Ricchan and I both froze, blinking at each other. No one had ever knocked before.

“It’s open!” Ricchan called.

The door, which was set wrong in its frame and notoriously loud, opened without a sound.

I looked up at the tall boy beyond. I knew his name.

It was Shuuya Sanada—my classmate, a former basketball star, and a master at erasing chalkboards. Today, he looked slightly surprised.

But why would he come to the Literature Club? The question caught in my throat, and I sat there simply looking perplexed.

Sanada’s head tilted a tad. “Mind if I join?”

“Huh?” I blinked. Those were the last words I’d expected to hear in that low voice of his. “Um, join what?”

“Uh…the Literature Club.”

Well, yes. What else could he have meant? I just…hadn’t been expecting it.

My reaction must have made him feel unwelcome, and he scratched his cheek.

“Are there rules?” he asked.

Rules?

“For joining,” he prompted.

“Not really, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Uh, I mean…”

“Are you not allowed to join midway through the year?”

“Augh!”

The questions were coming too fast for me to catch up. I couldn’t get the words out.

“New members are welcome!” Ricchan cried, propping her elbows on the table and smiling. “It’s only the two of us right now, after all.”

She was talking to a boy—Sanada, no less—but she took it all in stride. She was way more composed than I was.

“Nao, have him fill out the membership form and go with him to turn it in.”

“Oh! Uh, right.”

She’d easily bailed me out of trouble. Was I really the older one?

But on paper, at least, I was. Ricchan was right—I was club president, and this was my job. I managed to get to my feet, but then I once again hit a roadblock.

“Ricchan, where do we keep the forms?”

I could feel my cheeks burning. Our new member would know right away that I had no idea what I was doing.

“In the tin can on the shelf.”

The tin can. Aha.

This was also a souvenir from Disneyland. It had once been filled with big, flat rice crackers, but they had all been eaten by former club members who’d graduated long before our time.

I pried off the dusty lid and found a bundle of random papers inside. Unsure what I was looking at, I flipped through them until I found the form for new members. They were smaller sheets made by cutting longer pieces of paper in half, bound together with a rubber band. Whoever made them must not have had access to a paper cutter—the edges of the forms had a curve to them, like they’d been sliced with a pair of scissors.

The second one in the pile looked a little cleaner, so I took that one instead, then realized Sanada was still standing dutifully in the doorway.

“Uh, please come in,” I managed, clutching the forms.

He bent his head and stepped in, leaning hard on his left leg and minimizing the contact his right foot made with the floor.

I felt it would be rude to ask if he was all right, so I said nothing. Ricchan blinked a few times but also let it pass.

Then he unfolded a chair—the one next to mine. We had enough chairs for four people, but sitting next to Ricchan would put him by the window; I was closer to the door, so he’d made the obvious choice.

He put down his black backpack, and Ricchan handed him a ballpoint pen. It was usually just rolling around the table, abandoned by some former member. There was no ink visible inside, yet somehow it kept on writing.

Sanada casually thanked her. My reflexes were not improving, and I stood for a moment, my gaze swimming somewhere above their heads, before I finally remembered to put the form down in front of him.

He filled it out with neat penmanship. “Literature Club” had been written into the appropriate slot before the copies were made, so all he had to do was put his year, class, and name.

This took less than a minute, after which he stood and pushed the chair back without making a squeak. For a big guy, he didn’t make much excess noise. Before I could start wondering why, Ricchan sent us off.

“Go get ’em!” she said.

We headed straight to the faculty office, two doors down the hall to the right.

The moment the door opened, he muttered, “Ah…nice and cool.”

I agreed. That cold breeze felt great on my sweaty forehead, cheeks, and neck.

This place was an oasis. Our bodies seemed to be wrapped in an invincible veil, like we were wizards with a mastery of ice magic.

“Excuse us,” I said cautiously.

The teachers looked our way, but they soon lost interest. Those few seconds of attention always unnerved me. Because of it, I rarely came by, despite knowing there was a chilly paradise so near the clubroom.

The form went to the Literature Club sponsor, Mr. Akai, who was out. He sponsored both the Kendo Club and the Literature Club, and since we didn’t cause problems, he normally left us to our own devices. He knew Ricchan and I were both serious, quiet types who didn’t get in trouble, so he’d told us to only come to him if we needed help. And just as he’d hoped, no such situation had ever arisen.

