[T/N: For reference, one’s ‘heart’ in Japanese (and asian cultures in general) can refer more broadly to one’s emotions, mind, spirit, thoughts, etc. This is obviously true to an extent in Western culture (ex. love comes from the heart, heartbreak, etc), but is a lot more prevalent and emphasized in Japanese culture)
Ever since I was young, I was terrible at group activities.
Most likely, it was because the age difference was too immense. Compared to the witch who remembered every event in the ever-repeating days of this world, normal humans, with memories of only chosen days, aged far too differently.
Outwardly, we might look similar, but our mental ages differed by a factor of five. Whether at preschool or middle school, I never felt accustomed to my surroundings.
“How do we make pork miso soup?”
“How should I know? Besides, I just got my nails done so count me out.”
In my second year of middle school, we had a cooking practical exam in our home economics class.
“Um-”
Try to cut them smaller. All you need to do is cut and boil them. Here, let me show you.
I briefly interrupted before closing my mouth again, the rest of my sentence unspoken. I said nothing about my group’s mistakes.
Naturally, our finished product was horrendous. Over the shoulder of the other girls, I saw the teacher grimace as she sampled our dish.
Pointing out all the flaws in our soup would be quite insensitive, but my grade also hinged on this, so perhaps there was nothing wrong with speaking my mind. After all, our dish was truly horrendous. The vegetables weren’t cooked properly and had a chewy texture, large chunks of miso swam in the pot without fully being dissolved, and a layer of fat covered the top, so the soup itself lacked any sort of flavor.
Well, you reap what you sow.
I had no intention letting my opinion be known, nor any desire to speak forcefully so that others would listen.
The Twenty-Eight of September A
“Ayaka?”
I looked from my seat to see Michiru standing above me, clutching her textbook in her arms.
“Yeah, what?”
“Everyone left already.”
The next class was the last of morning classes- home economics. We had a cooking practical exam, so we couldn’t be late. Of course I hadn’t forgotten.
I was just somewhat distracted. I took out my own textbook and stood, following her out the door. Apart from the two of us, the entire classroom had been completely empty.
“You waited for me?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to miss the rare opportunity to see a melancholic Ayaka.”
“I wasn’t being melancholic.”
“You’re expression was so lovely, I almost ate you.”
What the heck. Perhaps my thoughts showed on my face.
“Zombies try to eat humans, don’t they?” she continued.
“Sure.”
But if they eat them, then they can’t multiply.”
Today’s Michiru was acting a bit strange. We walked down a corridor, the soles of our shoes echoing against the floor. I stole a sideways glance at Michiru. Her atmosphere was different? Zombie? Maybe she saw a weird movie.
“Did you eat something strange? You’re acting a bit off today.”
Perhaps, Michiru replied, laughing vaguely as if trying to brush aside the question.
“Why would it even matter if zombies don’t multiply?”
“Because a zombie’s only purpose is to multiply.”
“Sure… I guess.”
Zombies bite humans. They infect them with viruses, and turn their victims into zombies. They continue to multiply like rats. Then, the hordes of zombies go and eat humans. That’s why they’re terrifying. They’re depicted as creatures with the potential to annihilate the world.
But if they consume the entirety of their victims, they can’t multiply. A shame for the humans who’ve been eaten, but the crisis would die down quickly as a quiet tragedy in some small corner of the world. Zombies who can’t multiply are incapable of world destruction.
“Then, how do zombies multiply?” I said.
“Sexual desire, I’m sure.” The phrase that floated from Michiru’s lips made my heart throb, just a little. “Zombies multiply through sexual desire. That’s how all living things do it.”
“I thought zombies were dead?”
“‘Dead things,’ I guess then?”
Regardless, I felt that Michiru saying ‘sexual desire’ was a bold move. I didn’t think a teenager in the middle of puberty could use such a phrase so lightly, but it might’ve been because she was talking to me. She only relaxed her guard around me… I was probably reading into it too much.
“Hm, I suppose that means zombies also fall in love…” Michiru continued.
What the heck… Michiru’s unpredictability wasn’t anything new, but today, she almost seemed a smidge too frivolous.
“When you say zombies ‘also’ fall in love, does that mean you found yourself a lover?”
“H-how- how do you-“
“How do I know?”
“How do you come to that conclusion!? And that one too!”
Michiru was understandably flustered.
For some odd reason, I suddenly felt like doing something terrible.
“To begin with, do zombies even feel emotions like love or hate?”
“They started as humans, so they must have hearts, right?” Michiru said.
A fitting statement for someone as bright, sociable, and popular as her.
I couldn’t think like her. Which is precisely why I admired the girl walking beside me, and why I wanted to become closer to her. I wanted to know more about her thoughts, and wanted her to know more about mine.
“Do they also feel sorrow?”
“Yeah, it’s okay.”
Sorrow? They do, but it’s okay, is what she must have meant.
Because if not, she would have elaborated.
“You don’t have to force yourself to go along with my ramblings if you don’t want to.”
“It’s fine! I’m not forcing myself or anything like that,” I said quickly.
Had our positions been reversed, it would’ve been presumptuous of me to worry about Michiru.
We arrived at the classroom, and our conversation came to an end.
“I wonder if humans have hearts…”
Which is why I think that those words which slipped out of her mouth were her true feelings.
Even during the cooking practical exam, Michiru’s words never left my head.
Do zombies have hearts?
Can zombies love humans?
If zombies don’t have them, do humans have hearts?
