Ritsuka strode off towards the school entrance, eyes fixed off into the far distance and Yuiko's profuse apologies falling on deaf ears. "I know that I'm going to grow tall soon. Because Seimei was tall too."
Sometimes Ritsuka grows confused, his perceptions distorted by his mother's words. If he isn't Ritsuka, who is he? Sometimes Ritsuka will be walking along the street and a feeling of complete out-of-placeness will descend on him from nowhere. The streets he has walked along every day to and from school, the streets leading to his own home, the people he sees there daily, will take on a strangeness, an unfamiliarity that is jarring.
When this happens Ritsuka has to sit down, wherever he is, sit on the kerb of the pavement and clutch the material of his trousers with shaking hands that have broken out in sweat and rest his forehead on his knees and wait it out, all the time willing that Ritsuka to come back. Ritsuka,
But no matter how long he sits there, ignoring the people who pass and stare at the worried figure huddled on the kerb and even the kindly ones who lean down and ask "Are you alright?", Ritsuka decides he will not be coming back that day, and so the impostor currently inhabiting his body has to hurry home before he breaks the curfew.
On the even worse days Ritsuka will stare at himself in the mirror and wonder at how his body looks just like Ritsuka's. It's amazing really. One of a kind. No wonder Ritsuka's mother gets upset looking at him, it's like her lost son is right there, just beyond her reach. Ritsuka wonders why he exists, why someone bothered to make such an exact copy of Aoyagi Ritsuka.
Of course he knows why in a vague sort of way… "Ritsuka is Ritsuka, you know? There is no other Ritsuka… just you." "Ignore what mother says, Ritsuka. You're definitely my little brother."
…but Katsuko-sensei doesn't really understand and Seimei is gone forever.
Ritsuka is definitely going to grow tall soon, because Seimei was tall. And Ritsuka is definitely his little brother. Right?