2

In Kei’s opinion, the best part about pancakes was watching maple syrup pour down from a jar onto a fresh pile of cakes stacked with whipped cream. Everything that followed, from cutting them with a fork and knife to eating them, was just the epilogue.

Asai Kei, Haruki Misora, and the girl in the marble were sitting outside of a café roughly five minutes away from Ashiharabashi High. The café seating was plain, set up next to the road as a series of white tables and chairs under green parasols. Given the nice weather they were experiencing, Kei had thought it a waste to eat inside.

The girl stared at Kei from inside the marble that they had placed on the center of the table. Holding a knife and fork over his syrup-soaked pancakes, Kei said to the marble, “Sorry to eat without you.”

The girl in the marble answered with a slightly flustered nod, “No, it’s okay. Don’t mind me. Besides, I have this.” She pulled some kind of candy out of her pocket. “A strawberry flavored Chupa Chup sucker.” She seemed to be forcing the words out as she pulled off the wrapper.

“Do you enjoy Chupa Chups?”

“Mhm. They last for a long time, and they’re very sweet.” The appearance of her happily popping the Chupa Chup into her mouth reflected upside-down in the marble. Kei found it quite a strange sight. It was as though a fantasy world could fit in the palm of his hand.

With a short, “Time to eat, then,” Kei cut his knife into his pancakes. Haruki was twirling spaghetti with meat sauce onto a fork opposite of him. The girl in the marble continued staring at Kei as she licked her Chupa Chup. Her gaze was somewhat off-putting, making him hesitate to move his fork. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

The girl’s shoulders jumped slightly at his question. She timidly responded, “Is it… really okay for high schoolers to stop at a café on their way home?”

“Well… I guess it’s against school regulations.”

“Really?”

“But this is work for the Service Club, so it’ll probably be fine.”

“Um, are you sure?”

“Yeah. Haruki and I have been in the service club since middle school, so I’m pretty sure we’re not bending the rules.”

Most activities would be accepted as a form of club work as long as it was part of a Service Club job. Forget being yelled at, they could even be compensated for going to a restaurant as long as they kept the receipts.

“Okay then.” The girl breathed out, looking notably relieved.

Kei felt similarly calmed as he returned to his pancakes. Chewing on his first bite, he put down his cutlery and glanced at the stack of papers that Tsushima had shoved at him. Kei assumed them to be data printouts from the Administration Bureau. Included was a brief profile of the girl who had found herself inside a marble, as well as a thorough explanation of her ability.

Sera Sawako, 15 years old. New attendee of Ashiharabashi High, though she didn’t make it to the opening ceremony.

Haruki wiped sauce from her mouth with a paper napkin before asking, “Why is this girl inside of a marble?”

“Because that’s her ability.”

Sera Sawako had already used her ability twice in the past. According to the documentation, she used it roughly every two years. All information known regarding her ability was listed afterwards, and Kei read it out loud.

“Sera has the ability to step into the scenery of reflective surfaces, such as glass or mirrors. It is more accurate to describe her current location as inside the scenery of the marble rather than being in the marble itself. In these instances, only her consciousness enters the mirrored world, and her physical body enters a sleep-like state. This is why her physical body collapsed in front of the school gates before being laid on the bed of the nurse’s office.

“Does that all sound correct to you?” he asked as he finished reading.

Sera Sawako’s upside-down reflection in the marble nodded, the white Chupa Chup stick in her mouth bobbing up and down. “Sure. Probably.”

“Probably?”

“I don’t really know. I can’t tell any difference.”

“I see.”

The reason behind her comment was also explained in the documentation. Evidently, Sera Sawako had no voluntary control over the use or cancellation of her ability. As a result, the reality of her ability remained somewhat hidden even from her.

“Shall I reset?” Haruki posed. The Reset was her own special ability. Through it, the world could be restored to a past state, effectively giving her the powerful ability to rewind time. That great power came with a number of limitations, however.

Primarily, in order to restore the world’s state, Haruki was required to have made a previous save. Any created save would be lost after 72 hours, and once a reset was ordered, she would be unable to save for the following 24 hours.

The most important limitation was that resets would affect Haruki herself. Her memory would be altered along with the rest of the world, and she would have no recollection of even using her ability. Without her memories of what had occurred, any one reset was functionally worthless for Haruki, and she would be doomed to repeat the exact same series of events that had followed in the previous timeline.

Kei’s ability offered a solution to that problem. Kei had the ability to perfectly recall any and all past events in complete detail. Only Kei could remember what happened before a reset even after it had been used.

“We’ve been instructed to reset, so I’ll make sure to ask for it when the time’s right,” Kei responded, scooping up whipped cream with his fork to pile on a piece of pancake.

