My Parallel-World Self or Not, Walking to School Together Is Nerve-Wracking

The first thing I do when I wake up is wash my face.

I hadn't been able to sleep a wink the night before, but even so, I think I'd passed out before the sky outside started to lighten.

Either way, my eyelids were heavy and my whole body felt sluggish.

When I stepped into the washroom next to the bathroom, Tsukino-sa… Tsukino was there. She seemed to have just finished washing her face and was patting it dry with a towel. Her long hair had a touch of bedhead, sticking up ever so slightly.

A vague, unfocused gaze turned my way, nothing like the icy stare from when we first met, or the eyes she'd narrowed in laughter. Defenseless, even childlike. There was something almost precarious about her collar, damp and disheveled from washing her face. It was a side of Tsukino I hadn't seen before.

"Good morning. Asahi-ku… Asahi."

"Good morning. Tsukino."

My voice cracked a little. I still wasn't used to it.

"So you wash your face before breakfast too, Tsukino?"

"Mm. That's another thing we've got in common, huh."

Her mouth softened. Her still-drowsy voice had a slightly nasal, sweetly clingy ring to it.

Then Tsukino blinked and stared hard at me. The sleepy look from moments ago slowly faded, and her eyes went wide.

I was finally catching on to the situation myself.

"…Being seen right after I've woken up is pretty embarrassing, isn't it."

Tsukino smoothed down the tiny bit of bedhead.

"My bad. I'll wait in my room."

For my part, I'd hesitated even to breathe. Right after waking up, there's plenty I'm self-conscious about too.

Turning my back on Tsukino as she pressed her palms together with a "Sorry," I headed back upstairs, thinking I'd need to give my morning routine a little thought from now on.

 

*

 

By breakfast, Tsukino had already slipped neatly into her uniform.

Every trace of bedhead had been smoothed out of her long hair, and there wasn't a single wrinkle in her blouse.

I'm the type who's changed by breakfast too, but next to Tsukino, supposedly the same existence as me, I looked downright ordinary. I think I'd tamed my bedhead properly, at least.

In the Masumi household, eating breakfast together as a family is the custom. Both Mom and Dad had all but finished getting ready for work and were seated at the table.

"Tsukino-san."

It was Dad who'd spoken. You can really tell his mean-looking eyes got passed straight down to me, though they might suit a crisp dress shirt. I couldn't help remembering how, in Tsukino-san's world, he's apparently not her father but her mother. Ridiculous.

"It's been about two months now since you came to stay with us. Are you starting to settle in?"

Tsukino's eyebrow twitched for just an instant, but she spoke with no sign of fluster.

"Yes. It's as if I've lived here from the start."

The glance she flicked my way clearly said, "That's how it seems to be."

The morning news was playing on the TV in the living room. Mom and Dad traded remarks about the feature segment and the weather forecast as they went on with their meal. The usual morning scene.

Amid all that, I stole a look at Tsukino: she was biting into a slice of toast piled with jam, eyes narrowed in contentment. That smile of pure bliss was a slightly unexpected reaction. Maybe she likes eating more than I do.

After that, everyone heads out on their own schedule; that's how mornings go in the Masumi house.

Once we'd seen Mom and Dad off to work, Tsukino and I left the house at the same time.

First down the sloping road, through the tunnel, then off toward the station: my usual route to school.

But today, Tsukino was beside me.

It was the height of the morning commute, and the street along the national highway was crowded. There were kids from my own high school, plenty of students passing through the station on their way to other schools, and adults heading to work besides.

Mixed in among them were a man and woman who looked like a couple. Walking shoulder to shoulder, they seemed to be enjoying themselves, though I couldn't tell what they were talking about. Naturally, there wasn't much distance between them.

What's the proper distance, anyway…?

The moment I started thinking about it, I had no idea anymore.

We'd only just met yesterday, and obviously we weren't a couple or anything. But since we were apparently the same existence across parallel worlds, the distance between us had somehow ended up close.

Tsukino was right beside me. She's a little shorter than me, but her posture is so remarkably good that our eyes felt about level.

Spine held ramrod straight, she stepped out with a light, buoyant gait. Her long black hair streamed, and the black-and-silver hair accessory glittered in the morning light. The sight of her, cool eyes fixed straight ahead, was hopelessly beautiful.

Walking alone with a girl was something that almost never happened to me. When I'm with my senpai from the literature club, there are always other members around. Yesterday I'd been talking bad ends the whole time so it never crossed my mind, but now that I had started thinking about it, the nerves set in.

