Like Waking from a Dream (Continued)

You heard yourself say that. Although you had lost your memory, your sharp instincts had still helped you find three notes tucked into the pocket of your dressing gown.

The first read: "If you feel confused, please call your psychologist, Sakayanagi Arisu." A phone number followed.

The second read: "Meow meow meow meow meow." The words made no sense, and you still had no idea whether they were some kind of strange code. It was signed "Hotaru."

The third read: "Don't believe anything Ichinose Honami says. —Kitagawa Ryo."

After confirming that Ichinose Honami, the woman who claimed to be your wife, had left the house, you called your psychologist, Sakayanagi Arisu.

"Kitagawa Ryo? Is that you, Mr. Kitagawa?"

Sakayanagi Arisu, who introduced herself as a psychologist, chuckled softly.

"You called me just yesterday. I didn't expect to hear from you again today."

"I don't remember."

You couldn't find even the faintest trace of yesterday in your memory. Carefully, you asked:

"What did I say to you yesterday?"

"Let me see. I happen to have kept a recording from yesterday. Would you like to listen to it?"

"Yes, sorry for the trouble."

"After all, you're my patient. It would be wonderful if you could regain your memory soon."

The recording she played was short. Aside from your conversation, it was mostly white noise. You noticed that yesterday, whenever you heard her say a word, you'd fallen into a long silence. But today, you accepted the words "White Room" and "Matsuo Eiichiro" quite naturally, and memories connected to them gradually began to return.

"That's good. It means your condition is improving. Congratulations."

Sakayanagi Arisu seemed happy for you, too. Her usually calm voice now held a hint of a smile.

"Did I really jump out the window yesterday?"

At the end of the recording, you heard her tell you to "jump out the window."

"...If you really had jumped out the window, I doubt you'd be here talking to me so obediently now."

"True."

You looked down through the window in the wall. You were at least six or seven stories up. If you had really jumped from here yesterday...

You felt your arms and legs. All the parts were still attached to your body.

"Is there anything else?"

Sakayanagi Arisu seemed to have received another call on the other end. Perhaps a psychologist's everyday life was always this busy.

"I'll call you when I think of something."

You glanced at the clock on the wall. It was only nine in the morning, and you thought you should keep looking around the house for anything that might bring back your memories.

First, you looked through the photo album Ichinose Honami had handed you before leaving. It held some pictures from your childhood.

These were probably photos taken by your parents. You thought so because each picture of you alone had some words written beside it, such as "Ryo studying hard," "Ryo playing soccer," or "Ryo loves sweets." The words were small and neatly written.

The handwriting was different from Ichinose Honami's on the wedding photo she'd shown you. These neat, tiny characters looked much more mature, and you had a vague sense that they were your mother's handwriting.

Everyone had a childhood. Even without your memories, you could look through this album and imagine what yours had been like.

Your gaze soon settled on one of the photos.

"Happy tenth birthday, Ryo!"

It looked like a picture taken at a birthday party. The setting was... where? It didn't look as though it had been taken at home, but rather somewhere outdoors, perhaps at a campsite. A car was parked nearby, and you were happily grinning in front of a large cake topped with ten candles. Perhaps you'd just taken a bite, because your cheeks were smeared with cream. Your lively eyes had widened even further, startled by the camera's timer. A man and a woman stood beside you, smiling.

You kept flipping through the album and soon reached the end. There was a picture of you and Ichinose Honami at sixteen. You were reaching out to place a hair clip in her hair in front of the camera. Ichinose Honami's smile in the picture was so radiant that your head suddenly began to spin.

"Huh...?"

You couldn't help murmuring aloud.

The sense of something being wrong came so abruptly that even you were taken aback. You felt as if you'd discovered something that shouldn't exist—something that couldn't exist.

And yet—

You also felt as though you'd finally found something important that you'd lost.

You hurriedly flipped back through the pages, turning them again and again.

You avoided it, retracing your steps over and over.

But there was nothing.

It wasn't anywhere.

Something that absolutely should have been there was missing.

"Right. When you were sixteen, you went out with your uncle and aunt, and you were in a car accident on the way. You were the only one who survived, but you lost your memory."

You remembered what Ichinose Honami had said.

Thinking it over, there were other things that didn't add up.

Yes, a great many things.

You laid the three notes out in front of you again.

The first read: "If you feel confused, please call your psychologist, Sakayanagi Arisu." A phone number followed.

It was the only note without a signature, but its information was genuine. The number had connected you to the psychologist, Sakayanagi Arisu, and she had given you information about your memories. It was also the only note printed by machine, like a business card.

The second read: "Meow meow meow meow meow." The words made no sense. It was signed "Hotaru."

Was it... a cat?

As you looked at the string of meows, a little white cat took shape in your mind.

Why white?

You shook your head, but the cat in your memory only grew clearer. Every hair on its body stood out distinctly, pure white as fresh snow. It blinked its firefly-colored eyes at you.

Hotaru!

It was as if you'd suddenly remembered her. Then, like a gate opening in your memory, every recollection of you and the cat came rushing back.

