“I expect that’s local dialect, isn’t it? I hear the elderly people in Itomori still use ancient Japanese words here and there.”

“ ’Cause this here’s the sticks,” proclaims one of the boys, and people start giggling. He’s not wrong. Sometimes Gran uses words that make me want to ask her what language she’s speaking. Some of her expressions were abandoned by most of the rest of Japan a couple of centuries back. Idly pondering, I flip through my notebook, and then—on a page that should be blank—I see something written in big letters:

Who are you?

…Huh?

What is this? The sounds around me fade and grow distant, as if being absorbed by the unfamiliar handwriting. That’s not mine. I haven’t lent my notebook to anybody, either. What? “Who am I?” What’s that supposed to mean?

“…zu. You’re next, Miss Miyamizu!”

“Oh! Yes’m!” I stand up hastily.

“Begin reading on page ninety-eight, please,” Miss Yuki tells me. Scrutinizing my face, she adds, sounding amused, “Good to see that you remember your name today, Miss Miyamizu.”

At that, the whole class bursts out laughing. Excuse me? Seriously, what is going on?!

“You don’t remember?”

“…No.”

“For real?”

“Yes, for real,” I answer, taking a sip of banana juice. Gulp. Yum. Saya’s looking at me as if I’m some inanimate oddity.

“…No, listen. Yesterday, you forgot where your desk and your locker were. Your hair was all mussed and cowlicky, and you hadn’t tied it back. You didn’t wear your uniform ribbon, and you were crabby the whole time.”

I try visualizing what that must’ve looked like…… What?

“What?! No way, are you serious?!”

“Yeah, you acted like you had amnesia or somethin’ yesterday.”

Flustered, I try to think back… Something really is off here. I can’t remember yesterday. Or, no—I do remember little bits and pieces.

There was… an unfamiliar town somewhere?

A reflection in a mirror… a boy?

I try to retrace my memories. Piihyororooo. In the distance, a kite mocks me. It’s lunchtime, and we’re chatting in a corner of the schoolyard, juice boxes in hand.

“Umm… It feels like I spent the whole day in this weird dream. Like… a dream about somebody else’s life? …Mm, I can’t remember much of it…”

“I got it!”

Tesshi shouts all of a sudden, and I jump. He snatches up his half-read issue of the occult magazine MU and shoves it under our noses, spit flying enthusiastically.

“Memories of your past life! That’s what that is! Yeah, I know you’re gonna say that ain’t scientific, but if you put it another way and say your unconscious mind got linked up with a multiverse based on Everett’s many-worlds interpretation—”

“You shut your piehole,” Saya scolds him sharply.

“Hey! Were you the one who scribbled in my notebook?!” I erupt at almost the same time.

“Huh? Scribbled?”

Oh, I guess not. Tesshi’s not the type to pull a lame prank like that, and he didn’t have a motive, either.

“Um, nothin’. Never mind,” I say, backing down.