May 4 (Monday), 1:00 PMThat peppermint smell is gone. I’m in a convenience store, holding a weekly manga magazine like I was once before. I managed to escape from Maria Otonashi’s apartment.

“Ah-ha!”

It worked. My threat worked!

My trapped desperation is gone in an instant. It’ll be okay. I’ve still got a fighting chance. First, I need to see Ryu Miyazaki.

I leave the store and figure out where I am—a major street I’m familiar with. It’s not too far from Ryu Miyazaki’s place.

I go to his apartment and ring the doorbell. He answers right away.

His face is a sickly shade of white. The circles beneath his glasses are even darker than before. He’s not saying anything, either, just standing there and quietly taking me in.

“…What… What happened to you?”

“……It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

His denial makes it clear it wasn’t “nothing.” “Did Maria Otonashi do something to you?”

“No… Nothing happened.”

His response is monotone, almost mechanical. There’s obviously something wrong with him. Well, you could say there was always something wrong with him, but this is even worse than usual.

“Anyway, how about you come inside?” he asks dully, and I follow him in despite my suspicions.

“…What the heck?” The first thing I see once I’m in the apartment is a broken window.

“Oh, Otonashi did that.”

My brother sounds as if he couldn’t care less. She must have done something to him. That’s the only explanation I can come up with.

“…So the plan yesterday failed.”

“Yeah.”

So vague… Just what happened to him? “Why didn’t you answer when your sister called?”

“…Sister, huh?”

“What?”

“I thought you stopped referring to yourself as my sister.”

…He’s right. I need to stop doing that.

“…Just a little mistake. I’m no one, after all.”

“……It’s after one,” he says with a distant look in his eyes.

“Yeah, but why are you suddenly…?”

“It was you at this time on the third, too, so it has to be you now. That’s how I know. But if it were after two…I’d probably doubt myself and think you were Hoshino trying to trick me again. I can’t read subtle expressions like Maria Otonashi.”

“……What on earth are you even talking about?”

“Hey, what do you call me?”

“Huh? Well, I’ve called you ‘Ryu Miyazaki’ plenty of times.”

“Yeah, that’s right. That’s true.”

“Quit acting so weird and fill me in on yesterday.”

“Okay.” With a nod, he sits down at his desk and starts staring into the blank monitor of his computer. “I put the plan into action. As you can see, it failed.”

Expecting more, I wait as he sits perfectly still, peering into the depths of the screen. But he never starts talking again. “Huh? Is that it…?”

“I don’t know anything more than that. My plan didn’t work, and I have no way of knowing what happened after Maria Otonashi took him away. I don’t know what changed between them.”

“……What the hell. That doesn’t tell me anything at all.”

“I guess not.” His tone is cold, and he still isn’t making any attempt to look at me.

“……Are you abandoning me?”

Not even that quiet question is enough to make him turn my way.

Oh, I see. That’s what he’s doing. He thinks everything will be fine if he just plugs his ears and ignores it.

“You’re having regrets, aren’t you?”

That finally gets his attention.

“You wish you hadn’t gotten so deeply involved, don’t you? You wish you’d never discovered Riko Asami’s misery when you came running at her plea for help. I know you do. If you had just remained unaware, you’d still be living in your own little bubble, moaning about how unhappy you are. If only you had ignored that phone call……”

“I—I don’t regret any of that.” Ryu Miyazaki interrupts me. “The only regret I have is that I didn’t notice how things would end up. If I had, I’m sure I could’ve done something to keep it from coming to this. What I did is entirely my fault, from beginning to end. I never want to make a mistake like that again.”

His eyes land on me.

“That’s why I’ve decided to keep helping Riko. I’ve decided that will never change, no matter what anyone says.”

“……Ryu.” A warmth fills my chest. I know without a shadow of a doubt that my brother means those words. “Thank you, Ryu… And I do still need your help.”

“Ryu, eh?” he answers quietly. “Hey… Tell me what it is you hope to accomplish.”

“Why now…? Fine. My goal is to gain control of Kazuki Hoshino. To do that, I need to crush the will of ‘Kazuki Hoshino.’ I want him to suffer enough to want to rip off his own head. I want to crush him so thoroughly that he offers his body to me on bended knee and begs me to take it.”

“…Okay, and you’re absolutely sure that’s what you want?”

“Of course. How many times have I told you that?”

Mumbling “I see, okay” under his breath over and over, my brother lowers his head and eventually falls silent. Something doesn’t seem right, so I examine his face.

“……Huh?”

He’s crying. My brother is crying.

“R-Ryu, what’s with the tears?”

As if he didn’t notice until I mentioned it, he swipes at his cheek in surprise and realizes what he was doing, then roughly rubs his entire face with his arm.

When was the last time I saw my brother cry? Probably not since he discovered our parents’ deception. After that, there were no more tears from him. He hid all signs of weakness from others so that he could struggle with whatever invisible demons were plaguing him.

But now, he’s weeping.

“……I’ll…help,” he states softly. “That’s my decision. I decided to help my sister. Riko was so weak, and I was too consumed with my own problems to do anything for her before, but I swore this time I would be there for her. I swore. I’d help her, I said—I’d help her, I’d help her, I’d help her, I’d help her, I’d help her, I’d help her, I promised, but…but…”

He raises his head and looks at me.“……Who are you?”

I can’t breathe.

“The one I decided to help was Riko. But…who’re you? Tell me, who are you?!”

“…Wh-what’re you saying, Ryu?! I’m…”

“No one. You said it yourself, right?”

…I did. I did say that.

“That’s right. There’s no way you could be Riko Asami. If you were Riko, why would you be trying to be Kazuki Hoshino? And you aren’t Kazuki Hoshino, either. Then who does that make you? Tell me… Why should I go to bat for someone if I can’t even tell who they are? There’s no reason in hell!!”