“I guess we can leave it on his desk,” I said with parched lips.

The only other sounds were the hum of the AC and the scratching of pens.

“’Kay.”

Sanada didn’t seem to have any of my anxieties. He put the form down squarely in the middle of Mr. Akai’s messy desk.

For a paperweight, I placed a little statue of a frog on one edge of the form. That way, he was sure to notice. Mr. Akai loved frogs, and his desk was covered with frog souvenirs he’d picked up traveling. Every time he returned to the room, he checked each of them in turn, making sure they were doing well. Ribbit.

As I was about to leave, I belatedly noticed several pairs of eyes on us. They weren’t looking at me, however, but at Sanada.

He was tall and walking with a limp, so he certainly stood out. Still, it irked me. I didn’t like how they were all staring at the former basketball star, observing him without bothering to hide their curiosity.

Sanada seemed not to notice. Though I got the feeling he was acting like that precisely because he did feel those prickly gazes.

“Pardon us!” I said, slamming the door aggressively.

Sanada said nothing. Maybe he thought I’d gone too far.

Outside the room, it took only eight seconds for our invincible veil to peel away. From head to toe, like waking from a dream, I was thrust back into the world from whence I’d come.

Sanada was holding the hem of his shirt, flapping it wistfully. Alas, there was nothing left but lukewarm air.

I didn’t want to head back to the clubroom while I was still cross.

“Can we stop by the library?” I asked.

The library was next to the faculty office, in the direction of the clubroom.

The Literature Club might occupy a former closet, but I had to hand it to our predecessors—they’d scored a prime location. Most students might consider proximity to the faculty office a fate worse than death, but I went to the library a lot, so it was a blessing for me.

“Sure,” he said.

We headed inside through the open door. I saw the familiar librarian, as well as an older student checking out a book. I glanced at the spine. Asa Nonami’s Soap Bubble. The title didn’t reveal very much. Maybe I should read it someday.

Not a lot of people came to the library. It was about half the size of the faculty office and packed with bookshelves, but I almost never saw more than five students inside at once. If we had to research something for class, the tables would temporarily fill up, but when that happened, the library got so noisy that it felt like a whole different place.

I followed the shelves lining the wall, a path as familiar as the road to school. Wrapped in the scent of yellowing pages, I could feel my ruffled feathers falling back into place.

Currently, I was working my way through modern Japanese literature. I was sampling the works of the most famous—Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Osamu Dazai, Ichiyo Higuchi, Ango Sakaguchi. Everyone had heard of these authors and could probably name at least one of their works.

These were books written in another era, using words I didn’t recognize—I frequently had to consult the dictionaries we kept in the clubroom. Some books had glossaries in the back, but even those definitions often had words I didn’t know, so I couldn’t get far without a dictionary. I rather liked flipping through those giant tomes, running my fingers down the list of words, and finding myself distracted by some other term entirely until I forgot my original purpose. That was why I used only electronic dictionaries in class.

Before I started on modern literature, I’d read a bunch of foreign mystery novels and, before that, contemporary literature. I’d picked up only a few famous works or ones that caught my eye—so I wouldn’t call myself well-versed in the genre. I’m painfully aware that new books are published far faster than I can read them.

Sanada trailed along behind me, saying nothing.

It didn’t take long before I decided to start the ball rolling. We weren’t supposed to talk in the library, but if we kept our voices down, we wouldn’t get scolded. The only time I’d ever gotten in trouble was when Ricchan had yelped, “Oh shit, they’ve got Re:Zero!”

Come to think of it, I’d never gotten around to asking her what that was.

“Sanada, do you like books?” I asked.

He made a noncommittal noise. Was that supposed to be a yes or a no?

“They’re okay,” he said after a moment.

Fair enough. Most people were like that. Do you like books? They’re okay.

At this point, it occurred to me that I hadn’t really explained what our club did.

“At club meetings, I mostly just read. The other girl, Ricchan—Ritsuko Hironaka—writes her own novels. Sometimes I read those and tell her what I think.”

Sanada didn’t answer. Before, he’d at least made a noise.

Curious, I looked back and found him scratching his cheek. I’d seen that gesture earlier.

Oh. I noticed he kept his nails closely trimmed. He must always scratch himself like that when he was at a loss.

“I’ve never written anything,” he said. “Do I have to?”