Chapter Two

Chapter Two

 

1.

 

NAOMI TENTATIVELY touched the large, square bandage on his forehead.

“I can’t believe you got yourself hurt, Naomi,” said his mother, sounding genuinely mystified by this turn of events. Naomi had always spent most of his time safely indoors. He’d gotten through elementary and middle school without a single major injury to speak of.

Grimacing awkwardly, Naomi gave the bandage another careful rub. There was no telling how many years this thing had been sitting in their closet.

“I did give the city government a call about that drone, for what it’s worth…”

“Don’t worry about it, Mom,” said Naomi hurriedly. “It’s just a scratch. Thanks.”

Increasingly embarrassed by the entire situation, he quickly left the living room and opened the sliding door to his bedroom, which was located two paces down the hall.

Unsurprisingly, his new friend was waiting for him in there. He hadn’t expected anything else, but it was still unsettling.

Naomi slid the door shut behind him and sized up the man warily.

He was still wearing his pure white coat, even inside the house. He’d kept his hood down, though, so his face was now clearly visible. That three-legged bird, which seemed to be his companion, was perched on his shoulder.

This man had just claimed to be Naomi. Or a version of him from the future, anyway. At the moment, he was studying Naomi’s bookshelves.

Naomi took the opportunity to study his face from the side. There was a resemblance there, to be sure. Ten years from now, he might look something like this.

At the same time, he didn’t want to believe that it was true. It was hard to express why, but…he didn’t like adults like this guy. The man was always giving orders and bossing him around. He didn’t pay any attention to Naomi’s feelings and constantly ignored his questions. All he cared about was getting what he wanted.

His personality felt like the polar opposite of Naomi’s. It was really hard to believe he’d turn into someone like this.

“Ha, I remember buying this.”

Naomi started. The man was pointing at the book that lay open on his desk. It was the one he’d bought two days ago and had already filled with colorful sticky notes: How to Be Decisive: A Better You by Tomorrow!

There was a small smile on the man’s face, practically a self-mocking smirk.

Naomi approached the man cautiously. There was a significant height difference between them; in close quarters, he was forced to look up at him.

After a moment, he managed to piece together enough words to form a question. “Are you really me?”

“What, you wondering about my height?”

Naomi nodded nervously. That was exactly what he’d been wondering about. He wasn’t even 170 centimeters tall, but this man was well over 180.

“You’ll keep growing for a while,” the man replied simply. “That said, this is a just an avatar. I could change its appearance any way I wanted to.”

“What? Like how?”

The man lightly snapped his fingers. His hand instantly disappeared, replaced by a shiny, metallic arm.

Naomi stared at it, wide-eyed with shock. It was like a magic trick. The man’s hand had turned into a simple two-pronged claw, reminiscent of a toy you might see gathering dust on the shelves of a pawn shop. It clacked open and shut a few times, then abruptly returned to its original form.

“Huh,” Naomi said, for lack of any better thoughts. That transformation had been far too quick and realistic to be a sleight-of-hand trick. He couldn’t even imagine how that would work.

This was just...overwhelming. Naomi dropped down heavily onto his chair. He studied his own hands, trying to make sense of things.

Thinking back to what they’d talked about earlier, he lifted his right hand and snapped his fingers. They produced a sound, if not a particularly impressive one. Naturally, nothing else happened.

Still, he could feel his hand. He could feel his fingers. They sure as hell felt real to him.

“So this whole world, uh…” Naomi said, turning his head up to look at the man. “It’s really just made up of data? It’s some kind of simulation?”

“Yeah. Not that it really matters much. This world is a complete, perfect copy of reality, preserved inside the AllTale system.”

Once again, without prelude, the man snapped his fingers. Naomi jumped a little. But nothing changed this time.

“Now I’m back in reality.”

Again, the man snapped his fingers. Again, nothing happened.

“And now I’m in the simulation. I can hop freely between the two. But since this world is your reality, you can’t tell it’s simulated. You’ll never be able to perceive it as anything but real, so it’s pointless to even try.”

“Well, okay. I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”

“Huh. You sure took that well.”

“The whole thing kind of reminds me of Egan, I guess…” Naomi glanced at the small shelf next to his desk, where he kept books he was particularly fond of. Quite a few of these were “blue-back” science fiction paperbacks from Hayakawa Publishing. Writers like Greg Egan, H. G. Wells, Phillip K. Dick, and Arthur C. Clarke were all well represented. He was really fond of their work.

