‘It’s OK, Aki! Aki-chan! We can help each other! We can meet! We can see each other again! So you have to live! You’ve got to keep going, and grow up to be an adult.

‘Please, Aki. I’m … in the future. In the future, where you are too. Where you’re all grown up!’

Kokoro felt something soft and warm.

Someone was grasping her hand.

Kokoro shut her eyes tight, and grabbed the hand back as firmly as she could. No way am I going to let you go.

‘Kokoro?’

‘Yes. It’s me, Kokoro!’ Her face was wet with tears. Aki’s hand. She would never, ever let it go. ‘I came to get you.’

‘Kokoro – I’m so sorry. I—’

‘It doesn’t matter!’ Kokoro was shouting, her voice welling up from deep inside her. ‘It just doesn’t matter! You’ve got to come baaaack!’

Her voice cracked.

With every ounce of strength, she pulled the hand towards her.

At that moment—

‘Kokoro!’ a voice said. Not Aki’s, but someone from behind her.

She barely had time to think before she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned around with a jolt.

It was Fuka.

Fuka, and Subaru, and Masamune, and Ureshino, and Rion.

They’d all come back. Her wish had been granted.

‘Is it Aki?’ Masamune asked, and Kokoro nodded.

‘Yes!’

That short exchange was enough. While Kokoro thrust her hand beyond the clock, the friends took hold of her and each other in a line like in a tug-of-war, and they yanked with every ounce of strength they could muster.

‘Heave-ho!’ she heard Subaru call out.

‘We’re not letting go of you, even if it means we all die!’

She felt something slipping.

They all shut their eyes and pulled harder.

This wasn’t The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats, but more like the Grimms’ story The Enormous Turnip, Kokoro thought. And suddenly she felt a weight lifted off her.

We can do it, she said to herself.

‘Here we go, Aki!’

‘Heeeave-hooo!’ they shouted. The tops of Aki’s fingers began to emerge from behind the clock.

The momentum sent them all tumbling backwards down the staircase.

AT THE TOP OF THE staircase, in front of the grandfather clock, lay Aki.

‘Aki!’ Kokoro shouted, and raced back up the stairs.

‘Aki, you idiot!’ both Masamune and Rion said. ‘Seriously, you deserve a good kick in the butt,’ added Rion.

Aki looked as if she’d just emerged from underwater.

Her face was all wet – she’d been crying so hard and for so long.

‘I’m so sorry!’ Aki managed to speak through her sobs. Eyes bloodshot, she looked at each of them in turn.

‘I’m so sorry. I—’