Last Chapter – The World You Chose
His eyes could tell it was getting brighter even though they were closed. Sakuta realized he must be awake.
The sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains left cloudlike shadows on the ceiling of his room. The familiar feel of his bed assured him he was in his own room.
He reached for the digital alarm clock.
If the loop had ended, this should be July 19. Summer vacation.
Sakuta checked the display to be sure.
“……”
It took his eyes a few seconds to focus on the number. July 19? Or July 18 again? But the number shown was totally different.
“Huh?”
Sakuta jumped up and ran into the living room. He turned on the TV.
The morning news was just beginning.
“And a big win for the Japan team!”
That was very familiar. He’d heard that phrase before. The male newscaster was very enthusiastic.
“Good morning. Today is Friday, June 27. Our top story today is the results of yesterday’s big game.”
The screen started showing a World Cup game held on the other side of the world. A highlight reel of the second game of the group stage.
As the first half drew to a close, Japan was one point behind. Japanese player number ten dribbled into enemy territory and was taken down by some aggressive defense. Whistles blew.
Just outside the penalty box, so a free-kick chance. Number four took the kick. A short run up, a shot, the keeper dove the wrong way, and the ball hit the net. Number four roared, and the Japan team flocked to him, celebrating.
That point put momentum on Japan’s side, and they scored a follow-up in the second half, winning 2–1.
As Sakuta watched the extended coverage, his thoughts turned to one person.
Tomoe Koga.
A kohai from the year below him and Laplace’s demon
“She’s kind of amazing…,” he said, the words escaping his lips. “It was all a simulation of the future, then.”
Just as Rio had suggested. The repeating days weren’t because they were going back in time. It was all a calculation of the future from one point in time.
And in this case, that point was June 27.
What else could Sakuta do but laugh?
He and Kaede ate breakfast, and he got ready for school like always.
It was the end of June, and the rainy season was not yet over. The sun beating down wasn’t nearly as hot as it had been in the July of the day before, but it was much more humid.
“’Sup, Sakuta. Another amazing bed head.”
“This hairstyle’s all the rage these days.”
“You’re on the cutting edge of fashion.”
Yuuma laughed. This was just like it had been on the previous June 27.
“……”
“Something wrong, Sakuta?”
“……No.”
“Seriously, what?”
“That handsome face of yours is infuriating.”
“Huh? This again?”
“Agh, it’s terrible.”
Morning classes were math, physics, English, and Modern Japanese. During math, the teacher said, “This’ll be on the exam!” The physics teacher’s bad pun still dropped dead. Third-period English earned him another “Mr. Azusagawa, listen to me” for not paying attention, and he was forced to read aloud. And once again, the Modern Japanese teacher had lipstick on his shirt collar.
Each detail further proved that Sakuta had experienced a projection of the future.
Lunch arrived.
Sakuta and Mai were alone together in an empty classroom on the third floor.
The window was slightly open, and a sultry sea breeze blew in. The curtains swayed slightly. It was a moment of peace.
They sat on opposite sides of a desk with the lunch Mai had made for Sakuta spread out between them. Fried chicken, egg rolls, potato salad, cherry tomatoes, and a side of hijiki seaweed and soybeans. Sakuta tried each in turn and told her how good they were.
Mai seemed thoroughly satisfied with the opportunity to prove her culinary skills.
Once they finished eating, Sakuta sat up straight.
“Mai,” he said.
“Mm?” She looked up, chopsticks between her lips.
“I love you. Please go out with me.”
“……”
She looked away. She picked some egg roll out of her lunch and ate it.
“……”
She chewed for a while.
“……”
He waited until she swallowed, but still no answer came.
“You’re just gonna ignore it?!”
“I’m just not feeling the magic,” she said with a bored sigh. “You say the same thing to me every day for a month, and it just loses all meaning.”
“Oh…rejection? Then I’ll just have to search elsewhere for love.”
“Wha…?”
“Thank you for everything.”
He bowed his head and gave a heartbroken sigh.
“I—I didn’t say no! Why are you giving up?” Mai asked, giving him a reproachful glare.
“Then is it a yes?”
“Urgh…you’ve got a lot of nerve.”
“Is that a yes?”
He stuck to his guns. One last push.
“……Mm,” she said, nodding. Her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s a yes.”
As if trying to cover her embarrassment, Mai quickly started eating an egg roll. This was adorable. Sakuta decided to press his advantage and make sure of one other thing.
