CHAPTER 1

Hikaru Was Always There

1

The cicadas in the village buzzed loudly.

They buzzed away all through the summer without a moment’s pause. Their cacophony was relentless, as if the cicadas didn’t even have time to catch their breath. Yoshiki Tsujinaka didn’t know what sounds they made in the city and other far-off places.

BZZH, BZZH, BZZH, BZZH, BZZH, BZZH, BZZH, BZZH.

In the summer, the town where Yoshiki was born and raised overflowed with this sound. It was enough to drive you crazy.

Hikaru vigorously pulled at the front of his school uniform’s white buttoned shirt to fan himself. He opened the lid of a chest freezer as he called out to the back of the store.

“Pardon, ma’am. Can we grab some ice cream?”

There was a brief silence, and then a voice replied, “Sure, go on ahead.”

Hikaru’s expression relaxed as he let the cold air from the freezer wash over his face.

“Ahhh, nice an’ cool.”

But not a moment later, he knitted his eyebrows with displeasure.

“Wait—there’s barely anythin’ in here! Dang. All they got is Papicco.”

“It’s always like that here,” said Yoshiki as he brushed his bangs aside. His sweat-damp bangs were long enough to cover not just his forehead but also his eyes.

Around the store were sun-faded capsule toy and vending machines, along with shelves cluttered with items that may or may not have been for sale. The only things that looked brand-new were the weekly manga magazines in the store’s magazine section. Even after years of coming here, Yoshiki couldn’t really discern if this store, which was called “Yamahisa,” was a penny candy shop or a general store.

The shopkeeper, Mrs. Yamahisa, was an older woman of indeterminate age. Her appearance hadn’t changed the slightest bit since Yoshiki’s childhood days, so he secretly believed that she must be some sort of supernatural creature.

“‘Ice cream avail.,’ my ass!” Hikaru grumbled. “An’ what the heck’s ‘frusty-cold’ ice cream anyway?”

The sign hanging in front of Yamahisa was supposed to say “Frosty-cold ice cream avail.,” but the owner’s poor spelling made it read “frusty.” This wasn’t anything new.

This “frusty” sign had always been hanging at Yamahisa, even in Yoshiki’s oldest memory of the store. In that same memory, Hikaru Indou was with him, snapping off one of the two bottle-shaped tubes of ice cream that came in a pack and handing it to Yoshiki, just like he was doing now. The cicadas were in that memory as well, buzzing away like always.

“Still, can’t believe that jerk Hara made us run long-distance in this blazin’ heat,” said Yoshiki.

He sat down on a bench in front of the store and tore off the top of his tube of ice cream. A moment later, Hikaru sat down, causing the old bench to clatter and sway from side to side.

When did it get like this? When exactly did this bench get so rickety?

“What it is, is tor-cher, ain’t it?”

“Hikaru. You said ‘torture’ all weird. You said it like you’d say ‘for sure.’ But it’s the same intonation as ‘scorcher.’”

The ice cream had already softened, and it didn’t take much effort to slurp up its contents.

That freezer just might be on its last legs.

As Yoshiki considered whether it would be a good idea to exchange their ice cream treats for a new set, the buzzing of the cicadas unexpectedly drew nearer.

“Gotcha,” said Hikaru. “Torture… It’s torture. I’ll be careful ’bout that.”

Hikaru slurped up his ice cream, wearing a grin. As Yoshiki looked at his childhood friend’s face in profile, the already overwhelming buzzing became even louder. Illuminated by the sunlight, Hikaru’s light-colored hair looked oddly bright, with an almost white glow to it.

Triggered by that sight, in the back of his mind, Yoshiki recalled the flash of lightning he saw on a certain, fateful day—and he ended up asking his friend a question.

“So you really don’t remember goin’ missin’ in the mountains for over a week?”

“Naw. Not at all.”

The village where Yoshiki lived was called Kubitachi. It used to be a real village, but because it had merged with the town of Kibogayama, it wasn’t an actual village in technical terms. Even so, the residents thought of it as “Kubitachi Village,” and that’s what they called it.

