Chapter 2 – Raising the Question

1 – October 23rd (Monday), 8:30 AM

Kei woke up about 30 minutes earlier than usual the next morning. He ate a quick breakfast of toast with blueberry jam, took a shower, and headed out.

He began his walk on a familiar path down a single lane road with gray, sun-bleached asphalt, and passed a yellow, pole-mounted curb mirror. The white line separating the road from the sidewalk was cracked in all the same places.

It was just after 8:30 AM when he made it to Haruki Misora’s house.

He yawned widely. Mornings were never his strong suit. But he had still managed to make it to the usual meet-up spot 15 minutes ahead of his typical schedule.

Kei leaned against a wall, looking up into the sky. The weather was wonderfully clear. The vast light blue in his sight connected even to the edges of the universe.

As he looked to the sky, he remembered Souma Sumire’s words.

This is the last time. Everything should be over in just a few more days.

Her wording was concerning. Everything should be over. What did she mean by everything? What was supposed to be over?

As he thought it over, the door in front of him opened.

Haruki Misora. She jogged towards him as the door closed behind her with a bang, greeting him with a smile. “Good morning to you, Kei.”

Kei responded with a smile of his own. “Morning. You’re out early.”

“I saw you from my window.”

“Ah. Well, let’s go.”

They may have been early, but there was no point in standing around.

The pair began walking side-by-side. As instructed by Souma, they were planning to pick up trash at a nearby intersection.

“I received a phone call from Sakagami-san yesterday, by the way,” Haruki Misora shared.

“Oh? That’s odd.”

Sakagami Yousuke was a guy that used to be Kei’s senpai in junior high. He currently attended a high school outside of Sakurada, only returning on the occasional extended vacation.

“Sakagami-san claimed to have received a letter from Souma Sumire,” Haruki explained.

Kei couldn’t help but frown in response. Sakagami wasn’t supposed to know about Souma’s rebirth. He had helped back in August with the plan to pull Souma from the photo, but then lost those memories due to a reset.

So why would Souma send him a letter?

“What was in the letter?” Kei asked.

“All it said was that she wanted him to come to Sakurada. To that end, he has returned to town.”

“Any chance that was some kind of prank or something?”

“Sakagami-san himself thought that possibility was high.”

“I see.”

Sakagami Yousuke was not very proactive in most situations, but Souma was an exception. Two years prior, he had been willing to rebel against the Bureau just for the off chance that she could be brought back. Suspicious or not, the letter would most definitely draw him in.

“He asked me if I knew anything about it, and I told him that I did not,” Haruki finished.

Things being as they were, that was probably the best answer she could have given.

“I was also told to ask you if I could, so now I am passing his question on.”

“Gotcha. Thanks.”

“Why would he not just call you directly to find out?”

“Well, it’d probably be a pretty awkward call.”

Sakagami had a strong distaste for Kei.

Personally, Kei had never enjoyed talking with him much. He was a decent guy overall, but their ways of thinking were just incompatible. “Is Sakagami-san gonna be here for much longer?” he asked.

“I do not know. He ended the call rather quickly.”

Perhaps his powers were meant to be useful at some point. But how so? Kei couldn’t know. At the very least, the knowledge that Sakagami was around was worth keeping in the back of his mind. “Well, I’d rather figure out why Souma told us to go do this, first.”

“You mean having us clean up trash?”

“Yeah. Are we supposed to find something that someone dropped, maybe?” If that was the case, they wouldn’t know until they started.

“Why would she not give her reasoning?” Haruki asked.

Kei thought it over, tilting his head. “Well, I could think of a few reasons. It might not work out the same if I was expecting it. Or I wouldn’t do it if I knew the outcome. Whatever the case may be, I’m just gonna do as she said.”

Haruki peered into his face. “You have a great deal of trust in Souma Sumire.”

Kei nodded without hesitation. “Sure do. I can’t imagine her making any mistakes.”

She was strong, smart, and knew the future to boot. She was so spectacular that it was unfair. If the player was that good, then Kei didn’t mind being a part of their game.

“But Souma Sumire did make a mistake… two years ago,” Haruki responded quietly.

Two years ago, she had died.

“You think Souma really did make a mistake?” Kei challenged.

“Do you think that dying was the right thing to do?”

He didn’t know. He didn’t know her circumstances, her goals, anything. But still… “No, I agree. It certainly wasn’t right. Whatever her reasoning might have been, it’s just not right to have to die and come back to life for it.”

It may have been her best way forward. He could believe that. But he couldn’t call it right.

“It seems to me that you tend to lose your composure when the topic shifts to Souma Sumire.”

“You might be right about that.” It could be entirely true that she was never mistaken in her methodology. But that didn’t mean she had the right goals. “I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

It could be dangerous to refuse to harbor even the slightest of doubts.

