Kaito was quiet for a long time. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out something small and pink. Her rabbit eraser. The one she had lost three weeks ago.
“Then let people wait.”
“Why?” she asked.
She found Kaito on the rooftop after the festival ended. The crowds had gone home. The lanterns were being packed away. He sat on the old bench near the fence, sketchbook closed, watching the city lights begin to glow.
Item 3: He did not speak to anyone else in class. But when Ayumi muttered answers under her breath during history, he would nod, just slightly, as if confirming her logic.
Rina had laughed. “Ayumi, you can’t spreadsheet your way through a heartbeat.”
The trouble began in early July.
Ayumi Saitō believed in three things: statistical probability, the correct way to fold a paper crane, and that romance was a mathematical error.