You petting her at home... You finding her on a rainy day... You seeing her being bullied beside a doghouse in the village and bringing her home.

Why were there three memories?

You held your head and sat down on the living room sofa. You read the second note over and over, but that strange feeling didn't come again. Still, at least you'd remembered your pet cat.

The third read: "Don't believe anything Ichinose Honami says. —Kitagawa Ryo."

After thinking hard for a long time without finding any clues, you turned your attention to the third note. It had shocked you more than the others when you first saw it that morning.

Ichinose Honami was the woman who'd gently cared for you on the morning you lost your memory. She claimed to be your wife. You remembered her saying that today was the third anniversary of your wedding and the tenth anniversary of your relationship, and that she'd come home early, around five thirty.

You stood and walked into the room where you'd woken up. First, you opened the wardrobe. A variety of women's underwear met your eyes, making you feel a little embarrassed. But you took them out one by one and set them aside, then reached farther in. Your fingers touched something hard, and you pulled it out.

It was a whiteboard that seemed not to have been used in a long time. Teachers at cram schools often used them, and you'd heard that some families bought small ones to hang at home and write down daily tasks to remind everyone.

The whiteboard was a dirty gray. A lot of words had been scrawled on it, erased, and replaced with new ones, again and again, leaving faint traces behind.

You were curious. If time could be turned back and all the writing that had ever been on the board could reappear, layer by layer, what might you discover about your past? But you knew that even if such a thing were possible, it would be pointless. Looking at the few marks that hadn't been erased completely, all you could make out were simple, nearly useless reminders like:

"Remember to take your medicine today."

"Don't open the door to strangers."

You carried the whiteboard into the living room and compared its handwriting with that on the other two notes. It didn't match.

The whiteboard must have been used by Ichinose Honami to remind you while you were suffering from memory loss. That meant the Ichinose Honami in this house wasn't the person who'd left you those two notes.

But the handwriting on the board seemed familiar. You thought of the letter Ichinose Honami had shown you that morning, the one she claimed you'd written to her.

You quickly retrieved the letter from the living room cabinet. It had been framed behind glass.

When you placed the two side by side, you discovered something:

The handwriting on the two items was exactly the same.

You felt yourself sinking into a faint confusion.

You'd first confirmed that Ichinose Honami, the woman you'd seen upon waking that morning, was lying. And she'd told more than one lie.

First, she'd said that you lost your parents in a car accident when you were sixteen. But in the album from before you turned sixteen, there were no pictures of you with your parents after you turned ten. The little notes about your growth that had appeared beside every picture were missing, too. If you'd lost your parents in an accident at sixteen, there was no way that could be the case.

Second, she'd said that you wrote her this letter when you were thirteen. But its handwriting matched the writing on the whiteboard you'd just found. If Ichinose Honami had written what was on the whiteboard, then what did that mean? Had you written yourself a love letter?

Rubbing your chin, you turned your attention to the third note. These two discoveries seemed to prove that it was trustworthy.

"Don't believe anything Ichinose Honami says. —Kitagawa Ryo."

Kitagawa Ryo was the name Ichinose Honami had told you was yours. On the surface, this looked like a clue your past self had left for your present self.

But...

You took a pen from the study and wrote your name five times in a row on a sheet of paper.

Your handwriting looked nothing like the name on the note, as though it had been written by someone else.

You tried closing your eyes, or writing more sloppily, but no matter how deliberately you changed your writing, you couldn't make "Kitagawa Ryo" look like the one on the note.

You paced around the living room, thinking, and unexpectedly spotted the same thing on another object. The "Kitagawa Ryo" written there looked almost identical to the name on the note.

"I see..."

Clues of all kinds converged in your mind. Like various parts fitting precisely into a whole, they clicked into place, then locked together in the only arrangement that made sense.

At last, the scattered fragments gathered around the center and led to a vague answer.

One final step remained.

You reached this conclusion. All that was left was to wait.

At five twenty-five in the afternoon, you called Sakayanagi Arisu again.

"Hello, this is psychologist Sakayanagi Arisu."

"Yes, it's Kitagawa Ryo."

"Have you remembered something else?"

She yawned lazily, seeming to notice how late it was.

"I'm about to get off work."

"Is that at five thirty?"

"Hm? How do you know?"

Sakayanagi Arisu asked, puzzled. She seemed to realize something.

"You..."

"Yes, I understand."

"I see?"

Her voice sounded a little dejected, but she soon recovered.

"Congratulations, my number-one patient. You can say goodbye to me as your psychologist now."

"Goodbye."

You hung up, and almost the instant you put down the receiver, Ichinose Honami opened the door.

She stared in horror at you, with half your body already leaning out the window. Almost instinctively, she screamed:

"Ryo! Get down!"

The wind outside ruffled your hair. Without hesitation, you swung your other leg out the window, then let go with both hands.

"Goodbye!"

As you fell through the air, you shouted your last words to the woman rushing toward you. Even at the last moment, she couldn't catch you.

"Honami..."

"No. I should call you Ms. Sakayanagi Arisu."

You felt your body land on a furry back. You reached out and stroked the head of the giant beast.

"The dream is about to end."