No.

I understand. This isn’t how my brother really feels.

“To me, you’re no more than a poor imitation of my sister! I can’t even tell you apart from ‘Kazuki Hoshino’!”

This is simply meant to break my heart.

And to break his own.

“R-Ryu…”

“Don’t call me that.” He’s saying this to suppress his feelings. “I won’t let some piece of filth I can’t even recognize call me that!!”

And in crushing his own heart…

“Aaaah…”

…he crushes his sister’s, too.

My brother will not help me, because I’m not really his sister. Yes, that’s right. I’m not Riko Asami. If not, then who am I? Kazuki Hoshino? No. I’m not Kazuki Hoshino yet. Wait…did I ever really want to be Kazuki Hoshino?

“Aaah…”

What is it that I really want?

To be honest, maybe I knew ever since I received the Box.

I remember the times from before our parents got divorced.

I always thought our family got along pretty well. We were the type who would often go shopping at the mall together on weekends, see movies together, go out for all-you-can-eat hot pot, those kinds of things. After he got home from work, my dad would barge into my room to say hi—I’d warn him to knock next time, but he’d never listen. My mom always made cute little arrangements out of my bento lunches. My older brother and I were always fighting, but that didn’t stop us from playing together constantly.

We were a pretty happy crew, in my mind. I never doubted that we would always be together, just like other families.

Unfortunately, it was all a lie.

I don’t mean everything fell apart at once, just that none of it was real to begin with.

I remember I was so scared of something my brother said when learned about the divorce:

“I’m glad. Now we don’t have to try and act like some happy family anymore. We won’t have to feel guilty anymore.”

I didn’t know what he meant at first. But as time passed, everything started making sense. Why did our mother and father get along so well when they were together, even though they were getting divorced? All those smiles when they were kind to me were probably fake.

Everything was one big act meant to fool me, to delude me into believing I was living in a happy home. None of it was really for me, though. It was just a way of hiding their own shame.

That’s how I came to realize that the only way to obtain the happiness I longed for was to take it from someone else.

But is happiness something that can be stolen?

So what do I want to do? I don’t understand. I can’t even process such a thing. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Plus, I don’t have the Box anymore.

I just want to run away. I have to escape.

I need to leave this room. I’ll be fine as long as I go now. I can still run.

In my struggle to get out of there as fast as possible, I trip and fall. Realizing I can’t even waste the time it takes to stand up, I scrabble on my hands and knees down the hallway to the door.

For some reason, there’s a pair of legs that could belong to a model.

I raise my head.

“Wh-why…?”

Standing there in front of me is Maria Otonashi.

But if she’s here now… It can’t be! I turn back toward my brother. He’s sitting in the chair, head in his hands, refusing to acknowledge anything occurring around him. My brother knew she was close by. He decided to throw me to the wolves. He knew I would come here, and he was planning on turning me over to Maria Otonashi all along.

“……It was never going to work,” she states flatly. “It’s honestly impossible to throw away your identity. You can try, but who you are will always catch up to you in the end. You’ve known that from the get-go. This is as much as your Box’s wish will ever get you. You will gain nothing from the Week in the Mud. The swamp will simply suck you in and pull you down to the bottom.”

So says the object of my admiration to the one who utterly failed to be like her.

What does that make her? She threw away her old self, too, so does that mean she didn’t gain anything, either?

I gaze up into her face. There’s a touch of sadness in the way she’s watching me.

I’ve gotta escape. But where to? There’s nowhere for me to run in the apartment, and Maria Otonashi is right in front of the door. I’m on my knees, powerless. I don’t have anywhere to go.

“I’m going to ask you something. I put this question to you before, but I want you to answer it again. Tell me…”

Here comes her question.

“…Who are you?”

But that’s…

“Who…am I…?”

That’s what I want to know, too. I don’t know why at first, but she pulls out a phone and hands it to me as I fall back onto my rear.

“I’ll tell you.”

The voice belongs to “him,” the one who never doubted himself, no matter how chaotic I made his existence.

“Kazuki Hoshino” answers the question for me.

“You’re nobody, just another enemy who’s only here to fall before me.”

“No…”

That’s not what I am.

I am not living for you! You think I’d ever let you define me?!

“……I am Riko Asami!!”

As I make that admission, I realize there’s no turning back now. Now that I’ve admitted I’m Riko Asami, I have no hope of becoming Kazuki Hoshino. I can’t even imagine it. All avenues of retreat have been cut off, and there’s no escape for me any longer.

The instant it dawns on me……

“AH, AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaah!!”

The Box swells to an enormous size all at once. It rips through my veins like a bullet, wounding and maiming and tearing at every part of me—ahh, I can’t take it!! Stop, it hurts, stop, help me! I want it out of me, but I can’t get it out, can’t get it out, can’t get it out, can’t get it out. This body doesn’t have the Box in it. Why does it hurt so much? Stop, stop, please, just stop!!

“I get it… I get it now, so please, just stop…”

I understand now that I can never be anyone other than me.

I screwed up. I made the wrong wish with the Box. I can’t be in this body. All of this is pointless. I… I……

“I wanted to be happy, that’s all.”

But that’s not possible.

The moment I took the first step down this blood-soaked path, there would never be any happiness for me.

I cling to her, the one who successfully remade herself, the one who claims to be a Box.

I won’t mess up anymore. I won’t make any more mistakes, so please…

“Help…me.”

May 4 (Monday), 2:00 PM

Strangely, I know right away my vision is blurry because of tears.

As I wipe them away, I see Maria in front of me, fighting down her emotions.