This is the thread for chapter 9, 第三部：一月, a part of the かがみの孤城 book club.
As this is a read at your own pace club, please be sure to have your discussions in the correct thread, and don’t discuss anything that has not occurred by the of the chapter in this thread. As always, please also be considerate about spoilers and put anything that feels like a spoiler behind spoiler tags or in a drop down.
Yep, as I was reading the opening of this chapter I was like, there’s no way it’s going to be that easy for them to all meet up, not with like 250 pages left in the book 
Was still sad for them though. I wonder if they’re in parallel alternate realities or something like that. I also had the thought that it could be a time travel situation and they’re all from different years, but they all seem to have media in common, plus the three of them separately knowing the nice teacher lady kind of confuses me 
Well that escalated quickly.
I thought that maybe no one else would show up, or Sanada-san would find Kokoro on the way to school or something. Not, just, the other kids don’t exist 
At this point this is my best guess. Or maybe there’s some sort of force that makes it so they can’t meet outside of the castle until after the year is up. If you can make magic mirrors to transport people to a magical castle, I will also accept either of these realities.
Yeah I’ve also thought that but the media, plus the game system dates them pretty firmly into +/-3 years or so. So even if they are time shifted, you’d think that the teachers would be like “oh they graduated _ years ago” or something.
I hope that Masamune comes back soon.. but I also get why he wouldn’t want to. Although maybe he comes back eventually because he wants to find the key so that he can forget about them 
Yeah I was half expecting teacher to be like But ウレシノ’s been dead for ten years!!! 