Indeed, their instructions from Tsushima, and by extension the Administration Bureau, were to reset and use the reversal of time to report Sera’s incident before anything could occur. Following the instructions verbatim would have been easy enough. He could have finished the whole assignment without even going out for pancakes.

“I think we have a few more things to take care of first, though,” Kei commented.

“What kind of things?” Haruki asked.

“Well, for one, a conversation with Sera-san.”

Sera in the marble turned her eyes towards Kei. “Me?”

“Yes. There are several things I’d like to ask you.”

Sakurada’s abilities wouldn’t work unless the user wanted them to. For some reason, at some point, Sera Sawako wanted to use her ability. She wanted to step inside that marble. Kei had decided to clarify those reasons before resetting.

Looking at the marble on the table, Kei asked, “Why exactly did you want to use your ability?”

Being upside down, Sera Sawako’s gaze moved towards the sky as she dropped her head. “Sorry, but… I don’t know. I was just… in here, all of a sudden.”

That served to confirm that her ability was unconscious, but Kei already knew that. “Then let’s walk through it step by step. How did it all happen?”

“Well, where should I start?”

“Oh, right. How about this morning, when you woke up?”

She grabbed the white stick in her mouth, pulling out the Chupa Chup. “Well, um… I woke up at 5:30, or somewhere around there.”

“That’s pretty early.” Kei was quite surprised.

“It’s always been like that. Every school trip or field day, I’d have a hard time sleeping the night before, and I’d be so tired that I couldn’t really enjoy them.”

“So it was the entrance ceremony this time?”

“Yup, probably.”

“Alright, you woke up at 5:30. Then what?”

“Well, I got dressed and ate breakfast, and nothing was out of the ordinary… unless you want to know what I ate, too?”

“Tell me, just in case.”

Kei continued to grill Sera on her individual actions of the morning. She left home on time to make it to the ceremony, but found a marble at the bus stop, and as she was looking at it, missed the bus.

“And that’s why you were late to the entrance ceremony?” Kei asked.

Sera stuck the Chupa Chup in her mouth again, tilting her head. “Well, I guess missing the bus did it. I made the next one, though. But I figured it was just as well.”

“Just as well that you were late, you mean?”

Sera nodded. “I figured skipping the entrance ceremony wouldn’t be that big of a deal. It’d just be all the same speeches they said the last time and the time before, right? Spending some time wandering around the shopping district was clearly the cleverer choice.”¹

In a way, Kei had to agree. The entrance ceremony speech hadn’t exactly been dazzling, and the only things that were covered in the following homeroom were schedules and student handbooks. It was nothing he couldn’t have taken care of the next day. “But you still ended up at the school gates,” he probed.

“Yeah. When it came down to it, I was kinda half-hearted about skipping. It probably didn’t matter that much, but I was really serious about middle school, so I had never skipped class before.” Her voice slowly reduced to a sort of mumble. It seemed to be because of the sucker she had in her mouth, but what if it was something else?

She continued, perhaps a little too quickly, “So yeah, guess I looked at the marble when I made it to the school gates, and now I’m in here.”

“Do you particularly like marbles?” Kei asked.

After a slight, “Huh?” Sera nodded. “More or less.”

“What do you like about them?”

“Hmmm. It just… makes sense.”

“How so?”

“Okay, it’s like, you know how the scenery inside is distorted and backwards? It’s almost like the world inside of it is making fun of you.”

“I don’t really think it’s making fun of anything.”

“Well, I just kinda think it’s a nice feeling,” she responded, continuing to look down at the sky.

Kei finished his pancakes after asking Sera everything he wanted to know. Just as he was getting ready to leave, his phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but still had a good idea who was calling him. He got up from his seat, turning away from Haruki and Sera as he pressed the answer button.

As soon as he put the phone to his ear, a voice assaulted him. “Why haven’t you reset yet?” It was Tsushima’s voice.

“Haruki saved at noon two days ago. We have almost a full day to reset.”

A reset restored the world back to its previously saved state. It would do so no matter what time they used the reset in the three days following any save. As long as they had the extra time, Kei figured it would be worth gathering as much information as possible.

“Your only job is to tell my past self what happened. Nothing more, nothing less.” Tsushima spat out.

“Oh, I understand that very well.”

“Then are you trying to go against the Administration Bureau’s decision?” His voice rang with what seemed to be intentional condemnation.

“I wouldn’t dream of it. That was never our intention.”

“If that’s the case, why haven’t you reset?”

“We need to learn more about Sera-san first. By understanding her predicament, we can come to realize why she used her ability in the first place.”