“So.”
“What?”
“What are your feelings for me?”
“Well, obviously…”
The cherry tomato slipped from her chopsticks.
“Obviously?”
“What does it matter?”
“I’m asking because it does.”
“Sakuta, give it up.”
“This is very important.”
“You have to hear it?”
“From your own lips.”
A cherry tomato passed through those lips. She chewed for a while, then swallowed.
“I’m only saying this once.”
“Okay.”
“……”
“……”
There was a brief silence. Mai took a deep breath.
Then her eyes suddenly turned to the window. “Oh,” she said.
“Mm?”
Sakuta turned to look. All he could see were the sands of Shichirigahama, the sea, and the sky. Nothing out of the ordinary. Big summer clouds streaming by.
Then a sweet scent enveloped him. A shadow fell over his eyes. Before he knew it, something soft pressed against his cheek.
Surprised, he turned back toward her.
“Does that clear things up?”
Mai shot him a mischievous smile, only slightly embarrassed.
Sakuta reached up and felt his cheeks, certain that sensation had been Mai’s lips.
“I’d have preferred mouth to mouth.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
Under the desk, Mai stepped on his foot. It didn’t hurt a bit.
“Stop grinning!”
“That’s your fault, Mai.”
The two of them savored their time together.
When the bell rang, his lunch date with Mai was tragically brought to a close. Sakuta went down the hall alone, heading back to the second-year classrooms.
As he passed the stairs, he saw a familiar face on the landing.
Tomoe Koga.
She was with that third-year, Maesawa.
Things seemed tense, so Sakuta hid himself against the wall.
“I’m sorry,” Tomoe said, bowing her head. “I can’t go out with you.”
“You don’t have a boyfriend, though?”
“No.”
“You in love with someone else, then?”
“Yeah.”
Tomoe nodded.
“He on the team with me?”
“No.”
“Then…”
“He’s a caveman who doesn’t even own a phone.”
As she said this, Tomoe’s face lit up like a flower blooming.
“Huh?” Maesawa just sounded baffled. Still, he shrugged, said, “Well, maybe some other time,” whatever that meant, and turned to head up the stairs.
Sakuta stepped out and walked right past him, expressionless. He headed down the stairs.
Tomoe saw him coming.
“Eavesdropping’s a crime,” she said.
Sakuta knew instantly she remembered everything.
“I just happened to pass by.”
“Hmph.”
“Also, I’m not a caveman.”
“I wasn’t talking about you.” Tomoe puffed up her cheeks. “Being that self-absorbed is so not cool.”
He’d broken her heart only a day before, but she’d already rebounded enough to interact with him like this—a testament to her inner strength. This situation was her doing.
“Senpai, are you ready to accept the consequences?”
“Hmm?”
“If Rena ends up hating me because of this and I lose my place in class…”
“How is that my problem?”
“Well, the whole thing’s your fault.”
“Please explain.”
“You made a woman out of me.”
“That sounds damningly scandalous.”
“You know what I mean, but you always make a joke out of it. Is it because you’re secretly embarrassed?”
She grinned like she saw right through him. This smug attitude annoyed him a bit, but given that arguing the point would just prove her right, he steered the conversation back on track.
“Well, if anything happens to you, Koga, I’ll be your friend for life.”
Then he put his hand on her head.
“So at least you won’t be alone.”
“I’m the one willing to be your best friend,” she countered. Even cheekier.
Sakuta knew she woke up at six to get her hair right, so he deliberately messed it up.
“Augh! Don’t!”
He didn’t stop until the bell rang.
From there until summer vacation began was astonishing.
The days Sakuta and Tomoe had experienced played out the same way.
The Japan soccer team made it out of the group stage. Solid play took them to the quarterfinals. There, they suffered a painful loss, but these results let the world know Japan was a real contender.
Closer to home, the content on the final exams was exactly the same. Sakuta had taken all these tests before. And they’d gone over all the answers once, so his scores were excellent.
He felt mildly guilty about that, but considering all the trouble Adolescence Syndrome had put him through, this felt like a decent way of making up for it.
Also, Tomoe ended up working part-time with him at the restaurant.
Saki Kamisato called him to the rooftop that same Saturday.
Many of his interactions with Mai were the same. She still brought clothes over for Kaede, went to Kagoshima for a week filming a TV show, called him from there, showed up and forced him to study, and even agreed to change into the bunny-girl outfit while he did.
