“Suzume—”
A soft, kind voice is calling my name. Cool fingers stroke my cheeks. I open my eyes and see Souta looking down worriedly at me.
“Souta…”
I sit up in the grass. Souta takes off his long white overshirt and wraps it gently around my shoulders. I belatedly realize my school uniform is a torn-up mess.
“We…”
“We fell to the ground along with the worm when it turned back into earth. Are you hurt?”
Nothing hurts, and I can move. “No,” I say, and I slowly stand.
A yellow chair is mixed in among plastic bottles, empty cans, pieces of wood, and plastic toys. I squat in the meadow and pick up the familiar chair. There’s no doubt about it—it’s the kiddie chair my mother made for me, with two eyes carved into its backrest. I flip it over and see that one leg is missing, just like I knew it would be. But something about it is different. It’s new, I eventually realize. From the chip on the seat to the bright-yellow paint, it’s much newer than I remember. It has the vitality of something just made, as vivid as a fresh wound.
“It was washed away in the tsunami that day,” I mumble to myself. “And I found it here…”
I take another look around. Like junk washed ashore from a distant land, all sorts of little things are spread in a line on the grass. Each one is like a letter from somewhere far away, linking one person to another.
“Suzume!” Souta says in surprise, a short distance away. “Someone’s here!”
“What?!”
I follow his gaze. The full moon hangs in the dawn over the ridge of a faraway hill. A small form is walking slowly toward it.
“A child…?”
“I—I have to go!” I say, overwhelmed with excitement and confusion.
Unable to wait a second longer, I start running, the chair still in my hands.
“Suzume?”
“Sorry, be right back!”
Souta doesn’t ask any questions. He just stands where he is and watches me go.
Overhead, the stars are gleaming.
It’s like someone has mistakenly cranked up the luminosity to ten times the usual, until the starry sky is absurdly bright. Below this sky where stars, white clouds, and an evening sun all coexist, I stride through the grass toward the child in the distance, desperately trying to hold back my tears.
Ah, I think. I finally understand.
I didn’t want to know. And yet I always wanted to know.
I had always thought the woman was my mother. Somewhere in my heart, I believed I would see her again one day. At the same time, I knew I never would. The wind in the meadow is cold, and my breath is white. The white overshirt Souta wrapped around me was too big, so I cinched it around my waist with the red ribbon from my uniform, making it look like a dress. On my feet are Souta’s black work boots I put on in Tokyo. My straight hair falls below my shoulders. I hadn’t realized it had grown as long as my mother’s was back then.
Ahead of me, I see a small form hunched in the grass. I set the chair down softly, walk up to the girl in her muddy down jacket, and whisper:
“Suzume.”
The little girl, who is exhausted from walking and searching and is deep in despair, turns slowly toward me. She is my four-year-old self. She wandered through a Gate while searching for her mother and got lost in Ever-After. She looks up at me in surprise. Her eyes are filled with worry and hope at having finally found the way out of a long nightmare. I don’t know what expression I wear for her, but I force myself to smile because I want to lessen her sorrow as much as I can.
“…Mom?” she asks. I hesitate. I am painfully aware of the word she wants to hear. But—
“No,” I say, shaking my head. I watch helplessly as her eyes fill with tears. But she doesn’t cry.
“Do you know her?” she asks insistently, her frozen little hands folded in front of her stomach and her posture as straight as it can be. “My mom is looking for me, and I think she’s really worried, so I have to find her soon!”
“Suzume—”
“She works at the hospital. She’s good at cooking and building things, and she always makes me whatever I like—”
“Suzume, I—”
“My house…!”
It’s no good. Tears are already falling from her eyes. She sniffles and frantically goes on talking.
“My house is gone… So my mom doesn’t know where I am, and—”
“Enough!”
I can’t listen any longer. I drop to my knees in the grass and grab her arms.
“I already know…!” I say to both my selves.
“What do you mean?! My mom is here somewhere! I told you—she’s looking for me!”
“Suzume!”
The girl twists out of my hands and runs away. As she runs, she screams at the sky, “Mom, where are you? Mom!”
“Aah!”
I reflexively reach toward her. She falls forward, hard. But she sits up right away in the grass.
“Mooom!”
