A week.
Her mother had said “a week.” Hina stiffened.
“…I was gone for a week?”
“What kind of life were you living at your father’s? Honestly, you’re starting to take after him in all the worst ways,” her mother sighed dramatically.
Hina turned her back to the passive-aggressive remarks and headed to her room.
“And Hina, don’t go outside dressed like that. You’re not some kind of princess. Dressing up like that at your age will only make people laugh.”
Her mother’s sharp words trailed after her, but Hina said nothing.
She simply closed her bedroom door with a bang.
When Hina closed the door to her room, her trembling hands reached into her bag for her phone.
—It was out of battery.
Looking at the date on her alarm clock, she saw that exactly one week had passed since that day.
It had been a Friday then.
And today, another Friday, meant she had been absent from school for five days. Apparently, her mother had informed her teacher that she had caught a bad cold.
“How could no one notice that I wasn’t in this world for an entire week…” Hina muttered with a bitter smile.
Then, a thought struck her.
“Maiko!”
Earlier, Maiko’s mother hadn’t reacted to the mention of her name.
“Did she forget about Maiko?”
—No, that couldn’t be.
A chilling sense of foreboding swept over her. She wanted to laugh it off as impossible, but her body wouldn’t let her.
“…My phone! I can check with my phone!”
Hina hurried to plug in her phone, but her hands trembled so much she struggled to insert the charging cable. Finally, she managed to connect it and anxiously waited for the phone to power on.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry! Please turn on and tell me the truth!”
The few moments it took felt like an eternity.
Hina took a deep breath.
“It’s fine. Maiko hasn’t disappeared. It’s fine. All the records must still be there. It’s fine. After all, it really happened—this dress, these jewels, I’m still wearing them.”
And then, finally, her phone powered on.
She quickly opened her phone and searched for her message history with Maiko.
There were no records on LINE. Maiko wasn’t even in her contacts.
“Maybe I deleted it by mistake.”
She checked her phone book—no entry for Maiko.
“I don’t really make calls, so maybe I never saved her number.”
She opened her photo album.
There wasn’t a single photo of Maiko.
Photos that should have included both of them now showed only Hina, smiling alone.
* * *
Maiko was gone.
Maiko’s existence had been erased from this world.
Her mother was no longer “Maiko’s mom” but only the mother of Maiko’s older brother, Takatoshi.
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