The toilet door opened and out came Yoshiyuki after taking a leak. He lumbered out to the corridor and made his way through the sleeping passengers in the low light of the cabin. Everything was encouraging him to snooze, as well; the muffled snoring and soft music playing from someone's phone somewhere only reinforced the bedroom feel of the half-darkness, but, now that he was awake, he found it hard to go back to sleep.

Everything was so different now.

He found his seat by the aisle, right next to a slumbering Shuka. In front of him Anju occupied the seat, and with her in that row were Kanako and Ai. Behind him were Nanaka and Student President Arisa.

The first odd thing was the complete silence of Aquasports. On the flight to Italy, they had chatted in excited whispers in this same half-darkness. Coming from Italy now they were quickly worn out like a bunch of old pensioners, and he was sure it would still be quiet as a graveyard even if they were awake.

Anna Nanjou, of course, had her own private jet—oh yes, that was the other odd thing, they had been on that jet with her going to Italy. For some reason Anna was immediately summoned back to Japan by her father, in fact, the very next day after Rikako's recital. Sensing something amiss, as everyone else did, Nanaka offered to go back home on their own, asking only for tickets and papers.

"I'll do this," Anna had said at the cab back in Verona.

"Huh?"

"You go on back to your villa. I'll take care of this."

He was dumbstruck and still trying to understand what was going on when Anna quickly exited the cab and slammed the door shut on him, whereupon the chauffeur drove him off at once. It all happened so amazingly fast.

It certainly had something to do with all this, right?

It was a little bit of a shame, Anna herself was sitting with Nanaka- and Arisa-senpai at the jet, but now the third seat in their row was empty. And that was the third and oddest thing…. His row with Shuka also had an empty third seat. Rikako should have been there.

#11. The Morning After

"Flight 281," called the P.A. at the terminal. "Flight 281 in twenty minutes."

"Will you be alright?" asked Nanaka.

"Uhn!" beamed Shuka defying the general mood of the gang. "It's we who should be asking that, you know."

Nanka managed a smile. The underclassmen will be waiting at a hotel in Numazu until day after tomorrow when the cruise calls at Shimoda, upon which Shuka's dad will take care of their passage to the Kyunins. Yoshiyuki and his seniors will all board the economy ferry at once. Far as she knew, none of Nanaka's companions were prone to seasickness.

After a rough ocean trip in which Yoshiyuki did get seasick, the ladies accompanied him to Granny's before going off to spend the night at the Kubo's dorm. He lay in bed the whole night, but as soon as he got better the next morning Grandma brought to his bedside a full feast of pancakes and onigiri and udon, her homecoming meal. He only stared at the food for a good long while. It's not like the trip had actually achieved anything.

"Rikako-san's recital was canceled?" she said in disbelief. "Did she fall sick or something?"

He couldn't answer for a moment. Shall he say that Miss Nanjou had messed with the performance? Or that whole business had been just a petty contest that simply used Rikako? "I can't contact her family anymore," was all he could reply.

Grandma looked out the window. "What a huge pity! She was such a sweet young lady." She could almost see the girl back in Tokyo crying in bed over her shattered dreams… and after having traveled so far away! But that's all the sympathy she could offer. After being silent for a while she went back to the kitchen to make coffee. He was left to himself until lunch, much to his relief.

Later that afternoon he tried to contact Anju and company. They must be on the cruise by now. Only Anju had been responding to his texts, complaining they were all sleepy and weren't up for a chat. She wouldn't answer when he made a call. With some effort he got through to Shuka, who responded cheerily. "Ohayozoro!" she beamed in her concert best. How's your day, Yoshiyuki-kun? I'm sure your Granny got some yummy pudding again." What is this performance all of a sudden? He didn't call to get good vibes.

"Have you tried to contact Rikako?" he said bluntly.

Nervous laugh. "You know her folks are always in the way, right?"

"You can't even get some news form Miss Nanjou? At least she got a ticket to the recital. Maybe she was at least close enough to—"

"The weather's great out here today, isn't it? An-chi and I treated Kan-chan and Ai-chan to a new cake shop! You won't believe how much Ai-chan loved the mille-feuille!"

Sleepy, huh? "Cut it out. Don't tell me we don't have to know how Rika-chan is. She threw us a paper plane, it's impossible she won't try to reach us somehow."

The other end of the line fell silent, and he thought he heard her sniff before she hung up. Looks like he had just broken her.

The first day back in Nankaisei all pretenses have dropped. At the club meeting a grave air hung and Shuka appeared to be on edge as she rattled off school concerns and other club requirements, prosaic routine stuff.

And then she ran out of agenda to discuss—save one, the very topic everybody knew the meeting was really about. She held back—everybody held their breath, equally reluctant to bring up what needed to be brought up anyway, except Yoshiyuki, who was daring her to speak with his impatient stare. There's no reason for them to put it off at this point.

