The Last Ordinary Day

Kirigaya Books closed at eight, which meant that at seven fifty-eight, somebody always walked in.

Tonight it was Kaede Asakura.

The bell over the door gave its tired little jingle, and Kazuto Kirigaya looked up from the box of returns he’d been pretending to sort for the last twenty minutes. Kaede stood just inside the doorway like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to be there. Her school bag was hugged to her chest, and her hair was flat and damp from the drizzle outside.

“We’re closing,” Kazuto said. Then, because it was Kaede, “You’ve got two minutes.”

“Sorry. I’ll be quick.”

She wasn’t quick. She never was. Kaede drifted down the manga aisle at the pace of someone touring a museum, past the new releases, past the shounen wall, past the fantasy shelf Kazuto had re-alphabetized twice that week because customers kept putting things back wherever they felt like. She stopped where she always stopped on Thursdays, in front of Blade of the Forgotten King.

Volume twelve had come out on Tuesday. The slot where it should have been was empty.

Kazuto watched Kaede’s shoulders drop about an inch. Then he reached under the counter, pulled out the copy he’d set aside on Tuesday morning, and put it on the counter with a soft thump.

“Sold out yesterday,” he said. “I held one.”

Kaede turned around. She looked at the book, then at Kazuto, then at the book again, as if one of them might be a trick. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“You’ve bought every volume here since the first one. If you went somewhere else for twelve, it’d ruin my records.”

That got the smallest smile out of her. Kaede came to the counter and counted out her coins one at a time, exact change, the way she always did. Kazuto slid the book into a paper bag and folded the top over twice.

“Does he get his kingdom back?” Kaede asked. “In this one?”

“The king? No chance.” Kazuto handed her the bag. “Not this volume. Not the next ten, probably. The author’s going to drag this thing out for another fifteen years.”

“That’s terrible.”

“That’s beautiful. Long stories are the best ones. You actually get to live with the characters for a while.”

Kaede held the bag in both hands and didn’t leave. For a second it looked like she was going to say something else. Her mouth even opened a little. Then the clock on the wall clicked over to eight, and she seemed to lose her nerve, or her place, or whatever it was.

“See you tomorrow?” she said instead.

“Unfortunately,” Kazuto said. “School’s still a thing.”

Kaede laughed once, quietly, and ducked back out into the rain. The bell jingled behind her. Kazuto flipped the sign on the door from Open to Closed and stood there a moment, watching the street go blurry and gold under the lamps.

---

The shop took up the bottom floor of a narrow old building, with the family’s apartment squeezed into the two floors above it, and Kazuto loved every dusty square inch of the place, though he would have died before saying so out loud.

His parents ran the front half. New fiction, old fiction, poetry nobody bought, cookbooks everybody bought, and a rack of greeting cards his mother insisted was the only thing keeping the lights on. The back half was his. Manga, light novels, a wall of secondhand games, and one ancient beanbag chair that had been there so long it had developed a personality. He’d taken the back half over at thirteen, the year his father admitted he still couldn’t tell a shounen series from a seinen one, and he’d been running it ever since.

“Is she still in the back?” his father whispered, sliding up beside him at the register.

His father was a large, soft man with reading glasses permanently pushed up into his hair, and he had all the stealth of a vending machine falling down a flight of stairs.

“She’s doing the receipts,” Kazuto whispered back. “You’ve got maybe four minutes.”

“Good.” His father leaned in close. “I’ve made a decision about tomorrow.”

“Oh no.”

“I’m cooking.”

Kazuto stared at him. “Dad.”

“A real birthday dinner. Homemade. I found a recipe online with five stars and over two thousand reviews.”

“Last year you made toast and set off the fire alarm.”

“The toaster was faulty.”

“The toaster was new.”

His father waved this away, like a man who had made his peace with the past. Then he nodded at the counter beside the register, where a battered old paperback lay face down, its spine held together with yellowed tape.

