“Say what? Whaddaya mean, ‘scribbled’? Am I a suspect for somethin’?”

“I told you, forget it.”

“Whoa, Mitsuha, you’re so mean! Did you hear that, Saya? I’ve been falsely accused! Framed! Call a prosecutor, gimme a prosecutor! Or wait, maybe that’s a lawyer. Hey, which one are you supposed to get for stuff like this?”

“Anyway, Mitsuha, you really were kinda funny yesterday,” Saya says, grandly ignoring Tesshi’s complaints. “Were you feelin’ sick?”

“Hmm… That’s so weird. Maybe I really am stressed…”

I think back on all the accounts I’ve gotten so far.

Tesshi’s already absorbed in his magazine again, as if nothing ever happened. That’s one of his virtues, the way he just lets stuff go.

“That’s gotta be it! You’ve had all kinds of stress lately!”

She’s right. Even setting aside the election, that ritual’s tonight! Why, oh why, in this tiny little town, do I have to have a father who’s the mayor and a grandmother who’s the chief Shinto priestess at the shrine? I bury my face in my knees and heave a deep, deep sigh.

“Aaagh… I wanna hurry up and graduate and go to Tokyo. This town is too cramped and too tight!”

Saya’s nodding along: I know. I totally, totally get it! “My mom and my sisters have all been in charge of the town broadcasts, one after another. Ever since I was tiny, the neighborhood ladies have called me ‘the little broadcast girl,’ you know?! And now I’m in the broadcastin’ club for some reason! Even I don’t know what I want to do anymore!”

“Saya, once we graduate, let’s get out and go to Tokyo together! Even when we’re grown up, in this town, we’ll still be stuck with the school hierarchy! We’ll never be free of these moldy old traditions! C’mon, Tesshi, you’re comin’ with us, right?”

“Hmm?” Absently, Tesshi looks up from his magazine.

“…Were you even listenin’?”

“Mm. I don’t really, uh… I think I’ll just live here for the rest of my life.”

HAAAAAAAAH. Saya and I sigh again. This is why he isn’t popular with girls… Although it’s not like I’ve ever had a boyfriend myself.

The wind whispers gently. When I turn to look after it, there’s Itomori Lake below us: placid, calm, and completely disinterested.

This town doesn’t have a bookstore or a dentist. There’s one train every two hours, buses come through only twice each day, we don’t get weather reports for our area, and we’re still a mosaic on the Google Maps satellite photos. The convenience store closes at nine, and it sells things like vegetable seeds and high-grade farming equipment.

On the way home from school, Saya and I are still in “griping about Itomori” mode.

There are no big chains like McDonald’s or MOS Burger, but we have two sleazy “snack bars.” There’s no work, no girls come here to find husbands, and the daylight hours are short. Gripe, gripe, gripe, gripe. Most of the time, we actually find the town’s sparse population refreshing. We’re almost proud of it, but today we despair in earnest.