Kei: ——!?
In the span of one blink, one world is exchanged for another.
Kei: ————
I already knew this, but it was a dream.
And while it was a dream, I still feel exhausted, my heart is pounding, and my mouth is dry, as if I’d really been running around.
……Maybe I should drink some water.
Once my hand passes through vacant air searching for the light switch, I finally realize that I’m not in the room I’ve become used to.
In other words, it’s no use going to the kitchen, is it?
The refrigerator is probably empty, and the water, for that matter, has stopped running.
Darn it. I should’ve asked Tsudzura-chan, before going to sleep, exactly how she’s been living this way until now.
Kei: Uuu…… I guess I just have to go without it…
But the more thought I give it, the more dry my throat feels.
Kei: Ah.
Come to think of it, that tea I bought before boarding the train should still have about half left.
To search my pack for the PET bottle inside it, I turn on the room light—— or not.
This time I realize it before I reach out at nothing, instead flipping on the flashlight next to my pillow.
Kei: ……Huh? What is… this?
Its light pierces the gloom, and the scar on a pillar floats up out of the dark.
It’s carved in about the height of my chest, around the height of a small child who just entered elementary school, measuring its height.
And the scars of two years before that—— ahh, these are height comparison marks.
This is my father’s house, after all. They might have been his.
Is the name… written anywhere?
Kei: What…… is this……
The name is——
The name written aside this scar is——
Making doubly sure, I trace its abraded surface with my fingertip.
Kei: Kei……
It’s my name.
Is that landscape from the dream I saw… a recurrence of my memory?
So many marks left here… did I live here at one point?
No.
That’s not right.
It can’t be right.
The time when my father died, and I started living alone with mom, my height… was probably near the highest mark here.
Just enough to be… ten years ago.
But, the reason my father died, I heard, was because the house erupted in flames——
And the reason I don’t remember him at all… was that I breathed in the smoke and collapsed——
The reason we have no photographs of his face… because the albums all burned away——
In the end, every question I follow arrives at another question.
Supposing I had lived here, why isn’t this house burned down?
The simplest answer… this wasn’t my house, but it was very close—— like, a place we would visit every summer break.
It’s my father’s house, so that wouldn’t be out of place. And it’s easy enough to imagine we left it behind because of his death.
But, that’s not it.
Somehow, I get the feeling that isn’t it.
And the one who could have given me the answer, mom, isn’t here anymore.
Ahh… what is… this place… I——
And then my trembling fingertip touches upon one more scar.
Just as you’d expect of a height comparison, always there, hardly a hair’s breadth from mine.
Kei: Haku……ka……?
The same pain as within the dream.
The sign, “don’t think,” intermittently rushing through my body.
Kei: Tssagh!…… Hah!……
Don’t.
Don’t think.
She said it too, “forget it all,” the girl from my dream——
But, but still… who is Hakuka?
I can’t forget… nor can I remember.
Deep in the back of my eyes it pounds. *zuki zuki* *zuki zuki*
The same pain as in the dream.
Same as—— the dream——?
At last I realize…
Ahh, that’s right. This is a dream, too.
So a contradiction or two wouldn’t be strange at all.
For a house that should be burned down to still be standing, things like that are commonplace.
Even if I see a stranger’s name, stuff like that probably happens, too.
I don’t have to think too hard about it.
After all, it’s all just a dream.
Yes, just a dream——