The Count of Monte Cristo. His mother’s copy. She’d read it so many times that the pages came loose if you breathed on them wrong, and every year, in the week before her birthday, she took it out of its drawer and read it again from start to finish. It was a tradition nobody in the family could remember starting.

“Twenty years,” his father said fondly, “of watching that poor sailor crawl out of prison and ruin everybody’s lives. The woman deserves one birthday dinner that doesn’t come out of a cardboard box.”

Kazuto glanced at the book. “Betrayed by everyone he trusted. Locked in a dungeon for fourteen years. Comes back overpowered and makes them all pay.” He shrugged. “It’s basically an isekai without the truck.”

“Don’t you ever let your mother hear you call it that.”

“Call what what?” his mother asked, stepping out of the office with a stack of receipts.

“Nothing,” they said at the same time.

She narrowed her eyes at them both. She was small and quick, with ink on her fingers and a pencil stuck through the knot of her hair, and she could tell when a customer was about to ask for a refund from all the way across the store. Kazuto held her stare with the blank, peaceful expression he’d spent sixteen years perfecting.

She sighed. “I don’t want to know.”

“You really don’t,” his father said.

She set the receipts down and started counting the register, lips moving silently. “The distributor called, by the way. Your light novel shipment’s delayed again.”

Kazuto groaned. “That’s the third time.”

“Wait and hope,” his mother said, without looking up.

It was the last line of her favorite book. She said it about everything. Late shipments. Bad weather. Burned rice. The time Kazuto broke his wrist falling off the beanbag chair in a way he still refused to explain. When he was younger he’d thought it was the most annoying phrase in the world. Lately he’d started to suspect it was the kind of thing that only made sense once you were older, which was somehow even more annoying.

“Your father says he’s cooking tomorrow,” she went on, “which means we’re ordering pizza.”

His father opened his mouth. She held up one finger without looking at him, and he closed it again.

“Dinner’s at seven,” she said. “Be home by seven.”

“Where else would I be?”

“Be home by seven, Kazuto.”

“I’ll be home by seven,” he said.

He meant it, too. Later, that would be the part that hurt.

---

Test results went up on the hallway board on Friday mornings, and by the time Kazuto got to school, half the second-year class was crowded around it like it was a crime scene.

He didn’t push in. He didn’t need to. The list was sorted by rank, and his name always lived in the same neighborhood.

Seventh.

Not first. Not even top five. Just high enough to irritate the people who’d stayed up all night studying, and just low enough that nobody believed he’d actually tried.

Which, honestly, he hadn’t. Not really. He read fast and he remembered things, and he’d figured out early that most tests were less about knowing everything than about knowing what the person who wrote the test wanted you to say. It was the same skill as recommending books. You listened. You paid attention to what people actually meant. You gave them that.

It was not, as it turned out, a skill that made you popular.

“Seventh place, Kirigaya!”

Tetsuya Goto’s arm landed across his shoulders like a fallen tree. Goto was big for seventeen, and he moved through the halls with his two friends, Mori and Kobayashi, orbiting him like loyal and slightly dim moons.

“Morning, Goto,” Kazuto said.

“How’d you do it this time, huh?” Goto squeezed. It wasn’t quite a headlock. It was the kind of thing that could be called a joke if a teacher happened to walk by. “You sleep through every class. You read your little picture books under the desk. And somehow you keep beating real people.”

“Maybe the picture books are educational.”

Mori snorted. Kobayashi said, “Hey, Tetsu, what place did you get?”

Goto’s arm got heavier. Everyone knew what place Goto got. It was somewhere in the hundred and forties, and it was right there on the board for the whole school to see.

“Must be nice,” Goto said, close to Kazuto’s ear, “not having to try at anything.”

There were a lot of things Kazuto could have said. That he worked twenty hours a week at the shop. That he’d done half of last night’s homework on the train and the other half at the register between customers. That trying hard and being seen trying hard were two different things, and only one of them was anybody else’s business.

