They stopped by a store to buy four curry buns. Their order cleared out the store’s stock.
They’d followed the monorail all the way to Nishi-Kamakura Station, but now they turned south and headed to the coast.
At Koshigoe, they turned onto Route 134 and drove along with the ocean on their right. They got pretty close to Kamakura, then turned back, like they wanted a second helping of that view.
Currently, they were in the parking lot at Shichirigahama.
Sakuta and Miori were out of the car, walking along the beach.
They were enjoying their curry buns.
“Watch out for kites.”
Three birds of prey wheeled overhead. There was a distinct possibility those birds were aiming to swipe their food.
“The surf’s pretty loud,” Miori said.
It was unusually powerful. Enough to drown out anything said softly.
Enoshima was on their right.
On a clear day, they’d have seen Mount Fuji in the distance.
But today was cloudy, so there was no sign of it.
Fortunately, the recent rain had stopped.
Sakuta focused on getting the curry bun in his belly before the kites won. He’d bought some bottled tea with it and took a sip, then stared off at the horizon three miles away.
At last he spoke.
“When I was in my third year of junior high, my sister—she’s two years younger than me—was targeted by some bullies. She wound up developing Adolescence Syndrome.”
Miori was walking two, three steps away. She glanced his way.
“Her classmates’ words cut into her skin like knives. Her Adolescence Syndrome drew actual blood, or left bruises… No one believed me. Not her teachers, not her classmates, no one.”
“……”
Miori said nothing. But kept her eyes on him.
“I didn’t want anything to do with those assholes. I came down here and threw my phone into the ocean.”
His voice was raised a bit, fighting with the wind and surf.
“You really shouldn’t throw your trash in the water.”
“Mai said the roughly same thing. ‘You should really use a trash can.’”
A lot of time had passed since then.
“Should I assume you got rid of your phone because you think your text caused Touko Kirishima’s accident?” Sakuta asked.
“No,” she snapped.
“Then why?”
“Because everyone at school knew how close we were. They kept hounding me with texts. ‘Are you okay?’ ‘Cheer up!’ ‘I’m here for you.’ I got sick of it and ditched my phone.”
“That’s very you.”
“I know,” Miori said, satisfied.
“If the guys were worried about you, that would make some girls jealous.”
“I am that bitch.”
She acknowledged his point and laughed at herself. She often smiled in a way that seemed slightly uneasy.
“So, Mitou.”
“Mm-hmm?”
“You asked me the other day if I’d ever killed anyone.”
“And?”
“I have.”
“Call the police!”
“My second year of high school, on December twenty-fourth…I was supposed to die.”
“……?”
Miori turned to look at him, a faint gleam of interest in her eyes. He could tell that he had her attention now, so he pressed on.
“A car slipped on the ice at the crossing by Enoshima and should have run me over.”
“……”
“When I failed to wake up, my heart would have been transplanted into a junior high school girl.”
“Then am I talking to a ghost right now?”
Miori laughed at her own question. It clearly wasn’t true.
“We changed the future. With Adolescence Syndrome. Redid things to arrive at a new possibility.”
“……”
Sakuta looked her right in the eye. He wanted Miori to know he was telling the truth. She had to believe him.
Miori held his gaze. She blinked several times. It took her time to chew this over. He could tell she was.
“What happened to the girl who should have received your heart?”
Her first question got right to the crux of the matter.
“She found a different donor and is doing just fine.”
“Ah,” Miori murmured, nodding. “And her donor was Touko,” she added, half to herself.
“Mm,” Sakuta said. He nodded, slowly and emphatically. “So it might be my fault Touko Kirishima died.”
“……”
Sakuta met Miori’s gaze head-on.
He forgot to blink.
Neither moved. It was like time had stopped.
The silence lasted less than ten seconds.
But it felt like an eternity.
Eventually, Miori’s gaze dropped a bit.
“Is this a story about you pulling another do-over and saving Touko?” she asked, her voice flat. No hopes, no expectations. There was simply a serious expression on her face, which made her teardrop mole stand out.
“I’ve been told that’s not in the cards. We can go back from the future to the present, but not from the present to the past.”
That alone would hardly explain it. And he was sure it wouldn’t be very convincing.
But for some reason, he was sure the only thing Miori needed to hear was the conclusion.
She didn’t need the theory or the logic, just the facts.
“Then why tell me at all?”
There was no trace of disappointment. Just getting to the point.
Verifying Sakuta’s motives. Her eyes on him again.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Is it?”
“You can’t be friends if you’re keeping secrets.”
“I’m pretty sure I made my intentions clear the other day.”
