Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume28 Chapter1 1

*

Since that day, I'd occasionally experienced this deja-vu based precognition and it never really startled me. Either because of the way I'd been tempered by events of the past year, or because I'd simply become numb to the sensation of surprise.

A year ago I was involved in a car accident, suffered a head injury, and slept for ten months. Then, on a warm February morning, with no prior indication, I opened my eyes. The next two months consisted solely of having various scans taken and doing rehabilitation work. A whole year had passed by the time I was ready to resume normal school-life. As a result of my prolonged absence, the number of days I had attended and credits I had received were nowhere near enough to pass so, now, I've restarted high-school after a year's delay. Consequently, minor things like that don't really disturb me any more.

Anyway.

Although I look like I've completely recovered, I have no memories from the day of the accident, from the time I woke up until the accident itself. Well, according to the doctors I probably still have those memories somewhere, I'm just unable to find where they're stored.

At any rate, I interpreted my strange ability as a consolation gift, given to me by God who took pity on me for losing a part of my memory. Either that, or a part of my memory had to be erased to make way for this new ability. – Well, at the very least I felt that these were two sides of the same coin.

While on that subject, the deja-vu I occasionally encountered was neither beneficial nor detrimental – it could probably best be described as harmless. It was only minor things like knowing the pun the teacher was about to make several seconds before she said it, or that one of the teachers would hold quizzes from the first lesson onwards. The sort of thing that a new high-school student might hear from their onee-sama or an older student in one of their clubs, rather than experience as deja-vu. And even when I could predict that there was going to be a test, it was pretty much useless because I wouldn't know what questions would be on it. Additionally, I'd usually only realize right before it was about to happen, so it didn't give me any more time to prepare either.

"Ichigo-san."

I turned around and Futaba-san was standing there, smiling.

"The blackboard almost looks like a mirror, it's so sparkling clean, see."

She took the cloth from my hand and used it to skilfully wipe clean the inside of a bucket. I looked around and saw the desks, which had been stacked to one side, had been returned to their usual positions and the windows, all of which had been opened, were all now closed. It looks like the classroom cleanup had been completed while I was spacing out.

"Hehehe. Ichigo-san, your consciousness flies away somewhere else from time to time, doesn't it? Right? It's weird, but no-one says that. Even though there's this hard-to-approach vibe about you. Everyone says that you're conversing with God, since you look so beautiful and serene."

Futaba-san finished cleaning the bucket while she was saying this, then held my bag out towards me and said, "Let's go home together."

"It must be nice to be you, Ichigo-san. You've got slender arms and legs and you're taller than average. And your short hair matches nicely with your sharp facial features."

Futaba-san joked as we walked along the ginkgo tree-lined path, standing up on her tiptoes.

"I wonder. After all, little Futaba-san is quite cute, no?"

I smiled. Because that was how I felt, from the bottom of my heart.

There was nothing about me that should be envied. My limbs were slender because they had been reduced to just muscle and bone while I was comatose, and my hair was short because my head had been shaved following the accident to make it easier for the doctors to operate on me. And I thought the reason I was taller than Futaba-san was probably because I was actually a year older than her.

The truth was, I liked Futaba-san. Her cheerfulness, her vibrant personality, her face, everything about her fit me to a tee.

"Hehehe. I might be this small and cute now, but you'd better believe that I'm going to shoot up anytime now. That's how it is in my family. Even my mother was like that."

"Really?"

But the thing I liked most was when she called out my name.

"Ichigo-san, Ichigo-san."

That gentle, enveloping voice seemed to overlap with another I could only vaguely remember.

Could this too be deja-vu? A voice that had appeared countless times during my dreams.

The voice that whispered, "Ichigo-san, Ichigo-san," sounded like Futaba-san's, only more ephemeral and heartrending. It sounded so sorrowful that I always thought I should reply, but I could never open my mouth. Nor did I know what that person's face looked like.

I wasn't certain of just when exactly I had had this particular dream. Whether it was during my ten month coma, or some time after I had regained consciousness. Either way, it was definitely some time after the accident.

The dreams all seemed so similar that I started to wonder if they were, in actual fact, reality. My working theory was that someone came and talked to me while I lay comatose.

However, none of my friends from middle-school had a voice that sounded like that. I entertained the possibility that it had been Futaba-san, but quickly discarded it. I went to a different middle-school and passed the entrance exam to join Lillian's high-school, whereas Futaba-san graduated from Lillian's middle-school, so there was no possible intersection in our lives prior to the start of high-school. And since I was repeating first-year, I'd be a year older than Futaba-san.

"Hey, did any of my friends come and visit while I was in hospital?"

I asked my mother when I returned home.

"… Friends? You mean Miko-chan and Hiro-chan?"

The names listed were my two closest friends from middle-school.

"Not them."

"I don't know any other friends of yours."

"I suppose so – ?"

The accident happened on the day of the entrance ceremony last year, as I was making my way home from school.

"I guess I wouldn't have had any time to make friends at Lillian's high-school, right?"

I looked to my mother for confirmation.

"Th, that's right."

For some reason, she looked away before continuing.

"But I don't really know."

The way she said that sounded somehow wrong. As though she may have been hiding something. She'd been wiping the same spot on the table for some time now.

"Why are you asking about this, Ichigo?"

"Oh, no reason."

Getting information out of someone who was trying to hide it would probably be difficult. I decided to stop in at the hospital on the way home from school tomorrow, and ask one of the nurses from the ward I'd stayed in about it.

"Oh … ? There was?"

It was much easier getting information out of someone who wasn't trying to keep a secret.

"Yeah, there was. She wore the same kind of uniform that you've got on now. She came to visit you every day, more or less."

The friendly nurse said, full of confidence.

"Every day … ?"

"Yep. She was a nice, cheerful kid. She didn't know if you could hear her or not, but she'd talk to you about school. Things that happened in class, the teachers lame puns, things like that."

"– Ohh"

"Come to think of it, she stopped coming just before the summer holidays. I wonder why that was."

My poor friend, obliterated from my memory. I nervously asked:

"… This girl, what did she look like?"

"Let's see. She was short, a bit chubby, and had pimples all over her face."

No matter how I looked at it, those features belonged to Futaba-san.