The girl upon seeing that name written on the ragged old paper was sent to a moment of shock.
The name was familiar but not at the same time.
After a moment of staring, she sighed and turned her head.
"...Bah! What kind of Japanese has the name 'Ethan'?"
Of course, her name was Mira. What kind of parents would name a child Mira and the other Ethan?
She flopped backward onto her bed, staring at the ceiling as if it would give her answers. It didn't. The cracks on the plaster looked like rivers splitting across a desert — silent, endless, and dry.
"Ethan…" she whispered again. The syllables felt strange on her tongue, like a song she almost remembered but couldn't hum. It didn't sound Japanese. It didn't sound… hers.
And yet, it made her chest tighten.
Why?
Her phone buzzed beside her. She jumped up and checked her phone.
A message popped up.
[Kana: You coming to cram school today?]
She ignored it. She put it down next to her and stared at the notebook once again. Her fingers hovered over the notebook like it might bite her. Slowly, she touched the word again. The ink was faint, old, but the pressure marks dug deep into the paper, like whoever wrote it had carved the name in with stubbornness.
She flipped the notebook over. Checked the cover.
There was no other clue for the mystery surrounding her heart.
She flipped closed the book and threw it to her side, as if trying to escape it.
She got up from the bed and left her house, wanting to get some fresh air.
Just as she reached the same park she visited last time, there seemed to be a crowd of people.
Curious, she slowed her steps. Voices overlapped, excited and shaky.
A woman was holding a boy, hugging him like he was the last piece of treasure she had gained back.
"My boy... my Haruto!..." The lady cried, clutching the boy so tightly his face was buried in her shoulder. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
The girl blinked. Haruto?
The boy looked about eight, maybe nine. His clothes were dusty, his knees scraped raw. His eyes were wide — the kind of wide that held too many things at once: fear, relief, confusion.
People whispered around her.
"Wasn't that boy missing for a year?"
"How did they find him here?"
"I thought he was dead!"
The girl felt her stomach twist. A year?
Haruto turned his head slightly, his gaze brushing over the crowd… and for a second — just a second — his eyes locked with hers.
She froze.
Those eyes weren't the eyes of a child. Not entirely. There was something old in them. Like someone who came back from the dead.
Her chest tightened again. That same strange ache.
Haruto blinked, and it was gone. He was just a boy again, clinging to his mother, sobbing quietly.
She turned away, forcing herself to breathe, to move. It had nothing to do with her. Nothing at all.
And yet, as she walked past the old community board again, something made her stop.
The photograph was gone.
The one with the eight kids. The one that had felt like it should've been nine.
The world was going around.
It was spinning.
Spinning?
Should the world spin?
Isn't that common sense that the world spins?
Even the eleven-year old Mira knew that.
Everything that goes around comes back once again.
Like that boy.
Then.... Is there a probability?
But, for something to come back it must be thrown once.