(NOTE: INSERT IMAGE FROM VOL 1, PAGE 28 here)

A long desk, lightly varnished, had been set up next to a table of the same size to form a single surface. Ricchan laid a bundle of writing paper down on top of it.

Ricchan was writing a novel, and rather unusually for this day and age, she wrote everything out by hand. She’d taken penmanship lessons in grade school and had beautiful handwriting; if her work ever got published, I felt they should put out a handwritten edition, too.

Sunao and Ricchan first met ages ago, at the neighborhood association.

Our neighborhood association brought together all the children in the area and had them do various activities. They had the kids pick up litter on the beach on Sunday mornings, ran radio calisthenics during summer vacation, set up races for athletic events in the fall, organized group trips to the amusement park, and took everyone bowling at the end of the year. Some people even called it the children’s association.

Ricchan was a year younger than Sunao, but things like age and gender didn’t matter much when you were a child. They lived close to each other and soon became firm friends.

They’d play tag, shoot each other with water pistols, splash around in the creek, or run around at barbecues—and I knew those memories were still vivid in Sunao’s mind.

But Ricchan moved away the year Sunao started junior high, and they’d drifted apart. They sent each other cards at New Year’s that first year but then fell out of touch.

Then, this April, they’d reappeared in each other’s lives.

It was right at the beginning of the new school year, and strong winds sent cherry blossoms dancing through the air.

Two of the Literature Club’s older members had graduated in March, but neither had attended meetings with any frequency, so it wasn’t a major change. I’d always sat alone in the Literature Club room—until Ricchan showed up on the first day of the new students’ club trial period. She’d been all by herself, too.

She looked tense at first, but when she saw me there, her jaw dropped. “Oh!” she said. I managed to avoid making any sounds, but I bet I looked just as dumbfounded as she did.

I’d made a poster and hung it up on the school’s bulletin board, but I hadn’t even shown up for the club orientation assembly. Since I’d done almost no advertising, I hadn’t been expecting any new members, much less an old friend.

But as we sat with our knees pressed together under the table and discussed our favorite books, that awkwardness melted away and all the fun memories came flooding back. We were no longer little kids running around outside, and we’d both grown into book-loving high school girls. Our conversation went back and forth like a game of catch, more rhythmically than any pro baseball player could ever manage.

Our tastes were far from similar. Ricchan was all about light novels and manga, the exact opposite of what I read. But we spoke like we were picking up a conversation we’d left off the day before, each of us happily sharing whatever we had on our minds.

I hadn’t prepared any tea or snacks to welcome newcomers—nevertheless, Ricchan filled out a membership form that very day.

Now I was reading through her new manuscript as she provided enthusiastic commentary.

A boy feared by his classmates—who called him the reaper—found an abandoned girl living in a church. That was where the story began. Ricchan didn’t have a title yet.

Not only were the two leads supposed to be gorgeous, but all the other characters were jaw-droppingly beautiful, too. This seemed absurd to me, but Ricchan was a big anime fan, and everyone was beautiful in those shows.

I focused my mind back on the story. The male lead and the abandoned girl turned out to be twins, separated at birth. They looked exactly alike and took advantage of that to survive many a predicament. In time, they became professional killers, and among those of the criminal underworld, they became known as “the Duals.”

“Oh, Nao.”

“Mm?”

I pursed my lips, trying to hide how flustered I felt. Ricchan had always called me Nao-chan when we were younger, but she’d switched to Nao after our reunion, and I still wasn’t used to it.

“What do you think of the name? Should I change it? I mean, it could be confused with the word duels, you know, like ‘I challenge you to a duel.’”

“It just means there’s two of them, right?”

“Exactly! I could go with ‘Doppelgänger’ instead, but it’s not like seeing them kills you…”

Duals. Doppelgängers.

Doubles or multiples.

Copies that look just like you.

“What do you think?” she asked.

The bundle was maybe sixty pages. I’d taken my time, reading through it over the course of an hour, and I found her looking up through her lashes at me.

“Can I be honest?”

“I don’t want Sunao Aikawa ever mincing words with me. Please.”

Ricchan tended to hunch over a bit, but now she straightened all the way up.

“Your readers might have a hard time following this.”

“Gahhh!”

Ricchan fell back into her chair, pretending to vomit blood. She was prone to dramatic reactions.

“The opening here, where your leads meet in the snow. I’d like you to expand on this—it’s an important scene, right? I’d rather see their raw emotion than these melodramatic flourishes.”

I flipped from page 3 to page 5.

“What did he think when he saw a girl with his face? What did she think? You left me wondering.”

