It’s such a skillful speech that it’s almost overbearing. It leaves me cold—this campaign address sounds like it belongs on TV, not in a parking lot surrounded by fields. The whispers I hear from the crowd—“You know it’s gonna be Miyamizu again this term anyway,” “It sounds like he’s been spreadin’ lots of cash around”—make my mood even darker.

“Hey, Miyamizu.”

“…Mornin’.”

Wonderful. The greeting comes from three classmates I’m less than fond of. Even in high school, they’re part of the flashy “in-crowd,” and they snark at us—the “drones”—over every little thing.

“The mayor and the contractor,” one of them says, shooting a deliberate glance at my orating father. When I follow suit, I see Tesshi’s dad standing next to mine, beaming. He’s wearing a jacket from his construction company and an armband that says Toshiki Miyamizu Supporter.

The guy looks back at me, then at Tesshi, and continues. “Their kids are all buddy-buddy, too. Did your folks tell you to hang out together?”

This is so stupid. I don’t even answer—I walk faster, trying to get out of there. Tesshi’s expressionless. Only Saya looks bothered and a bit flustered.

“Mitsuha!”

Suddenly, a loud voice booms out. Yeep! My breath catches in my throat. I don’t believe this. My dad lowered his mic midspeech to shout at me without the aid of electronic amplification. The whole crowd turns to look at me.

“Mitsuha, straighten up!”

I turn beet red. It’s so unfair that I almost start crying. I want to run, but I desperately fight back the urge and stride away instead.

The crowd is whispering. “He’s even tough on family.”

“That’s the mayor for you.”

I hear my classmates snickering. “Ooh. Harsh.”

“I kinda feel a little sorry for her.”

This could not be worse.

The background music that was playing in my head a minute ago has disappeared, and I remember that this town, without a soundtrack, is an absolutely suffocating place.

With a sharp tak, tak, tak, the teacher writes a short poem on the blackboard.

Please don’t ask me “Who goes there?” I’m waiting here for my love, in the September dew.

“Tasokare, ‘who goes there?’ This is the origin of the term tasogare, or twilight. You know the word twilight, don’t you?”

Speaking in a clear voice, our teacher, Miss Yuki, writes Tasokare in big letters on the blackboard.

“It’s evening, not quite day or night. It’s a window when outlines blur, making it hard to tell who people are. When you might meet something that isn’t human. It’s a time when people encounter demons or the dead, and it has another name that reflects this. They say, though, that even before that, it had other names.”

Miss Yuki writes the two terms on the board, but it looks like she’s just shuffling around the same letters.

“ ’Scuse me, teacher! Question! What about half-light?”

Somebody speaks up, and I think, Yeah, that’s right. I know twilight, of course, but the word I’ve heard people use to mean evening ever since I was little is half-light. When Miss Yuki hears this, she smiles gently. You know, our classics teacher is much too pretty to be teaching at a country high school like this.