File 17: Looking at the Past in the Diagonal Mirror

1

The university Toriko attended was right by Yotsuya Station on the Chuo Line.

“Man, the station’s close!”

That was the first thing that surprised me; it was way different from my university on the outskirts of Saitama. Mine was a thirty-minute walk from the station. Having never seen a campus in the inner city before, I was walking around like a gaping yokel. When I realized how I must’ve looked, I hurriedly pulled my expression into a tight line. If I acted like such an outsider, the guards were going to ask me what I was doing there.

Still, there wasn’t much to worry about. The gate that led on to the main street was wide open and no one asked to see student ID at the entrance.

It was Tuesday. Just a perfectly ordinary day of the week. It was almost noon, so there were a lot of people walking around. I blended into the crowd, effortlessly infiltrating the campus.

I looked at the people passing by as I walked down a road with a neat row of buildings. I felt like a lot of them were kind of stylish, but I probably didn’t stand out too badly, I think. I had put the color contact in my right eye—for once—so I wouldn’t stand out in a bad way, at least.

“She just had to make this difficult...”

It had been two weeks since the love hotel girls’ party. I hadn’t been able to get in touch since, so I’d come to see her at school.

She wasn’t dead, at least. My messages were getting marked as read.

I didn’t know exactly why she was incommunicado. The only thing that came to mind was the naked dancing during the party. It would be understandable if I felt so awkward I broke off contact after performing some variation of the Barong dance in the nude while drunk and tripping on gamelan music, but what did Toriko have to feel awkward about? I was the one who’d humiliated myself.

That’s right—it occurred to me later, but the dance I was performing was probably the Barong dance. It’s a traditional dance from Bali, said to represent the eternal battle between good and evil. That meant the “lion dancer” who had barged in on us was the holy beast Barong, and as the one dancing with him, that made me the embodiment of evil—the witch named Rangda.

What the heck? How was I the embodiment of evil? How was traveling to check on my friend, who I was worried about because I couldn’t get in contact with her, anything other than an act of good? Give me a break, okay?

Setting that aside, while I knew where she lived, the last time I went there I’d run into the Time-space Man, and it had been a serious headache, so I was a little hesitant to go over there. While I was debating what to do, I remembered Toriko complaining about having two back-to-back compulsory lectures on Tuesday mornings. That meant there was a good chance of her being at school this time of day.

That was what brought me here, but...

Okay, now where is she? I thought as I walked among the other students.

Two lectures, back-to-back, in the morning. After that much thinking, a person tends to get hungry. Toriko was no exception to that; if anything, it was even more likely with her. I could be pretty sure she’d grab lunch somewhere on campus.

I’d read up on places to eat on campus during the train ride here. Two cafeterias, and two cafés, I think? Oh, and a convenience store too. If I went to one of them, I might find Toriko. Not knowing the area personally, I decided to just try at random.

The convenience store was closest, so I peeked inside. Confirming Toriko wasn’t there, I then moved on to the nearest café. I followed the map, and it turned out to be a take-out place selling crepes and sandwiches.

“Huh?” I just stood there, in front of the store.

Well, this wasn’t good. I had assumed Toriko would be sitting down somewhere to eat, so I never considered the possibility of take-out. If she was eating in an empty classroom somewhere, I was out of luck.

I agonized over what to do while glaring at the chalkboard in front of the café that had the menu written on it. Would Toriko be satisfied with a crepe and latte? I dunno. Toriko wasn’t exactly a small eater when she was around me, but she had a bad habit of ordering everything she could, then making other people eat it for her... Besides, in my case, because of how much eating with her cost, I tended to scrimp and save on food expenses when I was on my own. It wouldn’t be all that weird if Toriko did the same.

Well, there’s no point worrying about it while hanging around somewhere I know she isn’t... I reconsidered what I was doing, then headed back the way I had come. If I don’t find her, I’ll figure out what to do then. On to the next one.

Leaving the building, I crossed the road, and entered the building across the street. It was a tall one that I had been able to see from the station. The university in general was pretty tall, and it was kinda white in color.

The cafeteria I was heading to was on the fifth floor. The elevator was pretty packed, so I decided to give up and take the stairs. After hauling myself up to the fifth floor, I entered the cafeteria. The place seemed drained of color, maybe in part due to the thin clouds spread out outside the large windows. Rows of long tables with low-backed chairs continued all the way to the back of the large dining hall, taking up the majority of the floor space. Ignoring the long lineup at the serving corner along the wall, I searched for Toriko as I walked towards the back.

I searched from end to end, but there was no sign of her.

“This place is a miss too, huh?” I sighed, and started heading back to the entrance. Though there were a lot of people here, I didn’t think there was any risk of me having overlooked her. Not many people look like Toriko.

Instead, I spotted a number of people who were probably similar to me, with the same boring fashion sense, and didn’t know how to feel about that. There were a lot of girls in gaudy outfits, so it only made them stand out worse. Yeah, there were definitely a lot of sophisticated and stylish girls in this university. I wasn’t just imagining it. I felt so out of place.

When I was leaving the cafeteria, I spotted some stairs off to the side. It looked like there was outdoor seating. The building was L-shaped, and the five-story section that jutted out from the rest had terrace seating on the roof.

The weather today wasn’t too bad, but it was still January, so there weren’t many people who would actively choose to eat outside right now. Still, I figured I might as well look, so I walked towards the stairs.

As I opened the door to the terrace, a chill wind rubbed against my face. I had been fine walking around outside earlier, but when you were just coming out of a heated building, it felt a lot colder. I shrank my neck inside the collar of my duffle coat as I walked out onto the roof. Even if there weren’t that many of them, there were a few people scattered around the large terrace.

I could see Toriko there.

The person sitting alone at a table near the edge, with her back to me, was unmistakably Toriko. She wore a baggy, deep green mountain parka, and her blonde hair was tied in a ponytail that hung at her back.

“Found her...” I said to myself, coming to a stop. I was happy to have located her sooner than expected, and relieved to see that she seemed to be doing well enough to eat outside in the winter. Well, I had figured all along that she was fine, but I had still been reasonably concerned.