Sometime before Golden Week in late April, I’d stopped prefacing all my comments with an insistence that I was just an amateur. According to Ricchan, “You don’t realize how desperate writers are for feedback, Nao.” Articulating your impressions of a novel was a skill not many possessed.

This was the third novel she’d asked me to read. Ricchan finished one up every three or four months and had been doing so since junior high; that meant there were several she had yet to share with me.

I was just voicing my thoughts, but Ricchan always nodded away, taking notes on everything I said. In truth, this embarrassed me somewhat.

“That’s so helpful!” she exclaimed. “Can I share the next draft?”

“Sure.”

This interaction, too, had come a long way since April. That first time, she’d barely managed to get the words out, her big eyes swimming with emotion.

Spending time together was rekindling our friendship and, at the same time, establishing a new relationship between us as senior and junior classmates.

Last year, I would never have imagined this was possible. I dropped by the Literature Club only now and then to read books. I’d grown rather fond of sitting alone in the room, its silence broken only by the sound of each page turning. Still, I much preferred how things were now—it was far more fulfilling.

While Ricchan pored over her manuscript, groaning, I went back to my paperback. I was reading Yasunari Kawabata’s The Dancing Girl of Izu, set in the titular town at the eastern edge of Shizuoka.

I’d like to travel someday. It didn’t have to be Izu. Atami, Numazu, Mishima, Fuji, or Fujinomiya—anywhere.

It didn’t even have to be in this prefecture, but I’d barely been anywhere, so I figured it was worth starting close at hand. But I knew that dream wasn’t meant to be.

The sounds of trumpets came blasting through the window—the band was practicing outside. The soaring melody was that of “Treasure Island” (not “New Treasure Island,” the old one).

I was halfway through my book when I noticed that the light reflected off the table was turning red. I looked up to find the skies outside were growing darker. It was 5:50 PM, about time to wrap things up.

I put a bookmark between the pages of my paperback. It was a handmade bookmark with a little sprig of white baby’s breath pressed inside. I’d found it in the clubroom and decided to borrow it for a time.

It took me a while to get through a book. I read only during club meetings, so it could take me quite a few days.

Anything borrowed from the library ought to be kept within arm’s reach, but the clubroom was the closest thing I had to my own space, so I always slipped my books into a corner of the bookshelf here. The room was kept locked, so I figured it would be fine, but I always felt like I was breaking the rules.

I’d borrowed the book for a two-week period, and the due date was a week from today. If Sunao didn’t call for me, I wouldn’t be able to read any more—a fact that always made me anxious.

Ricchan and I locked up the clubroom and set off down the empty hall together.

“No clubs next week,” she said.

“Yeah.”

Starting ten days before final exams, sports teams and cultural clubs were all restricted.

“But you’ll still be using the room?” I asked.

“Of course!” Ricchan nodded, grinning. “Best place to study.”

There were few distractions, so it was more productive than her own room.

“Hngg, I can’t decide on the heroine’s name!” Ricchan’s mind was still on her novel, and she spoke as if we’d been talking about it all along.

“That’s a tough one,” I said, well aware she wasn’t expecting me to provide the answer.

Talking aloud helped her sort things out in her mind. I often saw her muttering to herself before yelping and scribbling something down in her notepad.

Today, though, no lightbulbs were going off. I silently cheered on my hardworking junior.

“Have you ever tried writing, Nao?” she asked.

“Mm-mm. I don’t think I could.”

I was sure of this. I could put on a serious face or even turn myself upside down—and still never write a single word.

Could Sunao?

I doubted I’d ever get the chance to ask, but I did wonder.

I entered the faculty office alone. The key rack was still empty. Various sports teams and the band were still practicing hard in the dimming light.

With the key in its rightful place, I headed for the building’s entrance. There I changed from slippers back into loafers and reunited with the bicycle, which had been patiently awaiting my return.

Ricchan and I split up at the back gate. She lived close by. She’d picked this high school for the easy commute rather than the uniform.

The wheels of the bike whirred as they spun; my feet were pressed flat against the pedals, my legs pumping.

The backs of the loafers were keen on folding in and locked in a battle with my Achilles tendons. They’d clearly forgotten their original shape entirely.

***

This is the story of how I came to be.

One day, Sunao really didn’t want to go to a children’s association event.

She’d had a fight with Ricchan, and because Sunao was a very stubborn child, she simply couldn’t be the first to apologize. But this time she knew the fight was her fault, which left her trapped between the part of her that didn’t want to apologize and the part that knew she had to.

The result of this impasse was my birth. Still—Sunao and Ricchan had fought before, so I can’t say that was the sole cause.

Sunao was shocked—but she faced me and put her hands together like she was offering a prayer.

“Will you go to the community center for me and make up with Ricchan?”