In the future, Careo probably developed into an even bigger shopping mall with its own movie theatre. Just as Masamune and Fuka described it.

‘So Ureshino must be from between Aki and Kokoro’s years. There’s a fourteen-year gap there, instead of seven. So Ureshino should be from the year 1999, no?’

‘Eh? Really?’ Ureshino looked pensive for a moment, but then shook his head. ‘Nah, I don’t think so. I mean, I was born in 2013.’

‘What?’ they exclaimed.

‘So that would mean …’ Fuka said, gazing off as she computed the numbers. ‘That for you, Ureshino, right now it is 2027. You should have told us that from the start.’

‘2027! That’s really incredible! So you’re from way off in the future?’ Subaru said, looking stunned.

‘I guess I am,’ Ureshino said, tilting his head.

Listening to this exchange, Kokoro said quietly, ‘Just wow …’

In the 2006 that she lived in, Ureshino wasn’t even born yet. It was hard to wrap her mind around it.

‘So Kokoro, Rion and I are the only ones with fourteen years between us,’ Aki murmured slowly. ‘How come?’

After such prolonged crying, Aki’s face was still pale, but Kokoro could sense she was getting back to her normal self. She was relieved that Aki was now contributing. ‘I’ve no idea,’ Kokoro replied after a moment, shaking her head. ‘It would make more sense if there was somebody in between us … It’s sort of strange as it is.’

‘But I can see how it might work,’ Fuka said slowly, and everyone looked at her. Fuka glanced at Aki, sitting cross-legged on the floor. ‘Do you remember the last day of February, when there was no one else in the castle? It was just the two of us. We called the Wolf Queen, but she didn’t appear either.’

‘Yeah, I do.’

Ah, Kokoro thought. The two of them had had a strained relationship in the early days, but towards the beginning of March she’d noticed how they were getting on so much better, and she’d thought it quite odd, and wondered at what point they’d made up.

‘That must have been a leap year.’

‘Ah …’

‘Every four years there’s an extra day on the twenty-ninth of February. Aki’s is in 1992, and mine in 2020, but no one else had one. So for you it was suddenly the first of March, no?’

‘You’re right …’

‘We are the only two who gained a day.’

Fuka’s use of gained was a bit odd. As she listened, Kokoro began to work something out.

‘Holidays, too,’ she said.

‘Holidays?’

‘In January when we discussed what day the school opening ceremony was, we started talking about Coming-of-Age Day, remember? Subaru said it was on the fifteenth, and we talked about how in parallel worlds it would fall on a different day for all of us.’

Back then, Subaru and Aki had said:

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