What now? I asked myself. Do I sneak up behind her and shout “Boo!”?

Yeah, no... That could end badly. She had a gun. And so did I, for that matter. In the interest of avoiding any unfortunate accidents, I refrained from playing any tricks on her. I just walked over there, then circled around the table and sat across from her.

Toriko raised her face, then glared at me. This was new. Her face showed a sort of anger and wariness directed at someone rude enough to suddenly decide that they were going to share a table with you. She’d never given me that look before. The moment she registered who I was, it was replaced with a look of bafflement.

“Hey,” I said. I turned away, continuing to look around the area. “Don’t you have any friends to eat with?”

That was payback. Not that I had any clue if Toriko would remember saying the same thing to me, though.

“Sorawo... What’re you doing here?”

“It seemed like a good opportunity, so I decided to drop by.” I looked down at the tray in front of Toriko. She’d half finished it already, but it was a set meal with saffron rice, curry, and something fried.

“What’d you have to eat?”

“The Chef’s Choice lunch.”

“Hee hee. They’ve got stuff like that? In a cafeteria? Sounds expensive.”

“It’s only 500 yen.”

“Seriously? With how neat this campus looks, I was expecting it to be closer to 1,000 yen.”

“The cafeteria here’s cheap. This is still on the expensive side.”

The cold wind across the terrace was too strong, and we both scrunched our necks into our bodies.

“You should eat inside... You’ll catch a chill out here.”

“Too many people.”

“Oh, yeah?” I nodded, and Toriko gave me a dubious look.

“What are you grinning about?”

“Huh? Nothing, really.” I rubbed my cheeks. Had I been smiling that much?

Honestly, I can’t deny that I was a little relieved. I had secretly been worrying about what I’d do if she had a ton of friends here and was living the good life on campus. Based on the glimpses of her shyness that I caught from day to day, I had assumed that wasn’t the case, but seeing her eating by herself was still a relief.

I wonder what her life at university is normally like.

It felt like a long time since we’d first met, but this might be the first time I’d been curious about what kind of person Toriko was in this way.

“Why don’t you get something, Sorawo?”

“I’m not a student here. Can I still use the cafeteria?”

“Nobody’s going to ask you for your student ID.”

“Yeah, I dunno... The line looked really long.”

“I don’t like being the only one eating.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll have a drink then.”

Once I pulled a disposable bottle of tea out of my bag and sat back down, Toriko finally seemed to calm down. The leather-gloved left hand which she had been clenching slowly loosened. It looked like my sudden appearance had shaken her up.

“So? Why have you not been replying, Toriko-san?”

Toriko stared down at her plate awkwardly. She wasn’t making any attempt to answer, so I kept asking.

“Does it have anything to do with the love hotel girls’ party...?”

“...”

Yeah, go figure. That was about the only thing it could’ve been.

I took a sip of my tea as I thought about how to talk about it. Having wet my lips, I put the cap back on the bottle and set it down.

“Um... I didn’t remember it very well, but, uh. I got drunk and did some pretty bad stuff, huh?”

Toriko gave me a probing look. “You don’t remember a thing?”

“Some of it came back to me after I talked to Kozakura-san.”

“Such as...?”

“Such as everyone dancing in the nude...” I felt awkward saying it, but Toriko leaned back in her chair, seeming deflated.

“Yeah, that was a thing that happened.” The words came out surprisingly easily.

“Sorry. It was probably my fault everyone ended up like that.

“Your fault, Sorawo? Why?”

“Maybe I lost control of my right eye while I was drunk.” Even as I said it, I nearly burst out laughing. Urgh... I can’t control my right eye... It’s the alcohol’s fault...! Doesn’t get cornier than that.

“Look, there it is again. Why do you keep grinning?”

“Oh, no, sorry. It’s nothing.” I recomposed myself and kept talking. “Anyway, I think that room might have turned into something like the interstitial space. I mean, there was a Balinese lion dancer...”

Toriko’s eyes suddenly seemed empty.

“Lion dancer...” Toriko shook her head, as if trying to dispel the hazy memory. Once her eyes regained their focus, I continued.

“Anyway, that’s why I think everyone was acting weird. Sorry for putting you through that awkward experience.”

“Nah.”

“I don’t think it’ll do any good telling you not to worry about it, but, well, you know, I’m the one who feels the most awkward about it, so cut me some slack. Okay?” I tried to say that in a cheerful, jokey tone, but Toriko looked disconcerted. “Can’t you...?”

Toriko used her spoon to poke around the curry that must have long since gone cold. “It’d take more than that to make me feel awkward...” she said.

“Huh? Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, why weren’t you replying then?” I asked.

“I thought I was the only one who enjoyed it...” Toriko mumbled in response.

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t seem like you were having much fun, Sorawo.”

“Uh...” That was unexpected, and I came up short for words.

“No... That’s not true at all.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying.”

“It’s a total lie. You called the others because you didn’t want to go alone with me, didn’t you?”

“It’s not...that I didn’t want to, but...”

“But?”

I had tagged on that “but” without thinking. I didn’t know what to say now.

Huh...? This is weird. When did I lose the initiative here?

“If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t have gone at all,” I said, raising my voice in an attempt to reassert control.

Toriko didn’t miss a beat before saying, “Okay, then how about we go alone next time?”

“...”

“See, I knew it.” Toriko looked away from me. “I didn’t realize you didn’t want it. I’m sorry.”

Though she was apologizing, her tone was hard. Hard and cold.

That’s when I finally realized: Toriko was mad.

I flinched when she suddenly rose from her seat. She walked away from the table, carrying the tray with her Chef’s Choice lunch set.

“H-Hold on!” I scrambled to my feet and chased after her. “Where are you going? We’re not done eating.”

“You want to eat? Here, have it.”

“No, I don’t want leftovers...”

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, you should.”

I was confused. I’d had the upper hand against Toriko at the beginning. She was the one who’d cut off contact without saying anything. When she first saw my face, she was acting all meek, wasn’t she? Yet before I knew it, she was the one who was mad, and I was running around after her. I had no idea what happened.

Toriko went inside without another glance at me. I followed her as she strode across the cafeteria, deposited her tray on the return counter, and left.