He’d learned a long time ago that none of it would help. Goto didn’t want an answer. Goto wanted a reaction, and the only real power Kazuto had in this situation was refusing to give him one.

So he yawned.

It was a good yawn. Big, slow, completely unbothered. He even stretched a little at the end. Goto’s face went through several interesting colors, and Kazuto slipped out from under his arm and walked to class without looking back.

It was only when he sat down at his desk that he noticed his hands weren’t quite steady. Being unbothered, it turned out, took a lot of work.

---

“Kazuto! Seventh place!”

Mio Tachibana was the only person in class 2-B who said his first name like it was a normal thing to say.

She leaned over his desk with both hands flat on it, ponytail swinging, smiling like his test score was her own personal good news. Mio was popular the way some people were tall, without seeming to try. She was class vice president. She played volleyball. She remembered everyone’s birthday, including his, which nobody else in the building did. And for reasons that nobody, Kazuto included, had ever been able to figure out, she seemed to actually like talking to him.

Every boy in the room noticed. Every single time.

“I’m thinking about going for eighth next time,” Kazuto said. “Seventh feels like a lot of pressure.”

She laughed. “Okay, so, my little brother’s birthday is next week, and he’s obsessed with dragons right now. Like, obsessed. He sleeps in a dragon costume. Is there a manga you’d recommend? For a nine-year-old?”

Kazuto thought about it. This was the one kind of question he was genuinely good at. “Sky Riders,” he said. “It’s about a kid who raises a dragon from an egg. It’s funny, it’s not too scary, and the dragon art’s really good. Volume one’s on the second shelf from the door. If he likes it, there are eight more.”

“You are a lifesaver.” She clapped her hands together. “I’ll come by the shop this weekend.”

“Mio.”

Kaito Sanada appeared at her shoulder, the way he generally did. Kaito was class president, captain of the kendo club, tall, handsome, polite to teachers, and so sincere about everything that it was almost impossible to dislike him. Kazuto managed it anyway, but it took real effort. Kaito and Mio had been friends since kindergarten, and the whole school had more or less decided they’d end up married someday. As far as Kazuto could tell, Kaito had decided it too.

“Homeroom’s starting,” Kaito said. Then he turned to Kazuto with a kind, patient look, the look of someone about to give advice that nobody had asked for. “Congratulations on your score, Kirigaya. You know, if you made a little more effort with people, I think they’d stop giving you such a hard time.”

Kazuto looked at him for a moment.

“Noted,” he said.

Kaito nodded like he’d done his good deed for the day and steered Mio back toward her desk.

Two rows over, someone gave a small, startled gasp.

Goto had stopped beside Kaede Asakura’s desk. He was holding something up over his head, high, where she couldn’t reach it. A paperback with a black and silver cover. Volume twelve of Blade of the Forgotten King.

“Asakura,” Goto said, delighted. “What’s this? You’re reading the freak’s picture books now?”

Kaede had half risen out of her chair. Her face had gone very pale, and then very red. “Please give it back.”

“Did he sell you this?” Goto flipped it open and fanned through the pages, not gently. A few people laughed. “Oh, man. Is this a date thing? You go to his little shop and hold hands over the comics?”

“Give it back,” Kaede said again, smaller this time. “Please.”

Mori laughed. Kobayashi called, “Read us the kissing part!” and more people laughed. Kaito had his back turned, deep in conversation with Mio. Nobody else moved.

Kazuto stood up.

He didn’t decide to. His chair just scraped back and he was standing, and the voice that came out of him wasn’t the lazy, bored voice he used at school. It was flat and quiet and very clear.

“Put it down.”

The room went still. It was the strangest thing. Kazuto had spent two years letting everything slide, and every person in class 2-B knew it, so the sound of him actually caring about something seemed to catch them all off guard at once. Even Goto blinked.

Then Goto smirked, because he was Goto. “Or what?”

