七

After the crash course on neo-metaphysics, Kai told me a few other things she thought relevant and then essentially left me to my own devices. With some pestering, I managed to get a phone number to contact her if I’m really stuck but she seems to want me to handle this myself. She announced she had ‘shit to do’ and then left me by myself in the bathroom.

It’s probably for the best. Kai seems to poison the air, the feeling I get is that she is far more dangerous than anything else in here. When she said that I’d die if she were to deal with this, I believed her. I get the feeling her way of ‘dealing’ with this problem would be like nuking an anthill.

That being said, I wish she would be a bit more helpful but, apparently, she still needs to play the role of ‘Miyamura-sensei’ unless we want the world to break.

It’s still early enough in the day so I decide to do some reconnaissance. I have a decent idea about what it is Keisuke wants to talk to me about but it wouldn’t hurt to find out. And if there’s something to be found out, there’s only one person to talk to about it.

***

“Well, if it isn’t the virgin,” I say to Shinji as I approach him outside the same konbini from the other day.

“Become a bigger bitch in your absence, Ruru?” he shoots back.

It seems that the day really is looping on itself. Not that I doubted Kai but I didn’t believe her either. Honestly, I’m still not convinced I’m not dead and that this isn’t some kind of purgatory.

“Just grown more tired of masking it. I need some info.”

“Nope, not happening the way you’re talking to me.”

“I’ll unblock you on LINE.”

“What do you need to know?” he replies instantly.

It’s in moments like these where I get why pretty girls are envied. To them, everyone is as easy to use as Shinji.

“Want to know if you’ve heard anything about Keisuke recently.”

“Keisuke? I know I know a bit about everything but you’d know a bit more about that than me.”

Shinji isn’t a very good liar, that’s why he’s an info broker. If you can’t hide that you know something, just make everything you know have a price. That’s the way he sees it.

“Look, I’m worried about him, there’s something he’s not telling me.”

This isn’t exactly a lie, it’s just more like there’s something he never told me.

“Talk to him yourself, Ruri. I ain’t got anything to do with this.”

“Need me to beat it out of you?”

“Go ahead, my lips are sealed.”

Even though I know he isn’t real, I can’t quite so easily bring myself to assault someone who considers me a friend.

“Fine, how much can you tell me?”

“Nothing, but I can point you to someone who might.”

Despite saying this, Shinji offers nothing of the sort.

“OK, then do it.”

“I’ll send you a hint on LINE,” he says with a mischievous grin.

“You’re unbelievable.”

***

A while later and a ways down the road, because Shinji insisted I leave before he messaged me the hint, I get a notification. Opening it I find a location pin and an unrelated picture which I immediately delete. I save the location before blocking him again.

“No way…”

***

“Hi, welcome to Mos Burger. What can I get you?”

The location Shinji gave me leads me back to the Mos Burger from before. He’s not one to mislead so that means something in here can help me, and if I were to bet it’s this girl.

I take the time to look at the girl’s name tag this time, which informs me she’s called Saya.

“Hey, Saya, right?” I say pointing at her name tag, “you don’t happen to know this guy do you?” I show her the least flattering photo of Keisuke I was able to find on my phone.

She examines the photo for a second and then…

“Oh, you’re the girl.”

***

A few minutes later I’m sitting across from Saya with a large combo in between us. She said that she’d talk to me but she’d have to take her lunch break first.

“So you’re the unlucky girl, huh?”

“We’re not dating or anything, if that’s what you think.”

“Oh don’t I know it, you’re all he talks about. You’re much prettier in person by the way.”

“How do you know Keisuke?” I say, trying to bypass her flirtation. It’s flattering but every moment I spend here I’m dying of dehydration on Keisuke's carpet.

“Well, I used to be friends with his sister.”

Saya saying that unlocks a memory buried deep in my head. Keisuke did have a sister. I thought she was his aunt.

“Not too many girls who’d make it their business to get close with their dead friend's little brother.”

“No, and it’s not like I did it on purpose, nor are we particularly close. He started coming here during school hours one day. I wasn’t about to tell him to go home, I remember how I was when Hori died. He kept coming day after day, so I introduced myself and we got talking.”

“Every day?”

“Basically.”

I didn’t realize that Keisuke was skipping school every day. I thought that any day I happened to be in just coincided with ones he wasn’t.

“Does anything seem to be bothering him?”

Saya thinks for a second before responding, grabbing the large soda off me as she does.

“Well… I guess it’s no harm to tell you. He told me about what happened between you two on New Year’s Eve. It really bothers him, almost every time he’s in he talks about how he wishes he could take it back.”

I wonder if he told her the whole story? Either way, it’s good to know there’s some level of conscience in that boy somewhere... not that it undoes anything.

“Anything else?”

