Part-3 Final Chapter Ep-02

 (Maki's POV)

“Even after the graduation ceremony ends, this world will still keep going, right?”

As usual, it happened while Seishuku-san, who had rarely been showing up lately, Mari, and I were eating lunch together in the deserted classroom during the voluntary attendance period.

“Eh?”

Confronted with such a sudden, utterly out-of-nowhere remark from Mari, all I could do was stare at her in bewilderment.

“I do not know, but I suppose we have no choice except to believe that it will as we continue living our lives.”

“Ehh...?”

Then, Seishuku-san responded with such a perfectly serious, deadpan expression that an embarrassingly pathetic sound slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it.

Wait, what? Is the world actually ending?

I seriously had no idea what they were talking about.

“Um, are you talking about Nostradams’s Great Prophecies?”

I tried bringing up a rumor from several decades ago that my parents had told me was wildly popular back when they were students.

If I remembered correctly, people had claimed the world would end in 1999 or something along those lines, yet in reality nothing happened at all... that sort of story.

When I asked my parents about those days, they told me schools had been absolutely buzzing with the topic, and that some people had genuinely become anxious, believing the world might truly be destroyed.

Still, I didn’t think Mari was the type to take occult nonsense like that seriously.

“Hmm, it’s not really something like that.”

Ah, so it was different after all. Well, the eras we grew up in were completely different to begin with.

But then what on earth was she actually talking about?

Unable to come up with anything else to say, I turned my gaze toward Seishuku-san, who was right in front of me busily unwrapping a sweet bun.

That’s your second one already, isn’t it?

“Even if it did turn out that way, I personally wouldn’t have any regrets.”

Seishuku-san said that while stuffing her cheeks with the sweet bun she held in both hands.

The gesture made her look remarkably like a little squirrel nibbling on an acorn, which was honestly adorable.

But the content of what she’d just said did absolutely nothing to reassure Mari.

Oh, come on. Seriously.

Hearing that, Mari seemed to slump even further as she quietly murmured, “I see...”

Oh, seriously!

Still, there wasn’t much I could do when I didn’t even understand what she meant in the first place.

As I’d thought, Mari and Seishuku-san shared some sort of mutual understanding, or rather, there were moments when I caught glimpses of the two of them operating on exactly the same wavelength.

I couldn’t help noticing it.

Even though I still had absolutely no idea what Mari was talking about.

When I asked, “Do you mean you’re scared of graduating from high school?” she answered, “Yeah, something like that.”

I wanted a few more hints than that.

Judging from her reply, she might not exactly have been lying, but at the same time, it felt as though she wasn’t telling me the whole truth either.

Surely, if you were to ask whether the “It’s okay” coming from me or the “It’s okay” coming from Seishuku-san would comfort Mari more, it would obviously be the latter, the person who actually seemed to understand the circumstances.

And somehow, that fact irritated me.

“‘Scared of graduating’?”

Kagami-kun and Todoroki-kun repeated my words in perfect unison.

“Well, rather than scared, I guess she just seemed anxious,” I muttered, fumbling slightly over how to phrase it. “Mari said, ‘Even after the graduation ceremony ends, I wonder if this world will still keep going.’”

With a somewhat exasperated look on his face, Todoroki-kun said, “Nagase does tend to jump to bizarre conclusions when all’s said and done...”

“Back when we first met, she was desperately trying to pair Ichinose up with one of us.”

“When she told me that either one of us was fine, so we should just ask Ichinose out on a Christmas date already, I was honestly shocked.”

“Did that girl seriously say something like that?”

It was an old story by now, but I might want to interrogate her about it a little later.

“Well, she’s probably just getting overly sentimental because of the entrance exams. More importantly, we should be cheering her on right now, considering she’s still doing her best at the exam venue even as we speak,” Kagami-kun said.

Today was the day Mari had gone to take the individual examination for her first-choice university.

Until only a few days ago, she’d been saying things like, “No matter how much I study, it never feels like enough,” yet in the end she’d managed to encourage herself and leave with the words, “I’ve done everything I can, so now I’m just going to give it my all.”

Yes, ordinarily she was the kind of girl who could pull herself back together like that.

And yet...

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll drop it.”

Even as I answered the two of them, there remained a sense of unease lodged deep in the back of my mind, one far too significant to simply ignore.