A box of chocolates she’d grabbed as she ran out.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I really do want to give it to her.’

When she’d heard that Subaru was away with his family on a trip, and Fuka was at a summer school juku, that one after another, the kids might all stop coming to the castle, she started to feel that coming here was a bit uncool.

Her parents had urged her to attend summer school, and she’d wasted the chance.

‘I’m going to fall behind at school,’ she murmured.

‘Hm?’

Rion glanced over and she quickly changed her expression. She laughed, so she wouldn’t seem so down. ‘Nothing,’ she replied. But he had heard her.

‘Are you worried about schoolwork?’ he asked. ‘You said you’re in the first year of junior high, aren’t you, Kokoro? So am I.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Got it.’

With that their conversation ended.

Rion might very well be in the same situation as her. That made her a little relieved, though she also felt sorry for him.

I’m afraid of not being able to keep up with schoolwork, she thought, but I’m just as afraid of going to a juku.

So what should I do?

There was only one answer.

She had to find the key to the Wishing Room.

THE FOLLOWING WEEK, AKI DIDN’T appear at the castle.

According to information from Ureshino and Masamune, she’d gone to her grandmother’s house and had stopped coming to the castle.

Kokoro’s parents were constantly busy with work and found it hard to get time off, and since Kokoro had refused to go to school or to the alternative School, it seemed like the idea that they might send her anywhere at all was now unlikely. And so she felt too awkward to ask them.

Masamune, like Kokoro, kept up his visits to the castle. At weekends Kokoro couldn’t get there as her parents were home, but perhaps Masamune still turned up, when the rest of the world was off. Masamune’s parents’ ideas about school were so completely different from her own parents’ – she wondered what sort of people they were, what kind of jobs they had.

Masamune was often all alone, and when she came into the Game Room he’d shoot her a glance and not even say hello.

When Subaru and the other boys weren’t there, Masamune didn’t play video games on the TV, but would spend most of his time absorbed in his portable game console.

‘Oh, is that …?’ Kokoro asked one day.

‘Hm?’ Masamune looked up. Kokoro’s eyes were fixed on his hands.