Chapter 19: The Fever Week

Akari went to the city on Monday anyway.

She had a practicum quiz at ten, and the course leader did not grant make-ups.

Nagi walked her to the milestone and held her face in both hands for a long time.

"Go to the doctor," she said.

"It's a cold."

"Go to the doctor."

"I'll go after the quiz."

"Akari."

"I'll text Sayo's shop," Akari said, and it was the last thing she said clearly that day.

By Monday evening her head felt full of warm sand.

By Tuesday morning she could not stand without the wall.

The six-mat room above the bakery was bright and hot and smelled of bread, and her thermometer said thirty-nine point two.

She fumbled with her phone, saw three missed calls, and could not remember who they were.

She lay on the futon with her glasses on, because she could not find the strength to take them off.

The ceiling went in and out of focus.

Down in the shop the bakery oven ticked.

Sometime around noon, a very small sound began on her desk.

It was a bottle.

She had filled it from the river on Friday, a plain glass bottle with a cork, and set it by the lamp.

It was tapping.

She turned her head.

The water in it had begun to turn.

It swirled slowly, round and round, and where it touched the glass, the glass fogged.

Letters formed on the inside, neat and small, in the same hand that had written on Sayo's window.

"Akari."

She stared.

"Akari. Please answer me. May I speak?"

It took her three tries to get her mouth working.

"Yes," she said, in a rough whisper. "Yes."

The water brightened.

A voice came from the bottle, thin and far away.

It was Nagi, and she was frightened.

"Thank the stones. I have been calling for a day. The water would not carry it. You were so hot, it turned the air away."

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