A voice saying "Asahi" pulled me back.

Tsukino's eyes were on a student couple holding hands. Had she caught what I was thinking? I sucked in a breath despite myself.

"How much distance do you think is good at times like this?"

That cool gaze still in place, she'd asked almost exactly what I'd been mulling over. Without changing her expression in the slightest, she shifted uncomfortably.

"I see. So we were fretting over the same thing."

"Right. We really are the same existence after all."

An oddly serious expression, an exchange in grave voices. And then we both burst out laughing at the same time.

At the sight of Tsukino breaking into a smile with a flush of red still on her cheeks, the tension drained out of me too.

"I mean, I've got no clue how to walk to school with a boy."

"Unfortunately, same here. I don't have a clue either."

All we could do was let our fits of laughter settle into wry smiles at each other.

Whether that was good or bad, I couldn't say, but our lack of experience across the board seemed like more proof we were the same existence.

"That reminds me," Tsukino began, as though nothing at all had happened.

"Your place eats breakfast together too, huh, Asahi."

Just idle chatter, the kind that changes the subject.

"Which means your house does too, Tsukino?"

I wanted to smooth things over too, so I answered in kind, playing it like I hadn't been thinking about anything.

"Even if Dad's and Mom's genders are swapped, yeah. Everyone together in the morning, isn't that actually kind of a hassle?"

"The morning after staying up late, I want to sleep until the last possible second, but if I don't get up properly I catch an earful."

"Right, right. Dad's the naggy one."

"That part's flipped for me. At my place, Mom's the naggy one. …No, wait, same person, huh."

Personality apparently follows the individual, not the gender.

Now that I really thought about it, maybe Tsukino and me sharing the same bad-end kink worked on the same principle.

"Speaking of little hassles, this road's the same too. All these slopes are rough, aren't they. Hard to ride a bike, too."

"It's a town carved out of the hills, after all."

That's why it's called Himurogioka. The 'oka' on the end means hill. It's a new town developed out of the hills north and south of the station, so there's no shortage of slopes and tunnels. Himurogioka High School is in Himurogioka-Kitamachi, which means a steep climb once you're past the station.

"You still can't get through on your phone, then?"

"Yeah. I keep trying, but…"

She fiddled with her phone as she said it, then tossed it back into her pocket.

"A whole night's gone by. That's got to be unsettling."

"A little. Though I still don't know how the flow of time works between your world and mine, Asahi."

"Hup," Tsukino went, adjusting her bag as she walked.

"We're only going to check where you stand at school, so you didn't really need to bring your stuff, did you? We've got to look into how to get you home, too."

"That's true, but better to have them than not. Besides, when it comes to a way home, I still don't know a thing. For starters, I don't even know whether this town is the same Himurogioka I know."

"Fair point."

"Oh, that's right. The textbooks I've got with me are the ones I originally had, but there was a whole second set in my room too. You don't have two copies of each, do you, Asahi?"

"There'd be no point in prepping two sets. Is that the world's adjustment too? For something that's just 'the world,' it sure is attentive, seeing to the textbooks and everything."

Tsukino shrugged.

The thought made me anxious, but we needed more information. We'd just have to look into things one at a time.

While we talked, we passed the station. Out of the corner of my eye I watched commuters vanish into the concourse as we crossed the elevated main road running over the tracks.

The area in front of Himurogioka Station is the heart of this town. Green Mall Himurogioka, the shopping mall that houses yesterday's theater, is right nearby, and the shopping arcade by the station hasn't gone completely to seed yet, so the place still manages to look at least a little like a city. Actually getting into the city center takes close to an hour, though.

By the time we reached the north side of town, the foot traffic was mostly Himurogioka High students. The climb from here is brutal, and now that late May had rolled around, it got hot whenever the wind died down.

Tsukino took the slope with a light step; I somehow managed to keep pace beside her.

"It should be the same school, but I'm a little excited."

"For me it's nothing new, though."

Still, with Tsukino here today, it was unmistakably a different scene than usual.

Before long, the Himurogioka High building came into view. It went up after the new town did, but it's a public school, and its age was frankly starting to show.

With students filing in through the school gate ahead of us, Tsukino stopped in her tracks.

Trailing a little behind her, I couldn't see her face, but I had a rough idea what she was thinking.

"Weren't you excited?"

"I might get labeled a suspicious person with no enrollment record, you know. If some stranger were just sitting in your class in a uniform, acting like it's nothing, wouldn't that scare you?"

