‘My older brother and me,’ Subaru went on. ‘At first I didn’t really want to go to school. I didn’t know anyone there. If you wanted to fit in, April was the month to go, when the school year started. It’s not that I was pushed out, or that anything serious happened, so unlike all of you I just dropped out because I’m lazy, and it makes me feel guilty.’

Hearing him say this made Kokoro feel contrite.

Maybe it was true nothing serious had happened to Subaru at school, but she imagined his troubles had started earlier in life. He could put on a brave face when he talked about living with his grandparents, but was he really smiling inside?

Summer break. Subaru said he went on a trip with his parents. He was given a music player by his father. These things now took on a significance.

‘Aokusa Elementary.’ Rion’s voice rang out in the silence.

Aokusa Elementary lay in the opposite direction from Kokoro’s Yukishina No. 1 school, with the junior high situated in between. So Rion hadn’t gone abroad at that stage, but had been living very near Kokoro.

Ureshino suddenly shook his head. ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he said.

‘About what?’ Rion said.

‘I went to Aokusa Elementary too!’ Ureshino said, looking shocked. Rion, too, looked back at him in astonishment.

‘You’re in the first grade of junior high, aren’t you, Rion? So we were in the same grade in elementary? Are you kidding me? You weren’t there, were you? I used to be at school every day. Were you really there? Really?’

‘I went every day too …’

Rion looked confused.

‘You didn’t know Ureshino either?’ asked Subaru.

‘I don’t remember him. He might have been there, but I don’t think I ever played with him.’

‘How many classes per year were there? Is Aokusa Elementary big?’

‘Three classes.’

Kokoro felt a little pained listening to their back and forth.

Unlike she and Fuka, who had been in different years at school, to be in a school that small, and in the same grade, and not remember each other, they must have lived in very different worlds.

‘I went to Shimizudai Elementary.’

The last to pipe up was Aki. Her school district was the furthest away from Kokoro’s house, but still within walking distance. They all lived really close.

All of them were now at Yukishina No. 5 Junior High, and each had passed through the mirror in their own bedroom to come here.

‘So you live near Careo?’