“Probably. That boy doesn’t like talking about problems no matter how hard I press. You’re the only thing he was willing to talk about and even that took him a couple of months.”

As she says this, an alarm goes off on her phone.

“Oh shit, lunch is over.”

“Already?” I ask, realizing that it hasn’t even been 10 minutes since she sat down.

“Yep.”

She says this and stands to go back to the tills. Before she does though, she says one final thing to me.

“Don’t be too hard on him, he’s got a lot going on.”

***

I left the Mos without finishing my meal, which I am now very much regretting. But I couldn’t stay there, Saya’s parting words really got to me. We’ve all got shit going on, that’s not an excuse.

Why do I have to eat inside here anyway? None of this is real.

For a while, I contemplated what to do after returning to the park I’d been at with Keisuke the two days prior. The problem is that the list of people who could shed light on Keisuke’s issues is so short. Apart from Keisuke himself, who is excluded for obvious reasons, the only people I can think of are his parents and Maiko.

His parents might be willing to talk but the only place I know to find them would be at their home, and if Keisuke’s there that might tip him off. Maiko… Maiko made it very clear that she would not be willing to talk about issues I and Keisuke might be having, even if she does know anything.

Anyone else is a long shot, like Goro. Thinking about it now, this day that’s repeating is from a couple of months ago. I don’t remember it that well but it has to be. Goro killed himself at the start of March.

“…”

I text Kai with the little info I’ve gathered.

[You don’t need to tell me that, I’ve been watching]

Immediately I stand up and look all around me but I spot nothing.

[Don’t bother you won’t find me]

Just who is this girl?

I text her back asking what I should do next.

[I already told you, just give him what he wants. Sounds like he wants to apologize for whatever that thing you want to forget about was. Let him.]

***

In the end I go home and wait for him to contact me. I neglect to via the roof this time.

Around the same time as he did on the other loop, he texts me.

[Sure. Where do you want to meet?] I reply.

[Remember the little beach near Ashi-Toku?]

That’s the place that Goro lives, where Keisuke used to live.

[Yeah.]

[Meet me there as soon as you can, and don’t take the train.]

Again with the train. Whatever is going on there, I don’t want to find out.

[Sure, I’ll see you soon.]

***

“Yo.”

Keisuke notices me before I can get the first word in.

He’s standing at the back of the beach, his hand is hovering over the mouth of a backpack he’s brought with him. Attached to his hand by the fingers is a flat stone, which when dropped into the bag makes a sound that indicates it has hit some contemporaries.

“You can find rocks anywhere you know? Beach ones ain’t special.”

“No, but they’re easier to get to the beach,” Keisuke says as he picks up a stone that he quickly deems unsuitable and tosses away, “thought we could skim some, like when we were kids.”

“You’re serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Because this isn’t like you, this kind of sentimentality isn’t Keisuke. I should’ve asked Kai more questions, it’s just occurred to me that this might just be Keisuke’s own idea of himself speaking, not the real person.

“What are we doing man? We’re not kids anymore, this is ridiculous. If you want to say something to me, just say it,” I tell him.

“Come on, humour me. Skim a few stones, it’ll be fun.”

“Fine. But I get to choose my stones, I remember how you used to cheat.”

“It’s not cheating, just starting a little early,” he says with a smile brighter than I’ve seen on him in a long time.

***

Keisuke had collected a couple dozen skimmable stones for us by the time I arrived so I pick my favorite 12 and put them into my pockets.

We’re unusually silent as we head for the shoreline, the two of us had always had always been able to come up with some kind of nothing to talk about but not now.

“You gonna take off your shoes?” Keisuke asks as my boot sinks half an inch into the moist sand.

It would look weird if I didn’t heed his advice, so even though I know these shoes aren’t real, they come off my feet. I take off my socks too and roll up the bottom of my jeans. Real or not, wet socks are uncomfortable.

Walking through the surf barefoot isn’t much better though. This beach isn’t as clean as you’d hope it would be. Not dirty by any means, but not spotless. It’s the kind of beach that would get cleaned before being filmed on. A sheet of part-buried tinfoil brushes the sole of my foot to prove my point.

I step up beside Keisuke, who was waiting for me, and cast the first stone. It drops with a thud through the surface tension as if it were in on the joke.

“Woah, just like that?” Keisuke asks.

“What, you wanted me to count it in? This isn’t a competition.”

“We could make it one,” he suggests.

“One that I’d win.”

“You sure?”

“Stop.”

I can’t help but be angry. This is the way he talks to people when he wants something from them, riling them up and edging them towards the outcome. He doesn’t talk to me like this. The only time he did was at the party on New Year’s Eve.

“You said you wanted to talk to me about something, so do it.”

Keisuke skims another stone without turning to face me.