Shuka opened her mouth…

But she wasn't ready to talk… not yet…

At that same moment in Tokyo, there was another meeting, in a high-rise corporate tower. Some of Piazza Hotels' stakeholders sat down with Mr. Nanjou, and after some short discussion of business the topic of the day was brought up.

"Your daughter should be in the news by now," remarked a greying old man.

Nanjou only grunted. "A small column in the inside pages of an Italian broadsheet, how earthshaklng."

"You assume we don't read that?" said yet another. "We have shareholders in Europe."

And another. "We aren't simple pedestrians who need extreme shamelessness in their news. Your heiress is showing a rebellious streak, and we take note of that."

"I don't know if it is rebellious," replied Nanjou, "I don't remember telling her not to speak out."

"So you're coddling her?' said Tobioka, sitting sitting directly across the table from him. "How tragic, I think, if the real problem is with the owner himself."

He gazed coolly at him. "I've heard things on what had actually happened."

"From your kid?" He cleared his throat loudly. "An impartial man is the only one we can trust our business with."

"And who exactly is impartial between the two of us, Tobioka?"

"Nanjou-san," said one of the more senior shareholders, "it does not matter who of you is correct. Your daughter had disrupted a public performance."

Nanjou raised an eyebrow. And Tobioka wasn't disrupting a public performance with his open conversation?

"A professional pianist slated in a key cultural event ended up not playing."

Mr. Nanjou finished his coffee. "If it really was that serious, then I presume there was something equally drastic to prompt it. If it's that serious maybe you should do an investigation if you haven't already."

"You actually think to dictate on us, Mr. Nanjou?" said Tobioka raising his voice.

He didn't answer. He 's not going to work himself up in front of these gentlemen just for Tobioka. The bloke was already looking foolish hanging in the air waiting for a response to latch on while his adversary handed out top-of-the-line cigars, which the older men took. No use cutting off ties to Mr. Nanjou over something not immediately related to profitability. Tobioka just stood up and left.

"But you need to rein in that woman. Please think about it."

"I understand your worries, Takahata-senpai, but never once had Anna made waves until now. She has spoken at the board at that young age and was heard. She's my only child. I've invested everything into her. If I can't trust my own heiress with the future of the hotel, no one will."

The affair ended in small talk at around eight.

But before everybody were gone, he stood up and went to the window by himself, taking out a phone to call Anna. "Are you alright now, woman?"

They had already conversed earlier that morning. "I wasn't quite expecting that from you," he had said at the breakfast table.

Anna only mindlessly stirred her tea.

"So I suppose we have sponsored a Nankaisei trip for nothing?"

She sighed weakly. "I only knew about everything else… a little later…"

"…"

"I quite regret sponsoring Tobioka's whims. It was he who wanted Hori-san on that stage, above all."

"And the Horis played along." He lay back tiredly in his seat. "Regardless, we made a very poor showing there."

"No, Papa, we were hoodwinked."

"You have placed the Piazza brand in question."

"It's only questionable in Tobioka's eyes."

"He made it questionable before the board."

Anna felt her cheeks flush. "Everyone can see it was just him raising a fuss about that!"

"What does it matter?" he snapped back. "Everybody's calling me now. Calls you should have been taking. I was the one answering all the questions, not you. They say they will raise up the matter at the meeting today. "

"I will sit there with you if that's what you need."

"No. Don't mess up things any further. I think I have already given you a little too much leeway. You know I don't want to indulge you."

"Papa," she finally said in a breaking voice, "they were abusing Hori-san! I must step in. You're calling that being indulged?"

He sighed loudly. "How can you prove they were doing anything to the young lady?"

"Huh—?" she gasped.

"Something should have happened to her in public. Say, a panic attack."

"…"
Well. That… Dad has a point. Maybe she stepped in a little too soon. She remembered arguing with the organizing committee before the actual performance.

But she did prevent an actual panic attack… right? She was still in the right, wasn't she?

"People do not think in terms of right or wrong," he continued. "Only upending each other. We must not allow ourselves to be upended. Am I clear on that, Anna?"

She looked out the window. "I don't know, Papa. I can't even… I can't begin to understand why it has to be like this."

"But that's how it is. If you can't stomach that, then I must have my doubts on your ability to run a business like Piazza… or anything, really."

Fine, thought Anna. I have lost my reason to stay in the islands, anyway.

That same morning Rikako sat by the window in their house in Sotokanda. She had been listless since that flight back from Italy and, as with now, she often felt empty and disoriented, watching the days drift by as though with clouds that show amusing shapes form time to time but are then inevitably erased. For a moment she felt that her time on earth will drain away to its last day exactly like that.