“Toriko,” I called out to her as I caught up to Toriko in the elevator hall.

“What are you mad for?”

“I’m not mad.”

“You so are...”

Even as the words left my mouth, it occurred to me we’d had this conversation before. Multiple times, at that. She was always the one asking why I was angry, and I was always saying I wasn’t. This was the first time our positions were reversed.

The elevator arrived, and the door opened. The students who had been lined up waiting piled in. It would be tight, but it looked like there was room for us too. Toriko didn’t board the elevator, though.

“Toriko? Aren’t you getting in?”

Instead of responding, Toriko let out an irate sigh, and turned around. Not towards the elevator, but to the stairs. I watched her go, dumbfounded, as she began quickly descending the stairs.

“Toriko!” I chased after her, racing down the stairs so fast I worried I might collide with the students climbing up them. Toriko was faster than me. As she pulled away, I nearly tripped over my own feet. By the time I reached the first floor, Toriko was on her way out the door.

“Toriko! Wait up!” I shouted as I came out of the building. She still didn’t stop, so I ran angrily after her. I reached out, grabbing the back of her coat.

“Let go!”

“No!” I reflexively shouted, and Toriko whirled around to face me. The hand I was holding onto her coat was getting pulled along, so I let go in a hurry. As I staggered backwards, Toriko’s swinging left hand hit me.

“Whoa!” She ended up pushing me away, and I fell over backwards. Fortunately, I landed on my butt and hands, and didn’t strike my head or anything.

Toriko gulped. “Y-Your hand...”

I looked up at her, shaking my hand to distract myself from the pain from it hitting the asphalt.

Toriko was looking down at me in shock. I was about to say something like, What are you doing? That was dangerous, but she had gone pale, and that startled me. I knew Toriko hadn’t meant to shove me. It was just inertia, and bad timing.

“Uh, it’s fine. No harm done. My hand just hurts a bit.”

She hadn’t said anything, but I smiled, trying to reassure her. It was the truth anyway. My hand stung, but I wasn’t bleeding. In fact, if anything, I was relieved that Toriko had finally stopped.

But that relief was short-lived. Her gaze drifted away from me, wandering.

“Sorawo...?”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Huh? Huh? Sorawo?”

There was something wrong. I thought she was too shaken to look me in the eye at first, but that apparently wasn’t it. She seemed to look at me again for a moment, but her eyes passed right over me, continuing to search all over.

It’s like she can’t see me at all...

“Sorawo, where are you?”

With those words, my suspicion turned to certainty.

She can’t see me.

She really can’t see me.

“Toriko—” I hurried to my feet.

What in the world happened to her?

“I’m right here.” I stepped forward, calling out to her. I was going to take her hand, try to calm her down.

That’s when, before my very eyes, Toriko’s form wavered. Then, in an instant, she vanished, swallowed up by silver phosphorescence.

2

“Toriko?!” It was my turn to be shocked. I rushed to where Toriko had been seconds ago and started looking around. Gone. She was gone. Nowhere to be found. Toriko had vanished without a trace. As if she’d never existed in the first place.

“Come on. You’re kidding me, right? Why...?”

As I was there, about to fall into a state of panic, I noticed something odd. It wasn’t just Toriko who’d disappeared—there was no one around as far as the eye could see.

It was noon, but all of the students who had been milling about were gone now, and the campus was silent and empty. In the space of maybe ten seconds, I had been left as the only living, moving person here.

I groaned, overcome by déjà vu.

I’d experienced the same thing when I encountered the Time-space Man. That time, I had also noticed there was suddenly no one else around. No people, no cars, no sound of trains. This utter silence, like nothing I had ever experienced in the surface world, was the same as it’d been back then.

Basically, that meant this was the interstitial space.

I don’t know why, but during the moment I tripped, I was cast out of the surface world. That had to be why we’d lost sight of each other too.

I focused on my right eye. If there was a gate, that should’ve let me see it...

“No dice, huh?”

I couldn’t see one. Had the gate only opened for an instant? There was no trace of the silver phosphorescence. I stopped to think about how I was going to get back. Last time it had been a phone call from the man that brought me back to my world...

“Right, my phone!”

I pulled out my smartphone and powered it on. Thank goodness: the text hadn’t been corrupted. Well, no, the display was weird in some places, but I could still read it, at least.

When I made a call, I got an ordinary dialing noise—and it went through!

“Sorawo?!” Toriko’s voice shouted in my ear, and I unconsciously moved the phone a little further away from it.

“Uh... Hello, Toriko?”

“Sorawo! Where are you now?! Are you okay?!”

“C-Calm down. I’m fine.”

“Thank goodness!”

I was relieved, but Toriko’s response went well beyond that. I could just imagine her eyebrows drooping.

“When you just vanished suddenly, I... Where are you now?”

“The same place as before, but... I seem to have entered the interstitial space.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then Toriko let out a deep sigh. “Sorry... It’s because I pushed you.”

“I just tripped because of inertia.”

“But...”

“You didn’t do it on purpose. I know that. The more important thing is—”

“No!” Toriko shouted again, and I fell silent out of surprise. “I touched you...with my left hand,” she explained, her voice tense.

“Huh? But you were wearing gloves, right?”

“I was. But... I felt it. When my hand hit you.”

“You felt it?”

“It felt like I was touching you directly. Even through the glove!”

That makes sense...?

“So, basically, what you’re saying is that your hand pushed me into the interstitial space? Hmm. But that’s never happened before, right?”

“Yeah...”

“Well, whatever. Okay, so if you were able to push me out, maybe you can pull me back? Let’s try it.”

“How?”

“You could try grasping the air somewhere, like usual.”

I could hear her swinging her left arm around and grunting on the other side of the receiver, but when she spoke again, her tone was dark.

“It didn’t work. I can’t feel anything.”

“Hmm. No luck, huh? I tried looking with my right eye, and I didn’t see anything either. If there was a gate, it may be gone now...”

I was pacing back and forth, thinking, when I spotted something moving in the corner of my eye and looked up.

“Ah...!”

“What? What’s up?”

“Toriko... I see you.”

