"I'm not lying!"
The mushroom-haired little girl couldn't help shouting.
Why...
Why did her parents think she was lying?
Now even her classmates thought she was lying.
But she wasn't.
Everything she'd said was true.
Why...
Why didn't anyone believe her?
The mushroom-haired little girl felt so wronged that her eyes reddened.
The mushroom-haired little girl's rare outburst left everyone else stunned.
"...And you still say you're not lying."
The boy in the baseball cap curled his lip. "You said it yourself. Your parents didn't see it."
"I didn't see it either."
"How do you explain that?"
"Can you really be the only one who saw it, while none of the rest of us did?"
"I..."
The mushroom-haired little girl was at a loss for words.
Her parents had asked her similar questions many times over the past two days.
She...
Couldn't explain.
More than anyone, she wanted to know...
Why couldn't her parents see the shadow?
Why...
Was it really...
Just her mistake?
The mushroom-haired little girl began to doubt herself.
But...
She had seen it...
Should she believe her own eyes...
Or her parents?
Yesterday, when her mother said no one else had seen the shadow, she hadn't believed her.
Today...
The boy in the baseball cap told her...
He'd been there too.
And he hadn't seen the shadow either.
The mushroom-haired little girl didn't know what to do...
She pressed a hand to her head.
A dull ache was starting to creep back in.
"You can't explain it, can you?"
The boy in the baseball cap looked rather pleased with himself.
"Don't think you can fool us."
"I'm not fooling you!"
The mushroom-haired little girl shouted, growing agitated.
She really wasn't lying!
She wasn't...
"...What's your problem?"