To begin with, even the assumption that humans have real hearts is dubious. Just like how people tell me that they have no idea what I’m thinking, I could never understand the hearts of others.
In scientific terms, you might call this the ‘philosophical zombie.’ There is no evidence to prove that other people perceive the world and feel emotions in the same way as oneself. The the philosophical zombie is a heartless, undead creature on the inside, yet gives off no rotting scent and completely indistinguishable from humans on the outside.
It was impossible to prove whether they had a true heart or not. No evidence whatsoever. Though if a power like my unforgettable memory existed which could read hearts and minds, that would be a different story.
“Is chawanmushi really that hard to make?” (T/N: savory steamed dish)
“I heard most of the groups from my older sister’s year failed.”
“You’re joking…”
My groupmates talked uneasily as they fumbled with the kitchenware, looking nervously at the ingredients lined up on the countertop.
An unpleasant, middle school memory crossed my mind. In the middle of my recollection, my mouth and body began moving on their own.
“Um, can I say something?”
“Aizawa? What is it?”
I interfered- something that would’ve been unthinkable for the me of the past. Utterly unthinkable.
I also had utter confidence that I would not lose. My skills had been honed through twenty-five years of cooking for myself, so naturally this task was trivial for me, and besides-
“Since we’re doing this anyway, don’t you want to eat a delicious lunch?”
My lovely, lovely proposal.
Perhaps it was because I was always together with Michiru. The other members of my group listened intently to every single one of my words that followed.
“Use a gentle boil for the egg… after you combine it with the dashi, strain it through a strainer.”
Their expressions right then resembled pidgeons who’d just been shot by a peashooter.
But their response wasn’t negative in the slightest.
“Aizawa-san, is it okay if I turn off the heat?”
“Yeah. It should be good now. Just double check that it’s turned off fully…”
“I’ll taste this, Aizawa-san!”
“You can tilt the bowl to check the firmness.”
The downside was that they began to address me increasingly more politely, to the point where it made me uncomfortable.
“Use a cloth so you don’t burn yourself.”
I felt the looks of my classmates on me. Looks of admiration and reverence that my former self never knew… I had a hunch. That in all probability, today wouldn’t be chosen.
Call it a jinx, or whatever, but I wasn’t optimistic that today would be chosen.
But even if today wouldn’t be chosen, the words I needed to convey weren’t going to change.
After class ended, I met up with Michiru.
“This is what our group made. Want to trade?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I want to try what you made, Michiru.”
We sat across from each other at one of the cooking classroom’s tables, where I offered her my portion of chawanmushi. My masterpiece that had shocked our teacher into silence upon tasting it.
“A philosophical zombie, right? That’s what you were worrying about.”
She probably discovered it while browsing the internet or something. She then spent the entire night unable to sleep as she fretted about the ramifications of the philosophical zombie. I unveiled my rather straightforward deduction.
“Philosophical zombie? What’s that?”
“Ah. I was wrong.”
Then, what was that all about?
Michiru couldn’t hear my thoughts, but she answered my question anyway.
“Recently, I’ve been thinking nothing but weird thoughts.”
“Weird thoughts?”
“Yeah. Weird stuff I never paid any attention to until recently. That’s why I was asking about hearts- because I realized I don’t know anything about them.”
“What kind of weird stuff?”
“…Not telling.”
Uncharacteristically, Michiru averted her eyes, a mysterious expression painted across her face. It was dyed with a strange emotion that I’d never seen before.
“When did you start thinking about all this?”
“Ever since… we called each other by our first names.”
Her voice was faint, as if it were about to fade into nothingness. A peculiar voice that radiated both shyness and defiance. It was a voice I occasionally found myself using from time to time, so I was familiar with it, but I had no idea why Michiru had become like this. Evidently, something changed when we called each other by our first names.
But I also wanted to see more of her rapidly changing expressions.
“Are you sure you didn’t eat something strange?”
“If this was a human heart, then I just did. It was delicious though.”
Michiru looked down at her now empty bowl of chawanmushi. I felt like sulking just a little bit…
Ah, whatever. I was happy that she ate a meal that I put my heart into, and if she found it delicious, then there were no problems.
-Do humans really have hearts…?
In response to Michiru’s question that showed a glimpse of her true feelings, I had an answer prepared.
“I think humans have hearts.”
Words I wanted to convey even if today wasn’t going to be chosen.
Feelings I could only convey because today wasn’t going to be chosen.
“Today in class, I tried to give it my all. I think, if I hadn’t met you, Michiru, I wouldn’t have done that.”
Our encounter on that spring day changed my obstinate self. My frozen emotions that hadn’t changed for tens of years were thawed by the girl sitting in front of me now.
“Your heart became a part of me, that’s why. It’s hard to put into words, I guess.”
I had no way to directly verify that she had a heart. But my own heart had been influenced by her. Our hearts had touched. Even now, traces of her influence still revertabrated within me.
“Your heart also contains something of mine, right?”
By reexamining one’s own heart, they could verify the feelings and passions of others.
Humans aren’t human when they’re alone. Humans are like a light, flashing on and off. They exist to illuminate other things, or other people. And they’re always looking forward to that moment.
I didn’t know how much of my true feelings had reached her, but:
“Yeah, you’re right.”
Like a bud suddenly blooming into a beautiful flower, vigor and liveliness returned to Michiru’s voice. “Ayaka, your heart is really sweet!”
She really did eat something strange, didn’t she.
SomewhatOkay Translations 
So volume 1 is over? No afterword this time?
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