3

Alone in the dark, Sera Sawako closed her eyes. She couldn’t see anything anyway, so there was no point in keeping them open. She wanted to fall asleep, but couldn’t manage it. Instead, with an almost unnoticeable transition, she began reminiscing.

Sera was in her third year of elementary school.

“Aren’t you going home yet?” her homeroom teacher from back then asked. As a third-year elementary schooler, that teacher had seemed much older to Sera, closer to her grandparents than her parents in age. She never did figure out how old that teacher was.

Sera and her teacher were alone in the classroom. Everyone else had left as Sera was changing the water of the class’s flower vase. She placed the vase on the cupboard to the left of the blackboard and turned to look out the window. She saw many students in the schoolyard, all headed home. Everyone had their backs to her, without exception. She noted a few of her classmates in the mix.

“I’ll head home in a little while,” Sera responded.

She didn’t like the idea of meeting any of her classmates at the shoe lockers. In fact, the very notion of seeing anyone face to face made her feel awkward, but not because she disliked them. There were a few classmates she would regularly talk to, and she would play with some of the girls after school. But she never really felt like she fit in. It seemed that everyone was slipping away from her. She never knew how to put on a smile at the right times, and things they cared about were only becoming more and more alien to her.

She especially didn’t want to talk to anyone after changing the flower vase’s water. It wasn’t her job, after all. It was the job of the person on day duty. Unfortunately, it was often forgotten, and the teacher didn’t usually check if it was done, so Sera made sure to change the water every day. But her friends would ask her, “Why did you change the water?” and she could never answer them.

“Thank you,” her teacher said, smiling.

Sera knew that it was thanks for changing the vase’s water, but she couldn’t manage a reply. That was always how things went for her. Whenever someone thanked her, she would just hang her head in silence. Perhaps she was supposed to respond with something like, “Think nothing of it.” But that sounded cocky to her, so she didn’t like it.

Ultimately, Sera kept her head down, though she managed to mutter, “It was nothing. The water just looks pretty when it’s clean.”

She felt like her teacher was smiling. She couldn’t see her face, so she didn’t really know, but that was the impression she had.

She heard her teacher’s voice, soft as a flower petal. “That’s because there’s something incredibly lovely inside of you.”

“Something lovely?”

“Yes. Little kids who have something lovely inside of them automatically like lovely things.”

“Why?”

“How would you know that anything else was lovely without it? Because there’s something lovely inside you, it helps you find everything else that is lovely out in the world.”

Sera wasn’t sure what that meant. She remained silent, and her teacher continued, “Everything works that way. It’s how we live our lives. We know that fire is hot because we all have a fire burning deep within us. We know that ice is cold because we have ice that freezes us deep inside. What’s in there tells us what’s out here.”

Was that really true? Did she have hot fire and cold ice inside of her?

“I can prove it to you, if you want. I have a way to find what’s lovely inside of you.”

“You can prove it?”

Her teacher nodded. “Close your eyes. Now, imagine something perfectly lovely.”

Sera was fairly certain that her teacher would smile at different times than her, and the things they cared about were probably quite different. But she was able to put that aside. For that moment, the differences didn’t seem to matter.

So, Sera obediently closed her eyes and tried imagining something lovely. What came to mind was a small, colorful sphere that fit in her palm and sparkled in the light.

Her teacher continued, “What you imagined is what makes you lovely. Deep inside of you, there is something incredibly lovely and pure.”

Sera believed her. She could see it there.

“When you open your eyes, you won’t see it anymore,” her teacher said.

Immediately, light began filtering in through her eyelids.

Sera realized she was no longer surrounded by darkness. Countless shining dots were swarming her, all slightly reddish in color. She opened her eyes.

The distorted face of a girl was staring back at her.

The boy that introduced himself as Asai Kei had gone off on his own after leaving the café. Haruki Misora had then placed the marble, and by extension Sera, into her pocket before heading home. If Sera had to estimate, they had been walking for around 10 to 15 minutes.

Sera took a look around from within the marble. She was in a very well-kept room, presumably Haruki’s. Several cat-themed accessories were placed around the room, but the room still felt vacant somehow, despite the decoration.

Suddenly struck by how rude it was to stare so much, Sera returned her gaze to Haruki. “Sorry, I don’t mean to intrude on you.”

Pulling out her chair and sitting in front of her study desk, Haruki answered, “You are not an inconvenience in any way.”

“But isn’t it kinda uncomfortable to have a random stranger in your house?”

“No.” Haruki’s gaze was difficult for Sera to read. Haruki slightly tilted her head. “Are you feeling uncomfortable?”

“Huh?”

“You are in a stranger’s house.”

“Oh.” Sera nodded. “I guess I am a little nervous. This whole thing still feels a little unreal.”

“Unreal?”

“Yeah. It’s like, being in a stranger’s house is the least of my worries right now.” She was in the marble before she had any chance to think about or understand what had happened. Sure, it was her ability, but it was only her third time experiencing it. It happened every couple of years, and each experience came just as quickly as it went. It felt more like having an extended dream, where every experience was neatly detached from reality.

“Is that so?” Haruki nodded, saying nothing more.

Sera took another look around, but this time, rather than looking at Haruki’s room, she was looking at the marble. The marble made for a very interesting landscape. The previous two times she used her ability were on broken glass and a mirror, so being inside of a sphere was novel.

