“…Excuse me? You don’t actually know where she is?”

We’re in a four-person box seat on the express train Hida. Okudera-senpai sounds incredulous, stuffing her face with a box lunch she picked up at the station.

“…Right.”

“Your only clue is what the town looks like? You can’t even contact this girl? Are you kidding me?!”

I didn’t ask her to come with me. How come I’m getting blamed? I look at Tsukasa, willing him to say something. He does, swallowing a bite of miso cutlet.

“You are an abysmal tour planner.”

“This isn’t a tour!”

I lose it for a second. These two think they’re on some kind of field trip. I can read their expressions clearly. There’s just no help for this child. Why are they acting all superior, anyway?

“Well, never mind,” Okudera-senpai says. Unexpectedly, she smiles, throwing out her chest. “Don’t you worry, Taki. We’ll help you look.”

“Eeeee, it’s so cuuuute! Taki, look at this, looook!”

At the local station we finally reached after noon, Okudera-senpai gushes over the area’s laid-back mascot. It’s a full-body plush cow costume wearing a station employee cap. The camera on Tsukasa’s phone fires off click after click in the little terminal.

“You guys are in the way.”

As I glare at the local map posted in the station, I’m even more convinced that these two are going to be no help whatsoever. I’ll just have to find her myself.

The plan goes like this:

Since I don’t know exactly where Mitsuha’s town is, we’ll take the train to a spot that seems close to the scenery in my memory. From that point, all we’ll have to go on will be the landscape sketches I drew. We’ll go around showing the drawings to residents, asking if anyone recognizes them, slowly working our way north along the local line. There’s a railroad crossing in one of the scenes I remember, so following the tracks should work.

It’s a really vague approach, to the point where I can’t really call it a “plan” at all, but I couldn’t think of any other way. Besides, there can’t be that many towns built around lakes. I’m convinced I’ll probably find some kind of hint by tonight, though I’ve got no grounds for thinking that.

Psyching myself up, I take a confident first step, heading out to talk to the driver of the lone taxi parked outside the station.

“…This isn’t gonna work…”

I’m slumped at a bus stop, my head drooping.

All the confidence I had when we started asking around has completely caved.

After that first taxi driver gave me a blunt “N-nope, dunno,” we tried police boxes, convenience stores, souvenir shops, guest houses, diners, and everyone from farmers to grade-school kids, oblivious to how we probably looked, but our results were solidly negative. The fact that there was only one local train every two hours made it hard for us to get around, so we thought we’d try asking people on the bus. We boarded in high spirits but were the only passengers. I didn’t even feel like asking the driver at that point, and the last stop was way out in the middle of nowhere, with no houses anywhere in sight. The whole time, Tsukasa and Okudera-senpai cheerfully made the most of their day trip, playing word games, cards, phone games, variations on rock-paper-scissors, and eating snacks. Eventually, they ended up on either side of me on the bus, leaning against my shoulders and dozing peacefully.