"Putting myself in that spot, yeah, it's pretty chilling. It'd turn into 'who is that guy?', and once they found out I wasn't enrolled, that's a police matter, plain and simple."

"I didn't want you to spell it out that clearly. What do I do. I wonder where I even stand at this school."

"Then why did you come…?"

Tsukino looked away. She was pursing her lips, ill at ease. So she makes faces like that too.

"If you're me, Asahi, I think you'll get it. You know how sometimes you act on impulse, and then when you think it over you realize you weren't thinking at all? And how sometimes that's the very thing that causes the failure?"

"'Never.' That's what I'd like to say, but I get it."

I've pulled my share of stunts. If anything, yesterday's exchange at the theater and the two-hour bad-end talk were way too impulsive. If the person I'd been talking to hadn't been Tsukinomy same existence, wouldn't that have been a full-blown disaster?

"But a character who acts on impulse and screws up isn't exactly welcome in a bad-end work."

"I get that. When the cause of the bad end is a mistake born of stupidity, it tends to leave you deflated, doesn't it."

"Yes, that. A bad end where a brilliant character gives it everything they've got and still falls short, or where any number of best moves collide in the worst possible way and drive things toward a bad end, those I can accept. But moving without thinking and failing? Come on. The only takeaway you're left with is 'isn't this guy just an idiot?'"

"Could it be… we're not cut out for bad ends?"

"As far as real life goes, that's fine, isn't it."

A bad end is something that works precisely because it's fiction. In real life, I'd like a happy ending.

"So, well. From here on, I'll stay calm, and back you up coolly and precisely, no impulse involved. This is my world, after all."

Because if I were the one who'd wandered into a parallel world, I know I'd be anxious.

Tsukino's eyes went round. Then she let out a little chuckle.

"That's me for you. Well then, let's go!"

Tsukino took my hand and pulled. Just like that, the two of us passed through the school gate.

We'd bumped fists before, but this was the first time I'd touched her palm: cool and soft, smooth yet carrying that faint moisture human skin has. Her hand wrapped over mine, she led me along with surprising strength.

Before I knew it, I'd stopped worrying about the matter of distance. Whether because we're the same existence, or simply because I'd gotten used to it.

That aside, ending up in what basically amounted to holding hands was, admittedly, embarrassing.

Coming to a stop just inside the school grounds, Tsukino let go of my hand.

The gaze she turned back to me wavered. It was the face of someone who'd done it again.

In no time her pale cheeks flushed red. Maybe she noticed, because she pressed both hands to them, but with even her ears burning, she wasn't hiding a thing.

"I can tell that was another impulse thing."

"I've got no comeback for that. Just, don't look at my face right now."

If she's my same existence across parallel worlds, am I always like this too? Maybe I ought to take a hard look at myself.

 

*

 

My self-examination came to nothing: in under ten minutes, I'd screwed up on impulse myself.

"So, he wants to know if we know Masumi Tsukino-san, apparently～"

"If anyone would know that, it's you, Masumi-kun. You two are shacking up, aren't you?"

"W-well. That much is true. It's not shacking up, though."

Before Tsukino came into the classroom, I'd tried asking a nearby classmate to find out where she stood, and this was the result. Picking a socially skilled kid, figuring they'd answer without making it a thing, had backfired too.

There really is no more baffling question than this. From where they stood, a guy who lives with Tsukino had walked up and asked whether they knew Tsukino. Suspicious. No wonder they were eyeing me with doubt.

"You mean like, my impression of Tsukino-chan? Why are you asking?"

All I could do was mumble. Depending on how you took it, the question could sound like me fishing for Tsukino's bad points. They're good people, the type who'd take it that way and get angry on her behalf, which only made my position worse.

More fundamentally, I'm just bad at talking to girls in the first place.

Both the choice of who did the asking, namely me, and the question itself were wrong. It was shaping up to be a D-grade bad end: moving on impulse and failing.

Outside the classroom, Tsukino was making an X. Not the cute little kind you make with your fingers, but a full-power X with both arms. I felt exactly the same.

When I shook my head, Tsukino stepped forward.

Right up until a second before, she'd worn an "oh no" face, but then her expression flipped. With an elegant, cold gaze, she strolled into the classroom as if she'd only just arrived at school.

"Morning," she said, and the two of them looked over and answered with a "Heyy."

"Sorry about that. That was something that came up between me and him. Like, 'come to think of it, when did you two and I first get to know each other?' Asahi went and asked it for me, but his phrasing was a little… you know."