“And what will you do with that information?”

“Figure out how to meet her halfway.”

Sakurada’s abilities were a vast and varied mess of power. They could exist in almost any capacity, and nearly half the population had one. No matter how capable the Administration Bureau was, they would never be able to handle every single ability with grace and care. So, they cut a few corners. They simplified problems, created cookie-cutter solutions, and forced issues to fit into a mold they could handle.

As a basic rule, the Bureau did not consider the individual. Their role was to solve problems caused by abilities, and the happiness of those involved often went to the wayside. The present case was a perfect example.

The Bureau didn’t frame the problem as a girl being trapped in a marble by her ability. Rather, the issue was time and place. She had used her ability in front of the school gates on the day of the opening ceremony, and an attending parent was the first to find her. In the Bureau’s eyes, the real problem was the physical scope of people involved in the incident.

As a result, Kei and Haruki were rushed into the Service Club, while Tsushima fed them the line, “This should be just perfect for you two.”

The Bureau just wanted to be able to eliminate the problem before it occurred. They wanted a reset button.

Tsushima’s voice rang out from the phone. “Do you have a problem with the way the Bureau runs things?”

Without hesitation, Kei answered, “No, I think they’re in the right.” He wasn’t just saying that. He did believe the Bureau to be just. They did everything within their power to manage what they could, and to that end, he found the Bureau to be an excellent organization.

“If that’s the case, why haven’t you reset?” Tsushima repeated.

“Just think of it as me stroking my own ego.”

If they reset right away, the world before Sera picked up the marble would be recreated. Then, they could take the marble in advance, so she never found it. Problem solved, at least in theory. But that only satisfied surface level conditions.

Even if it was an unconscious decision, Sera Sawako had used her ability for a reason. She had a mental justification for shutting herself up inside the marble. By slightly reframing the issue, that reason could easily be seen as the actual problem.

If Kei had to use a reset anyway, then he wanted to solve both the physical and mental problems at once. He didn’t want to do so out of any altruistic purpose as much as to simply satisfy his egotistical desires. If he could do it, he wanted to.

Tsushima remained quiet for a time. Maybe he was holding back laughter. Maybe he was just stunned into silence. Either way, he had no doubt realized how silly the whole conversation was.

Seeing how annoying the exchange was becoming, Kei sighed. “I’m just doing what you wanted me to, Tsushima-sensei.”

“Oh? And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“If all you wanted us to do was reset like the Bureau instructed, then you really went about it the wrong way. There’d be no need for us to meet Sera-san, look into her ability report, or anything else.”

Tsushima sure hadn’t acted like someone who wanted to follow the Bureau to the letter and reset right away. Otherwise, he’d have just told them to reset right then and there, no documentation, no Sera, no nothing.

“I can only assume that you want us to approach the situation differently than the Bureau suggested,” Kei concluded.

Tsushima gave a quick laugh. In what was neither a confirmation nor a denial, he said, “You’re gonna reset when you need to, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s all that matters.”

Tsushima prepared to end the call, but just before he could, Kei stopped him. “Oh, before you go, I have a request for you.”

“What’s that?”

“I need the contact information of people who attended middle school with Sera-san.”

“Anyone specific?”

“No, I just want as many as you can get your hands on, but even just one would be better than none.”

“You can come pick them up from the staff room.”

Without waiting for a reply, Tsushima hung up.

With a short sigh, Kei slipped his phone back into his pocket.

✽

Ending his phone call, Tsushima flopped down onto the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. He was sitting in the Service Club’s clubroom, which was rarely used by the actual club members. It made for a nice place to be alone. Hunched over on the sofa, he reached for the application form on the table.

Asai Kei.

Nothing gets past that kid. He had a really good eye for looking at a situation from all angles.

At first, Tsushima had designed the case as a way to test that strange boy. How far would he follow the Bureau, and how much would he deviate from them? He thought his little experiment would work. But that kid saw right through it, lightning fast. It wasn’t even worthy of being called a test anymore.

Tushima smirked as he thought about it. Then again, maybe that was only to be expected.

Two years ago, Asai Kei had found himself in direct conflict with the Bureau, and as a middle schooler, no less. He wasn’t just a problem to the oh-so-perfect Administration Bureau, he was labeled as an outright enemy.

In the end, though, excellence alone wasn’t enough. Only the Bureau’s power was sufficient for its cause.

But was it possible to pick up the pieces tossed aside by a system that encompassed an entire city?

Only time would tell.

1. The word Sera says that I translated as “clever” is 利口, “rikou”, and carries a double entendre. It directly references intelligence or cleverness, but is also specifically used to praise well-behaved or obedient children. ↩︎