Kubitachi was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and each mountain had a name—Nisayama, Matsuyama, Kasayama, and Futakasayama. The village was desolate. Houses, sparsely scattered like dead leaves, dotted the banks of the river that flowed down from the mountains. Even the population was small; only about two hundred people lived in Kubitachi.

It had been about six months since Hikaru went missing on Nisayama—it happened at the end of January on a day with thunderous lightning and heavy rain.

The adults in the village came together to look for Hikaru and were unsuccessful, yet one week later, Hikaru suddenly returned home.

Moreover, he remembered nothing about the week when he’d gone missing.

And just like that, spring came, followed by summer. Yoshiki remembered how his breath turned white in the cold on the day he heard Hikaru had vanished, and naturally, a sigh escaped from his mouth.

“It’s been a whole six months since then. Guess y’ain’t gonna remember any more’n you already do,” he said to Hikaru.

“It’s all right, ain’t it? How much longer ya gonna keep askin’ me ’bout it?”

“It ain’t all right,” Yoshiki snapped back. He shoved Hikaru’s head down as if he were trying to make a dog lie on the ground. Hikaru protested and told Yoshiki to “quit it,” although he didn’t seriously mind.

“Everybody was worried sick ’bout ya,” Yoshiki told him.

“So ya missed me when I was gone?”

Hikaru smoothly squeezed his already narrow eyes into thin, needle-like slits and smiled. You could almost hear the snicker of the sly grin on his face.

“Not really…”

“You liar! You musta cried like a baby. Bet you were all like, ‘Don’t leave me all alone, Hikaruuu! Boo-hoo!’” Hikaru pulled down the corners of his eyes to make a crying face.

“Don’t get carried away,” Yoshiki warned, pushing Hikaru’s head down once more.

“Ya always do that, just ’cause yer bigger’n me…,” Hikaru mumbled.

Yoshiki agreed; that was why he always did that. Yoshiki was taller than Hikaru, so he always did things like this whenever Hikaru got carried away. It was only natural.

“Hey,” said Yoshiki. “Can I ask you somethin’ that might sound kinda weird?”

The buzzing drew near once again, and before Yoshiki knew it, the noise that had been screeching beside his ears was now echoing inside his head.

“What is it? Gonna confess yer feelings to me?” Hikaru teased.

“Naw.”

That’s right. That ain’t what this is. Not at all.

“…Listen, this ain’t somethin’ that came ta me just now—it’s been on my mind ever since you went missin’ an’ came back, so I’ve been wonderin’ ’bout it for a while…”

Yoshiki recalled the late January chill. He felt it in his upper arms. Even though sweat was running down his cheeks, goosebumps ran up his sides beneath his short-sleeved shirt.

Every temperature he had experienced since that day rushed along the surface of his skin—the cold of January, the deep chill of February, the thaw of March, the warmth of April, the sunshine of May, and even the muggy humidity of June.

“You ain’t the real Hikaru, are ya?”

He gradually began to see in Hikaru something that…wasn’t Hikaru. Despite Yoshiki’s bangs acting as personal blinds, he could clearly see the expression of the person in front of him.

With a face identical to Hikaru’s, the person let out a “Huh?” And in the unbearably long silence that followed, it felt as if time itself had stopped.

But the cicadas continued their incessant buzzing.

“Why…?”

As soon as the person mumbled that to himself, something long and slender slithered out of his left eye. Then there were more of them, and his skin melted and crumbled into a gooey mess that flowed out from his cheekbones and hairline.

“I’m s’posed to be a perfect copy of ’im…”

Yoshiki wanted to believe the bangs in his eyes were to blame.

But no matter how many times he blinked, it wouldn’t go away.

It appeared to be not quite black, or blue, or red, or even green. It looked something like the shriveled roadkill remains of a rat that he’d seen on the way to school that morning, or like the fishy-smelling scales that someone scraped off and discarded after fishing by the riverside, or even like rain-soaked mud and cold bamboo grass.

“Please…don’t tell anyone…,” the thing begged.

Yoshiki tried to speak but was instead overcome with nausea.