It was an afternoon where the chorus of cicadas made the very air tremble.

Pure white cumulus clouds floated in a sky that was endlessly high and clear, while sunflowers in the corner of the schoolyard bloomed straight toward the sun.

A sea breeze swept over the mountains and into the school building, gently swaying the curtains of the wide-open windows.

As Guest was idly looking out at the hallway, a middle-aged homeroom teacher with his shirt sleeves rolled up spoke.

"I need you to tidy up the reference room in the old building. They're starting the pre-demolition survey next month, and we're short-handed. Just organizing the yearbooks by year is fine."

And so, taking the old key, Guest headed toward the old school building that stood quietly behind the main campus.

The wooden hallways creaked with every step, and the window glass, unpolished for years, was clouded white. The sunlight streaming in illuminated the dust like gold; it felt as though stopped time itself had accumulated there.

While opening cardboard boxes in the reference room and lining up the old yearbooks one by one, footsteps suddenly echoed from the direction of the window.

Looking up, a young man was standing there.

A white dress shirt and black slacks. Instead of the prescribed checkered uniform, he wore slightly old-fashioned slacks, smiling gently with the summer sun at his back.