Naomi hadn’t intended to build an SF-heavy collection, but at some point he’d fallen in love with the genre. In the very beginning, he’d been a bit intimidated by the ominous-looking covers and the thickness of the novels, but now he actively looked for books like that every time he visited the store.

He’d read quite a lot of science fiction for a boy his age. In a way, he’d given himself a good foundation for coping with this hooded man’s strange claims.

As his eyes ran across the spines of the books on his shelf, Naomi thought back to the stories they contained. Permutation City by Greg Egan had a setup a lot like what this man was describing. And Incandescence, too.

Those books had both featured purely simulated worlds. The people living in them were simulations, too. Thinking about those stories helped him process the situation, at least a little bit. But it also led him to new questions.

Incandescence was a story set in the distant future, when almost all of humanity had been converted into digital transhumans. And in Permutation City, the simulated world was very different from reality.

But according to the hooded man, this simulation was a “record”—an exact copy of the real world as it used to be.

“If that’s all true,” said Naomi, looking up again, “why are you here? Why come visit a copy of the past?”

It was the first question that had popped into his mind. What was his future self even doing here?

“I think I already gave you an answer, but I don’t mind repeating myself.”

The man snapped his fingers again. This time, there was a visible effect. The bird leapt off his shoulder, flapping up to the top of a bookshelf.

With skillful movement of its three legs, it kicked down the cardboard box that was sitting there.

“Gah!”

The box hit the ground with a thump and fell over, spilling its contents onto the ground.

Naomi had packed it and put it up there—it was full of magazines. Gravure magazines, mostly. And a few that were slightly more explicit.

“Ah! Gaaaah!”

Yelping with embarrassment, Naomi dove onto the pile. Gathering the magazines in his arms, he pushed them under his bed. It was far too late, of course, but he couldn’t stop himself.

He could feel his face going red. Wasn’t this man his future self? Shouldn’t he be humiliated by this, too?

“I came here to help you with the painful dilemmas of your youth,” the man said, his voice as bold as ever. “In other words, I’m here to help you get a girlfriend.”

 

2.

 

EVERY CLASS in a school is surrounded by a strange barrier.

Anyone can enter or leave their own classroom freely. However, if you want to enter a different class, you’ve got to contend with an invisible wall. You might just be going to see a friend across the hall, but the moment you cross that threshold, the other thirty-nine students in the room will suddenly seem like enemies determined to drive you from their turf.

Because of this, Naomi never set foot in other classes. Even a handful of people glancing in his direction was more than he could bear. The very thought of an entire classroom looking at him made him want to run screaming for the hills.

It was kind of pathetic, yes. He was probably the single weakest, most fragile person out of all two hundred fifty first-year students in his school.

But there were also people on the opposite end of the spectrum: unusually powerful exceptions. The ones who had both self-confidence and respect from others, for example. Or people who could find their own way through anything that life threw at them.

While pretending to read a paperback at his desk, Naomi glanced repeatedly across the room. He was so worried about not being noticed that he could only manage to look for about two seconds at a time. But he couldn’t bring himself to stop, either.

Three girls were chatting at the center of the classroom. Two of them were from Naomi’s class, but the girl sitting in between them was from the next room over. She was constantly smiling or bursting into laughter, and the air around her seemed to fill with sparkles whenever it happened.

She was Kadenokouji Misuzu, the “idol” Naomi had first spotted at the library committee. Over the course of that single meeting, she’d somehow captured the hearts of multiple boys her own age, along with several older guys. She was a force to be reckoned with. It was hard to believe she was the same age as Naomi.

Of course, the girl herself probably didn’t have any interest in the school’s hierarchy as Naomi saw it. She probably didn’t even know it existed. That was part of what made her so fearsome.

It didn’t matter whether a real princess was strong or fragile—her presence was all that was required. Just by being in the room, she made everyone else in it happy. Anyone standing in her way would smile and yield the path to her. She could walk right into any classroom she wanted without a second thought. Everyone was actually happy to see her!

Hidden behind his paperback, Naomi continued to observe this strange phenomenon. Misuzu was smiling again, her face emitting magical beams of sunshine in all directions.

Man, thought Naomi. I kind of wish I was observing her instead…

“Kadenon! Let’s get back to our classroom!” another girl called from the doorway. Misuzu nodded and rose to her feet.

“Gotta go! See you at lunch, okay?”

