Three days before the summer festival, Aki has the conversation with Toru that splits her world in two. They have been friends since elementary school. They eat lunch together. They share manga reccs. They exist in the comfortable, unlabeled space between children and something else, and Aki thought — hoped — that the distance between them was shrinking. Instead, Toru tells her he likes another girl and asks for her help getting closer to her. Aki agrees. What else can she do?

Afterward, she walks to the old lot where the ground cracks apart, that place where she and Toru once caught bugs and swore dumb childhood oaths. She stops exactly where the earth shifts beneath her feet and makes a wish she does not say aloud. When she turns back, Toru is still smiling at her, and she realizes the worst part is not that he asked. It is that the feeling she buried so deep she forgot to name it has already started to claw its way out, and he handed her the shovel. The festival is three days away, and everything is about to break.

Also known as: げにかすり, Genikasuri.