‘Honestly, I was planning to get hold of the key tomorrow and ask for a wish. If Aki hadn’t done what she did, I was going to ask everyone to let me wish that my sister could come back home.’

The girl whose face was hidden behind the wolf mask.

She had made this castle for him, using every ounce of strength she had left.

Once Rion had had this realization, he couldn’t shake it.

The junior high in Japan he’d wanted to attend.

The friends he’d wanted to have.

‘It’s exactly the same,’ Rion said. ‘This castle is just like the doll’s house you had in hospital.’

The exquisite doll’s house bought by her parents lay next to the window in her hospital room for weeks.

As it was a doll’s house, there was no running water. You couldn’t use the bathroom. And there was no gas.

But there was electricity, since they’d installed tiny light bulbs through all the rooms.

None of the other utilities worked in the castle, but you could still play video games. And you could flick a switch and there would be light. He was never sure why electricity was the one thing they had.

The dolls she played with all wore dresses like the one the Wolf Queen had on now.

The doll’s house his sister loved so much.

The seven children welcomed into it.

The search for the key that followed the story she had read to him over and over, The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats.

And the day the castle was scheduled to close, 30 March.

Not 31 March.

The fact that this was the anniversary of her death had to be significant.

This castle was prepared just for him.

The Wolf Queen had told them she’d invited other groups before, but he knew that wasn’t true.

The group she had invited was unique.

‘Mio-chan.’

The Wolf Queen didn’t reply.

Rion carried on speaking.

‘The only year missing is 1999. You brought a kid from every seventh year, but 1999 is the only year where there is no representative. Between Aki’s time and mine is a gap of fourteen years, twice the other ones.’

He fairly hurled this at the Wolf Queen’s back, since she refused to turn and face him.

‘You and I are seven years apart in age.’

His sister had died at thirteen, when Rion was six. Her first year of junior high. She had never worn the school uniform for Yukishina No. 5 Junior High that hung on the wall in her hospital room, not even once.

The memory was so painful, as if his chest was being ripped open and his heart was being wrenched out.

‘So – 1999 is you, isn’t it? The girl who wanted to go to Yukishina No. 5 but couldn’t.’