Although she was inside a marble, her perspective was not that she was trapped inside spherical glass. Her directions didn’t seem reversed, and she didn’t feel shorter by comparison. The main difference was that her scenery was distorted. It was as if she had stretched out the middle of a photograph, simultaneously pushing both ends down. Far away at the edge of her vision, she could see a place where the floor and ceiling met each other.

Sera was floating amidst that space, her feet far off the floor, her body weightless. It felt pleasant, like the sensation of floating in water, but she couldn’t move her body. Of course, she could scratch her head, take out her candy, open up its wrapper, and could even move her legs to simulate walking. But that movement had no effect on her physical location. No matter how much she walked, she never moved, as if she were on a treadmill. Her visual surroundings weren’t even solid. If she tried to touch the desk, her hand passed right through.

If Sera had to put it into words, it felt like she was a ghost. She was very clearly separated from the world, and there was no point of contact between her and her surroundings.

“Hey, what do I look like to you?” Sera asked the distorted figure of Haruki.

“You are inside the marble. The room is reflected upside-down, and you are standing upside-down in it.”

“Oh.” From Sera’s point of view, everything was distorted. To Haruki, she was upside-down. Their viewpoints were different.

Maybe that’s because everything is upside-down, Sera thought. If I’m upside-down, and the room is upside-down, then everything is upside-down, and if everything is upside-down, then nothing is.

To Sera, Haruki appeared to be right-side up. As a result, Sera would be seen as upside-down.

Haruki took her cell phone out of her pocket, placing it on the desk next to Sera. Sera noticed that the phone had a cat strap attached to it. Haruki began squishing the cat with her fingers.

After a slight bout of hesitation, Sera said, “You know, you’re pretty weird. You and Asai-kun both.”

Haruki looked away from her cat strap, focusing on Sera. “What do you mean by weird?”

“Well, um, exactly what I said. Something about you two just isn’t normal.”

Sera wasn’t exactly sure how to put it into words, but she knew something felt off. It just bugged her. They were supposed to be new high schoolers, fresh out of their entrance ceremony, but they didn’t quite fit the bill.

“What about us is abnormal?” Haruki questioned.

Tilting her head, Sera replied, “Well, it’s like, I don’t really get your vibe.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s just, look, I’m the same grade as you, right? You’re not supposed to talk so politely to me like that.”

Haruki’s speech wasn’t the heart of the matter, but all of her mannerisms put together didn’t mix right. It was the little things that made her feel ever so slightly out of the norm. The minute ways that she moved, the peculiar word choices, it all just seemed so weird.

“Would you prefer that I did not speak politely?” Haruki asked.

“Well, it’d make me feel more comfortable, to be sure,” Sera answered.

Haruki nodded. “Mmkay, I’ll try it.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll just kinda say whatever comes to mind. Whaddaya think?”

At first, Sera assumed it was a joke. But Haruki was looking straight at her, unblinking, her face entirely serious. It was just… so weird. Sera chuckled involuntarily.

Haruki noticed the change in expression, tilting her head. “What’s up?”

Laughing some more, Sera replied, “That’s so weird. What even is that?”

“Figured I’d talk more like Kei. This is how he talks to me, anyway. I’m not used to it, so it probably sounds a bit rough,” Haruki added.

Sera was still laughing. As if sounding rough was even the beginning of the problem. “Okay, I take it back. This sounds even more unnatural. It’s kinda scary, really.”

“Is that so?” Haruki nodded, her tone returning to normal, her eyes still completely unreadable.

Sera wiped away the tears that had beaded up from her laughter. “Yeah, you’re definitely not normal.”

“Was my way of speaking truly that strange?”

“It’s not that. It’s probably more like your way of thinking is out of whack.” Sera still held a white stick in her hand, and she put it in her mouth. It was the one that came off her sucker, and she had nowhere to put it, so it had remained in her hand. “Still though, even if you’re weird, it’s kinda nice. It feels a little special.”

“Are not all weird things special by nature?”

“Huh? What’s that mean?”

“To call something weird is to say that it is rare. Normal things exist in great quantities, comparatively. In that case, the words rare and special are describing the same circumstance.”

That didn’t sound quite right. Sera shook her head. “No, not really. I might be kinda weird, for example, but I’m certainly nothing special.”

“I do not understand what you mean.”

“Well…” Sera rolled the white stick around in her mouth for a while. Pulling it out with her right hand, she continued, “The whole time I was in middle school, I was stuck with a weird nickname. But that nickname didn’t feel special at all. I wanted to lose it as soon as possible.”

“Why did you want to get rid of that nickname?”

“‘Cause I didn’t need it. It may have been weird, but it was also worthless. It wasn’t special in any way.” Calling something weird wasn’t a statement of value. In Sera’s opinion, special meant that something was both unusual and valuable.

Haruki nodded, her head flitting up and down. “I understand.” She said nothing afterwards.

Sera closed her eyes again. A strange nickname, the lovely object inside of her, and a piece of candy.

She was supposed to eat the candy at school. It was supposed to be a lovely, round object that would melt in her mouth, disappear, and finally free her.

But her candy was gone now.

Not to mention… I’m in a marble. The sphere she was stuck in wouldn’t melt if she put it in her mouth.

So she remained in her lovely, cheap, and inescapable prison.