Miori picked up a little shell from the beach. Half a bivalve. She played with it in her hand.
“When Touko died, I wasn’t the least bit sad,” she muttered. “Didn’t cry at all.”
“……”
Even now, there were no tears. Her voice wasn’t choked up.
“I was like, ‘She’s dead? What the hell?’”
She was the same old Miori.
“I went to the funeral, then I went to class without her, and it didn’t feel real. Part of me expected to see her again the next day.”
It sounded as though she still felt that way.
“But you never did.”
“Yeah. And the next Christmas rolled around. By that point, no one was talking about Touko anymore.”
“……”
“So I thought I should sing the songs Touko left behind. She’d wanted me to sing them. I uploaded the first song on the anniversary of her death.”
December 24. Christmas Eve.
“It did shockingly well,” Miori said, placing the shell at the edge of the surf. “And I had more songs by her.”
On the wet sand, the shell was soon grabbed by the waves and washed away. Off to somewhere else. Like how Touko had left her.
“I put them out there, one at a time.”
Miori’s eyes were on the ocean.
“So many people said, ‘I love Touko Kirishima.’”
On the horizon.
“They talked about ‘Touko Kirishima.’”
Sakuta felt like Miori’s words were directed at nobody.
“But that wasn’t the Touko I wanted to see.”
“……”
“No matter how many songs I sang, it didn’t bring her to me.”
“Is that why you stopped?”
“I also ran out of songs. I put the last one out on Christmas Eve, a year after I started.”
“And yet Touko Kirishima songs kept showing up.”
“I really didn’t see that coming.”
Multiple people started claiming to be Touko Kirishima, singing as her.
Miori mustered a guilty smile.
But it soon gave way to her usual one, her eyes on the horizon again.
“Azusagawa.”
“What?”
“Do you still want to be friends with a heartless girl who doesn’t shed a tear over a friend’s death?”
“I do.”
“Really?”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
Miori turned to face him. His face was reflected in her eyes.
“I might have caused your friend’s death,” he said. “Does that rule out us being friends?”
“……What do I even want?”
It was an evasive response. Her eyes fled to the water. A very Miori way to avoid the issue.
But it also felt genuine.
The ocean surface wasn’t gleaming, but she squinted at it anyway. As if searching for the shape of her own emotions.
If she really was just trying to brush him off, she’d have found a more effective means.
“I just want to see Touko again.”
Her voice was so soft the wind and surf nearly drowned it out.
And again, it sounded like she was speaking from the heart.
“Is that why you rewrote reality, Mitou?”
“……Around the time I stopped singing, I started waking up in the morning and found things a little bit different.”
“……”
“The curtains would be a lighter shade of blue. My favorite cat mug would have a dog on the side instead. I’d have a different teacher.”
“Was that what you wanted?”
She neither nodded nor shook her head.
Instead…
“If reality’s being rewritten, I wanted one where Touko was still alive. Too bad, I guess.”
Her tone never changed.
“Why the past tense? Don’t you still want that?”
“My reality stopped being rewritten a while back.”
“When…?”
“Last fall. When I met you at that core curriculum party, Azusagawa.”
“……”
He had not expected his name to come up here, and he blinked at her, visibly confused.
Miori clearly appreciated that reaction.
“What did you do to me?” she asked.
“You sound sure I’m the cause.”
“It was my first time meeting an Azusagawa without a phone.”
“Sounds like you met a lot of other me’s.”
“I did. An Azusagawa who wore glasses, one who was in med school—one was super slick. I was curious about Mai’s boyfriend, so I went up to you each time reality was rewritten. I must have met at least fifty versions.”
“Did any of them become your friend?”
“Not a single one.”
“Then I’m gonna be the first. What an honor.”
“If that happens.” Miori made it sound like she was just a bystander. They were hollow, empty words. “So there you have it, Azusagawa.”
“Have what?”
“Any way you can arrange it so I can find a reality where Touko’s alive?”
“In return, will you come forward as the real Touko Kirishima?”
“Should we pinkie promise?”
She held up her little finger.
“Nah. I trust you,” he said.
“Oh, you are obnoxious!” she said, laughing merrily.
Still smiling, she said, “I’ve got a shift, so I’d better go.”
She waved goodbye.
“We’ve got the car. I’ll drop you off.”
“I work right there.”
“Right where?”
“The café by the parking lot.”
Miori turned her back on the water and walked away. She went up the stairs by the breakwater. Sakuta silently watched her go.
They each followed their own line. Their paths led them straight ahead, never crossing. That was the current state of their relationship.