“Hello, Wataya!”
As I watched him at work, he caught sight of me. After thanking the people he’d been photographing, he ran over to me.
“You don’t have to run.”
“I was happy to see you.”
“I swear you—”
As we talked, I noticed something. I brought my hand to my cheek.
“What is it, Wataya? Did I say something funny?”
I shook my head, still smiling as I reassured him that it was nothing.
The day I had tea in Tokyo with Tooru’s sister, she’d told me something at the end of our conversation.
“By the way, back when Tooru was alive…”
Before she received the Akutagawa Prize, she and Tooru met by chance at the bookstore where she was doing a signing. It was the day Tooru had planned to go to the aquarium with me and Maori, but instead he went to talk with his sister and asked me to explain his absence to her. His sister said that was when he told her he had found someone he liked, a girl named Maori. When she told him to treat her the best he could, he said, “I will. And I won’t just treat her well. I’ll do everything I can to be that kind of person.”
To be that kind of person…
I couldn’t help feeling deeply impressed. Tooru really had been just that. Just about anyone can temporarily treat another person kindly. But life goes on. Things happen that prevent us from treasuring the things we had thought we wanted to value. Everything keeps moving forward, with such miserable, merciless inevitability that it makes you sad. Yet Tooru was not a temporary presence. He devoted his whole life to treating Maori well. He became that kind of person. Maybe that was why he asked me to erase him from her mind if anything happened to him.
As I thought back on it as a university student, I felt that I, too, wanted to be like that. Would I be able to, though? Could I value someone that much, treat them that well? Could I find someone other than Tooru to be that way with?
…Maybe I had already found them.
Summer changed to fall, and I still hadn’t given Naruse a clear answer. One day as I was sitting on a bench on campus between interviews for a postgraduation job, he walked up to me.
“Hello, Wataya,” he said. As usual, he had found me in a spot that people rarely frequented and come to say hello. He asked if he could sit down next to me, and I nodded. We chatted for a few minutes, then looked up at the sky together.
“People in your year are starting to get serious about finding jobs, right?”
“You’ll be doing the same before you know it. What’s your plan? Will you pursue photography?”
“Instead of that, I think I want to do something behind the scenes to support photographers. I feel like that would be a better fit.”
Despite the prize, he didn’t seem interested in becoming a professional. He said he was continuing to take photos as a hobby, and he told me about his mentor, Sakurai. I’d heard him talk about Sakurai before. He seemed like an eccentric person, but a nice one.
“I bet from your perspective, everyone seems like a good person,” I said.
“Maybe you’re right. I’m a happy-go-lucky guy.”
He smiled. As usual, his camera was around his neck. I looked at it silently. It wasn’t so much that I momentarily forgot my doubts and reticence but that they didn’t exist anymore.
“Hey, how about taking my picture with that?” I said. He was dumbfounded.
“What? No, I couldn’t!”
“Why not?”
“…Okay, fine.”
He took pictures of his friends all the time, but he’d never tried to take one of me. I’d never asked him to. He stood up from the bench, looking a little nervous. He walked around, searching for the right angle and finally, with a serious expression, held the camera to his eye.
“Tell me before you take it, okay?”
“Oh, okay. So…I’m gonna take it.”
The next instant, I heard the sound of the shutter. I opened up to him. There in a place where I felt safe, I smiled from the bottom of my heart.
When he was done taking pictures, he looked dazed. He checked the photos, then looked up at me in surprise. I stood and walked over to him. “It’s chilly, isn’t it?” I said, and took his hand.
More than a year earlier, when we went on a date at the aquarium, we had held hands, and I thought his had felt frail. But now it felt big and rough.
“By the way, I’ll go out with you,” I said quietly. He widened his eyes slightly. “But I have one condition.”
I gave him a teasing look, and he grinned. “And what is it?” he asked.
“You can fall in love with me because I’ll fall in love with you. I’m already starting to. But in exchange, you have to promise me one thing.”
I smiled at him as I remembered all the people I had parted with and met in my life.
“You absolutely must live longer than me.”
The smile vanished from his face, and as if he took a deep breath, his expression grew serious. I turned toward him and tried to continue, but I was shaking. I made myself open my mouth.
“I know full well that it’s enough for someone to live on in my heart. But, and maybe this sounds obvious, if they’re alive, it’s even better. It’s much more joyful. So I’m begging you. Please don’t die before me. Let me treasure you for a long, long time.”