Today’s my sixteenth birthday.

It’s also the day I start high school.

Right now, I’m sitting in the middle of the opening ceremony. It started thirty minutes ago. Just like the ones in middle school, it was unimaginably boring, but I still managed to force myself to look interested and studious.

Only a few moments ago, a girl had appeared in front of me. She had blue, shoulder-length hair.

She was tiny, with a childish face. She looked to be in her first year of middle school, or maybe younger. She was wearing a uniform like the Japanese army ones I’d seen in textbooks, and she was staring at me with a dead serious look on her face— while she floated upside down in the air.

“Are you Rekka Namidare?” For some reason, she knew my name.



Who was this girl? And wait, why was she floating? I’d been waving my hands in confusion, and the boy wearing glasses who sat next to me was staring at me suspiciously. It felt like only I could see or hear her.

“My name is R. You can call me Arlie if you want.” The girl began to introduce herself, even though I hadn’t asked her name. And she was a little too friendly.

Wait. Hold on a second.

Question: Who was this girl, R? A hallucination? A delusion? A... ghost? I didn’t want to be seeing any of those, and if I was, it was bad news. This was a big problem, but I was in the middle of the opening ceremony for school. I had to sit up straight and look serious, whether I wanted to or not. Otherwise I’d end up sticking out.

I didn’t like sticking out. My motto was, “Normal is best.”

Normal is best in all things.

Some people might say normal is boring, but if you asked me, I’d tell you that those people didn’t know what normal meant. A normal life had time for hobbies, or for playing with friends. Was there anybody who didn’t like hanging out with their friends? If you insisted on being different from other people, you lost out on things like that.

Which meant that being normal was the best way to be happy.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” And now, something that was threatening to shatter my normality into a million pieces was waving its hand right in front of my face.

“Hello? Sir Namidare? Hmm, is that a little too formal? Rekka? Does that not work, either?” No, first name basis is about as informal as you can get. It’s not that I can’t hear you. It’s that I’m ignoring you. And why are you so friendly, anyway?

“All right, dung beetle! Can you hear me? Answer me, damn it!” Who are you calling a dung beetle? That’s quite the downgrade. Did I do something? Did I do something that would make you call me a dung beetle? I did not! No... don’t give in. Hang in there! If you scream, that’s just what she wants.

“Hey, you’ve got a nose hair sticking out,” R said, as she pointed at my nose.

Huh? Seriously? I moved my hand to my face without thinking.

“Not your right side. Your left. Your left.” Left, huh? Got it. I need to yank it out before someone notices... Wait, there’s nothing there?!

“I lied. And you fell for it!”

“Are you trying to pick a fight with me or something?!” I blurted out.

“So you can hear me, after all.”

“Oh.” Crap.

Then things got worse. “You, new student. Who are you picking a fight with?” said a teacher. The principal, the entire student body, and even the parents were staring at me.

Aahh! “N-No, it’s nothing.”

“Sit down. Now.”

“Yes, sir...” It hurt to have them all looking at me. I felt like I could die of shame. In fact, I wished I would. My head felt like it was about to reach its boiling point.

“Well, I knew you could hear me when you put your hand to your nose.” This little brat! It was all I could do to keep from screaming.

“Since I’ve succeeded in making first contact, I’d like to get right to the point. Is that all right?” It wasn’t, but if I ignored her, who knew what she’d do?

Was there a way to talk to her without standing out? Maybe there was. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and opened the text message screen.

Tap-tap-tap-tap. “Who are you?” I typed in a message, and then motioned for R to read it.

She spun around in mid-air and looked down at my hands.

“This is quite an old communications device, isn’t it?” Old? I’d just traded in my phone for a new one not too long ago.

“I guess that’s natural, though. I’ve come from the future, after all.”

The future? “Did you just say the future?”

“That’s correct. I’m from the future.” The future... seriously?

I decided to put aside my confusion and start asking questions.

“Can anybody but me see you?”

“No. Only you can see and touch me, Rekka.”

“I can touch you?”

“Correct. And I can’t touch or speak to anyone but you. I am what’s called a demi-material being. Would you like a complicated explanation of what that means?”

“...”

“I don’t think the ‘...’ merits being typed out.” I ignored her and asked the biggest question on my mind.

“What do you want with me?”

“I’ve come to save the future. I’ve come to change the future that’s been ruined by you and the Namidare bloodline,” R said.

I had ruined the future? My goal in life was to be normal, so it was hard to see me having any effect on the future.

But I had some small idea of what she might be talking about. My father had told me about my blood— the Namidare bloodline.

That had just happened yesterday.

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