THE NEXT DAY, I made plans to meet up with Ryo and Aoi at a diner not far from the station. Luckily, they were both able to make it despite the short notice.
Aoi who showed up first. “Long time no see, Tomoya-kun,” she said, walking over to the table.
“Hey,” I said, lifting one hand to greet her. “Yeah, guess it’s been a while… Doesn’t feel all that long though, since we’ve been messaging back and forth every day.”
“You don’t have cram school today?”
“Figured I could afford to skip out for once,” I replied.
Aoi ordered a fountain drink, and then went and got herself a melon soda. She took a few sips as we made idle chitchat until Ryo walked through the door. He quickly spotted our table, walked over, and took a seat next to Aoi. He immediately took off his hat and started fanning himself with it. The summer swelter was brutal today and you could practically feel each individual ray of sunlight piercing your skin.
Today, though, Ryo seemed awfully haggard and pale. I wondered to myself if his already poor bill of health made the heat that much more unbearable. I went over to the drink counter and poured an iced coffee for him.
“Sorry for calling you here on such short notice,” I said. “Hope I didn’t put you guys out too much.”
“It’s cool, dude,” said Ryo. “Had to go to the hospital this morning anyway, so I was already out and about.”
“Everything okay?” Aoi asked him.
“Honestly, I’m not doing super. Still just delaying the inevitable with meds, basically,” he answered, then turned to face me. “Anyway, Tomoya—what’d you wanna talk about?”
“Well, there’s something I think you guys deserve to know,” I began. “Basically, I went back to the abandoned airfield last night, and…”
I told them all about my experience the previous evening—how I summoned the Summer Ghost once again using a sparkler, and how she divorced my soul from my body and took me on a flight through the night sky. I had to admit it all sounded rather fantastical, so I was a little worried they might think I hallucinated the whole thing.
Skepticism was painted all across Ryo’s face. “You two went flying together? You’re kidding me, right?”
“I believe it. I mean, if ghosts can fly, then it only makes sense that he could too, if she put him into soul form,” said Aoi. She seemed somewhat enthralled by the idea. “Wow… Now I’m almost excited to die, ha ha. I better hurry up and kill myself, huh?”
“C’mon, dude. Don’t say stuff like that,” said Ryo, less than amused.
“Flying was pretty fun though, I gotta say. But that’s not what I really called you guys here to talk about. You see, the thing is…Ayane-san can’t give us any advice when it comes to killing ourselves. Because, apparently, she didn’t commit suicide.”
And so I proceeded to tell them what Ayane told me the night before—about her death and how it really happened.
Shortly after our conversation on the radio tower, Ayane told me there was somewhere else she wanted to take me. And so we zipped over residential streets like shooting stars, eventually soaring up the hill to a particularly wealthy neighborhood that looked down over the whole city. Toward the center of this well-to-do community was a lot upon which an old, Victorian-style manor stood—and it was there that we made our landing. Moths had gathered around the softly glowing porch lights, which were fashioned in the style of antique lanterns.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“My old house,” said Ayane. “Though now it’s just my mom living here, all by herself. Come on in.”
And with that, she passed right through the front door and vanished. I followed her inside shortly thereafter and found myself in a hushed foyer. I could almost smell the aging hardwood of the sturdy pillars and carved handrail snaking its way along the stairs.
Light leaked in through the opened door of what appeared to be the living room. I poked my head inside and saw an older woman reclining on the sofa reading a book of some sort. She had an air about her that reminded me a lot of Ayane—and the two looked quite similar in the face as well. I could only presume that this was her mother. She was wearing rather subdued attire dyed in muted tones.
“She’s always reading at this hour,” said Ayane. “Even back when I was still living here, this was how she preferred to spend her evenings.”
Ayane loomed over her mother from behind the sofa—but the woman didn’t notice either of our presences. She kept her eyes trained on whatever line of text she was currently reading. There was a large picture frame hung on the wall—a photo of a younger Ayane, back when she was still alive. Given that the police still officially had her listed as a missing person, there was a good chance this poor woman still believed her daughter might be out there somewhere, still alive.
Ayane reached out and laid her ghostly hand gently on top of her mother’s. “She and I got into an argument that night, three years ago,” she said. “It wasn’t even worth getting upset about, looking back on it. We were just talking about what I was planning to do with myself after graduating from college. When the conversation took a turn that I didn’t like, I just ran out of the house in a huff.”
As she recounted this to me, she turned away from her mother and headed into the next room. I obediently followed suit.
“It was pretty stupid of me, honestly. I see that now in hindsight. But at the time, I guess I just let my emotions get the better of me, and I ran out into the wind and rain despite the fact that there was literally a typhoon coming in.”
She ascended the staircase, going by a small window from which a few scant rays of moonlight came trickling in. I followed her down the second-floor hallway, past some impressionist paintings and a number of wooden doors. Eventually, she stopped in front of one of them and invited me to enter, so I did.