The answer I was hoping for may not come back. People might laugh and say it was like a dream. But still, I decided to try everything I could do now, just as I believed in myself when I was a half-spirit.
The school road lined with trees I visited was the same as in my memory.
At this time, students were walking in a line toward the high school. I, too, used to walk this path in my invisible form with Soejima-kun. Although I felt like a spirit, things were different. Even with a thin voice, I could talk to anyone.
“Um, excuse me!”
The female student I called out to shivered at my sudden appearance behind her.
“Do you… know someone named Hajime?”
“Huh? What?”
I was too nervous to speak properly. I took a deep breath and rephrased my question, “Do you know a person named Hajime Soejima in the second year?”
The female student tilted her head.
I asked the same question to many students, but all the answers were the same.
No one knew Soejima-kun, who was a prominent figure in school. My anxiety just deepened.
The students were looking at me, who was asking anyone, with suspicious eyes. I could hear some voices that seemed to be amused. Nevertheless, I continued to ask questions and found a male student who said he was in the second grade, first class.
With a suspicious expression at my question, the male student told me, “There’s no one like that in the class…”
Not long after, I was staring at the vacant lot.
Behind the school road lined with trees, the old man’s house I came to on foot was just a vacant lot, just as I saw when I escaped from the hospital.
I let out a sigh that became a white cloud in front of me. My heart grew colder in the face of reality that I had to accept. It was so cold that the hand I used to hold my coat tightly closed felt as if it were frozen.
It was just as my mother-in-law had predicted. The weather worsened, and it began to snow heavily.
I took out the folding umbrella from my bag and opened it.
The heavy snowflakes falling silently without any wind were beautiful.
The snow piling up in the vacant lot brought back scenes in my memory one after another.
The image of Soejima-kun, sitting next to me on the veranda, relaxed and smiling, vividly surfaced in my mind.
I couldn’t bear it anymore and looked down. It was when I tried to stop the rising emotions by gripping the umbrella tightly and closing my eyes tightly—a sharp pain shot through my head.
“I’ll give it to you.” I heard a voice of someone offering the navy-blue folding umbrella to me when I was in elementary school…
Surprised by that image suddenly resurfacing, I opened my eyes, and something quickly crossed before me. When I followed it with my eyes, it was a black cat with a sturdy body. It stopped a little distance away and looked at me as if to scrutinize me with its golden eyes.
“Fuyu?”
It was an adult cat. It couldn’t be the small kitten Fuyu. However, the red collar the black cat was wearing was exactly like Fuyu’s.
Am I seeing things?
When I tried to approach, the black cat ran down the road as if to escape. My umbrella fell from my hand as I tried to chase after it. The impact caused the frame to bend slightly.
The next moment, my thoughts froze as I looked at the inside of the umbrella.
A small star was drawn with a magic marker in the corner of the inside of the folding umbrella. I slowly turned my eyes from the umbrella to where the black cat had been.
The memory fragments that appeared in the back of the black cat running down the distant road overlap. Forgotten memories came back to life…
A crossing with an alarm ringing.
A train passing through, brushing off the snow.
A shadow covered me with my school bag on my back, and something obstructed the falling snow from the sky and me.
Looking up to confirm what that something was, there was a navy-blue folding umbrella.
“I’ll give it to you.”
A high school student in uniform offered me the folding umbrella.
He left me, who was taken aback, with the navy-blue folding umbrella as if forcing it on me, and then he hurriedly left.
Why did I forget? From that moment on, I have always wished to meet the person who gave me this umbrella again.
Still in a daze, I dropped my gaze to the coat I was wearing.
“I’ve never seen the uniform you’re wearing now.”
“If Yuu became a spirit right after the accident and met me… It’s strange to walk around outside in just a school uniform at this time of year. Even more so if it was raining.”
That’s right. The accident happened in the fall. Could it be possible for the seasons to change in an instant?
“I’ve been telling you this since you were little, right? You should write your name on your belongings. Have you been properly writing it big on your things?”
The black star mark I recognized was drawn in inconspicuous places on the back cover of a reference book, the corner of my indoor shoes, and a folding umbrella. Each interaction with Soejima-kun, which I traced from the bottom of my memory, suggested a possibility.
With a glimmer of hope, the cold winter wind swept through my cheeks.
I was running to a place in my memories. When I reached the cemetery on the hilltop with a beautiful view, I climbed a slope and searched for the old man’s grave.
I remembered the scene of Soejima-kun looking at engraving on the tombstone… “He would probably say the characters are too small.”
When I was a primary school student, the young man who gave me the folding umbrella in front of the railway line looked a lot like Soejima-kun I met as a half-spirit.
If that’s not a mistake, if the black cat with the red collar is the grown-up Fuyu, if the seasons changed in an instant, then the time I spent as a half-spirit was…
My heart was throbbing heavily. When I arrived at the cemetery, I checked the tombstones from end to end. After a while, I found a tombstone with the name “Soejima Family Tomb,” which was well taken care of and had fresh flowers on it. I could only hear the sound of my heart beating hard.
I approached the tombstone and confirmed the names and date of death engraved on the side, just as Soejima-kun did in my memories.
“Four years ago…”
Warmth shot up from within my chest.
On the side of the grave, the name of the old man and the date of his death four years ago were carved.
The me who had become a half-spirit had been here four years ago. Soejima-kun and I had definitely been there.
Wiping away the tears that welled up, I stomped on the ground and retraced my steps.
I ran down the slope to the station and checked the route to XX University. I was convinced that the university student who had come to visit me with the news article about the accident my sister talked about was Soejima-kun.
Soejima-kun exists. It wasn’t an illusion.
I ran. My breath became increasingly short, and my pulse quickened. The wind from running made my bangs, which hid my eyes, flutter.
The nearest station to the university where I arrived was filled with a lot of people. As I looked around for the exit to the university, I noticed a figure in the distance in the crowd through a gap in the passing people.
He looks like him…
I pushed through the crowd and chased after the figure. I didn’t know if the one I spot in the crowd was really Soejima-kun. I could have been mistaking him for someone else.
“Wait.”
The thin voice I let out was drowned out by the bustling people. I bumped into a person walking in front and got a scowl.
The distant figure I found was getting further and further away, and I couldn’t catch up.
I stood still in the crowd. The people passing by were avoiding me as if I were in the way. My figure was buried in the wave of people. I had always lived like a spirit, hiding my voice and presence. I had given up. I thought this was the way it would always be. How many times had I swallowed the words I wanted to say?
But Soejima-kun looked for me. He tried to find me. He made me notice the half of me I had forgotten. That I was not a spirit, that I was there…
I clenched my hands tightly, made up my mind, and took a deep breath.
“Wait! Soejima-kun!”
I screamed with all my might, as if throwing everything at him. The eyes of the passing people all at once stabbed at me. My face got hot as if it were on fire, but I didn’t look down.
The voice from my throat went through the crowd, and the figure I saw in the distance turned around. I was staring at him as if I were praying.