With a little wave to her friends, she left the classroom at a trot. Once she was gone, Naomi could finally see all the way over to the other side of the room.

In one of the seats next to the window, a girl was quietly reading a book. There was a cover on it, but it looked like a novel.

She was doing the exact same thing as Naomi, in other words. But Naomi didn’t feel the comparison was fair to her. She was reading in a fundamentally different way.

“Pass! Pass!”

A sudden shout made Naomi flinch. A group of boys were tossing a bag of gym clothes around the room as a makeshift basketball.

“Come on, cut it ooout!” someone shouted, their tone only half serious.

Naomi looked back down at his book, wishing he could hide behind it. Those guys were the same age as him. So why did they seem so intimidating?

“Hey!”

“Crap!”

Naomi looked up. Somebody had messed up and sent the bag flying off course. It zipped across the room, passing between the girl at the window and her book; it hit the glass loudly and fell to the floor.

The classroom was suddenly dead silent. Everyone was thinking the same thing: This isn’t good.

The bag hadn’t hit her, but it easily could have. The boys had clearly gone too far. Everyone, including Naomi, waited anxiously for the girl’s reaction.

Flip.

She’d turned to the next page in her book.

Everyone else in the room blinked simultaneously. Nobody actually spoke, but the word “whoa” was definitely running through their minds.

The culprit who’d hurled the bag received a sharp elbow to the side and promptly ducked his head in apology. “Sorry ’bout that…”

Ichigyou Ruri kept right on reading her book as if nothing had happened.

 

After observing her for an entire day, Naomi discovered that his fellow library committee member, Ichigyou Ruri, was a very formidable person in many ways.

First of all, her face was formidable.

That word could mean more than one thing, of course. Some people might be described as formidably beautiful. But Naomi wasn’t entirely sure whether that applied in this case. He thought she had a pretty face, but not one that stood out to him as his type. She certainly couldn’t be called cute.

Ruri had a very composed face. She didn’t smile, and her default expression was cold and calm—almost angry, really. Most of the people in their grade would laugh at pretty much anything, even if it wasn’t funny, but Ruri’s face suggested that she didn’t do much laughing at all. She looked like the kind of person who would sit stone-faced through an entire comedy routine out of pure stubbornness.

At lunchtime, Ruri headed to the school store.

She was relatively tall compared to someone like Kadenokouji Misuzu, granted, but Naomi had still been impressed to see her push right through the crowd without flinching or hesitating. Reaching the front of the pack while plenty of fish sandwiches and yakisoba breads were still available, she’d immediately called out, “I’d like four twisty breads, please.”

Apparently, she was a fan of those things.

After buying her lunch and returning to the classroom, Ruri found her seat occupied by a girl who was chattering cheerfully with a group of friends.

“So yeah, you know what Yukawa-senpai told me next? Seriously, he—”

“That’s my seat,” Ruri interrupted.

Naomi cringed a little. Her timing was terrible. It was like she wasn’t even trying to be nice.

The group of girls apologized and moved across the classroom. Ichigyou Ruri, looking totally unperturbed, promptly sat down and resumed her reading while working on her twisty breads.

After school, Ruri was on duty at the checkout desk of the library. The majority of the job was loaning out books and processing returns, but there usually weren’t that many people using the library on any given day, so they usually had lots of free time on their hands.

Unsurprisingly, she used that time to read her book.

After engrossing herself in it for a while, a sudden frown appeared on Ruri’s face. Her default expression was already vaguely hostile, but now she was clearly displeased. Naomi was reminded of a scowling juvenile delinquent from a manga he’d once read.

Ruri began flipping backward through her book. After finding something or other in the first few pages, she returned to the page she’d been reading and grimaced once again. She didn’t even notice that someone was now standing by the desk, hoping to borrow a book. And the poor guy was too intimidated to speak up.

Naomi, who’d been watching from the hallway, quietly expressed his thoughts—which were probably shared by anyone else who’d witnessed this.

“Yikes…”

At that point, something smacked into the back of his head. Turning around, he found the three-legged bird flapping in the air behind him.

“Kaw!”

With that brief cry, the bird flapped down to land on the hallway floor. Then, it turned around and walked off at a steady trot. Naomi tagged along behind it.

As he followed the chubby little animal, Naomi studied it curiously from behind. From what he’d found on the internet, a bird like this was apparently called a yatagarasu. He felt like he’d seen a depiction of one on an informational sign at some shrine before, although he couldn’t remember which. In any case, it was supposedly a very special kind of crow.

