I, the allegedly-sane Sakuragi Toji, am so fucking confused.
I’m in Fujimura’s house, in Fujimura’s room, looking at… notFujimura.
She’s staring at me, I’m staring at her, and…
Did she just call me “Toji-kun”?
“…Fujimura?” It feels like such a dumb thing to say, but who else still calls me that? And she even caught herself, which makes me doubly certain that it’s him.
Which makes me triply certain that I’m going completely nuts, because what the fuck is going on?
The girl looks frozen, like her brain is rebooting.
“…Toji-kun,” she mumbles again, almost to herself.
The voice is still wrong.
Softer, higher than it should be.
My stomach drops.
Red hair. Wrong voice. Not even Fujimura’s face—not exactly, at least.
That almost-Fujimura face is scrunched up in thought.
She looks at me.
“…Sorry. ‘Sakuragi-kun’.”
It takes me a second to register what she’s saying. It feels so besides-the-point with everything going on, but maybe… this person… is still thinking about last night?
Jeez. Priorities.
“Uh, yeah. ‘Sakuragi-kun’ is fine,” I say, more to fill the silence than anything.
She nods slowly. She has her hand in front of her, flipping between its front and back like she’s never seen a hand before.
I guess, she’s just never seen this hand before.
“My…hands…” she whispers. “And…my voice.”
She clears her throat. Winces immediately.
“My…” She stops. Tries again. “My voice sounds weird.”
Not panicked. Not loud. Just… confused. Like she’s reporting a problem in real time.
I don’t answer.
Her hands move again.
Not dramatic. Not panicked.
Just… careful.
She presses a hand lightly to her throat.
Then her jaw.
Then her, um,… “upper torso”.
She freezes.
Completely.
For a full three seconds.
“…Oh.”
Barely audible.
Not a shout. Not even a yelp of surprise. Just kind of… the last domino falling in her brain.
It takes me a second to realize what it is I’m basically staring at—my face is hot, and I jerk my gaze away.
I hear a deep inhale and a long, shuddering exhale, and I instantly feel bad for my mind wandering.
Of course she’s panicking. Mind out of the gutter, Sakuragi.
She looks at me for the first time in… minutes, probably.
“This is a dream,” she says. “…Right?”
I don’t answer.
I don’t know how to answer.
She seems to remember something and she reaches for the phone on her bedside table.
Her thumb fumbles with the screen twice before it unlocks.
I tell myself I’m not watching.
I am absolutely watching.
She hesitates for a second, then taps open the camera app.
The faint glow of the screen lights up her face from below.
She flips to the front camera.
And freezes.
Not dramatically.
Not loudly.
Just… stops.
Like someone hit pause.
Her shoulders lock.
She doesn’t blink.
“That’s not…”
Her lips part slightly, like she’s about to say something else, and then close again.
She tilts the phone a little.
Then back.
Like the angle might fix it.
It doesn’t.
“That’s… me,” she says finally.
It’s not a question.
It’s not acceptance, either.
More like a factual observation she does not like.
She lowers the phone slowly into her lap.
Doesn’t look at me.
Doesn’t look at anything.
Just… stares at her covers.
“…My family is here,” she says eventually.
Huh?
“My family is here—well, not Papa right now—but Mama and Shizuka-nee are here and they’re going to wake up and come check on me.”
She looks up at me.
Her words get faster, and I can see her brain shifting from frozen to overdrive.
“Which they should, I guess—I mean, I’m right out of the hospital—but they can’t see this, you know? They can’t—they’ll—they won’t—”
She shakes her head sharply.
“If anyone—anyone—finds out in this town, then everyone does, you get it? And soon I’ve lost my team and my friends and I’m just…”
She shrinks in on herself a bit.
“I’m not me anymore.”
She puts the palms of her hands over her eyes and grits her teeth.
Is she going to cry?
Her whole body looks tense.
I blink.
Process.
I…
I don’t know what to do.
Or say.
This is all so far outside of my everyday experience that my brain just… freezes. Like it’s trying to find a place to put it and just sort of failing.
Not “me” anymore?
I look at her again.
Isn’t she already… kind of… not the same person?
Or something?
God my brain hurts.
My thoughts feel slow.
Heavy.
Like I’m thinking through fog.
Like I’m having an existential crisis about someone else’s existential crisis and I haven’t even had my fucking coffee yet.
This…
This is not “weird morning” stuff.
Not “help a classmate” stuff.
Definitely not “help an ex-friend” stuff.
This is big.
Too big.
…“Could ruin both our lives” big.
I swallow.
Yesterday I was a guest, at most.
Now she’s looking at me like I’m part of this.
Like this is somehow my problem too.
My chest tightens.
Nope.
Nope nope nope.
I can’t.
I can’t.
I inhale slowly.
Then let out a long, shuddering exhale.
I scan the floor for a second.
Locate my bag of clothes.
Then slowly…
Reach down to pick it up.