“Huh?!”

“You’re reflected in the glass.”

In the windows of the building in front of me, I could see Toriko standing behind me. With the sky as cloudy as it was, it was quite a hazy image, but that was definitely Toriko’s shadow.

“Where? Which glass?”

“Um, that might be hard to explain. Try pointing at random. Yeah, like that. Okay, now turn thirty degrees to your left. Yeah. Right in front of you.”

“I only see my own reflection.”

“Really? Okay, then maybe only I can see it.”

“Oh...”

“It’s fine, okay? I’ll look for a way out. I’m sure I’ll find a gate somewhere with my eye and you can just open it up with your hand.”

“Yeah... Thank goodness your phone works.”

“You said it. If we couldn’t get in touch, this would have been a real headache.”

“Hey, don’t hang up,” Toriko said as if just realizing something. “We don’t know if you’ll be able to get through to me again.”

“I know. But, just in case, let’s decide on a Plan B.”

“Plan B?”

“You know how things got weird when we called Kozakura-san from Kisaragi Station? If the person on the other end of the line seems to be talking crazy like that, let’s hang up, and call back.”

“And what if we can’t connect?”

“Well, how about we walk to Jinbouchou, and enter the Otherside through the usual building? Though I’ve never used that elevator from the interstitial space before...” I said.

“I don’t know about that plan. I’d prefer to find a gate near here.”

“Yeah. Well... Let’s go, then.”

“Where to?”

“I can see you from here, so just walk wherever, and I’ll follow along.”

“This feels kinda lonely,” Toriko mumbled, and her image began to walk.

3

The interstitial space was always...unsettling, somehow. I could still read the notices on the bulletin board, but the words were strange and talking about things like the “Neighbor Building,” “open wounds,” and “gathering spots.”

Was the grass always this long? And was it a coincidence that the cracks in that building looked like a person’s face...?

I walked through the area, led on by a vague image reflected in the glass.

There were people here in the surface world, but I was alone here in this one. Was the reason Toriko’s shadow swayed at irregular intervals because she was avoiding people who were passing by?

“Hey, I’m just wandering around at random here. Is that okay?” Toriko said, sounding uncertain.

“Okay, give me the tour, then.”

“The tour?”

“How do you normally spend your time around the university, Toriko?”

There was no immediate response.

“Um? Hello?”

“You’ve never asked that before...” she said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Toriko said, then let out a goofy laugh. “I figure you just weren’t interested.”

“You might be right. I wasn’t all that interested.”

“So, what changed all of a sudden?”

“Nothing, really...” There was no particularly deep reason for the question. “Come on. I’m here anyway, so tell me about it.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Hmm, well... Do you always eat at that cafeteria?”

“It’s cheap and the portions are generous, so I go pretty often. Not every day, though. It’s pretty common for me to just grab something from the convenience store instead.”

“There are other cafeterias, right? You don’t use them?”

“Sometimes, when I feel like it.”

“Okay, I guess I got lucky, meeting you there today, then.”

“I was surprised. It was like you knew I’d be there when you showed up,” Toriko said with a laugh, then, sounding impressed, added, “Good job finding me. There’s a lot of people here.”

“Well, you were all by yourself, Toriko.”

“Well, sure, but... There’s a lot of girls who look like me, right? Here at this school.”

Now that she mentioned it, she might have been right. I had definitely spotted girls about as fashionable as her, who were quite pretty, and even had silky blonde hair.

“There was no one I’d ever have confused for you,” I replied. Toriko was silent for a moment, then let out a long sigh on the other side of the phone.

“You’re always so quick to say these things...”

“Huh?! Did I say something weird?”

“It’s fine. I think I’m just crazy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“...”

“Hey.”

“I just need to show you around, right?”

“Huh? Sure.”

“Well, come along, then.”

Toriko forced a change in subject, then walked forward at a brisk pace. I sped up to avoid being left behind.

“You still mad?”

“I’m not mad.”

Toriko headed towards a building. When we got close to the entrance, her reflection in the glass became a little clearer. With the light of the cloudy sky behind her, I couldn’t quite make out the expression on her face. She vanished before I had the time to look too close. She must have opened the door and gone inside in the surface world. I opened the door in this world and followed her.

There was a long corridor on the other side of a hall with a staircase. I could see classroom doors placed at fixed intervals along it. The buildings that housed classrooms were probably more or less the same at every university, but this one looked newer, and clearer, than the one at mine. Maybe it was the echoing footsteps, but it felt even more silent in here than it had out there. The light streaming in through the windows made it feel like I was walking through a cave.

“Sorawo, you following me?”

“You’re in the corridor on the first floor, right?”

“Yeah. I’m going into the second classroom now.”

“Okay.”

I probably opened the door at the same time as Toriko. I saw her silhouette in the opposite window, standing in the door frame as I did. Inside, there was a large classroom with lines of long, wooden desks. The front had a sliding chalkboard and a lectern. Pretty normal, as university classrooms went.

“Where is this?”

“The classroom where I had a lecture before you showed up.”

“Oh, yeah? So this is where you study, huh?”

“Not much different from your place, right?”

“This is just a touch more stylish, though. Like the design of the lights.”

“What are you talking about?” Toriko chuckled.

In the window, I saw her walking slowly between the rows of desks. I leaned against the lectern, looking at the place where Toriko must have been in the surface world.

“What lecture? I mean, what department are you part of anyway?”

“I’m pretty sure I already said. At one of the afterparties, maybe.”

“Did you? I may have gotten too drunk to remember it.”

“...”

When I tried to lie my way out of not remembering it, I could sense the subtle waves of anger on the other side of the phone, so I gave up and apologized.

“Sorry. Tell me again.”

“English literature.”

“Oh, yeah? Makes sense. You are good at English,” I said, not meaning anything by it, and Toriko fell silent again. “Oh... Sorry, did I offend you?”

“Nah. It’s just...you touched a sore spot.”

“Huh?”

“I only applied to this place because I could speak English,” Toriko said, laughing, but it sounded self-derisive. “See, I didn’t have anything I wanted to do, or anything I really wanted to know when I joined the Department of English Literature. It just seemed easy to get into. So...when I heard the girls around me talking, I felt like I knew less and less.”

