We were looking for the music’s source—pushing our way through the grass, shoving our heads under the bench, combing the park for quite a while—when, at last, we found a speaker. It was buried in the roots of the largest tree by the road.

However, it was strange. We didn’t really understand the speaker’s mechanism. Yamazaki and I considered it together. We concluded that the speaker was a “white hole”, which pushed out matter rather than sucking it in.

We walked into the white hole and emerged near a beautiful lake. Yamazaki slowly shed his clothing and dove headfirst into the lake. However… “Argh! It’s a sandbox!”

It seemed that the lake was, in reality, just a plain old sandbox. It really had looked like a lake to me. I decided that I couldn’t trust what Yamazaki told me.

In any event, it felt as if time had been playing tricks on us. First, we were going back in time, and then we were headed forward into the future. I thought about this. When could “now” possibly be?

“Hey, Yamazaki. What day of the week is today?”

There was no answer. It seemed as though he had gone back home already.

Having grown sad, I climbed into the brush, picking the spot where we had detonated Saturday night’s bomb.

In the brush were Yamazaki and myself—from three days ago!

“Okay, it will explode after three minutes. Please, back far away from it.”

Me, myself, and Yamazaki retreated.

“I wanted to be a revolutionary, but that dream didn’t come true. I wanted to be a soldier, but that dream didn’t come true. My father is dying, and then I’ll have no choice but to go home. I wonder whose fault that is. I think there’s some evildoer out there somewhere. I wanted to blow him up, like in a Hollywood movie, with this bomb. You know…”

As I could see only our backs, there was no way for me to check Yamazaki’s expression as he said that. But I already knew.

“Huh? Three minutes already have passed, but it didn’t explode.” Yamazaki walked over in the direction of the bomb. As he did, I heard a loud bang, and Yamazaki fell over.

I knew. I knew that he had been crying. “This has no force at all. This bomb I worked so hard to make only has the power of a few firecrackers. This is no good. I’m going back home. See you.”

And then, he went back home to the countryside.

When I returned to my apartment, only the life-sized anime doll that Yamazaki had left was waiting for me. She asked, “Aren’t you lonely?”

“No, I’m not lonely…”

On that warm, sunny day, I had gone on the date with Misaki. It unfolded as wholesomely as a date between middle school kids in the countryside would have.