Chapter 1

I love the stars. My name is Tasuku Kuresawa, and I’ve always been entranced by the night sky—by the heavens so filled with specks of light that it feels like nothing else exists between them and human life here on Earth. I knew that one way or another, my future would inevitably revolve around those stars. My parents encouraged my interest, although they may have been a little worried about the way their son seemed totally obsessed. Still, they felt it was good to have an unwavering passion. However, despite my certainty, even my little world of a star-filled future could change. Near the end of the rainy season, in my third and final year of middle school, my class went on a trip, but one of our classmates couldn’t make it. I tagged along when our group went to visit her in the hospital and encountered a radiance as bright as any star. “Hee-hee! Nice to meet you, Kuresawa. I’m Yuki Fujimi. I guess it’s odd to say ‘nice to meet you,’ huh? We’ve been in class together for so long… Anyway, thanks for coming to see me.” Wow, she sure is cute! I thought. Our meeting felt like a bolt from the blue. It marked the beginning of my new life with her. “First-year students, please begin the procession into the gymnasium,” a teacher said. The words, accompanied by the static hiss from the mic, emerged from the open gym and drifted into the sky. The student at the head of the queue started forward, and we all filed into the gym in an untidy line. Unlike middle school graduation two weeks earlier, here at the high school entrance ceremony, I felt almost floaty, a mix of anticipation and anxiety mingling inside me. The fabric of my new uniform was still stiff, and I had a red artificial flower pinned to my chest. All of it seemed so novel. How could I not be jittery with excitement? A few minutes ago, we’d assembled in a classroom where we were given some handouts and told how the ceremony would go. I’d taken the opportunity to text my girlfriend a picture—a shot I’d snapped of the courtyard before we all went inside. You could practically hear the hubbub through the screen. My mind flitted back to her response: It really is all boys! Wish I could see a shot of you, Tasuku. Well, that put me in a tight spot. I guess her request was only natural, since we were dating and all, but I was still a little shy about selfies. I was going to meet my parents after the ceremony was over, and I was sure they’d want to take a commemorative photo. I could just send her that. I hoped she’d like it. Just last week, I started dating my girlfriend, Yuki. We’d been classmates in middle school. When I told her how I felt about her and asked her out on the day of the graduation ceremony—totally cliché, right?—her reaction was, well, less than ideal. She was often sick and was in and out of the hospital a lot, so I didn’t actually see her at school very much. I’d technically been in class with her for months, yet her name was all I’d known about her. If we’d passed each other on the street, I probably wouldn’t have recognized her. She was such a rare sight at school that even in our class photo at the beginning of the year, she was just a circle with a name in it. To me, she might as well have been made of thin air. She and I had been assigned to the same group for the class trip, but the teacher warned us that Yuki probably wouldn’t be able to come. We operated on that assumption as our group got ready to go. It hadn’t made much difference; we’d talked about what kind of souvenir we should bring her, but that was about it. I don’t remember who suggested we visit her in the hospital. It was someone in our group for the trip, but I don’t even know if it was a guy or girl. The idea, though, proved to be a momentous one: My life branched off in an entirely unprecedented direction from that point on. Yuki had thanked each of the group members, and she’d even remembered my name. “Thanks for coming to see me.” She’d said my name cautiously, as if trying to be sure she had it right. “Nice to meet you, Kuresawa.” That’s what she said. Her bashful tone tickled me. I guess the other members of my group had all talked to her at least once or twice before. Mine was the only name she was saying for the first time, the syllables new and unfamiliar on her tongue. The sound of it as she tried it out wouldn’t leave my mind. “Did you have fun on the trip, Kuresawa?” “Oh! The trip. Right. Yeah, I guess.” I had been so taken with her that I was hardly thinking about anything else. “You guess, my foot!” one of my buddies burst out. “We called you, like, fifteen times, and you still wouldn’t leave the planetarium!” “Do you like planetariums?” Yuki asked. “Uh-huh.” Here, she had been kind enough to ask about me, but I couldn’t seem to figure out where to go with it. I’d never had this much trouble talking to my other classmates. As I sputtered, the conversation had moved on without me. People started holding up phones to show off their photo galleries. Yuki didn’t seem completely comfortable, which I guess made sense for someone who was so rarely at school, but she still made an effort to talk to everybody. Even me, who couldn’t seem to say anything back. In the end, I’d found myself smitten with her smile, which looked nothing like I had imagined from a girl who was supposed to be frail with illness. I was bewitched by her hair—a deep black as dark as the cosmos—which rippled each time she responded politely to someone. When the sun peeked out from behind the rainy-season clouds, filtered through the hospital windows and lit upon her smile, it shone as radiant as Aldebaran, the brightest star in the Taurus constellation. Her eyes glimmered, lovely as a clear, starlit night, and swallowed me whole. She had a good head on her shoulders, she was cheerful, and, above all, she was cute! From that day forward, she was all I could think about. Even when I was thinking about the stars, my mind would wander to her every time. The seasons changed, and as the nights (when you could observe the stars in the sky!) got longer, my yearning for her grew keener. Aldebaran is especially visible in winter, so every night, when I looked up at the heavens, it was like I saw her smiling back at me. The problem was that she didn’t feel the same way. I was just someone who’d started tagging along to visit her in the hospital, and as far as she was concerned, we hardly had anything in