"Rika," called her mother form downstairs, "your teacher called in from Otonokizaka. He says he'll visit tomorrow."

"…"

"Rika? Rikako?" The woman slowly proceeded upstairs and entered her room. "Moh," she sighed softly, "you act like you haven't eaten for days. Have you touched the soup I sent you last night?"

"Uh—" she muttered absently. "Eh…?"

"Silly child," Mom could only whisper, her worry growing by the minute, wanting to say "poor" instead of "silly," but still hoping her daughter was only having a mood, no matter how many days it took. She closed the door on her gently, and the girl was left in suspended animation again.

Was that Mama?

"…"

Maybe I should have asked for my phone back now that we're home. Surely—

"…"

Who was I going to call, exactly?

Maybe those girls she had met in the islands were just a wild dream. Maybe the islands, too, are but a fevered vision. She's of Tokyo. What was she doing there in the first place?

Shuttled off to some far-off planet to "rest," and then carried off to some unknown continent I never asked to be to be taken to, and then spirited back here—all just like that?

What am I, an inanimate toy?

But the whole random business, it turned out, did have an effect on her. She really did miss them. Certainly, it wouldn't be the case if they were just an illusion. Floating somewhere in the vastness of that hollow space, she did miss them. What is happening to me? she raved inside of her as her vision misted over. And now the deep void began to fill with static, at first inaudible, subtle, but then began to quickly fill her dead universe with noise.

Suddenly Anna dissolved into tears, to her father's mild surprise. He thought she was done assessing the damage. "Papa," she choked, "can you imagine…?

"Can you imagine what Hori-san must be going through right now?"

She wasn't supposed to say this, she knew, she already expected that nothing her reckless self could say now will ever move her father. But it must be said.

"Can you see her sitting in her room?"

Rikako furiously wrote down consuming pad after pad in uncharacteristically large handwriting.

"Can you see her coughing for breath as I do? Can you imagine her seeing her friends vanish in blink and never return? Can any living person ever take that?

"You think things are as simple as your platitudes make it out to be?"

Rikako has filled out four pads already, back to back, but she isn't done yet.

"From the time I was small it was easy for you to tear from me the people I love.

"It's all so easy for you, Papa, isn't it?!"

And she buried her face in her open hand.

"I only began the work, Anna," he replied, not caring whether she heard him now. "You finished it. Handle it, woman."

Rikako has just finished her anguished composition, wiping her face with the back of her arm, and then she was back in the doldrums again.

This thing she can carry in her pocket and drop off at the (mailbox) on the way to Otonokizaka. She didn't mind if it will take too long, she reached out to them, and that's it. She only regretted not seeing them off. She only regretted not seeing Yoshiyuki off.

Yoshiyuki….

She never got to know what bothered him when she played that song.

She didn't include him in that letter; is she going to fire off a special message to him now? But what if he was still unwilling? And then… She realized. Yoshiyuki… He's from here in Tokyo, too, wasn't he? Oh… So she wasn't so helpless, after all. She can still do something for him. She still had him. At least, perhaps, she can know him a little bit better. If only she can find his family…

An ocean away, evening has taken over the islands, as well as the school grounds of Nankaisei. Aquasports was still in the clubroom. Shuka still stood speechless in front of them all, still holding back that final topic. Finally, thinking she'll never get there if she didn't force herself, she grabbed the letter from her pocket and tossed it onto the table. "Read it," she just said.

One by one they regarded the letter solemnly. It was basically an outpouring of grief and a personal farewell for each of the girls individually. Throughout the letter there were two words that stood out, not poetically echoed at every end of a paragraph, but haphazardly repeated everywhere, sometimes three in a row: "Remember me."

Shadows fell on everybody's faces as loud sobs punctuated the dreary stillness of the air. The letter, having had dried tear stains form Rikako, collected more and more. What does she even mean, "Remember?" Is she never coming back for good? Is there no silver lining anywhere? She can't do this! protested Shuka in her thoughts. She thinks she can just put a close to everything we had been through with just two stupid words? Are we just cardboard cutouts she can chuck into some box?

Yoshiyuki stared at the ceiling and saw a lizard catch a moth struggling to break free. In two quick gulps it was over. Yeah, he mused, we do not pass out in ceremony with a graceful bow, flowers and speeches and all. We are disposed of, and that's it. Everything and everyone we held dear are counted for nothing. We have no greater worth or more special character than anything else that exists.

"Wait," said Ai through the tears. She checked the letter again. There was not one word addressed to one particular club member. "Yoshiyuki… Didn't Rika-chan write to you?"

The rest of them snapped out of it all at once and turned to him. "Yoshiyuki," said Shuka rushing over to him. "Did something happen with you and Rika?"

"Wha—" Things have shifted a little too quickly. He was completely unprepared to bring up stuff only between him and Rikako, not least that little affair at the Music Room which he had bungled.