There were some minor differences, since he wasn’t faking a relationship with Tomoe, but without exception, the events he remembered came to pass.
This was more than enough evidence to suggest the version of June 27 to July 18 the two of them experienced was no mere dream, but an accurate projection of the future.
One day after school, in the science lab, he talked this over with Rio.
“If that’s true, it’s certainly astonishing.”
“You think I’m lying?”
“Azusagawa…in this projected future, you managed to convince the whole school you were dating a first-year, so I think you could lie convincingly about this, too.”
Sakuta didn’t see any point in insisting she should believe him.
“But it does make some sense,” Rio said absently. “A girl who wants to fit in so badly she spends all her time desperately reading others, and before she knows it, she can even read the future.”
At least, it made sense to her.
But the one thing that puzzled Sakuta was how he’d come to get mixed up in her Adolescence Syndrome. While seven billion other people never noticed anything wrong, never realized they were repeating the same day.
When he asked Rio about it, she just said “Quantum entanglement” like he was supposed to know what that meant.
“Quantums entangle?” he asked.
“Yes. You see?”
“Not a whit.”
“A what?”
“I mean I don’t have the foggiest clue what you mean.”
“Hmph.”
Rio wrote whit on the blackboard to look up later.
“So what is quantum entanglement?”
“A spooky phenomenon in which two particles in separate locations instantly share information without any intermediary.”
“Do particles have cell phones?”
“Those count as intermediaries.”
“Then they’re telepathic?”
“Exactly.”
“Seriously?”
He’d intended that to be a joke.
“In fact, world-famous professors have done research on whether they can apply the principles of quantum entanglement to realize actual telepathy.”
“Again, are you serious?”
“Quantum entanglement itself is a verified phenomenon.”
“So you think Koga and I became entangled and synched up that way?”
Rio nodded.
“But why were we entangled?”
“Quantum entanglement occurs after the particles collide. Did you and that first-year collide recently?”
In a sense, yes.
“We kicked each other’s butts.”
“……”
“……”
“Azusagawa.”
“What?”
“I would like to replicate this effect. Present your hindquarters.”
“Nope.”
“Come on, hurry up, rascal.”
“That’s no way to ask for a favor!”
Rio looked genuinely disappointed. Perhaps she’d actually meant it.
As for Tomoe after rejecting Maesawa…well, like she’d predicted, she was driven out of Rena’s group.
Sakuta found her the Wednesday after, sitting on the stairs to the roof, eating lunch alone.
He sat down next to her, and they ate together.
“Should I come to the bathroom with you, too?”
“That would make it worse.”
“Ask me any time.”
“Seriously, that’s creepy. Do I have to report you?”
This continued through Thursday and Friday, but on the first day of final exams, he saw Tomoe talking to another classmate on the train in to school. Not Rena, Hinako, or Aya. The reason he knew she was a first-year in Tomoe’s class was because in the projection of the future, Sakuta had met her.
On his first date with Tomoe, they’d helped a girl with glasses find her phone strap. Her name was Nana Yoneyama.
Nana took her phone out, and he saw the jellyfish strap hanging from it, the one Tomoe had gotten soaking wet to retrieve.
Sakuta guessed Tomoe had gone and helped her search again. Proving that notion was the fact that she’d caught a cold again, on the exact same day as before.
At work after exams, Tomoe said, “I’ve made some new friends.”
“The girl with the phone strap?”
“Yep. And Nana let me join her group in class.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yeah.”
Tomoe seemed a little sheepish but very happy.
“All thanks to you.”
“I didn’t do a thing.”
Tomoe’s own good behavior had proved her salvation.
With a personality like hers, he didn’t think it would take her all that long to patch things over with Rena, either.
“But because of you, I got through this without having to lie, so…thank you.”
In a sense, she meant that literally. She hadn’t lied to anyone this time. But in another sense, he thought she was talking about lying to herself.
With his concerns all resolved, the days passed peacefully.
The end-of-term ceremony arrived.
The principal made his grand speech, and the teacher handed out report cards.
After homeroom, he waited for Mai at the shoe cubbies, and they left together. Lately, Mai had been out of school for work a lot, so it had actually been two whole weeks since they’d been able to leave together like this.
When they stepped onto the train at Shichirigahama Station, Mai held out her hand expectantly.
He tried to take it, but she snatched it away.
“Show me your report card.”
“Then say that.”
“Just do it.”