She is sobbing violently, like she’s accusing me and her mom and the whole world. She keeps crying, wringing the tears from her whole body, like she’s going to throw up. Beyond her shaking form, the red sun of Ever-After is about to set. The sunset is as crimson and heavy as blood, like it’s reflecting her despair. It begins to blur. I’m crying, too.
“Mom…,” I say, and now I can’t stop crying. The pain of the little girl sobbing before me is my own pain. The two are identical. Her despair and loneliness, her suffocating sorrow and burning fury—all of it is still inside me, as powerful as ever. I cry like I’m going to throw up. We sit in the grass and sob.
…But.
As I listen to the sobs that threaten to break her apart, something occurs to me. This isn’t working. I can’t go on like this. I have to stop crying. She and I are different. I’m still weak, but at the very least, I’ve lived twelve years since that day. I’ve lived. Suzume is all alone, but I’m not alone anymore. If I don’t do something, she truly will be all alone in the world. She won’t be able to go on living.
I look up. In the corner of my vision, I see something yellow. I push my tears away with the back of my hand, pick up the kiddie chair, and run over to Suzume, who’s still sobbing.
“Suzume—”
I set the chair down next to her and squat beside it.
“Look at this!”
“Huh?”
She blinks with surprise, tears still pouring from her eyes.
“This is my chair… Why is it here?”
She looks up at me, puzzled.
“…How do I explain this?” I say, smiling as I search for the right words. The sun is below the clouds now, and the world is tinted a translucent ultramarine.
“Listen, Suzume, no matter how sad you are right now—”
I can only tell her the truth. The plain and simple truth.
“You’re going to grow up.”
A strong wind blows the tears off our cheeks. The sky is getting darker, and the stars are shining brighter.
“So don’t worry. The future isn’t scary!”
Her eyes reflect the stars. Praying that my words reach as deep as those points of light, I make my voice more forceful and turn my mouth up in a smile.
“Suzume, you will love people again, and you will meet lots of people who love you, too. You might think everything is pitch-black right now, but morning will come, I promise.”
The stars are spinning overhead as I watch, like time has sped up.
“Morning will come, and night will come again, over and over. You will grow into an adult in the light. No matter what happens in the future, no one can stop you.”
Shooting stars streak across the sky, and finally, the other side of the meadow begins to turn pink. It’s morning. I watch as the dawning sun lights her up, and I say again, “You will grow into an adult in the light.”
I pick up the chair and stand. She looks up at me and asks in a puzzled voice, “Who are you?”
“Me?” I ask.
A warm breeze blows, lifting the plants at our feet so they dance around us. I lean over and hold out the yellow chair to her.
“I’m your tomorrow.”
Her little hands grasp the chair firmly.
There’s a door in front of the little girl.
Holding the chair under one arm, she uses the other to turn the knob and open the door.
On the other side is an ash-colored world. The sun hasn’t risen, and it’s dim out, with fine snow falling. Fresh rubble forms looming black silhouettes all around her. The March landscape on the other side of the door is filled with sorrow yet to be consoled.
Before she steps across the threshold, the girl glances behind her.
On top of a hill in the distance, she sees two grown-ups. One is a tall man, and the other is a woman whose dress is blowing in the wind. They are staring straight at her. They are as beautiful as a picture, standing among swaying grass and lit up by the Milky Way. The image is seared forever in the little girl’s memory.
She turns around and steps confidently through the door. Clasping the yellow chair tightly, she returns to the ashen world. Then she shuts the door firmly with her small hand.
“—I’d forgotten,” I murmur, still holding the knob of the door I’ve just shut, which is propped against the stone wall. “I was given everything important a long time ago.”
Souta, who’s standing next to me, smiles gently and nods. The sky is dyed the faint blue of predawn. Its color is much paler and calmer here than in Ever-After. But here, there are signs of life all around us. The morning birds are chirping busily. On a road far away, a truck drives leisurely off to work. I can hear waves breaking quietly on the other side of the seawall.
I take my hand off the knob and grip the Closer’s key around my neck. I put it into the keyhole glowing on the door. Then I fill my chest with morning air. It smells like plants and ocean and people’s lives all mixed together—the smell of a town in the morning. The smell of the world I’m going to live in.
“See you later,” I say as I lock my own Gate.