“Oh boy, you made her cry.”
Before Mitsuki could make heads or tails of what was happening, the girl shinigami was standing in the room.
Her sidekick, the black cat, hopped onto the table beside the tropical fish tank. “Hey, Momo,” the cat called out to her. “Do these taste good?”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Mitsuki accosted them. “Hey, you! What did you come here for?”
“It’s not ‘hey, you.’ Call me ‘Momo,’ okay?”
That took him by surprise. “Huh?” Apparently, this shinigami had a name.
“I’m shinigami #A-100100. That reads as ‘hyaku’ and ‘hyaku.’ But it can also be read as ‘Momo.’
“Daniel,” she called. “Come on, that’s enough. Get over here.”
“All right.” Reluctantly, the cat bid farewell to the fish. He hopped down and leapt into Momo’s arms.
“Are that girl’s tears supposed to be payment for your death?” Momo asked.
“No,” Mitsuki answered. “Is it about me?”
“What is…?”
“If this wasn’t about me,” he said, “then I could have told Fujishima properly about whether I liked her or not…”
“Then why didn’t you just tell her you liked her?” the shinigami asked.
“How can I when I’m supposed to die soon?!” Mitsuki felt irritation welling up within him. But for the first time since she had begun appearing to him, her expression was serious. It was as if all the light humor she had been affecting up until then had just been an act.
“It’s not just you,” she stated. “So do your best.”
Mitsuki couldn’t understand what she was talking about. If it’s not just me, he asked himself, then what else is there? I am the one dying, nobody else.
Neither the little girl nor the black cat answered the questions raging through his mind. They simply disappeared.
✦ ✦ ✦
Yutaka was smiling again the next day. Or rather, she was doing her best to smile.
“After all, I like you, Asano. Yeah, that’s all. So it’s okay. Even if you don’t like me, even if you think nothing of me.” She smiled as she said it.
Mitsuki smiled too, even if it hurt a little to do so. His heart hurt too… just a bit.
Images flickered on the living room television set. It was past nine at night. A movie starring a popular musician was on TV. Mitsuki watched it absentmindedly. The audio barely registered in his ears, while the images flashed before his eyes and somehow made it to his brain.
On TV, the rock star was pretending to be sad. He was actually quite good at pretending to be sad.
Here I am, watching it all with a stupid look on my face.
On TV, the screenplay writer continued to tell straight-faced lies. He was bad at it.
And I am staring at it with a stupid look on my face.
Somehow, it was all very sad.
It seems I am going to die…
—and I am scared.
It seems.
✦ ✦ ✦
That night, Mitsuki swam in the water under the stars.
When they get tired of swimming, he asked himself, what do fish do? Where do they go?
They probably sank to the bottom and looked up at the distorted night sky.
The water’s surface reflected the moonlight, and Mitsuki floated on it. There was only silence, nothing else. No sound. This was probably how it was in outer space. Mitsuki floated on a transparent outer space. Everything appeared transparent. And within that space, he heard a voice from a long time ago.
“They say nightmares are the hardest to wake up from. Didn’t they say something like that on TV? So you wish upon a star, hoping the bleak-looking future is just a dream…”
The gentle voice belonged to Subaru. Her words were transparent as well and flowed straight into his heart.
Both of his parents, no doubt, had had high hopes for Subaru. And he had taken Subaru away from them.
I am the one who took her away.
Originally, Mitsuki had intended to bear the burden of their high hopes for his sister himself and go on. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t be like Subaru. In fact, he couldn’t even be himself. His destiny had already been decided. He wondered if it was all destined to be like this from the very beginning. Was this the only path he could walk?
Mitsuki floated in the water for awhile and then sank to the bottom of the pool. He reached up with his hands and then stopped. Trying to grab the moon, he reached up again. And again, he stopped.
He realized he wouldn’t be able to see this again, no matter how often he had looked upon it in the past. He couldn’t be somebody else.
“You’re you. Nobody else.”
The little girl’s words rang in his ears. And he reached his hands out, one last time. Then, it happened.
Somebody grabbed Mitsuki’s hand. With a firm hold, he was dragged from outer space and back into the world.
“Asano? Are you all right?!”
“…Why… Fujishima…?”
Yutaka was there, crying. “But… Asano, you didn’t come up to the surface at all! I thought you were dead!”
Her face was running with liquid—maybe it was pool water or tears or a mixture of both. She must have sensed Mitsuki would be there tonight and had come to the pool as well. She had watched him for a while and seen him sink. She had waited for him to surface, but the minutes had ticked by, and still he wouldn’t come up.
Yutaka must have become frightened and jumped into the pool to save Mitsuki. No matter how badly she hated going into the pool, she had leapt in to save him.
Her body was trembling, probably due to the cold, or perhaps from something else entirely.
“H-hey,” Mitsuki blurted out, “I thought you hated the water?!”
“No…” she answered. “It’s not that. That’s not it.” She shook her head, then drew a deep breath and said, “I was scared. That’s all. I thought you might die, and I got hopelessly scared. After all, I have nothing. Only you, Asano.”
She tried hard to smile as she spoke. “I’m so glad… Asano…”
She hugged him tightly. Locked in her embrace, Mitsuki felt tears began to flow from his eyes.
“Thanks…” he mumbled. What he actually wanted to do was laugh, but his emotions, his tears, wouldn’t obey orders from his brain.
“I…” he continued, “I guess I don’t really want to die. I-I suppressed my own self… I didn’t do the things I wanted to do… I wanted to take Subaru’s place… but I wasn’t good enough… But… but I want to live… I want to live! I want to stay alive. I want to stay here… I don’t want to die…”
He cried. He cried shamelessly, as if there was nothing else left for him to do. For the first time, he voiced what he had kept hidden within his heart. He spoke about the things he had become unable to see, the things he had lost, and the things he had gained in return.
In losing Subaru, he had gained a sense of loss. And so, to gain was to lose, and to lose was to gain something new.
He was definitely still here, in this precious place, together with her…