“Do you remember my sister Hori?”

This is unexpected.

“Not really.”

I skim a stone.

“That’s fine, we were really young when she died,” he skims another stone, “anyway, she was really important to me. Mom and Dad always worked a lot so she was always the one who looked after me…”

He skims another one.

“I hurt you Ruri.”

My knees buckle. I thought I’d prepared myself for this but the thing about his sister threw me off.

“Do you have any spare stones?” he asks.

“What?”

“Stones. I just skimmed my last one.”

“Oh, yeah… sure.”

I drop three stones into his hand and he immediately skims one of them.

“My sister would be very upset with me for what I did to you, I don’t think I would’ve done it if she was still here.”

He’s dancing around what it was he actually did.

“But I did do it, and I regret that. It’s the second time that I hurt the most important woman in my life.”

Keisuke skims his final stone again and then turns to face me. He takes one step. I want to take one back but I can't. My feet have sunk into the sand but it feels like they’re stuck in cement.

He puts his hands on both my shoulders, holding me in place.

“I love you Ruri, you mean so much to me.”

When I don’t respond, he takes that as consent, putting his right hand on my face to hold it steady as he goes in for the kiss.

His grip on my face is so strong that I can’t pull away from his approaching lips. It's something that I desperately don't want, he must be able to feel that from the tension in my jaw. Out of pure instinct, my right-hand rises up and smacks him. He was so close to invading my mouth that our lips brush past each other as his head snaps to the side. The hold he had on me loosens and I push him away from me.

Keisuke looks dejected, his head hung towards the sand, unwilling to look me in the eye. The water lapping at my ankles seems to grow cooler with every wave.

But I’m not remotely cold. Inside my chest, rising up into my head is a rage so intense that it makes me realize I’d never understood anger before.

When people described anger to me in the past, I never got it. It seemed to be nothing more than annoyance coupled with a sense of compulsion. ‘How could you let them say that about you?’ ‘You need to get payback!’ people would say these things and I would ignore them because I had decided I didn’t care. What I felt during the test...!

“You’re unbelievable!” 

Unable to even finish my thoughts I scream at him.

Kai told me that this ‘layer’ we’re in is born from a regret of Keisuke’s. When I remembered that this day he had wanted to tell me something, it didn’t sit right with me. It couldn’t have been as simple as that, why wouldn’t he just talk to me another day?

And I realize now that he did. At that party on New Year’s Eve, when he pushed me down and tried to kiss me, that was him telling me. The apology is mere theatrics. He doesn’t want something from me, he wants my body. I get the feeling he’d have it dead if it wouldn’t go cold too quickly for his liking.

“You don’t know anything about me do you?!”

“Why would you say something like that?” Keisuke says, sounding as hurt as he can.

“Because you thought this would work. All this sentimental, romantic shit; the stones, the beach, the stuff about your sister. All you can appeal to is the time we’ve spent together, you have nothing else!”

“...”

“Want to know why we’ve never kissed? Why we’re not together? It’s not because you asked the wrong way, it’s because you thought asking would work. You never got me drunk enough that I'd be willing to fuck you, the same way no guy I’ve ever met has. That’s the only way we could’ve ever been intimate, I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. We’re just two ships that ran aground as we tried to pass each other.”

It all spills out of my lips like my voice box was ignited by the anger and burned up in my throat. None of it was considered, the rage pushed it out of me.

No response is forthcoming from Keisuke. He’s frozen in the sand, tears are welling in his eyes but they never break.

This is a mess. I should’ve just let him kiss me, resolve this ‘regret’ for Keisuke and move one step closer to getting out of here. But I couldn’t, what would be the point if I resigned myself to the inevitable again?

I wait for Keisuke to respond but he doesn't, in fact his body is as still as a statue, one of the tears that had fallen from his face suspended in midair.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve just done???”

Kai appears out of nowhere and starts shouting at me.

“I don’t care!”

“You don’t care? You don’t care that what you just did might cause the deaths of dozens of people?”

“...what?”

“Look at him, completely frozen. You broke him, took one of his deepest regrets and managed to make it worse, almost like you did it on purpose. You’ve accelerated the collapse of his soul, now any soul linked in here is at risk. Fuck!”

“Linked in?”

“You didn’t think he just managed to perfectly recreate dozens of people do you? All of the people you see in here were in close enough proximity to him that their souls have been caught in his gravity. It’s subconscious, none of them realize it. And now you’ve put them all in danger.”

Everyone in here means Maiko. It means my Mom, our entire class.

“Why didn’t you tell me about that?!”

“Because I shouldn’t have to! If you’d just done what you were fucking told, you’d be back in your body right now and I could be dealing with this myself.”

“And that’s my fault?!”

“Yes it’s your fault! Are you a fuc-”