The crow trotted along the hallway at a surprisingly brisk clip, perhaps aided by its extra leg. Naomi jogged behind it at first, but eventually he had to run just to keep up.

Finally, the crow turned into a boy’s bathroom on the very edge of the building, one that didn’t get much traffic. Following it inside, Naomi found his “future self” waiting with his arms folded.

“Why are we meeting—”

“Shh,” the man interrupted him, holding up a hand. A moment later, there was the sound of a toilet flushing, and an older student emerged from one of the stalls. As he washed his hands, he glanced dubiously over at Naomi, who was just standing there awkwardly.

Once the other student had left the bathroom, the older man lowered his hand, signaling that it was all right to proceed.

“You can’t just start talking to yourself when other people are around, you know. People might think you’re nuts.”

“Thanks. Very considerate of you…”

For what little it was worth, this future version of Naomi did have some consideration for his reputation. Naomi was grateful for that, but not too grateful. He wouldn’t even have this problem if the man had never come here, after all.

“So, did you get a good look at her today?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Naomi had carried out his mission exactly as instructed. He’d observed his target carefully for the entire day.

“I kept an eye on her all day, but… Uhm, are you sure it’s her?”

“I am,” the man said. “You and Ichigyou Ruri will be dating three months from today.” The way he said it made it sound like the most obvious statement in the world.

Naomi frowned involuntarily. His feelings about all this were very mixed.

“What’s with that face, huh?”

“Um, well…I don’t know.” Naomi waved a hand in a vague gesture of protest. “Me and Ichigyou-san? It seems kind of…impossible.”

“Impossible? Why?”

“Well, I mean…” Naomi paused, trying to find the right words. He was a little frightened of the man, so he wanted to explain this as diplomatically as possible. “I’m not sure I could handle her. She’s kind of a lone wolf, and I’m more of a wimp. I feel like she’ll bite me if I get too close. Also, um, I kind of prefer girls on the cuter side of the spectrum, so…”

“What? Are you calling her ugly?”

Apparently, Naomi had blundered straight into a landmine. He suppressed an urge to cover his face with his hands.

In his mind’s eye, he pictured Ichigyou Ruri as accurately as he could.

I mean… Come on…

“Of course not! I think she’s got a really pretty face. But she’s just not the cute type, right?!”

Naomi tried his very best to explain his position; he was scared, but he wasn’t going to lie to himself. If the cold, fearsome face of Ichigyou Ruri was cute, then so was a snarling lion.

“Wrong!” shouted the man angrily. “She’s the cutest girl on the planet Earth. Are you blind or something, kid? Are you sure you were even watching the right person?!”

That was actually seeming kind of plausible to Naomi right now. Maybe there had been a mistake. Maybe he was actually going to be dating some other girl in three months’ time.

Still…you could misremember someone’s face, but the man knew her name perfectly…

As Naomi pondered this mystery, the older man suddenly strode toward him and passed right through his body. “I’ll just have to double-check myself.”

“Huh?”

“She’s in the library, right? Follow me, but don’t say anything!”

With that final declaration, the man passed right through the bathroom door. In his hurry to follow, Naomi nearly walked right into it.

 

3.

 

THE OLDER MAN STRODE right into the library as if its glass door didn’t even exist.

Naomi screeched to a halt in front of it, then slowly opened the heavy door. When he entered the room, he found himself in a hushed, peaceful space. He walked cautiously into this holy ground, conscious that it was taboo to make a sound here.

Nishiki High’s main building had undergone a major remodel a few years earlier, and its library had been completely redesigned in a very modern style. The interior was a pleasant mix of clean white and polished wood.

The library was two floors with an atrium in its center. The first floor was home to the book collection, and the second floor was a study space. Since the students who came here to study were up on the second floor, the browsing space on the first floor was usually open. There weren’t many people hanging around today, either.

Naomi moved from one bookshelf to the other, trying to be stealthy. This place ought to be his home turf, but he felt more like a burglar sneaking into someone else’s home.

The older man had stopped next to a shelf not far from the checkout desk and was gazing quietly at it. Naomi crouched down next to him and pointed at Ruri. “See?” he whispered. “That’s Ichigyou-san right there.”

Ruri was still reading at the checkout desk. It was probably the same book she’d been working on earlier, judging from the displeased expression on her face.

