Masamune waited for the two of them to agree. ‘So in their two worlds there is no Free School. It doesn’t exist. The possibility is that the person called Ms Kitajima herself doesn’t exist there. Or else she does but is somewhere else, doing a totally different job.’

Masamune had clearly been spending his time thinking deeply about this, trying to tie up his ideas. He had no doubt been digging around in books and other resources, researching the subject of parallel worlds.

‘And the geography around Yukishina No. 5 Junior High as we’ve talked about it seems a bit vague. Like … Kokoro. What’s the main shopping centre near your house?’

‘That would be … Careo.’

When she saw their reactions, she was shocked. Fuka’s eyes widened. ‘Don’t you go to Careo, Fuka?’ Kokoro asked.

‘We go to a shopping mall called Arco. Where they have a cinema.’

‘What?’

Arco? Kokoro had never heard of it.

Masamune nodded in agreement with Fuka. ‘Same as me, it’s called Arco. When you first mentioned Careo, Kokoro, I thought you’d made a mistake and meant Arco. But that’s not true, right?’

‘Yeah.’

Kokoro nodded vacantly. She couldn’t remember when she’d talked about Careo.

Aki’s face clouded over. ‘I don’t know either of them – Arco or Careo,’ she said. ‘Now that you mention it, you asked me where I went to elementary school and you said, Oh, that’s near Careo. I had no clue then what you were talking about.’

‘No way.’

‘And McDonald’s, too,’ Fuka said in a low voice. ‘I often go to McDonald’s inside Arco, but is there really one in front of the station? Didn’t you and Subaru say there was, Aki?’

‘Yeah, in front of the station.’

Aki and Subaru shared a confused look.

‘When you guys said that, Aki, I thought they’d just opened it and I didn’t know about it, but when I went to check it out, there wasn’t one. I thought it was strange. Do you know it, Kokoro?’

‘I know the McDonald’s inside Careo.’

Kokoro had tried to avoid that McDonald’s since kids from her school would probably be hanging out there.

‘What about the truck selling things from Mikawa Market? It’s been coming to the park near my house a couple of times a week ever since I was little,’ Kokoro asked.

‘It’s A Small World’ swirled around in her head.

The little truck blasting out the song from her favourite ride at Disneyland.

It seemed like ages since she’d heard that tune. It had always made her feel low when she heard it sitting alone at home, during the day. Since she’d started coming to the castle, she hadn’t heard it.

‘I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t stop by our neighbourhood.’