"Say," she continued, "you weren't at the villa with us that night. Did you… Did you come to see her at the concert? But how—?"

So that's how it was, he now realized. Rikako didn't lump him in with the others because she meant to write to him separately about something he wanted her to bury. And now the whole club was closing in on him about that very same topic. But how exactly was he to open up to them about an unsavory family issue?

He hissed under his breath.

And yet, why hasn't she written to him so far?

Kanako stood up. "You're also the one spending a lot of time with her after the exam, weren't you?"

Anju gritted her teeth. "Yoshiyuki's monopolizing her. Heh. I suppose you went to the opera and met with that witch Nanjou." Her voice took on a bitter tone. "You think you guys are dashing, gleaming knights on white horses out to save a princess. Pathetic."

"Yoshiyuki," urged Shuka, "do us a favor and tell us what's between you and Rika-chan. Do you have a relationship? Did she send you anything?! Do you have a secret you won't tell us?! Please! Let all of us know!"

The image of him bleeding tears at the bedside as the song played downstairs came back to him in a blinding flash. "Do I have to absolutely say everything?" he roared. "You think being close with her makes it alright for me to strip myself naked in front of you all?!"

Anju only laughed softly under her breath. "Oh. So our resident virgin feels violated." Chuckle.

She was still chuckling when Yoshiyuki swept out of the room with his stuff and left everyone with hard feelings. The chuckling then quickly segued into sobbing. "Rika-chan…"

Yoshiyuki passed the school gates and stopped… but he didn't look back. He can't look back to a club that wants to pry him open like a can whenever they feel like. There has to be a limit to all this madness. And their noses end where his past begins.

That devil, he thought of Anna. She thought she can do anything just because she's rich. She can just burn alive with her filthy money.

His mind was in turmoil as he made his way through the lamplit coast road. The sea was uncannily calm, as though it wasn't there at all, just an endless pitch black. Even deciding what to think next was a struggle. In this moonless, starless night, where the features of the landscape were a series of lampposts along the road, his pace quickened trying to escape this maze of murky lights and loneliness, until he broke into a full run.

Soon he gave out, panting and panting and wanting to collapse, but, as soon as he recovered he noticed a large shadow projected onto the road—the shade of a certain tree.

"Yoshiyuki-kun…" smiled that girl from under that tree, one morning long ago.

He fumbled in his bag for a flashlight and entered the footpath marked by the tree into the thick darkness. The flashlight could only show him a few yards ahead, but his steps were sure. It was certainly darker now than when he first came here, but now there was no scary forest where a wolf in a nightgown awaited him. Instead, at the end of it, there was only an abandoned house.

The windows were black and empty now, but he could still hear voices inside, like it always was every evening, Rikako playing a sprightly tune on the piano while Aunt Maruko chided her playfully asking her to slow down, but ending in mutual laughter as the music goes on and on into the night.

He found the doorstep where Rikako had found him ages ago, shivering from the cold staying outside in the mist overnight. He sat down on it again and dreamed of her once more. Maybe… if he slept here, Rikako will find him a second time, wake him up, tell him, tell him with love and a hug, that it was all just a sick joke. But he couldn't sleep, so he just stared out into the forest and let the echoes of music long gone lull him into comfort, the sweetness of being near her once again.

Yoshiyuki had cooled off on the club. Kanako was already treating him indifferently, hanging out with other classmates, and of course Ai at lunch, in her buddy's classroom. As for Anju and Shuka he and they would glance at each other for maybe half a second whenever they met at the corridor, though Shuka managed a weak smile sometimes, especially at the end of the school day as his room and theirs were directly across the hallway. He would of course go straight home, and their two upperclassmen would go on to the clubroom.

Nanaka didn't seem to be at the dive shop, but they had no way to be sure, since they haven't been to Okaa-san after returning to the Kyunins, and they had no contact with her, either. Anju's father had mentioned that Miss Mori was flying to Australia for glider training, but did not quite clarify how long she'd be there or even whether she's already out of the country.

Arisa simply retreated back into isolation in the Student Council room.

One day she sent a notice to Aquasports saying their club was going to be reduced to a society seeing that only two members remained active. Apparently, she had noticed that Ai and Kanako were always home early (and they had ceased talking about anything club over dinner), so she sent a student to check on Aquasports.

To Anju and Shuka, for whom tending to the clubroom had become nothing more than a tired ritual, this was oddly welcome news. Why bother, if they could just pair off, as well? Nobody's coming back. So one day they just took all of their stuff out and left the room bare. Which was how Yoshiyuki found it a month later when he passed by out of curiosity.

Somehow it felt like a slap in the face. Sure, he didn't care anymore than the others did, but, did absolutely nobody tell him?

Next Time. #12. The Summer of Piazza