I chose to visit her in the hospital. I chose the gifts to bring.
I chose to teach her what I had learned in class. I chose when to go home.
I chose to run from her best friend. I chose to watch her magic trick.
I chose to play truth or dare. I chose my question.
I chose not to run from her arms. I chose to get an explanation from her.
I chose to laugh with her. I chose to embrace her.
Again and again, at every point along the way, I made a choice.
I could have made different choices, and the ones I made were of my own free will and nothing else. My free will brought me here—as a changed person.
I came to a realization:
No one was a boat of reeds, not even me. We choose whether to flow with the currents or turn against them.
She had taught me that. Even though she would soon die, she looked more to the future than anyone else, and she took possession over her life. She loved the world, she loved its people, and she loved herself.
Again I had that thought.
You teach me so much that—
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
I just got home! I think I might be a little late. Sorry! 😊 I’ll wear something cute for you! 😊
I thought for a moment, then replied half-jokingly.
Congrats on escaping the hospital. I was just thinking of you.
Her reply came right away.
Are you trying to say something to make me happy? What’s wrong, are you sick? 😉
I waited a little bit before responding.
Unlike you, I’m healthy.
Meanie! You hurt my feelings. Now you have to make it up to me by saying something you like about me!
I can’t think of anything, but I don’t know if the problem is with me or with you.
100% you. Stop stalling.
I placed my cell phone on the table, crossed my arms, and thought. Something I liked about her… There were more than I could count. More than could fit in my phone’s memory.
I had truly learned so much from her. She taught me about things I’d never known.
Like texting back and forth. She showed me how much fun talking to another person could be, and how I could try to find things to say that would get an entertaining response from her.
The parts of her that were incredible—the things that gave her charm—had absolutely nothing to do with her shortened life. I was sure she had always been this person. Maybe her viewpoint had taken a slightly firmer shape, and her words took on more richness, but I believed who she was at her core would have been just the same if she was to die the next year or keep on living.
She was amazing just how she was. That in and of itself was amazing.
I was amazed every time she taught me something new. She was my direct opposite. She could easily declare and do things I was too cowardly and withdrawn to do myself.
I took my phone in my hand.
You’re truly an amazing person.
That’s what I’d been thinking for a long time. But I hadn’t been able to find the right words to neatly contain how I felt.
But then, when she taught me what living meant to her, I understood.
She completed my heart.
I…
I want to be you.
To be someone who could know other people, and who could be known.
To be someone who could love other people, and who could be loved.
I’d finally found words to fit how I felt, and they seemed to permeate my being. A smile came to my lips.
How did I become like you?
How can I become more like you?
A thought came to me—a vague recollection of a weird old saying that seemed to be made just for this purpose.
I searched my memory, found the phrase, and decided to send it to her.
I want to brew a potion from the dirt under your nails.
I determinedly typed those words but immediately deleted them. Something told me that an idiom wasn’t interesting enough. I thought there must be something else, something more appropriate, that I could say to make her happy.
As I thought it over once more, the words came to me from a corner of my memory—or maybe the center of it.
I felt elation at finding those words, along with more than a little pride.
There was no better message to send her than this.
Nothing else so perfectly summed up my being.
I…
I want to eat your pancreas.
I sent the message to her phone, placed mine back on the table, and waited excitedly for her reply. If I’d told myself just a few months ago I would be sitting here, impatiently waiting for anyone’s reply about anything, I wouldn’t have believed it. Well, the me of a few months ago made the choices that brought me here, so he had no right to complain.
I waited.
And I waited.
But her reply didn’t come.
Time passed, and my hunger grew.
When the clock ticked past the time we were to meet, I began looking forward to hearing her reply in person.
But like her reply, she didn’t come either.
For thirty minutes, I didn’t think anything of it.
After an hour or two, I grew restless with worry. How could I not?
After three hours, I tried calling her. She didn’t answer.
After four hours, the sky was beginning to change color. I left the café; I knew something must have happened, but I didn’t know what. I felt an ill-defined fear but had no way of dispelling it. I texted her again and went home.
At home, I told myself her parents had probably forced her to do something else today. That was the only way I could shake my fear.
I was restless and uneasy. Later, I’d wish I could have frozen time and stayed that way.
“Later” came too quickly. I was sitting at the table and watching TV, picking disinterestedly at my dinner, as worry had replaced my appetite.
That’s when I learned why she hadn’t come.
She had lied.
I had lied, too.
She broke her word by not telling me when she would die.
I broke my word by not returning the book I’d borrowed and the money I owed her.
I would never be with her again.
The news was on.
My classmate, Yamauchi Sakura, had been discovered, collapsed in an alleyway in a residential area by a local resident.
After being found, she had been rushed by ambulance to a hospital, but despite the best efforts to resuscitate her, she passed away.
The newscaster reported these facts without any emotion.
My unused chopsticks slipped from my fingers and dropped to the floor.
When they found her, she had been stabbed by a common kitchen knife.
She had become another victim of the random killer from the neighboring prefecture.
The police quickly apprehended the murderer. He was nobody at all.