“What do you mean?”

“I realized that they all have things they want to do in the future, things they’re interested in, but I have nothing. When I started thinking about it again, I had no idea what I was doing here, and I was scared to talk to people.”

This was the first time Toriko had talked about this. I’d heard about how she didn’t go to high school in Japan, and had gotten into this university after taking an equivalency exam before. And that her tutor when studying for it had been Satsuki Uruma.

I’d met Toriko back at the start of May. If I remember correctly, Satsuki had disappeared three months before that. Calculating backwards from there, that put it around February of her first year in university, huh? That might have been the first time that Toriko, who felt abandoned after losing her idol, came back to her senses.

“You went to university because you had stuff you wanted to study—sociology, anthropology, and other stuff, right?”

“Well, yeah...”

“I respect that.”

“Uh, it’s really nothing special, though...”

It felt awkward being complimented like this. This was the first time Toriko and I had a serious talk about university, and what we planned to do in the future, and that was making me feel restless too. Unable to sit still, I was wandering around near the lectern when I saw something written on the board in chalk.

It looked like English, but not quite. Did the original passage mean something?

“You’ll be in your third year next year, huh? Does your university have seminars, Sorawo?”

When Toriko asked me that, I reluctantly returned my focus to the conversation. “We do. You choose a seminar to join in your third year.”

“Same as us. Which are you joining? Have you already decided?”

“Nah, not really...”

“Oh, I see.”

“What about you, Toriko?”

“Same deal. I didn’t join the program because I was interested in it, so I’d feel bad being there with the actual serious students...”

“You’re sounding awfully timid.”

“That’s how I am, by nature.”

“Now you’re just lying. You’re always super forward with me.”

“Only with you, Sorawo.”

Oh...

I shut my eyes tight despite myself.

I screwed up. This is going in a bad direction.

“Just me, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I can see that. You’re pretty shy, after all,” I said.

“Yeah. When I meet someone for the first time, I can’t even talk.”

“Wait... Hold on. The first time we met you were able to talk just—”

I did it again! I hadn’t been able to hold back and not point it out.

“Yeah... When I think I’m gonna be able to get along with someone, I tend to get a little too friendly,” Toriko replied, sounding kind of meek.

So she realizes it...

“Well, uh, I’m glad it was me.”

“Do you still feel the same way?”

“Of course I do.” Maybe Toriko’s timidity had irked me, because my tone got a little stronger there.

There was a short silence, then Toriko suddenly said, “Are we done here?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Okay, let’s move on to the next place.”

I thought I heard a door opening, and turned to look. The classroom door was open.

Huh? Did I close it? I don’t remember.

I didn’t want there to be anything here, so I took a look with my right eye, just to be sure, but I was all alone, the same as before.

“Toriko, did you go out into the corridor?”

“No? I’m by the lectern now. Can’t you see me?”

I looked back to the window, and sure enough I could see the blurry image of Toriko. “So you are. I wish I could see you a little more clearly, though.”

“I wish I could say that. I can’t even see you from where I am, you know that?”

“It’s just a window, after all. If it were a mirror, then—Ah!” I raised my voice at the sudden realization. I must have been out of it. How did I not think of this sooner?

“What?!”

“Toriko, where’s the washroom?”

“Huh? Did you wet yourself?”

“No, dummy! And shouldn’t the question be ‘are you going to wet yourself’?!”

“You sounded so desperate, I had to assume...”

“Geez. No, that’s not it. There’s mirrors in the washroom!”

“Oh! Proper mirrors!”

“Yeah! Not this unreliable reflection in the glass. Or do you have one on you? A compact mirror?”

“I don’t usually carry one around. You, Sorawo?”

“Me either...”

“We’re the same.”

What do you sound so happy for?

“Anyway! If we use the mirrors, I might be able to see you better.”

“Okay, let’s give it a shot.”

We each headed to the nearest washroom in our own worlds.

I left the classroom and returned to the entrance hall, entering the washroom in the shadow of the stairs. I immediately spotted the mirror there.

Reflected in it was...me. Just me.

“Well, Sorawo?”

“Yeah, sorry. Looks like my guess was wrong.”

“It didn’t work?”

“I can see myself.”

“Yeah. It’s a mirror, after all.”

“Uh, well. Yes, but...”

I had expected this to work, so I was pretty shocked. But why didn’t it? I could see her reflection in the glass, but not the mirror? What was the logic there? Okay, maybe expecting logic from the interstitial space wasn’t such a good idea, but still...

While I looked into the mirror, thinking about it, Toriko spoke up. “That’s just how it goes, I guess. Where to next?”

“Hold on...”

“Hm?”

“Just now, there was something...”

I sensed something amiss, and had Toriko stop. I felt like, for just a brief moment, those familiar golden locks had flashed across the corner of my eye, and so I got closer to the mirror. I tried narrowing my eyes, closing one eye then the other, and a number of other things before that golden color crossed the mirror again.

No doubt about it—that was Toriko’s hair! I was able to see her under a certain condition. But what was it?

“The angle...?”

“Huh?”

“I think I’ve worked it out. Hold on a second, okay?”

I was gradually narrowing down what the condition was. First, I tried looking straight at the mirror. I was focusing on my left eye’s normal vision for this. When I did, my right eye, which had lost focus, moved a little. It was like the ocular muscles had twitched slightly as I relaxed them. When it happened, I saw something different in the gap between my left and right fields of vision.

The mirror stirred like a pool of water, a silver haze covering its surface for a moment, and when it cleared—there was Toriko.

On the other side of the mirror, I could see Toriko’s eyes turned in my direction. She was pressing her smartphone against her ear, her brow furrowed with concern. It was the first time I’d been able to get a proper look at her face in a while, and that really made me feel relieved. I’d been feeling pretty dejected.

As I tried to keep Toriko in my field of vision in an attempt to preserve my own sanity, I saw one of the stall doors behind her open. Someone came out of the stall. She dragged her feet as she headed out the door. A duffle coat, muffler, and short black hair. Even with her face turned downwards, I immediately recognized her.

