Part 8 | Contents At night, I shared the details of the situation with Osanai-san. After a few hours, she sent over a reply that was longer than any other message I’d seen from her. “Hotel Sacher and Cafe Demel fought over the right to use the dessert’s name. As a result of the legal […]

Part 7 | Contents | Part 9 I was wrong. Not that my entire theory was wrong, but there were some things I’d unknowingly ignored. Just as sachertorte on its own looked like nothing more than plain chocolate but actually had apricot jam spread between the base and fondant, a large mystery was linked to

Part 6 | Contents | Part 8 I knew where Osanai-san’s house was, which was how I’d noticed a while ago that we were taking a detour. That was probably to secure enough time to complete our conversation. As we were crossing a canal with a sluice gate, Osanai-san suddenly stopped. Placed at the entrance

Part 5 | Contents | Part 7 In his speech, Shima Taiga told us not to hold onto our dreams. “I wanted to become a sculptor. For that end, I practiced, studied great works, and sought the tutelage of others. So, was I chasing a dream? No, I wasn’t. Would you call practicing for interviews

Part 4 | Contents | Part 6 Since we’d been sworn to secrecy, the only people who knew that Shima Taiga’s objet had been damaged was me, Shimai-san, Sawami-san, Aotagawa-kun, and Koumura-sensei. …is what I would like to say, but that wasn’t the case. Of course, Koumura-sensei would inform the school, and the rest of

Part 3 | Contents | Part 5 The rumor of the threatening letter took the school by storm – but saying that would be an overstatement. The rumor did not sow any panic or chaos, and all was quiet all the way until the speech. If you conducted a survey among the students and asked

Part 2 | Contents | Part 4 We went up the stairs at the South Block, and soon found ourselves in front of the Art Preparation Room on the fourth floor. Koumura-sensei, who had one free hand, unlocked the door, causing the smell of paint to waft out of the small, dimly-lit room. The first

Part 1 | Contents | Part 3 Two weeks before the speech, I was on class duty. One boy and one girl was assigned for class duty on each day, going by our student numbers. Since the boy-girl split in my class was uneven, everyone would have a different partner every day of class duty.

(Note: Sachertorte is a chocolate sponge cake covered with chocolate glaze and filled with apricot jam.) Contents | Part 2 It was during a June which saw little rain and was swelteringly hot, making it seem like we’d skipped the plum rains and had gone straight to midsummer, when a strange rumor was spread in