“I’d prefer not to.”
“Why?”
“Why do you want to see it?”
“You’re going to the same college as me, right?”
“That’s what I put on the class survey…”
“Then go on.”
She held out her hand again. No getting out of this one. Sakuta forking over his report card was a forgone conclusion.
“If it’s better than you think, do I get a reward?”
“If your average is higher than a seven, I’ll listen to any one request you make.”
Minegahara grades were on a ten-point scale. Anyone scoring over a seven was doing very well.
“That’s a tall order,” Sakuta said.
He glumly handed over his report card.
She looked down at it, clearly surprised.
“Er…how?”
He hadn’t actually crunched the numbers, but the average was probably over seven. This was all thanks to Laplace’s demon. He would have to buy Tomoe lunch later. After all, Mai had to accept a request from him now.
“Soooo, what should I have you do?”
“If it’s too weird, I’ll break up with you,” Mai said preemptively.
She handed his report card back.
“Then will you come over tonight and make dinner?”
“Is that all?”
Having a girlfriend come over to cook dinner was a top-tier event in his mind. Especially if it was Mai Sakurajima. This seemed lost on her, though.
“I just want to see you in an apron.”
“I never wear an apron to cook.”
“Aww.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll put one on.”
“We could go straight to the naked apron.”
“I could add laxatives to everything.”
“I’m kidding.”
“You were not.”
Her eyes bored through him, and he did his best to laugh it off.
“Should we stop by the grocery story on the way home?”
“Let’s.”
Sakuta was thrilled to get another shopping date.
After buying groceries at the store near Fujisawa Station, Sakuta and Mai stepped outside to find it raining. The skies were blue, but it was coming down pretty hard. Quite a sun-shower.
“Sakuta, you have an umbrella?”
“I do.”
He pulled it out of his schoolbag and opened it. Mai stepped under it with him.
“I’ll hold one of those,” she said.
Sakuta’s right hand was holding up the umbrella, but on his left side, he had both his schoolbag slung over his shoulder and a plastic grocery bag with green onions sticking out dangling from his hand.
“I’ve got it.”
“You’re sure?”
He kept the umbrella angled so Mai would stay dry as they walked.
“Mai, what are you gonna make?”
“It’s a secret. It’s no fun if I tell you now.”
“Fair.”
At this point, they were in sight of the park a few minutes from his apartment building.
As they were passing by, Mai suddenly stopped.
“What’s with that girl?”
Sakuta followed her gaze.
A girl with a red umbrella was standing just inside the entrance, by the grass. She was wearing a uniform from a local junior high. It looked pretty new still, so she must’ve been a first-year.
How long had she been there? Her shoulders and legs were soaking wet.
When he looked closer, he saw a cardboard box hidden in the grass.
Mai started walking in her direction, so Sakuta was forced to follow.
“What’s wrong?” Mai asked.
The girl turned toward them, her face emerging from beneath the umbrella.
The moment he saw her face, something felt wrong. No, not “wrong,” exactly. It was like he’d met this red umbrella girl before. Or she reminded him of someone he knew.
“Um, this kitten…,” the girl whimpered, her voice very faint.
She looked down at the cardboard box again. There was a kitten curled up inside, shivery from the cold and wet.
The girl was clearly worried about the kitten but had no idea what to do about it.
“Mai, can you hold the umbrella?”
“Sure.”
She took it from him. Sakuta bent down and picked the kitten up with one hand.
“I’ll take it home with me. If it gets better, great; if not, I’ll take it to the vet.”
“Okay. Oh, but…”
“Mm?”
“I want to adopt it.”
“Oh, then…”
Sakuta gave the girl his phone number. She punched it into her cell phone.
“Is that right?” she asked, showing him the screen.
“Yep. My name’s Sakuta Azusagawa. Same Azusagawa as the highway rest area chain. Sakuta is written as a blooming Tarou.”
She typed in his name as instructed.
Then, she looked up from the phone and gave him a long look.
“My name’s Shouko Makinohara.”
The moment he heard this name, Sakuta’s heart started beating so hard it hurt. But it took his brain longer to catch up.
He blinked several times. Then he finally worked out just what had been bugging him. He knew that name. No wonder he felt like he’d met her before. It made sense—but also begged a much bigger question.
“What did you say?”
“My name’s Shouko Makinohara.”
The junior high school girl in front of him had the same name as the high school girl who’d been Sakuta’s first love.
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