It’s me.

In the mirror, I raised my face, and...

The phone rang.

I jumped a little, looking away from the mirror.

The phone in my hand was ringing.

“...Hello?”

“Sorawo?”

“Toriko? Huh?”

“You okay?”

“What do you mean?”

I looked up as I asked that, but only my own bewildered face stared back at me from the mirror. I couldn’t see Toriko, or the me who had come out of the stall anymore.

Toriko let out a sigh of relief.

“You scared me there. You started talking nonsense.”

“Oh... So you hung up?”

“Yeah. It seemed like things were getting bad.”

“What was I saying?”

“It was about ‘a lively place where people gather,’ or something... Didn’t make any sense to me.”

Oh, yeah... If just one of us was going to go crazy, now that I thought about it, it was more likely to be me, the one in the interstitial space. I didn’t like that I hadn’t realized that sooner.

I shook my head. “Thanks. I’m glad we had a Plan B prepared.”

“Hey, listen, I really don’t want to be the one hanging up. I did it reflexively before, but when I started thinking it might not connect again, I got super scared.”

“Yeah, I get that. Sorry.”

“Seriously. My fingers are still trembling.”

“I was able to see you, Toriko.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah. You looked worried.”

“Well, duh?! I could slap you right now, Sorawo.”

“Attagirl. Try to keep your spirits up like that.”

“Ohh, I’m mad. I’m gonna sock you. I swear.”

“Now we see your violent nature exposed.”

As I was teasing her, Toriko started growling like a dog, so I decided it was time to lay it off.

“So? Think the mirror will work as a gate?” Toriko asked, and I looked at it again.

“I saw a silver haze, so I think if we time it right, it could, but...”

Concerned about what was behind me, I turned to look. The stalls here were all open, and there was no one around. Was what I had just seen the doppelganger of me that had appeared in the past?

“I’d rather not try it here. Can we go somewhere else?” I said, and Toriko got suspicious.

“Did something happen?”

“Nah, not really.”

“Really? Well...do you want to go to the washroom upstairs?”

“I guess...washrooms are the only places with mirrors, huh?” I wasn’t keen on the idea, but what choice did I have? I’d seen the doppelganger before. It was creepy, seeing a warped version of myself with all the ugliness inside me emphasized, but if I brought it up now, I would only worry Toriko more.

We left the washroom, went up the stairs, and entered the second floor washroom. After checking that all the stall doors were open, I looked into the mirror again. Recalling the way it had felt the last time, I relaxed the muscles in my right eye, and...

It came.

The silver haze came over my vision again.

Nice. Now, if I could see Toriko, I could have her use her left hand to open the gate to the surface world. I’d need to climb up onto the counter to go through the mirror, though.

As I looked and focused, Toriko’s form slowly appeared...

“Huh?”

Something was weird. I wasn’t looking straight at her, but upwards.

And the scenery wasn’t the washroom I expected. It was outdoors. The sky was clear, and I could see the tips of the tall, faded grass. The Toriko looking down at me wore an olive-colored jacket zipped up to her neck, along with jeans, and lace-up boots.

“Huh? Huh?” The surprise was apparent in my voice.

I could tell with just a glance: this was the scene where Toriko and I had first met on the Otherside.

Toriko reached her hand out towards the mirror. My eyes were drawn towards her approaching face. In the next moment, I dove into her eyes. Or that’s what it felt like. My field of view flipped around. I saw myself, soaked and half underwater, taking Toriko’s hand, looking towards me in awe. My hair was plastered to my head, and water dripped pitifully from my nose and mouth, but my eyes sparkled—they were so incredibly full of life. But how...?

“How do I look anything like Ophelia?!”

This time, I managed to regain my sanity before Toriko hung up on me. The scene in the mirror wasn’t the field in the other world anymore, but the washroom it originally was. What had changed was that I could see the other me having completely left the stall. She dragged her feet, approaching me with strange, robotic movements. Her body was poorly balanced. I felt like her hands were stretched and strangely elongated.

Instinctively, I turned around. There was nobody there. Looking back to the mirror, the other me had vanished from there too.

“Sorawo, did you say something? Should I call back again?”

“Nah... It’s fine.”

“You sure?”

“So, uh, listen. I saw you. From the first time we met.”

“Huh...?” Toriko sounded bewildered.

“When I was drowning in the other world. I was looking at myself through your eyes.”

“Through my eyes?”

“Yeah.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then she shouted. “Hold on?! Does that mean you could see how I see you?”

“I guess it does?”

“Wait! Stop it! Ahh, you can’t do this to me! This is the worst!” Toriko started panicking, which confused me.

“Uh, it didn’t feel particularly malicious or anything.”

“That’s not the issue! Hey, could you stop picking on me, and hurry up and come back?”

“I’m not picking on you! But, darn. Do you think we can try it again?”

“Sorry... Someone came in here.”

“All right. Let’s go to another floor then.”

“What is this, the toilet tour?”

We moved to the third-floor washroom, and tried the same thing there.

When the silver haze cleared this time, it was a dark room. There was something like a person’s head in front of me, and on the other side of it I could see Toriko and myself looking towards me. The door behind them was open, and I could see a familiar street outside it.

Oh, crap! That’s what the road outside my apartment looks like through the Pandora mirror stand in the room next door!

The moment I grasped the situation, I instinctively closed my eyes. In the mirror, the door that led to the modular bathroom opened, and I felt like I saw myself come out of it for a moment. Both of my elongated, mantis-like arms were raised, but I forced myself not to focus on it.

“Toriko, are you okay?!”

“Huh?! I’m fine, but... Did something happen?”

Thank goodness. No matter what was going on, it didn’t seem to be affecting Toriko in the surface world.

“I may be starting to figure this out. The mirrors in this interstitial space might be connected to mirrors that you and I have seen before.” I explained what I was experiencing, but Toriko seemed mystified.

“The mirrors are connected? So you can travel through time?”

“Yeah, no, pretty sure it doesn’t work like that... If the current me turned up in the place where we first met, it would cause some really weird things to happen.”

“That’d create a time paradox, yeah.”