common. As I listened to her chat with other friends, I discovered she was really into manga and TV dramas, but I didn’t read many manga and I didn’t watch much television, so it was hard for me to be a part of those conversations. My interest in the cosmos was obvious, but those talks threatened to go from conversations to lectures. Still, I figured talking about the stars was better than trying to BS my way through a discussion about something I knew nothing about, so I stuck to chatting about astronomy. It wouldn’t have been right to try to make myself the center of attention while she was talking to her friends, so I settled for dropping in little bits of information here and there, like about her star sign or mine. Or I would mention stars she’d likely be able to see out the window of her hospital room. As time went on, her attitude toward me softened; it no longer seemed to take the wind out of her sails to have me around while she and her friends were chatting. When she was talking about her favorite things, she had a strength and vivacity that could almost make you forget she was hospitalized. At least until visiting hours were over and reality came crashing down. “Oh… Is it that time already?” she said, and I knew the look of loneliness on her face would never have been there if we’d just been having a long chat after school. It would have been easy. She could have just called home and told them she would be a little late getting back. Or said, “All right, see you at school tomorrow!” But the fact was that she was in the hospital, and that meant there were limits on her fun. Most kids our age had enough problems just dealing with compulsory education. When I thought about how much harder it was for her, I could barely stand it. I wish she could smile more. I wanted to make her happy. Exactly because she had the strength of heart to stand on her own without even worrying about herself. The first thing I decided to do was bring her a present: a manga. I’d listened to her talk with her friends enough to have a pretty good idea of what she liked. It wouldn’t be too extravagant for a hospital-visit gift, and I could afford it with my allowance. If she didn’t like it, that would be good to know, too. I could ask her to tell me what she liked instead. So for the first time, I went to the hospital by myself, carrying the manga I’d settled on after much agonizing. “You’re alone today?” she asked, surprised. I nodded. “Do you like this one?” I asked and handed her the book. It was one that had just come out. “Are you a mind reader?!” she exclaimed, and the way she put her hands to her mouth was so unbearably cute, I couldn’t hold back a weird sound. I asked why she seemed so surprised. “Oh,” she said, “I thought I must have mentioned it…” Her shy smile was even cuter. It was the same expression she had when she talked with her friends, easy and relaxed. Even though it was just the two of us. It was enough to make me smile, too. “Do you like this series too, Kuresawa?” she asked. “Oh, uh, not really. I just thought you might enjoy it.” “Aw, I’m sorry to hear that. But it still makes me happy. Would you like to read it, Kuresawa?” “Sure. I’d love to know more about which series you like.” Her eyes sparkled at that, and I was thrilled. That was the look I’d hoped to see. A warm glow of happiness bubbled up within me as I listened diligently to her explain the appeal of her favorite manga. They had something to do with…guy friends? In love? I didn’t really get it. But I did think she looked adorable as she said, “It just gives you the warm fuzzies!” There wasn’t a cloud in the sky that night. It looked even more beautiful than usual. There was a constant risk of catching a cold in the winter, so a lot of the time I wasn’t able to visit Yuki even though we’d gotten to know each other a little better. Each time I did go, though, she thanked me for the gifts I brought her. The day she finally asked me “Will you tell me about the stars?” I was there until visiting hours ended and they had to kick me out, and my folks really tore into me when I got home. “When you visit someone in the hospital, they can’t just tell you to go away. Not even if you’re talking their ear off!” they said, and I took those words to heart. Although Yuki and I had more topics of conversation now, I was still just a classmate who came to visit her sometimes while she was ill. She had plenty of friends who were closer to her than I was. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d presumed a lot about what a girl who was sick in the hospital would be like. Worse, when she was released, I was swamped with studying for tests and only found out about it through the grapevine. I didn’t even know where she lived. That’s how it was for me. There was still such a distance between us. I knew that, but I still did it. I confessed and asked her to go out with me. “Why would you tell me that today? Is it because you won’t have to live with it if I shoot you down?” Her face was bright red. I was sure that due to radiative cooling—the loss of body heat—the chilly air must be virtually toxic to her. I knew the blush in her cheeks wasn’t because of my request—she looked at me not with joy or even embarrassment but with disbelief. “No, it’s because this graduation ceremony is the only time you’ve come to school recently. I never had a chance to ask you. I don’t know your address or your cell number. I heard you got out of the hospital, but you haven’t been to school once since then. Heck, you have a fever right now, don’t you?” “Yeah, a slight one… You’re right. I see what you mean!” She laughed aloud. I’d been expecting this, but it wasn’t a very promising reaction. I was annoyed to notice we were attracting stares. I guess a guy and a girl standing and talking to each other in the hallway while everybody else was busy taking pictures with their classmates stood out. I could feel their gazes prickling my skin. Her slim fingers gripped the tube containing her diploma. Her nails were perfectly shaped. That was just one of countless small details I noticed about her as I took a deep breath. I knew that if I didn’t do something, I would regret it, maybe forever. “I know you probably can’t answer me right this second,” I said. “I know we don’t know each other that well. I think all I’ve done by asking today is horrify you. But maybe you could give me a chance.”