‘Aki-chan, do you go to Yukishina No. 5 Junior High?’

Aki slowly followed Kokoro’s eyeline and looked down at her own uniform.

‘Yes,’ Aki said. ‘Yukishina No. 5.’

Kokoro’s eyes had widened with astonishment.

A few moments later, Masamune and Subaru came through the door, one behind the other. ‘It’s exactly the same uniform worn by the girls at my school!’ Masamune said, joining in the conversation.

We are all – all of us – at the same school.

Which means—

‘We could all help each other.’

Aki took Masamune’s words the most seriously.

Because, she said to herself, I’m the one who really wants help.

THERE WAS NO ANSWER THAT day from Atsushi-kun to the message she’d left him.

No reaction to my desperate call for help. Aki realized for the first time that, though she knew his pager number, he’d never actually given her his phone number.

She’d told him all about her problems with her stepfather.

Atsushi had promised her he’d protect her, that he’d never let anything like that happen again.

But these guys – they’ll really help me.

They’ll stand up to it all with me.

BUT ON THAT JANUARY DAY, when she’d gone over to the nurse’s office, wanting to support Masamune, truly wanting to do what she could, no one else had turned up.

It had been so cold.

Looking out of the window of the nurse’s office at the pale sky, Aki felt betrayed.

‘Ma’am, is it true that Aki has come into school today?’

Outside the door of the nurse’s office, she overheard the voice of Misuzu from the volleyball team.

It made her want to run.

The nurse was warming her hands over the portable heater and Aki had clung to her, weeping. ‘Please, tell her I’m not here. Even if they all come, please don’t tell them I’m here.’

Aki crawled into the small bed in the office, pulled the covers up over her, and lay there trembling.

She did know. She did. That she was behaving badly.

The other girls all had a good laugh, placing prank calls to telephone sex chat lines, but they acted as a group. No one ever did that sort of thing without the others.

I’m not like Misuzu and the others any more, not at all.

I FOUND OUT THAT THE kids in the castle didn’t betray me, but that doesn’t make it any better.

The fact remains: we can’t see each other outside.

‘I can be a bit slow, and don’t exactly understand all that stuff about parallel worlds, but what you’re saying is we can never meet up in the outside world?’ Rion said.

‘Yep,’ Masamune nodded.

‘You mean we can’t help each other?’

‘That’s right. We can’t help each other.’

THE MONTH OF MARCH WAS almost over.

Please, make my life a bit more tolerable.

Make my mother stronger.

Please kill my stepfather.