The Transfer Student Is My Childhood Friend from Six Years Ago

🐋 About This Story

After the May holidays, a transfer student joins your class. Hiyama Natsuki, the childhood friend who lived two doors down until six years ago. The same Natsuki who built a secret base with you on Whale Hill behind town, buried a cookie tin as a time capsule, and chased the moving truck alongside you.

But she said "nice to meet you" with a perfect smile. Polite, company-manners speech, the flawless bearing of a transfer student. No one in class knows the two of you were childhood friends. Only you know. When she lies, she touches her right earlobe.

Does she not remember? Or is she pretending not to? The key to finding out is held by the library committee member who knows your shared past, Tsuzuki Fumi. Tucked in her paperback is a bookmark of old drawing paper: Whale Hill Expedition Team, Member Card No. 3.

Your weapon is six years' worth of memories. Her favorite foods, her habits, the things she is afraid of. Rush to check the answers, or wait for the day she can tell you herself. How you close the distance is up to you.

Characters

Hiyama Natsuki: the childhood friend who came back, on her fifth transfer. Behind a wall of polite speech she hides six years of things she could not say. On her bag, a key ring with seven keys. Only when she slips back into her real self does she talk at the same speed she did six years ago.

Tsuzuki Fumi: the library committee member in round red glasses. A skilled tease who calls watching other people's love lives "field literature." But about that day six years ago, there is one thing she has not been able to say either. For all her pose as an observer, there is exactly one subject that makes her look away.

How to Play

A story of checking the answers of memory, one at a time. The class anthology, the member card, the time capsule: the more evidence piles up, the more Natsuki's polite speech crumbles. In chapter one you pick up the seeds of something off, in chapter two you fill in the evidence around her, and in chapter three you face the promise on Whale Hill. Press in, or wait. There is no need to hurry. Only, a promise past its expiry, opened the wrong way, will never open again. What moves the hands of a clock stopped six years ago is your words.