“I mean, she’s the only other library committee member from my class, so I don’t think you could have mixed things up, but…”

As he said it, Naomi realized the idea really didn’t make much sense. This girl was the only Ichigyou Ruri he knew; he couldn’t imagine that some other person with the same name was going to show up and become his girlfriend out of nowhere.

Still, the other scenario seemed equally implausible. He couldn’t even imagine how he would start dating this girl in only three months. They’d happened to become classmates in high school and happened to end up on the same committee, but that was as far as their connection went.

Sure, those coincidences might be enough to lead to a friendship at some point. Maybe. Possibly. But at the moment, their ties were totally superficial. And this girl was so different from Naomi.

Her personality was nothing like his. She was so much stronger than him. It felt like they were different kinds of people on some fundamental level. A giant, yawning chasm separated the two of them, and Naomi had no idea how he could ever hope to cross it.

He couldn’t really imagine himself falling in love with her. But just as he thought that, a drop of something fell past his eyes. Naomi looked up.

There were tears running down the invisible man’s cheeks.

Naomi found himself at a loss for words. This felt like seeing something that he shouldn’t. And yet, he couldn’t look away.

The man stared fixedly at the counter with wide eyes. His tears flowed freely, but he didn’t even wipe them away. He just gazed at the girl behind the desk and, for a long, awkward moment, everyone in the room seemed frozen in place.

The tears of Naomi’s “future self” passed right through the floor of the library and disappeared.

 

4.

 

THE STREETS OF KYOTO were bathed in orange light.

Naomi looked down on them from the rooftop of his school building. The man that only he could see was standing on top of the low guard wall at its very edge. He probably wasn’t in any danger, but it made Naomi nervous anyway.

Naturally, Naomi wasn’t up there with him. He was leaning against the wall with his feet safely on the roof.

From up here, he had a clear view of the big apartment buildings around Shijo-Omiya, and the mountains further out. Kyoto was surrounded by mountains on all sides, so you could see them any way you looked, and soon, the sun would sink below them.

“The accident took place not long after we started dating,” the man said quietly.

Naomi looked up at him curiously. He’d put up his hood again, so it was impossible to see his expression.

“The two of us went to see the fireworks together. It was a cloudy day, so they’d considered canceling the show, but they decided to rush through it before the rain started. And then, just as the show reached its climax, a bolt of lightning hit a tree on the riverbank.”

Naomi’s heart thudded in his chest, and a cold shiver ran down his spine. Somehow, his body knew what was coming next.

“Unfortunately, Ruri was standing right next to it…” The man paused, then continued solemnly, “and she never opened her eyes again.”

He fell silent. The sounds of cars in the distance seemed oddly loud all of a sudden. Naomi needed some time to process what he’d just heard. This was far more serious than he’d expected.

This man was telling him that Ichigyou Ruri had died.

Honestly, it wasn’t easy to believe. He’d only met the girl recently, and he’d seen her alive and well only minutes earlier. But this man was talking about the future, so of course it didn’t feel real—her death hadn’t happened yet.

There was one thing Naomi could believe, though…because he’d seen it with his own two eyes. This arrogant, self-confident man who claimed to be his future self had broken down in tears.

“My objective is to falsify the record of that event,” the man continued. “We’ll prevent the accident three months from now, overwriting it completely. When she survives, it should create a ripple effect through the simulation as a whole. Within AllTale’s infinite storage space, a world where Ichigyou Ruri survived will form.”

Naomi thought this through as best he could. The man’s words fit with what he knew, at least. If this AllTale system really did have infinite capacity, creating a new world might be possible.

He had one question, though.

“Uh…” Naomi started to speak, but his voice faltered for a moment. “Is there…any point to doing that?”

The words came out sounding hesitant and fearful. Naomi found himself looking down at his shoes. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked, but he hadn’t been able to resist the urge.

“Even if you save Ichigyou-san inside the simulation…”

“She won’t come back in the real world,” the man responded in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone.

“Then why do it?”

There was a lengthy silence. After a while, the man’s mouth quirked into a smile.

“You know, it happened just after we started going out.” He reached up and pulled down his hood before continuing, exposing his face again. “We never got a chance to go anywhere together. We didn’t make any memories. We didn’t even take a single picture together.” There was no intensity or anger to the way he spoke.

“I just want one smile.” He continued, quietly and earnestly. “Just once, I want to see her really, truly happy. I want a record of that to exist. I want that memory. Even if it’s not real.”

The man’s gaze turned to Naomi.

