“Why are you okay with this?! We don’t know where Taiga went! There’s no way this is fine! Didn’t you say that you loved Taiga?! Didn’t you tell me you knew where you wanted to go, Takasu-kun?! Didn’t you say you would live together?! Didn’t you say that was how you’d gain happiness… Why did it turn out this way?! Why?!”
“Taiga’s not running away from home! Taiga’s not going to give up on anyone! That’s why it’s fine this way!”
The people coming and going on the road turned their heads at the loud voices. Regardless, Ryuuji did not let go of Minori’s wrist. He wouldn’t let her go. There were tears on Minori’s cheeks. The words she aimed at him were shaking so much he could barely make them out.
He closed his eyes and yelled so loud that it might just have reached Taiga. “Taiga! Go! Hurry! Get out of here!”
If there was a chance they could still catch up with her, then she needed to be moving faster. She needed to go as far as she could. Go to the end of the world you live in. Go seize everything you deserve, go seize as much as it’s in your power to hold.
“GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Rather than cry, Ryuuji poured all his strength into squeezing out his voice. The distant sky was dazzling.
This was fine. It really was.
Taiga was already nowhere to be seen. She had already disappeared. This was fine.
Removing his glasses, Kitamura covered his face where he stood. He couldn’t keep a low sob from escaping his contorted lips. When she saw that, Ami bit her lip. Her cheeks, nose, and throat were bright red. Clear tears fell from her long eyelashes down to her chin.
In the end, Minori stopped struggling and went limp. She crouched down in the middle of the sidewalk. “You mean…she left us behind? Taiga left me.”
“No,” Ryuuji earnestly said to her back—to his friend’s back. “That’s completely wrong. Taiga doesn’t give up. She’s not that soft. She’s definitely coming back. And when she comes home, you have to definitely be here, too!”
“It doesn’t matter how you put it… I’m still sad. I’m heartbroken Taiga isn’t here. Where am I supposed to put this sadness? Where did you put yours?”
He couldn’t deny Minori’s grief. And so, he would accept it instead. “It’s sad, but it’s fine.”
We’re sad because we’re apart—that’s the relationship I have with Taiga right now. But Ryuuji’s heart was filled with love. It was sad, but things would be fine.
Reeling his memories in one by one, Ryuuji thought back on everything that had happened.
At the end of the cherry blossom season, he’d met the hot mess that was Taiga. That had been the start of a time more turbulent than he could ever have foreseen. He couldn’t help being drawn in, unaware that he was tumbling towards love. He had fallen, thought he was done for, and then somehow gotten back on his feet. Somehow, their hearts had finally met. And after all that, in the present, Takasu Ryuuji loved Aisaka Taiga.
As long as they loved each other like this, he didn’t think the bond that connected them would ever break. Sooner or later, this love would find its voice and come overflowing from him. Their bodies, hearts, and souls would call to each other, and eventually, somewhere in the world, they would collide.
Ryuuji would take the days that had come to pass, the day he was currently living through, and the days to come, loving them in their entirety. Taiga would do the same for her days, and so would Yasuko, Minori, Ami, and Kitamura. They would each love what was their own to the very limits of their abilities.
They would absolutely meet again. Their attraction to each other was this strong, after all. They called to each other. They yearned for each other.
They persisted absolutely, unconditionally.
“I wonder if Tiger will even want to see me…” Ami muttered in a voice so small it seemed about to vanish.
Ryuuji answered firmly, as though summoning her back. “I feel like she wants to see you, too. Don’t worry about whether Taiga needs it. If that’s what you need, then make sure you tell her. Show her with your actions. You’re the only one who can make your thoughts into reality!”
“I—” Even more tears were spilling down Ami’s contorted and tear-stained face. “I want to see Tiger again! I want to be here when she comes home! I want to get to know Minori-chan better! I want to make up with you, Takasu-kun! I don’t actually want to stop being friends! I want to be friends forever! I’ve enjoyed being with all of you—everything’s been better with you here. I love you all…!”
“Wh-what about me?!”
“Who cares about you, Yuusaku!”
“Ahmin…!” Minori stood up and practically jumped on Ami. Hminohri-an! Ami yelled back, still crying as she wrapped her arms around Minori’s back. They buried their faces in each other’s shoulders. Though they were perfectly matched in stubborn pride, for the moment, they entrusted their body weight to each other. They thought about the friend they had lost and paid no mind to the eyes of passersby as they cried out loud.
Kitamura also understood what was in his childhood friend’s heart and the heart of the one he’d entrusted his team to. He joined their ring. Ryuuji put his hands around his friends and turned his face down. All four of them came together and held each other’s shoulders. They stood in the middle of the sidewalk as they cried out loud, letting the children inside them run free.
If they could warm each other when they were hurt like this, then it was good they were born in separate bodies, Ryuuji thought. It was such a rare miracle, he thought, that they could be born separately, raised apart, meet, love each other, fight…and, like they were now, could bury their crying faces into each other.
Even at this point, when he felt his whole heart being washed away by sorrow, Ryuuji felt that everything he had then, everything that existed in the world, was so precious he could barely contain it. Yell as he might, he couldn’t keep up with the love that welled up within him.
He believed that wherever she went on ahead of him, Taiga’s journey was also overflowing with love. Not all of her love would be rewarded. There would be days when she was betrayed, hurt, and brokenhearted again. But she would keep going. Each of them would keep going.
No matter how far apart or how far away their journeys led them, Ryuuji would reach Taiga and Taiga, Ryuuji. They would eventually converge again, so everything would be fine. The goal they headed towards was the same.
As he revolved around the endless skies, the world below the clouds was beautiful to Ryuuji. Among the vivid lives and merciless colors of the various living things of the land, a tough beast kicked up the dust of time and continued ever forward. With energy that warped her four limbs, she proudly ran through the earth she lived on.
I am a tiger.
I am a dragon.
They became nothing more than life itself as they called. They answered. Their roars traveled far and wide as could be.
Eventually, the clouds in the sky that the dragon roamed would break, and there would be nothing separating his voice from the earth where the tiger roared.