After arriving at their destination, the pair quickly began picking up trash. They found convenience store bags, crumpled fast food bags, and all types of flyers. Kei, having made sure to wear work gloves, picked them all up in turn, tossing everything into a garbage bag. Haruki had brought two pairs of gloves from her house.

“Did she perhaps lose something important recently?” Haruki asked.

Kei shook his head. “Looks like a new crepe shop opened up,” he commented, having picked up one of its flyers. It advertised a chocolate banana crepe for $3.50. That was the only part that caught his eye. The rest was exciting and all, with crepes popping out of a yellow background and pink letters splashed around, but it didn’t seem to have anything to do with Souma and any possible goal she could have.

“What if we were to visit that restaurant for lunch?” Haruki proposed.

“Sounds great. They even have savory stuff, like sausage or salad crepes.”

All in all, he just felt like he was taking a relaxing day off to perform some volunteer work. It wasn’t a bad gig, but at the same time, he couldn’t shake the guilt of leaving everyone else to clean up after the school festival. If they were just picking up anyway, wouldn’t it have been better to do so in the school hallway?

“How long will we continue to pick up trash?” Haruki asked.

“She didn’t really give me an end time. All she said was that she’d contact me later.” Kei pulled out his cell phone to check the time.

It was approaching 9:30. They had started at 9, and had already picked up all the trash in sight. Their directions only specified one intersection, so it was never going to take all that long.

Kei pointed to a vending machine on the side of the road. “Let’s take a breather. Want a drink?”

“I will go buy them.”

Kei had already gone to all the trouble of predicting where the conversation would turn, and tried to ask Haruki first, all for nothing. He fought back. “It’s fine, I’ll go.”

“Then we can go together.”

“But one of us needs to keep an eye on the surroundings, just in case something happens.”

“If that is your concern, then you should be the one to stay. Your ability puts you at a significant advantage for keeping watch.”

He couldn’t counter that one. It was like the world’s hardest game of shogi.

Kei took a few coins from his wallet, handing them to Haruki. “I’ll have a coffee, cold. And a little sweet.”

“Understood.” Haruki accepted the coins, trotting off to the vending machine.

Kei kept a vague watch over the intersection. Nothing particularly interesting was happening. The east-west side of the intersection got a fair amount of traffic, but the north-south side only had two lanes. A small paid parking lot was in the opposite corner, with a silver station wagon backing out of it.

The sidewalk sat some six inches above the road, with flower pots along its edge. A U-shaped pedestrian bridge crossed over the road, but it didn’t seem to be used by many people. A man was standing right beside it waiting for the light to turn so he could use the crosswalk.

What are we even supposed to be doing here right now? Nothing productive was coming to mind.

The pedestrian light flashed green, and Kei saw a young girl run over from the other side of the crosswalk. She looked around 10 years old, at least still in elementary school. She seemed to be trying to make the light before it turned again, but just before making it to the road, she tripped and fell.

Ooh. Kei remembered that spot. There was a cracked tile right in that location. He had seen it while picking up trash, but the girl definitely didn’t, tripping spectacularly. A bus turned the corner in front of her, blocking her from his view.

Immediately afterwards, something strange happened.

Kei’s field of vision suddenly shifted. After taking a moment to collect himself, he realized what had just occurred.

My head just turned to the side. His neck had unintentionally twisted about 70 degrees. He tried correcting himself, but couldn’t move. Some kind of powerful force was stopping his neck in place, and he couldn’t even move his eyes.

Has my body been frozen in place to restrict my line of sight? Nothing but an ability could have that kind of power.

As he considered his options, the environment around him became greatly disturbed.

Two sounds echoed around in quick succession. First was the high-pitched squeal of a brake, followed by a dull crunching sound of something colliding with something else.

There’s been an accident. But he still couldn’t look. His field of vision was still fixed in place, rendering him immobile. He had no idea what was happening.

Kei removed the glove from his right hand, pulling out his phone. At that moment, he discovered that everything below his neck could still move.

By the time he had dialed emergency services, his head could finally move again. Rubbing his neck, he checked out the scene of the accident. A navy blue sedan had hit the silver station wagon backing out right near the intersection.

Before long, a voice came from his phone. “Do you need emergency services, or the fire department?”

“This is about an emergency. There’s been a traffic accident.” Kei gave his current address, as well as a few buildings to serve as landmarks. He then summarized the accident.

The driver of the silver station wagon had already gotten out of his car, but Kei couldn’t see much of the blue sedan, except that its hood was badly crushed. The sedan’s driver was still in his car seat, motionless, his hands hanging onto the steering wheel.

As Kei described what he saw, a thought ran through his head. Is this what Souma wanted me to see?

It couldn’t have been anything else. But it only served to beg another question.

Couldn’t she have prevented this from happening?