Kazuto didn’t have an answer. He knew he didn’t. Goto was bigger and meaner and had two friends, and the honest truth was that Kazuto had never been in a real fight in his life. But he didn’t sit back down, either.

Maybe Goto saw something in his face. Maybe he just got bored. He snorted, said, “Relax, freak,” and tossed the book over his shoulder.

It hit the floor corner first.

Kazuto crossed the room before he could think better of it. He crouched, picked the book up off the floor, brushed the dust off the cover, front and back, and smoothed down a page that had folded over. Then he held it out to Kaede.

“The corner’s a little bent,” he said. “Sorry. I’ll get you a fresh copy when the next shipment comes in.”

Kaede took it with both hands. For a second she just looked at him, like she was trying to work out what had happened, or whether he was real.

“It’s not your fault,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”

Then she ducked her head, and Kazuto noticed that her ears had gone bright red, and he had absolutely no idea what to do with that information. So he nodded, and turned back toward his desk.

The classroom door slid open and Mr. Nakamura walked in with his coffee and his attendance book and his permanent look of mild disappointment, and the room snapped back to normal like nothing had happened at all. Kazuto sat down. His hands were shaking again.

Two rows over, Kaede held the book in her lap with both hands flat on the cover. She didn’t put it away for the rest of the day.

---

By last period the rain had stopped, and the light through the classroom windows had gone thin and orange.

Mr. Nakamura had stepped out to make copies of a worksheet nobody wanted. The class was doing what classes always do when the teacher steps out, which was everything except the worksheet. Kaito was trying to keep order and failing politely. Goto was telling a story loudly enough that it had become everybody’s story. Mio was laughing at something on a friend’s phone. Kaede was reading volume twelve under her desk, bent corner and all.

Kazuto was watching the clock.

Three forty-one. Last period ended at four. He’d walk to the shop, help close up early, and then the three of them would go upstairs, and his father would pretend he’d tried to cook something, and they’d order pizza. After cake, his mother would read her favorite chapter out loud, the way she did every year, and Kazuto would pretend to be bored by it, the way he did every year.

His phone buzzed once in his pocket. His mother, probably, reminding him about seven for the fifth time today. He’d answer her after class.

Wait and hope, he thought. Three more hours.

That was when he noticed the floor was glowing.

It started as a thin white line, so faint that at first he thought it was the sunset catching on something. The line ran along the floorboards beneath the front row of desks. Then it bent. It curved. It ran into another line, and another, and suddenly there were symbols spreading out across the floor, sharp and angular and bright, turning slowly outward until they had swallowed the entire room in a circle of cold white light.

Someone laughed. “Is that a projector?”

“Who’s doing that?”

“Okay, this is actually kind of cool.”

“Is this a prank? Kaito, is this a student council thing?”

Kazuto didn’t laugh.

He knew what it was. He knew the second he saw it. He’d seen it on a hundred covers. He’d priced it and shelved it and recommended it to strangers. Magic circle. Classroom. Last period. A whole class at once. He could have described the next scene from memory: the flash, the marble floor, someone in long robes saying the word “Hero.”

And he knew the thing that almost all of those stories had in common. The thing nobody ever put on the back cover.

They never went home.

“No,” Kazuto said. He was on his feet. “No, no, no.”

“Kazuto?” Mio twisted around in her chair, still half smiling. “What’s wrong?”

He was already moving. He made it three steps to the classroom door, grabbed the handle, and pulled, and it didn’t move. It didn’t rattle or stick. It just didn’t move, like it had become part of the wall. The light was coming up through the floor now, up through his shoes, cold, so cold, and the symbols were spinning faster, and the laughing behind him had started to turn into something else.

“Kirigaya, what are you doing?” Kaito called. “Everyone, just stay calm, it’s probably…”

He never finished. The light went white.

The last thing Kazuto felt was the cold climbing up into his chest, and the phone in his pocket, still waiting for an answer.

The last thing he thought was, I told her seven.