KAKERU
His uncle arrives at school on a Tuesday morning in November.
Kakeru is in the middle of first period when the door opens and Daichi Asakura stands in the frame — work clothes, Tuesday, the expression of a man who has decided an inconvenience is best handled by converting it into a scene. Twenty-six students arrange themselves into the particular stillness of people watching something they cannot look away from and feel guilty for watching.
"Kakeru. Come home."
"I'm in class."
"You stayed out without telling me. You're irresponsible. You're like—"
Kakeru is already standing. His body decides before his mind does. He picks up his bag and walks toward the door. His uncle steps back — surprised by the forward movement instead of the expected flinch — and Kakeru walks past him into the hallway and runs.
He hears his uncle's voice behind him, receding. He does not turn.
He comes out, leaves his school behind he is running he is thinking that where should he go? He does not have an answer but that's a lie. He knows exactly where his feet are leading him to. His mind has been clouded since he saw that dream and the lake. He thinks: I promised her I wouldn't go alone but what if there is a chance that I can fix all this, I won't have to endure anything, I will have a nice bed, I can turn on the lights as long as I can, have proper meals, mama and papa will be on my sports day so I wouldn't have to skip them and yeah Niji…
He thinks about the promise. He thinks about Hana's voice in the dream — the accuracy of it, the weight of her shoulders, the distance that kept being wrong no matter how he moved. He thinks about the lake and what the voice said. He thinks about his mother's laugh still going approximate. He thinks about the notebook and the nine years and the theory that is also, at its root, a sentence: I want to go back.
His feet start walking.
He walks toward the forest.
He tells himself he is only going to look.
✦
The lake is darker than the forest around it — not in color but in quality, the darkness of something that has chosen what it reflects. The trees lean over it. The surface is perfectly, deliberately still.
He stands at the edge. He thinks: I promised.
He thinks about her hands around his hands in the dark. About the theory on the kitchen table. About the way she said the fabric folds, the note at the right pitch, her voice the same frequency as nine years of his own thinking.
He is still thinking — genuinely weighing it, the promise and the voice in the dream and the ten years of approximate memory — when the hand comes out of the water.
Palm up. Fingers slightly open. Not grabbing. Offering.
It closes around his wrist before he has finished processing what he is seeing. The pull is gentle and total. He has one moment — trees, cold air, the still dark surface — and then he is somewhere else.