"Different middle schools, so it's from high school, right? I mean, Masumi-kun, you're in the literature club and your Japanese is total garbage."

"Why'd that even come up in the first place?"

"It was a pretty pointless tangent. Like, 'who in our current class did you meet first?' Sorry."

After another brief exchange, Tsukino headed for her seat, the one she'd checked in advance. Having smoothed things over on my end, I went back to my own seat right next to hers.

The two I'd asked about Tsukino didn't seem to be dwelling on it anymore and had moved on to a video they'd watched recently.

"That saved me. Turns out I'm a creature of impulse too."

"You got to take a hard look at yourself, didn't you."

"Just, don't look at my face right now."

Sitting down, Tsukino gave a wry smile and pointedly averted her eyes for my sake. What a saint.

"But when you think about it, asking whether you know me is a pretty high-difficulty question, isn't it."

"Next time I'll think a bit harder about how I ask."

I said it while watching the two peppy, outgoing girls cackling away.

"Still, you handled that like a pro. Are your communication skills better than mine?"

"Isn't it just because they were girls? …I mean, the only friends I've really got are in the literature club. What about you, Asahi?"

"Same here. I see. With someone of the same sex, maybe I wouldn't tense up quite so much either."

That aside, I felt relieved that Tsukino wasn't some communication monster with a suspiciously huge crowd of friends of both sexes, but that's an uncool thing to feel, so I'm keeping it to myself.

"If I said the boy I find easiest to talk to right now is you, Asahi, would that make you happy?"

"That's just because we're the same existence, isn't it. …It does make me happy, though."

I was happier than my reply let on, my heart pounding fit to burst. To put it plainly, I was done for.

Quit teasing me! I thought, but the girl who'd said it was clearly embarrassed herself, lowering her eyes and toying with her black hair. She'd self-destructed.

"…Still, the whole class knows we live together, huh. Isn't this the kind of thing people usually keep quiet?"

"The world's adjustment is pretty slapdash, isn't it."

"Adjustment, huh. So those two were in your class as well, Tsukino? What's the class lineup like?"

I kept my voice down just in case, though the classroom was noisy to begin with, so maybe there was no need to bother.

"I don't think the lineup's changed much. But there are some people whose sex is different."

"Same as with my family, then. Maybe we can just go ahead and treat it as a given that it's a parallel world."

"Right. There's too much you can't explain any other way, after all."

"So what do we do now?"

"When, and where, I slipped into this world. We've got to look into that."

"We met at the theater, but since you were watching the movie, it's not like you suddenly appeared there."

After the movie, we had no contact until the bad-end talk came up, but I'm pretty sure she'd been in her seat during the screening too.

"Truth be told, I wasn't aware of the moment I crossed into this world at all. It'd have been nice if a portal or something had obviously opened up and sucked me in."

"That'd be blatantly crossing worlds."

"Infinity Heaven" did it that way.

"So I figure our best bet is to go around the places I went yesterday. If I can find some strange spot that way, it'll make things quick."

"Then let's go right now."

Homeroom would start soon, so if we were going to leave school, now was the time.

We didn't know how the flow of time worked between this world and Tsukino's. Was it passing in both at once, or if she returned to her world would she come back to the moment she left? Or was it something wildly different? Depending on the answer, she might already be a missing person over there, and it could be causing a huge uproar.

"So, um. As for going around the places that come to mind, I think after school would be fine."

"But this is no time to be sitting through classes, right? I'll help too."

Shaking her head, Tsukino started getting her textbooks ready.

"There are only so many places I went, so after school leaves plenty of time to make the rounds."

Our homeroom teacher came in. Homeroom would be starting any second.

"Besides, while we're at it. I'd like to see how this world's literature club is doing, too. Since it's a place closely tied to us, there might be something to gain."

"Is there? Well, if you say so…"

Half-listening to the teacher's voice, I got ready for class too.

Say I were the one who'd wandered into a parallel world, what then? Finding a way back to my original world would come first, I think, but I'd definitely be curious about a world so similar to my own and yet not. If so, I could see why Tsukino would want a peek at this world's literature club. Or rather, now I'm interested in the literature club over on her side.

"By the way, Asahi. I brought the wrong textbook, so please let me share yours."

Tsukino shifted her desk closer.

"And after you'd gotten everything ready so carefully, too…"

"The timetables are subtly different, but I packed on pure habit."

A few classmates noticed us drawing our chairs together, too, and kept sneaking glances.

Even if she's my same existence across parallel worlds, having other people see this kind of thing is honestly just embarrassing.