Saying a single word to the driver of the silver station wagon would have been enough to change the future. Any delay at all from the time he left the parking lot could have helped. Her future sight would have made avoiding that accident a walk in the park.

Then, there was the matter of what had happened for those ten seconds.

I couldn’t move my line of sight at all.

It was as though someone had specifically manipulated his field of vision to stop him from seeing the accident. It was like some supernatural ability. Granted, such a thing was commonplace in their town.

After finishing his explanation, Kei hung up. He found Haruki standing beside him, a can of coffee in each hand. “Did you see the accident?” he asked. His voice was strong and forceful.

Haruki shook her head. “No. I heard the noise and tried to look over, but could not.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“I do not know why, but I was incapable of looking at the intersection.”

The exact same thing Kei had experienced. “Let me borrow your cell phone for a second, Haruki.” Kei needed to use another phone just in case emergency services called his phone back.

Haruki shifted the coffee can in her right hand to her left arm, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket. Kei took it, dialing in a number he knew by heart.

The phone rang for a long time. Eventually, a sleepy voice answered the call.

“What’s up? Not every day I get a call from you.” It was Tsushima Shintarou, the Bureau employee-cum-Service Club advisor.

“Good morning to you. This is Asai.”

“Oh, it’s you. Never mind what I said.”

Tsushima had probably misunderstood since the call came from Haruki’s phone.

Shrugging that off, Kei paid greater attention to the sounds coming from the other side of the phone. He thought he heard low, heavy rumbles, like the sound of an engine, but Tsushima was supposed to be at school.

All sorts of speculations ran through Kei’s mind, but he focused on saying what he had called for. “I’m at the scene of a traffic accident right now.”

“What? You’re not at school?”

“I skipped out on the festival cleanup.”

“You’re, uh… not supposed to tell the teachers that,” Tsushima answered with a stunned voice, before continuing, “Anyway, what’s this about an accident?”

The traffic accident in and of itself wasn’t worth calling Tsushima, but… “It seems pretty likely that an ability was used at the time the accident happened,” Kei reported.

If an ability was related to an accident, that was a job for the Administration Bureau.

✽

Following his short exchange with Asai Kei, Tsushima Shintarou hung up his phone. “Sorry for the disturbance,” he apologized to the man sitting beside him, giving a slight bow.

Tsushima was presently sitting in the backseat of a car. The Index, a woman he knew well, sat in the driver’s seat. He had actually known her even before joining the Bureau, back before she was called “The Index”, and he still felt somewhat uncomfortable calling her that.

The passenger seat was occupied by a girl who looked to be around middle school age. She was a girl that Tsushima had only ever seen in photos. But she was also supposed to have died two years prior.

Could that really be Souma Sumire? Did Asai Kei’s plan from two years ago finally reach fruition? The boy’s entire goal in opposing the Bureau had been to bring her back to life.

But if all that is true, why’s this girl together with Bureau employees?

Of course, no matter how many thoughts ran through his head, he didn’t dare voice them.

Sitting beside Tsushima was another Bureau employee by the name of Urachi. It was a name he had heard before.

Strictly speaking, the Bureau didn’t have a clear hierarchy. In that vein of thought, Urachi could only be described as an employee with enormous pull. There was a particular sector called the Countermeasures Department, significant in being allowed the most free use of abilities of any department in the Bureau. Urachi was evidently the head of that department.

Urachi looked towards Tsushima, smiling. “Quite the acting chops you’ve got there.” When Asai Kei had called, or at least, when they had thought Haruki Misora was calling, Urachi had instructed Tsushima to act natural.

But Tsushima shook his head. “I’d bet that Asai Kei saw right through it.”

“Oh? Why would you think that?”

“I’m sure he heard the sound of the car engine, so he would know that I’m in a car when I should be at work, which would most likely mean Bureau-related activity. And since I never answer the phone when I’m driving, he’d know that I was being taken somewhere.”

It was possible that the boy had figured out even more than that, but Tsushima couldn’t be sure. Not like I even really know what’s going on here, myself.

All Tsushima could be sure of was the phone call he had received from The Index that morning.

Wait at your house. That was the beginning and end of his instructions.

He had done as told, waiting in his house. Eventually, a car stopped in front of his house, leading to the present, where he was sitting beside the head of the Countermeasures Department.

None of it made any sense.

Of any possible Bureau employee, the last one anyone should want close to the Countermeasures Department, where the most power was held over ability use, was Tsushima Shintarou.

“What did he call about?” Urachi asked.

“There’s been a traffic accident. The accident itself was nothing unusual, but it is possible that an ability was related.”

“Oh, I see.” Urachi turned his head to the girl in the passenger seat. “It all happened just the way you said.”

“Of course it did,” the girl answered, strangely calm. “Do you doubt my ability?”

