‘But Fuka, didn’t we go to the same elementary school? Elementary School No. 1? I thought the truck drove around that area.’

She’d been convinced that Fuka lived nearby. They’d never actually met, but she’d always found this encouraging.

‘It comes near me. It plays “Small World”, doesn’t it?’ Aki said.

‘Yes!’ said Kokoro.

‘My grandmother used to do her shopping there,’ Aki said. ‘She said it was so helpful.’

‘I think it comes around our area too,’ Ureshino said. ‘But it doesn’t play music. And it’s not really a truck, more of a van, isn’t it? The one that sells vegetables and things? A lot of elderly people can’t make it to the supermarket. My mother always times it so she can do her shopping there. She can’t drive, and so it’s awkward for her to go to the supermarket.’

Ureshino seemed to be describing something a little different from what Kokoro and Aki knew.

‘And then there’s the date,’ Masamune said.

Kokoro and the others looked puzzled. Ureshino chimed in. ‘Listen, Masamune, the date you gave us to go into school, the tenth of January, that wasn’t actually the day of the opening ceremony.’

That’s true, thought Kokoro.

Then Ureshino said something startling.

‘It was a Sunday, wasn’t it?’

‘What?’ The word got stuck halfway up her throat. She gave Ureshino a surprised look and he looked back, confused.

‘I haven’t been going into school so I’ve sort of lost any sense of what day of the week it is, so I made a mistake. When I told my mother I was going to school the next day, she laughed and told me it was a Sunday. I thought you’d all made a mistake, but I went in anyway, and the entrance was shut, so I waited half the day in front of the gate.’

‘No way!’ Kokoro said, but Ureshino was looking dazed.

‘It’s true,’ he said.

When she saw his look, Kokoro was convinced.

Ureshino, having been beaten up a few months previously, risked it happening all over again, and Kokoro had admired his courage in going back. But if it had been a Sunday, well, that changed things.

She was suddenly feeling very confused.

Even if he had waited outside the gate, there would have been students in clubs coming in and out, and so that really took guts to hang around there.

‘I figured Masamune had made a mistake about the date, so I thought I’d better come back on Monday, but my mother told me Monday was Coming-of-Age Day and school was out. Two days off in a row. So then I really couldn’t work out what was going on.’

‘Eh? Coming-of-Age Day is the fifteenth, isn’t it? I didn’t think it was a two-day holiday,’ Subaru said.