“Even if she’s not smiling at me.”

Naomi could see the determination in his eyes. It was deep, and strong, and completely beyond his understanding.

Maybe it was meaningless. Maybe this was all a simulation. Maybe the girl he’d loved would really be dating “someone else.” But this man was still going to make it happen.

Hopping down from the wall, the man approached Naomi, who found himself frozen. He tensed up reflexively as the man reached for his arm, but the hand didn’t make contact. It just passed right through him.

“I can’t do much here. This is only an avatar, unable to touch anything in this world. I’m powerless on my own.”

With that, he took one step back and bowed his head deeply.

“Please help me, Naomi.”

His words were simple and straightforward. Maybe that was why they hit Naomi as hard as they did.

Naomi was at a total loss for words; this imposing, intimidating man, this confident and arrogant adult, was bowing to him. Begging him for help.

“Look, uh…”

Naomi’s hands rose up defensively. He hadn’t yet decided how to respond, but his body seemed ready to reject this plea.

His mind, on the other hand, wanted time to think this through. This man was asking him earnestly for help. He’d been honest with Naomi and told him the whole story. Naomi owed him a thoughtful response.

“Okay, well…” With a conscious effort, Naomi lowered his hands. “This is all new to me, and it hasn’t really sunk in yet. I don’t know Ichigyou-san that well, either. So, um, I can’t really imagine going out with her, but…”

He mentally ran through the words he’d just spoken. He still couldn’t imagine dating her, at all.

But that said—

“I mean, maybe she’s not the cute type, exactly, but…uh, it would be nice to have a girlfriend that pretty…” Naomi’s halting, stumbling words came out sounding painfully crass and selfish, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He was only being honest.

“Also…” The words flowed more easily now. “If we can stop that accident from happening, and save her life…I want to do it. I want to save her.”

Naomi’s future self looked up with an expression of surprise.

“Um…”

Naomi forced a dopey smile on his face in an attempt to disguise his embarrassment. It felt a bit pathetic, even to him.

“So what am I supposed to call you, anyway? I mean, you’re me.”

The man smiled. That familiar confidence was returning to his face, and for some reason, that made Naomi happy.

“You can call me Sensei,” he said, finally straightening up out of his bow.

“Sensei? Like you’re my mentor or something? I mean, I guess that works…” It was funny—the kanji that make up the word Sensei mean “previous,” and “life.” Naomi wondered if that was intentional.

He was also kind of impressed—it took guts to give yourself a nickname like that. It wasn’t the choice he would have made. Apparently he was going to acquire a lot more self-confidence at some point in the next ten years.

Sensei reached out his right hand.

Naomi stared at it uncertainly. The two of them couldn’t touch each other.

“It’s just a ritual. Can’t hurt to go through the motions,” Sensei said.

Naomi nodded and reached out as well. Their hands clasped awkwardly in midair, both gripping at something that wasn’t there.

They didn’t make physical contact in that moment, but they did make a pact. Naomi was going to help Sensei, and together, they would save Ichigyou Ruri’s life.

“I’ll teach you all sorts of things. I do have ten years more experience than you, after all.”

“So how can I help?” He was finally feeling calmer, so he could consider the details of this arrangement better than before.

Sensei claimed he couldn’t touch this world directly. In that case, Naomi would probably be at least somewhat useful, since he could interact with it freely. That said, he was only a high-school student, and not a particularly competent one. He was a weak-willed waffler who couldn’t even make his own decisions.

“I can’t do anything special. I’m kind of useless, really. I’m sure you know that...” He hadn’t intended to put himself down, but this was the truth—there was no point running from it.

Sensei answered him with a bold smile.

“Wrong. You can do anything.”

Suddenly, a black shadow jumped across the roof. Naomi jerked his head up to look for its source. That three-legged crow had taken flight again.

“Right now, you’ve got me on your side…”

It was flying right at them. Specifically right at their hands, still “shaking” in midair. Naomi couldn’t jerk away in time.

The bird flew into his hand—and quickly began to transform.

“And you’ve got this guy, too.”

The thing that had been a crow distorted itself into a soft, supple substance, wrapping itself around Naomi’s hand. It spread over his palm, between his fingers, then down to his wrist; the sensation was like nothing he’d ever felt before.

For just an instant, he though he saw a spray of feathers in the air. When the dust had settled, Naomi looked down at his right hand. It was covered in an odd blue glove with a surface that swayed like the waters of a deep and ancient sea.