“No. Though I must say, it is rather strange.”

“What about it’s strange?”

“The fact that Asai-kun was at the scene himself. Did you tell him to be there?”

“No. I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Really?”

“Really,” the girl replied, turning her eyes to The Index.

“She’s not lying,” The Index confirmed.

“Seems a bit too much to be a coincidence. But oh, well,” Urachi trailed off, turning back towards Tsushima. “While I’ve got you here, I need to ask you a favor.”

“What would that be?”

“I want you to join as a temporary member of the Countermeasures Department.”

What an odd thing to ask, Tsushima thought. “Is this request coming directly from HR?”

“No. At least, not that I’m aware. However, the Countermeasures Department has the authority to temporarily conscript anyone from the Bureau. That’s where the request is coming from.”

Tsushima shook his head. “That authority derives from the rule that the Countermeasures Department can make use of any ability user.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“So, not me.”

Urachi smiled. “Whatever the origin may be, the fact remains that we are allowed to apply that authority to any personnel of the Administration Bureau. Position and standing can come into play, but not for you.”

The entire situation was wholly annoying. Tsushima didn’t know what was up, but he didn’t want to become involved in some harebrained, incomprehensible scheme. He sighed knowingly, as if putting up a meager resistance. “I don’t understand the reason you’d want someone like me in the Countermeasures Department.”

Nodding, Urachi replied, “There are two reasons, actually. For one, you don’t have an ability.”

“And that’s a plus?”

“It will be. Very much so.”

That was hardly convincing, but Urachi didn’t appear to be in the mood to explain. So Tsushima pressed, “And the second?”

“You are the singular member of the Administration Bureau that holds the greatest degree of Asai Kei’s trust. If that boy wants to contact the Bureau, he will be contacting you.”

Asai Kei. “He’s only a high schooler.” He shouldn’t have been on so high of a radar as the Countermeasures Department.

But Urachi slowly shook his head. “On the contrary, he is special purely by the merit that he has an ability. He’s not only a high schooler.”

In a way, there was no arguing that fact.

But at the same time, that fact hardly mattered to most of the citizens of Sakurada.

✽

Once the ambulance arrived, Kei left the scene of the accident. There was nothing left he could do, and he didn’t want to have to explain to the soon-arriving police why he was skipping school to pick up trash at an intersection.

He decided to return to Haruki’s house for the time being. It was a good opportunity to return the work gloves and dispose of their trash.

Standing in front of her house, Haruki held out a coffee can. “Would you like to drink this inside?”

“No, I’ll just wait here.”

“Understood.”

He watched Haruki enter her house, pulling the tab on his coffee can. It was both bitter and sweet, with a gentle taste that seemed owed to a high amount of milk. The flavor was quite complex.

Upon his second sip from the can, a voice echoed in his head.

Rest assured that nobody will die from the accident.

It was Souma Sumire’s voice.

She was undoubtedly using Nakano Tomoki’s powers, but Tomoki himself had no memory of being used. What exactly had Souma done? What was she doing in the present, for that matter?

Whispering, Kei answered, “What was the point of having me be there for that?”

You’ll understand soon. Only a little longer. It’s imperative that you know what’s going to be happening within Sakurada.

“That accident was caused by an ability, from what it seemed.”

If the drivers were under the same strange influence of vision control that Kei and Haruki were, then it was only natural to assume that was the cause of the accident.

You don’t need to overthink it right now. Just remember the facts, and how everything happened, Souma whispered inside his head.

What exactly was she trying to pull? What kind of future was she leading him towards?

He wanted to ask, but he doubted he’d get an answer.

Now then. The next request.

“Just how many requests do you have of me?”

Three more, so four, including the trash.

Was he supposed to take that to mean that similar events would happen three more times?

Spend your time for now as you please, but at 3 PM, you need to be at the supermarket near Nanasaka Junior High for a little shopping trip.

She listed a set of ingredients as if she had previously written them out. Carrots, onions, and chicken. They sounded like the ingredients for chicken curry to Kei.

Lastly, some yogurt.

Yogurt?

Kei decided not to question it. The purchases themselves were probably nothing important. He assumed they were leading to something else, just like how picking up trash led to witnessing a traffic accident.

See you later. Once you’ve finished shopping, that is.

With those words, the voice in his head faded away.

At the exact same time, Haruki came out of her house. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Kei turned to look at her. “Souma contacted me again.”

“Where are we meant to go next?”

“We actually have some free time for a while. We can just wander around for now.”

Now he really was just skipping the festival cleanup to play around. He felt pretty bad about it, but figured he could work it out if any police tried to question him. He was skipping school to go on a date with a girl. That was a believable argument.

Or at least, it was a lot easier than explaining that the reason he witnessed a traffic accident was because he was following the instruction of an ability user with future sight.