“So I think I’m just seeing scenes from that time through the mirror.”

“So, we can’t use it as a gate, then?”

“It feels like it should work, but when the scenes appear, my attention is pulled into them. That makes me start going crazy, and it’s keeping me from sending you the signal.”

“Then how about I keep my hand on the mirror the whole time? If I do that, then even without the signal, I’ll notice as soon as the feel of it changes. Then I can pull on it.”

“It’s a good idea, I think.”

“Okay, then let’s try—”

“No, hold on. This place is pretty tight, so I want to do it somewhere more open, in case things go south, and we have to run.”

I stopped Toriko. The doppelgangers had me worried, and so did the fact that I had seen Pandora just now.

“Somewhere other than a washroom? Hmm,” Toriko thought about it. “The side mirror of a car, maybe...? Oh, I know. They sell mirrors at the convenience store, right? Why don’t I buy one?”

“I won’t fit through a small hole like that.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s right, huh? Well... There’s a multipurpose building that the sports clubs use when practicing. It’s got a gymnasium, and I think there’s a big mirror there.”

“Okay, let’s try going there.”

We left the washroom and headed outside the building again.

4

We reached the multipurpose athletics building and headed inside; the first floor was a gymnasium. I immediately opened the door to go looking for a mirror, but this time, Toriko stopped me.

“Wait, Sorawo. This one may be a no-go.”

“Huh? Why?”

“There’s a whole bunch of people.”

“Oh...”

The interstitial space was as deserted as ever, but there were other people where Toriko was.

“There are people who go to the gym in the middle of the day, huh?”

“I don’t think time of day has much to do with it.”

“Do you ever come here, Toriko?”

“Sometimes. When I want to run.”

“Oh yeah?”

I don’t think I had ever, at any point in my life, felt like I wanted to run, so that didn’t click with me. I’d been forced to run a number of times, though.

Peering in through the door, I saw a wide, empty space with lines of exercise equipment. These machines were ostensibly meant for physical training, but maybe they had been warped by the interstitial space, because with all the leather belts and chains, they all looked like torture equipment to me. There was a large mirror, but if it was hard for Toriko to go in there on her side, it wasn’t going to do us much good. Even if I was able to escape, a whole lot of people would see me emerging from the mirror—and they’d see Toriko’s translucent hand.

“Okay, let’s try another building then...”

I was about to leave, but Toriko spoke up. “Let’s look in the other rooms first. The dance clubs use this building for practice, so we might find other rooms with mirrors.”

She led the way, and we checked the other rooms one by one. When we were in hallways without windows or other reflective surfaces, it was hard to spot Toriko, so I had her give regular updates on her current position.

When we did find mirrors they were too small, or the rooms were in use in the surface world, so it was hard to find a good spot. We kept at it, and in a hallway on the fourth floor, Toriko shouted, “Sorawo, I found one! Second door from the back on the right-hand side!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I opened the door she’d indicated; it was a brightly lit room with plywood flooring. The whole back wall was covered in mirrors. It might have been used for dance practice, because the entirety of the floor was covered in small scuffs and scratches.

“Oh, just what we were looking for.”

“No one’s here. Let’s use it. I’ll lock the door, okay?” Toriko said, and I locked up on my side too. We didn’t want anything coming in from outside to interrupt us. It might slow down our escape if anything happened that forced us to flee, but...this was probably the best room we could ask for, so I wanted to do whatever it took to get out of here.

I took my Makarov out of my backpack and kept it in my right hand. It’d ruin everything if I accidentally discharged the weapon, but I wanted to play things safe.

“I’m in front of the mirror. Right in front of it,” Toriko said on the other side of the phone. I stood in the same spot.

“I’m ready on my end too.”

“Okay. I’m gonna touch the mirror now.”

“Okay. I’ll look with my right eye.” I focused on the mirror in front of my eyes.

Okay, now what am I going to see this time..?

As I tried to remember what memories of mine included mirrors, a silver haze covered the whole mirror.

Now!

It happened just as I was about to open my mouth to give Toriko the signal. A train came right at me. The glare of the headlights on the front car was approaching me at an incredible speed. Obviously, I screamed.

It’s gonna hit me!

My eyes went dark.

Dark...

Still dark.

I realized I hadn’t been run over, and looked up. I saw myself. When our eyes met, my face contorted, and I clutched my head. Then I could see no more.

Was that...the scene from when we escaped Kisaragi Station?

Some time passed, and then my vision suddenly brightened again. I raised my head. I knew it. It was a train in the surface world, on the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line like that time back then.

I was clinging to the metal bar next to the door, my body swaying with the motion of the train. I couldn’t hear any sound, but it was clear at a glance that I was bawling my eyes out like a child. My eyes were drawn to a tear dripping from my eyelashes.

I was reflected on the surface of the teardrop. I was crawling on a concrete floor, with creepy movements like I had lost all of my joints. There was a hand in my field of vision. A translucent left hand, with the glove removed. The hand touched my body, which was mushy, like clay. It moved as if trying to confirm the outline of my body. It rolled up my clothes, exposing my back. It slapped against my skin. Again and again. There were multiple white hand prints left on my back. I looked over my shoulder, looking into my eyes reproachfully. I was drawn into the gaze of those moist eyes again, and...

This was the other world, the time we met the Yamanoke. I was watching past events through Toriko’s eyes. That had to be it.

Oh. It doesn’t have to be a place with a mirror.

The eyes are mirrors reflecting the world.

If Toriko is next to me, that’s just like there’s a mirror reflecting me at all times.

Even as I was thinking, the scenes rapidly shifted from one to the next.

Me, acting suspiciously as Toriko handed me a fat wad of cash.

Me, trying so hard to finish the excessive amounts of food Toriko ordered.

Me, with my arm around Toriko as I fired the shotgun resting on the balcony railing.

Me, on top of a military vehicle, looking ahead of us, a tense look on my face.

Me, in a swimsuit, not quite willing to look Toriko in the eye.

Me, sitting across from her in a yakitori place, looking to the side sullenly.

Me, lying on the floor, blanching with pain, but still seriously looking at the woodwork mosaic.

