The narrator tells us that he's been hearing strange things about aiko lately. He says that she's acting weird, and that she seems to be a different person from the one he used to know. He asks if anyone from the old group has seen her recently, and they all agree that she hasn't. The narrator says that they used to go to a cram school, but that it was just a place where working parents could leave their children while they went off to work. He tells the group that they've been trying to find her for a year, but they haven't been able to. He also says that he did a missing person's report on her, but he doesn't think it's possible that she could have gone back to her hotel. He wonders if they should tell her for him if they find her, and she says that's not possible, because she has already gone back home. She says that the person she thinks is aiko is actually honoka, who's transformed to look just like her. He's the one who created her, he says, and the only reason he wants to tell the group this is because aiko told him they were her friends. He wants them to keep quiet about it, because if the public found out about her "circum stances" , they'd all come back to him, and he'd have to defend himself.