3
THE LONG WAR came to an end with the Empire of Japan’s surrender. In the final years, when Japan began losing ground, many men were conscripted and sent to the battlefield. Those who weren’t nobility or of a similar social class were generally chosen for conscription, but Kajii Takumi was lucky enough to be exempt from the draft because he was a medical student and doctors were always in short supply during wartime. However, Takumi didn’t linger much on his good fortune. Any focus he had was dedicated to his studies.
A young girl he knew like a little sister had lost her parents to an air raid and was now living with her mother’s relatives. He couldn’t bring himself to ignore her plight, but he understood there was only so much he could do. He could not bring her parents back from the dead, and even if he stayed by her side, he had nothing to offer. People liked to say the comfort of one’s presence alone could mean the world, but talk was cheap. One’s presence could not fill the stomach, nor could it provide a roof over one’s head.
Japan was poverty-stricken after the war. If he wanted to help her, he needed money. That’s why Takumi decided to become a doctor—not to take over his family business but to become someone capable of helping her. To put it in another, less flattering way, one could say Takumi was such an awkward man that it took years of preparation for him just to approach a girl eight years his junior.
He believed that the two of them were always connected through the starry sky. Most people feared the sky during the war because they never knew when the next air raid might occur, but she alone would gaze at the stars and call them beautiful, smiling as she expressed the hope that everyone else could appreciate their beauty someday.
That smile of hers was probably what Takumi first fell in love with. He believed he could overcome any hardship if it meant she would smile for him again.
“…-chan. I’m sorry I took so long.”
The first thing he did after becoming a doctor was go meet her. Softly, he patted her head. She was thinner now that she’d been passed between the homes of relatives for a while, and her eyes were hollow and devoid of hope. But he wasn’t powerless anymore. He now had what it took to help her.
“Was that a bit confusing? I’m saying I love you. I want you to be my other half.”
He told her that he had always loved her and he wanted to introduce her to his parents as his fiancée. Out of embarrassment, he couldn’t help but sheepishly add that he felt like he owed her parents and wanted to return their favor—something he probably would’ve been better off not saying at all. But at least he managed to tell her the full extent of his feelings.
She was greatly surprised by what he had to say, which was understandable. It had taken him a long time to come to her, so he wouldn’t have been surprised if she turned him down. But he staked everything on the small chance she would have him anyway and visited her almost daily to ask her to come to Yamagata with him.
No matter how many times he told her his feelings, she always flatly replied that she wasn’t a fitting match. He became dejected, but his desire to help her didn’t change. So he came to a decision: He would make one last attempt, and if she rejected him once more, then he would give up and support her as a mere friend.
“…Why are you going so far for me?”
“Like I’ve said, it’s because I love you. But the last thing I’d want is to trouble you. If you happen to hate me, then…”
“No. I could never…never hate you…”
Tears suddenly began to fall from her eyes. As she cried, she finally showed him that smile he had been waiting for.
“I know I’ve turned you down so many times already, but is it not too late for me to change my mind and come with you?”
Her soft, gentle voice brought back memories of the days when she was younger and treated him like an older brother. Overcome with joy, he hugged her. His action flustered her, but he held her tight as though it meant he would never lose her again.
That was probably the happiest day of his life. Seeing her smile again was all he needed to be happy, and yet he lost that happiness all too soon.
“She’s…gone?”
He proposed to her once more on her eighteenth birthday, but she disappeared without giving him an answer.
Somberly, his father told him she’d chosen to leave. Takumi didn’t understand what he was saying at first, but his father’s grim expression cooled his head and made the words gradually settle in. She had left him.
It dawned on him that she must have hated him enough to run away. He felt plunged into darkness.
He knew she didn’t love him romantically at first, but they’d spent much time together since then. When they looked up at the stars and their fingers brushed, she would blush. The way she called his name turned endearing at some point, and the eyes with which she looked at him had become warm and moist. His waiting hadn’t been in vain. She had come to love him as a man—or so he had believed. In the end, he was mistaken.
He felt as though the ground had disappeared beneath his feet. Everything he’d believed in was a lie. She had smiled so happily when he gave her that bottle of star sand, saying she would treasure it. But that smile hadn’t been real.
And so the two became separated.
Eventually, he followed whatever lead on her he could find and, knowing he was simply pursuing a dead love, set foot in the Dove District.