Me, looking blankly at Toriko on the roof as we waited for the elevator.

Me, sitting next to her on the train, playing with my slightly longer hair.

Me, bound to a chair, looking up at Toriko in disbelief.

Me, clinging to Toriko, my face a mess of tears as I babbled something.

Me, in the changing room at the hot springs, looking tense as I took off my clothes.

Me, in a dark hotel room, rinsing out my mouth in front of a sink with no running water, looking exhausted.

Me, opening the box containing the folding knife, my eyes widening with surprise.

The scenes played out without sound or smell, only vision, but there was one thing, like it or not, that came across clearly.

Wow. Toriko Nishina really loves me...

No, I knew that. I already knew that. She’d told me as much herself, so it was a bit late to be saying this, but...

Geez, you know... She really does. Toriko loves me.

In Toriko’s eyes, I looked like I was adorable, strong, reliable, smart, like someone she just couldn’t leave alone... I was way more attractive than I ever would have thought myself.

If it were just completely detached from my own self-image, I might have been able to ignore it, saying she’d given me too much credit. But at the same time, she saw my pettiness, the times I was lame, pitiful, and ugly. She saw it all.

She saw it, and accepted it.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to do.

Toriko had said she didn’t want me to know how she saw me, but I was really shocked to find out too.

Could I accept this much affection?

Was I giving her the same in return?

No, I’m not. Not in the slightest.

I had caught a glimpse of the morning after the love hotel girls’ party through Toriko’s eyes. I was immersed in a bathtub with hibiscus leaves floating on the surface of the water, staring off into space. Toriko’s hand entered my field of vision. She tried to hold my hand under the water, but I was so out of it I was non-responsive. As I saw Toriko’s hand pull back, limp, I felt something squeeze tight in my chest.

Then another scene, one that had just happened, appeared.

It was from Toriko’s perspective, walking away quickly as she left the cafeteria. I was following her, a stupid look on my face, and stood next to her in the elevator hall. I saw my face in profile. It bore a carefree look that knew nothing of what she was going through. Like I was thinking, Oh, look, Toriko’s throwing a tantrum again. Gosh, what ever shall I do? Toriko headed towards the stairs. She descended them with long strides. Her vision blurred. She raced down to the first floor, pushed the door open, and went outside. Her field of vision filled with nothing but asphalt. One, then two tears fell to the ground.

I’m such a fool.

I assumed she was mad. Toriko hadn’t been mad. She’d been sad.

Because I’d rebuffed her overtures. Because even though I knew how she felt, I was too much of a coward.

The phone in my hand vibrated and began ringing. My consciousness returned from afar. Once again, there was a figure behind me with hands that were elongated like those of a praying mantis.

I was in no state of mind to be afraid of that ugly doppelganger of me. In my head, I spoke to the figure with its face still downturned.

Hey, what are you going to do? Doppelganger.

I’m feeling kind of off-balance today...

“Toriko, you see everything that’s wrong with me. But you don’t go away. I don’t even know how to make sense of it. What am I supposed to do with someone like that?”

There was no response.

“I love you too, but... Well, no, do I? I think this is a kind of love... Yeah, I love you... No doubt about that...”

I felt if I told her how I felt, put it into words, it would just become even more hazy. My head started itching, like I had been in a hot bath too long and the heat was getting to me. I scratched my head, then let out a sigh.

“Maybe I should put some more serious thought into this...” I mumbled, and the figure behind me looked up.

It had...a face other than mine. I’d never seen this woman before.

It wasn’t a doppelganger!

“Huh? Who’re you?!” I cried out in surprise, and the mantis woman wrapped her arms around me from behind, like she was hugging me.

“Eek!”

Without even thinking, I pointed the Makarov in my right hand over my shoulder, and started pulling the trigger. I wasn’t aiming, but she was right behind me, so the mantis woman took a bullet right in the face.

“Ow! My ears...!”

I had fired right near my face because I didn’t have time to think about it, and now there was a sharp pain in my right ear. The mantis woman’s head was knocked back hard. But she didn’t go down. I focused on my right eye again, trying to see the true form of my enemy.

Right in front of me, I saw a hand print.

It appeared suddenly, as if someone were touching the other side of the mirror glass.

Toriko’s hand!

I stuffed the Makarov into my duffle coat and touched the hand print with my own right hand.

I could feel it. Not the hard surface of a mirror, but the softness of her hand. I instinctively gripped it, and she squeezed back. Our fingers intertwined, as if it were across the surface of a pool of water, and my hand sunk into the mirror. I felt her pull hard, and then...

“Pwah!” I gasped.

“Sorawo!”

I suddenly realized I was with Toriko and still holding my ringing phone in my left hand.

When I looked up, Toriko looked absolutely relieved as she looked down at me from up close.

“I-I’m back...”

“Welcome home, Sorawo.”

I turned back to look behind me, in the room, and in the mirror, there was only us.

No, wait. There it is.

I don’t know where it came from, but there was a single black mantis in front of the mirror, staring at me. I glared back, and the mantis seemed to give up, looking away, then skittering off along the wall.

The phone cut out, and it was suddenly quiet.

“You smell like gunpowder. Did you shoot something? You’re not hurt, are you?” Toriko asked, sounding worried. I looked at her for a little while, then, I took a deep breath—and I gave Toriko a big hug.

“I’m sorry, Toriko.”

“Wh-What? What brought this on?”

“I’m sorry for making you sad.”

Thinking back, whenever I was hurting, Toriko would always give me a hug. But I had never done the same for her. Not once.

Not even after learning how she felt about me.

Man, I was terrible...

I had one more reason for hugging her. I didn’t want her to see my face.

When I saw myself through Toriko’s eyes, I realized something for the first time. I had always thought I was doing a pretty good job of masking my emotions, but...

No, that wasn’t true at all. Every one of them, positive or negative, showed on my face, plain as day. That might have been the biggest disconnect with my image of myself.

Realizing that every time I had tried to skirt around some issue, or outright lie to Toriko, she had seen right through me.

“You can go ahead and slap me. Like you promised you would,” I said.

“What...?”

I couldn’t look Toriko in the eye, so I just tightened my arms around her.