10:32 A.M.

10:32 A.M.

 

He had no idea what was going on. What was this?

Shinozaki Yuzuru was a college student who’d been hired to help guide the event visitors, and had been completely at a loss ever since “Custard Pie” had stared blaring and the building had plunged into darkness.

He wasn’t even standing in the same place. He was sitting in a café with the girl he’d been in love with three years ago, in high school.

“Wh-what the heck?!”

He stood up, surprised.

“Now, now, calm down,” she said, just like she had that day. Hazuki Noriko, the girl he’d had a one-sided crush on.

But something about her seemed off.

Noriko had no light in her eyes. They looked like frosted glass or the faint luster of an insect’s compound eyes.

“Wh-what? What did I do?”

“Have you done anything the last three years? Anything worth mentioning?”

This thing with Noriko’s face laughed at him.

“Hunh…?”

“I am the King of Distortion. I am here to remind you of what remains in your heart.”

“Distortion?”

The cell phone in Yuzuru’s pocket rang. The one he’d been given to receive instructions on the job.

This thing reached across the table, and took the phone from him.

“Yes, Shinozaki speaking,” the thing said, in Yuzuru’s voice. With Noriko’s face. “Oh, no. Nothing major going down. Yeah. Visitors are calm. Boss said lead them downstairs, so I’m doing just that. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll let you know if anything happens. Thanks!”

And it hung up.

Yuzuru just stared in horror.

“………”

While he reeled, the thing took an elegant sip of coffee.

“So what were we talking about, Shinozaki-kun?” Noriko’s voice said, just as she had that day.

Her eyes now looked like a regular human’s. Or maybe Yuzuru had just adjusted to it and could no longer tell the difference.

“Er, um…”

“You invited me here to tell me something, didn’t you? Or did we just happen to find ourselves walking back from cram school together?”

“………”

That’s right.

Yuzuru had been waiting ages for a chance to talk to Noriko alone. She had lots of friends and nearly always moved in groups of three. But that day, her friends had been taking a mock test somewhere else and he finally got his chance.

But he ended up being unable to say anything worthwhile. The time flew by with pointless small talk. She’d gone to a junior college and he’d heard she got herself a boyfriend at the very first mixer she attended.

If only he’d asked her out that day. Or…

“N-no, I…”

“This time,” she smiled. “I’ll wait as long as it takes. Until you work up the nerve to say it.”

It was impossible for him to see this thing as anything but the real Hazuki Noriko.

They sat in the quiet café, staring at each other in silence.

Time passed, minute by minute, as if it would never end.

“Um…” he said.

And then the silence resumed.