oh. I forgot dinner.”
I left my room and went to the kitchen.
I picked up the covered plate of nikujaga, got another plate, and served myself some rice.
Mom was watching television in the living room.
I carried my food over to the table.
Honestly, I wanted to eat in my room.
But if I did that, Mom would get irritated, so I sat beside her instead.
I glanced toward the closet.
Dad was probably curled up inside it again today.
He usually didn’t come out while I was around.
I had no idea what he did during the day.
I tried not to think about people I disliked.
He was like a sheet of thin ice stretched so tight that anything might shatter it.
Even trying to reach out to him made you nervous.
Someone with a body temperature as high as mine would probably ruin him the moment I touched him.
I couldn’t shake that feeling.
Maybe he felt the same way.
We had only spoken a little when he first moved in.
Since then, we had barely had a proper conversation.
It had already been two years since we met.
A handsome actor was on TV.
It was a kissing scene from a romance drama.
“Oh, this actor’s in this one too?”
“Yeah, he is.”
He was a popular young heartthrob who seemed to be everywhere.
The girls in my class were always squealing over him.
Mostly the ones getting into university through recommendations.
The ones taking entrance exams were usually screaming about math instead.
No matter what channel you turned to, he seemed to be having another “first kiss” with a different actress.
Even for someone that popular, appearing in four dramas in one season felt excessive.
But Mom liked him, so she watched all of them.
“Is he really that great?”
“He’s handsome.”
“Huh.”
I ate while watching the drama.
It was about a forbidden romance between a man and woman from different social classes.
In the last drama I saw him in, the handsome actor had played the commoner.
This time he was the prince.
The mismatch was so distracting I couldn’t focus on the story.
There was another reason I couldn’t focus.
Kameyama-kun.
My head was completely full of him.
Filling my entire brain with just four characters?
What kind of literary genius was that bastard?
How much meaning had he crammed between the lines?
If I was going to go find Kameyama-kun...
what was I supposed to do?
What I needed to do was basically the equivalent of a character from one drama going off to meet a character from a completely different drama.
That level of impossible.
A girl in love can do impossible things!
Don’t underestimate an invincible high school girl!
...I could say that with confidence.
But confidence alone wasn’t going to solve anything.
I needed an actual method.
A way to cross world lines.
How?
If he had written Wait for me, there had to be some way.
But I couldn’t find a single clue.
There was no normal, everyday way to cross world lines.
I understood that I had to do something abnormal.
But what?
Where was I supposed to go?
There was no signpost anywhere.
And I couldn’t just wait patiently.
I couldn’t keep these feelings under control.
I wanted to see him.
I wanted to see him right now.
Damn it.
I really thought I was going to see him today.
“Momoka, I don’t think this is supposed to be that sad of a scene.”
“Yeah. I just started crying. I’ll wash my dishes. Thanks for dinner.”
I stood and headed for the kitchen.
For now, I had to search.
There had to be some way.
I had to believe that.

The next day.
I got up, brushed my teeth, got ready while holding a piece of toast in my mouth, and rode my bicycle to school.
For the time being, I decided I would spend the entire day carefully observing everything around me.
Maybe somewhere out there was a clue to crossing world lines.
I pedaled along.
Same time as always.
The students from another high school I always passed.
The person walking their dog.
I saw that person all the time too.
I passed the department store and waited at the traffic light.
If you took the same road every day, you even learned how long the lights lasted.
I could probably ride this route with my eyes closed.
Not that I would.
The same road as always.
Up a long hill.
Then down.
And eventually, I arrived at Kameyama-kun’s house.
I watched secretly from behind a utility pole.
“Ah! Crap...!”
I had spent so long stalking Kameyama-kun that it had become second nature.
But this was Kameyama Number Three now.
I didn’t need to follow him anymore.
Wait.
No.
Most of the cause of all this was him.
He was why I started following Kameyama-kun in the first place.
And so far, he was the only thing that had changed.
Maybe that Wait for me message was actually telling me to observe Kameyama Number Three.
Obviously!
So in the end, I decided to follow him just like always.
Kameyama-kun lived in a fairly large detached house near the school.
According to my research, his family had moved here when he started high school.
His father was a university professor.
His mother was a homemaker.
Honestly, I didn’t know much more than that.
Observing his parents too would have required sacrificing my entire daily life.
If I were a proper stalker, I probably should have known every movement of the whole family.
Pathetic.
What happened to my pride as a stalker?!
Kameyama-kun always left for school at the last possible minute, so even though he lived nearby, he still rode a bike.
He stayed up late drawing, so he was always short on sleep.
He had also started studying for entrance exams, which meant his drawing time had been cut back a lot.
He was aiming for a famous art university, so this was probably the busiest period of his life.
But today, he was unusually early.
A full twenty minutes earlier than normal.
No doubt about it.
He had to be the clue to crossing world lines.
I was absolutely not stalking him because I liked him.
Though I definitely did like Kameyama-kun.
“...Ah.”
Kameyama Number Three looked straight at me.
The moment he recognized me, he started running over.
“C-Crap...”
I thought about running.
Too late.
“Hamori-san.”
Kameyama Number Three called out to me.
“Yes...?”
“If you want... want to go to school together?”