Good. It looks like the amount wasn’t enough, but she believes I’m serious now.

“I’m goin’ to the convenience store. Tesshi, you keep a close eye on Mitsuha. She ain’t quite right.”

And so Teshigawara and I sneak into a room in the club building nobody uses anymore and put together an evacuation plan for the town.

The goal is to get all 188 families—about five hundred people—out of the danger zone before the meteorite falls. The first thing we think of is broadcasting an evacuation order.

After we run through the inevitable ridiculous ideas—We’ll take over the prime minister’s official residence! Or the Diet Building! Or the NHK Shibuya Broadcasting Center, or at least the NHK Gifu-Takayama branch office!—we start talking about how not everybody in town will be at home with their TVs or radios on and how even more people will be out and about because of the autumn festival tonight. Then we fall silent, thinking.

“…The disaster alert system!” Teshigawara shouts suddenly.

“Disaster alert system?”

“Hunh? Don’t go tellin’ me you don’t know. There are speakers all over town, remember?”

“Oh… That thing that starts talking out of the blue every morning and evening? Who was born, who’s having a funeral, that sort of thing?”

“Yeah. You can hear that all over town for sure, whether you’re inside or out. If we send the order over that…!”

“Huh? But, uh… how? That comes from the town hall, doesn’t it? Would they let us broadcast stuff if we asked?”

“Pssh. No.”

“Then what do we do? Hijack Town Hall? I mean, I guess we’d have a better shot at that than at taking over NHK, but…”

“Heh-heh-heh.” With a creepy smile, Teshigawara types something into his phone. Geez, this guy looks happy.

“We can do this!”

He holds out his phone to me.

Superimposed frequencies, it reads, and below is an explanation.

“Wha…? Is this for real?”

Teshigawara flares his nostrils and nods proudly.

“Uh, Tesshi… Why do you even know stuff like this?”

“Well, I always fantasize before I fall asleep, y’know? About destroyin’ the town, overthrowin’ the school, stuff like that. Doesn’t everybody?”

“Huh…?” That weirds me out a bit. But, no—this is…

“This is awesome, Tesshi! It just might work!”

Without thinking, I throw an arm around Teshigawara’s shoulders.

“H-hey, don’t get too close!”

“Huh?”

Whoa. Even his ears are red.

“What’s this? Tesshi, are you embarrassed?”

I look up into Teshigawara’s face from below, grinning at him. Well, well, Mitsuha, you’re not to be taken lightly, are you? C’mon, c’mon! I press my body against him some more. Here you go—have a freebie! We’re sitting side by side on an old sofa, and Tesshi’s already right by the wall, so he’s got nowhere to run.

“Hey, Mitsuha, cut it out!”

Teshigawara resists, big body squirming. He’s a guy, for sure… Well, so am I. Then, abruptly, Teshigawara jumps up, climbing onto the back of the sofa, and yells, “I told you, knock it off! A single girl your age—that ain’t proper!”