5:06 P.M.

5:06 P.M.

 

I recognized the music echoing through the Moon Temple.

It was the Overture to the first act of “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.”

As if the music was an alarm clock, the unconscious people around me began to wake up. I, Takeda Keiji, was too preoccupied to help them out. I just kept climbing up this giant staircase of a building, looking for Touka. This song was his favorite. That clinched it. He was here.

It had been pitch black when I’d first come in, so I’d had to feel my way around, but once that the lights came on I found a staff member, shook him awake, and demanded answers. His name tag read Shinozaki.

“Hey! Wake up!”

“Mm… mmm? Hazuki, you know I…”

He was still half-asleep. Annoyed, I shook him harder.

“Snap out of it, man! Where do they set the music?”

“H-hunh? Wait, what was I doing?”

“Telling me where this music is set!”

He blinked at me.

“U-um, pretty sure the control room is the boss’s office, at the top.”

That was enough for me. I started running.

I was still running. I’d passed a number of couples my age lying on the floor as I went, which just made me run faster.

“Jesus, what is he doing?”

I was getting near the top when I turned a corner too fast, and ran right into someone.

“Eek!”

It was a girl. Hastily, I stammered, “S-sorry!”

Then recognized her.

It was Niitoki Kei.

“N-Niitoki?! What are you doing here?”

“Oh, Takeda-senpai!” She didn’t seem that surprised. “What are you doing here, senpai?”

“Well, um…” I hesitated. Not only because I wasn’t sure how to explain it, but also because Niitoki and I had…history. As in, she’d told me she loved me, and things got awkward, and stayed awkward.

But she seemed pretty cheery today.

“It’s Valentine’s Day, isn’t it? Should you really leave Miyashita-san waiting?”

“Hunh? Uh, no, you see…” I stammered.

She snorted. “Oh, God, senpai, you’re hilarious.”

“Uh…hunh?”

“Have you thought I was serious this whole time?”

“What?”

“You know. Seriously, I was just kidding!”

“You…were?” I blinked at her.

“Of course! You were just sooo obsessed with Miyashita-san I thought I’d tease you a little about it!”

“Th-that’s…really?”

“Really!”

“O-oh. Well, then. Oh.”

I was relieved, but also a little disappointed. I wanted to laugh out loud. But I didn’t have time. I shook my head and asked, “S-so, Niitoki, do you know who put this music on?”

“I do!”

“Wh-where are they?”

“Right here.”

“Hunh?”

“I put it on.”

“Wha…?”

Niitoki explained that some dude named Habara had figured out the secret of the Moon Temple, and she’d helped him out, and chosen this song at the end of it.

“Y-you did?”

“Is that weird?”

“Well, no…wait…”

I was really confused now. I hadn’t expected this at all. So where was Touka?

“Senpai, are you looking for Miyashita-san? You two have a date today? I’m sure she’s waiting right where you agreed to meet.”

“No, she’s…”

“Maybe… like if you agreed to meet where you first met, and you were waiting literally where you first met, but Miyashita-san’s waiting in the café you went to that day?”

I gaped at her.

“Y-you think that’s it?”

“Extremely likely,” Niitoki said, grinning.

“Oh, crap!”

I was in trouble now.

 

***

 

I mean, that made sense. A story like that would totally explain any disconnect. I could invent that cover story, or she would.

“B-but…no, never mind.”

Takeda-senpai was starting to believe it.

I gave him one last push.

“And I bet she’s super-pissed by now.”

“Yikes.”

“You’d better hurry, and be ready to apologize.”

I was twisting the knife a bit, I admit. Senpai couldn’t handle it. He looked this way and that, and let out a moan.

“Th-then there’s really nothing going on here?”

I nodded.

“R-right. Then I’d better…”

He turned, and ran back the way he’d come.

I sighed, my shoulders drooping.

But he came running back up. When I looked surprised, he said.

“Um, Niitoki…sorry.”

“What for?”

“W-well…I feel like I did you wrong. Maybe I’m just imagining it, but… but either way, sorry. I just felt I should say that.”

“You don’t even know what you’re apologizing for?”

“Yeah, but…anyway, I mean it. I didn’t intend to…but I feel like I might have hurt you, somehow.”

“We’re good.”

“We are?”

“Yeah, it’s in the past.”

I held out my hand. He looked at it a moment, I nodded, and then we shook.

“Thanks. Bye, senpai.”

“Yeah…see you around.”

This time he really did run away.

The hand he’d held trembled.

“Good-bye,” I whispered. There was a single tear running down my cheek.

But that tear was no longer a painful one. There was a note of closure to it. A tear marking the end of things.

“Good-bye,” I said, again.

I was, at last, done nursing that broken heart.