Boom! Boom-boom!! Boom! Boom! Boom-boom!!
Fireworks continued to explode in the sky, as if laughing at my confusion.
I retraced my thoughts. If there really were rules to the wishing worlds, then maybe—just maybe—if the orb went back to the place it came from, things would go back to the beginning, like hitting the reset button on a game console. Maybe the orb’s return to the sea meant the wishing worlds were over, and we had been returned to the world as it was.
Splash! Splash!
A new sound came, joining those of the fireworks. Nazuna was cupping handfuls of seawater and throwing them against her face. She repeated the action over and over, like she was trying to wash some intangible thing away. Eventually, she stopped and turned toward me.
Her dripping face shone with the light of the fireworks. Her expression was mysterious. She seemed to be crying and laughing all at once. She spoke to me.
“…I guess this is where we say adieu.”
“Huh?”
For a moment, the word didn’t register. It was only because of the sorrow in her voice that I managed to parse the meaning.
My mind flashed with images of things that had happened in the “real world.”
I saw the words FIREWORKS DISPLAY written on the calendar hanging in the bathroom. I heard the voice of the weather girl. I saw the yolk of the egg resting on top of my bowl of curry. I was racing down the slope on my worn-out bike with the ocean breeze whipping past. Nazuna stood at the water’s edge with the glittering waves behind her. She was staring at my eyes in the classroom. She was lying along the edge of the pool in her swimsuit. The dragonfly rose from her breast and flew languidly into the sky. Nazuna’s hand held out the orb for me to see. I heard her voice. “You guys racing? I’m in.” The pool’s water cascaded in great splashes as the three of us dived in. Nazuna swam ahead. I saw her from behind. She turned and headed back my way, and her eyes… She wore no goggles, and her eyes were looking at me.
Nazuna had been watching me. Always, since long ago, she’d been watching me…
I felt a dull pain in my right foot. I lifted it up out of the ocean water and saw there was a wound on the ankle. Skin had torn away, leaving an exposed patch that was light pink.
We came back… We really came back…to the world we started at…
I looked up. Nazuna was…staring at me, smiling. But in her eyes I could see drops welling up that weren’t from the sea. It seemed they might come gushing out at any moment.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”
I hollered, throwing off my T-shirt and kicking off my shoes. Without any idea of what had come over me, I found myself running into the water toward Nazuna.
Nazuna seemed taken aback by my abrupt cry. When I closed in, I tried to throw my arms around her in a great, big hug, but I stumbled when the sand dropped away beneath my feet more quickly than I’d expected. I ended up slamming into her and pushing us both underwater.
It would have been pitch-black under the surface had it not been for the shimmering fireworks blooming high above. The spray of sparks dancing through the sky blended in with the sight of the bubbles all around us. It felt like we were swimming among the fireworks themselves.
Everything moved in slow motion in this private world for Nazuna and me. Our bodies drifted about through the underwater fireworks. Nazuna reached forward and clasped both my hands. She slipped her fingers between mine and looked into my eyes.
I held mine open wide and stared back. I was seeing her face clearly under the water, without any goggles.
Her smiling face slowly drew near.
Her eyes closed, she pulled herself even closer, and then…she pressed her lips against mine.
“!!”
It was like I’d blown a fuse from her bold, unexpected action…the first kiss of my entire life! My first, instantaneous thought was about the sensation of her lips; they felt soft and squishy, like the yolk of a raw egg. But the thought had hardly registered before the panicked realization I’d just had—that I was having my first kiss, and suddenly I was dangerously low on air. I broke away from Nazuna’s lips and pulled myself up to the surface, desperate for breath.
I stuck my head straight up toward the sky and opened my mouth to pull in a big lungful of fresh air. A joyous, round explosion filled the sky in greeting.
Turns out fireworks are round from below…and round if you see them from the side, too…
It was something I’d probably known all along. Perhaps at that moment, up on the top of Moshimo Lighthouse, Yusuke and the others were seeing that same firework from the side and having the same realization.
The thought prompted me to turn in the direction of the lighthouse. Just then, Nazuna surfaced within my field of view. Embarrassed, I looked away.
Even though she’d been the one to instigate the kiss, I didn’t have any idea how I was supposed to look at her or act around her now that it had happened.
“Wow! It’s gorgeous!!”
Nazuna paid my hesitation no mind. She nimbly pivoted in the water so that she was now floating on her back, taking in the whole of the fireworks display.
Everything from her shoulders down sank gently into the water. Only her face remained above the surface.
“It’s wonderful… It’s like we’re floating among the fireworks themselves…”
Nazuna’s murmur echoed the thought I’d had under the water. My mind eased. I relaxed, floating on my back like her, and entrusted my body to the sea. The movement of the waves naturally carried the two of us near each other.
The night sky continued to fill with round firework explosions, but it seemed natural to me that they wouldn’t last forever.
In another ten or twenty minutes, the show would be over. The people on the beach would head back to their houses. Yusuke and the others—probably at the lighthouse at that moment—would go home, too.
Even Nazuna and I would have to.
For two thirteen-year-olds like us, there was no other place to go back to.
Other worlds to escape to, like the ones we’d been to that day, didn’t really exist.
“Hey, Norimichi.”
Nazuna spoke to me, still looking up at the fireworks in the night sky.
“Hmm?”
I wanted to turn my head toward her, but I knew I’d get seawater in my nose and mouth. So I continued looking up like she did.
“I wonder what kind of world it will be, where we see each other next.”
“…”
“I’ll be looking forward to it.”
With those words, Nazuna tilted herself onto her side and began slowly swimming back to shore. Her receding figure blended in with the light of the fireworks reflected off the waves. It was such a beautiful sight—all I could do was watch.
Or perhaps I felt as if there was nothing I could say that would change that image of Nazuna swimming away.
Nazuna was headed toward the one and only true world, where there were no “do-overs,” “what-ifs,” or “if onlys,” and she was going there at a calm and steady pace.
✦ ✦ ✦
If… If only I was able to see Nazuna again… No matter what kind of world we were in when it happened, I’d let her know how I really felt.
Calling out just like I had each time the wishing orb was thrown, I shouted…