When the ambulance took Shiori to the nearest hospital, she was accompanied not only by the director, but by me and my dad as well. While the doctor was examining her, naturally, the two adults demanded an explanation from me.
“What in the world is going on, Koyomi? Use your words and tell us,” Dad said calmly, with no hint of anger. The director seemed normal too—on the outside, at least.
“…We were trying to run away to a parallel world.”
“Run away? Why?”
“Because you two are getting married,” I admitted honestly.
They looked at each other, their eyes wide in shock.
“So you were opposed to it? I thought you said you were fine with the director as your new mom!” my dad yelled.
“I am fine with that. It’s not about her… I just don’t want Shiori as my sister.”
“Why not? I thought you two liked each other a lot.”
“Yeah, and that’s why.”
Neither my dad nor the director seemed to grasp what I was getting at, so I was forced to spell it out for them.
“Once we’re siblings, we can’t get married. Duh.”
At that, Dad finally understood. “So you do have feelings for each other. When we asked you, you both denied it, so we thought…”
He must have meant that time I hit him. If I could have admitted it outright then and there, would things be different now?
“We were blind, Hidaka-kun. When they told us it wasn’t like that, we took them at their word, never realizing the truth… Yes, we were blind indeed,” the director repeated, shaking her head weakly. For some reason, I started to feel guilty.
“Well, Koyomi, to be clear, you’re wrong about one thing: Step-siblings can in fact get married.”
“…What?”
“It’s perfectly legal as long as you’re not related by blood, which the two of you obviously aren’t. No parallel worlds necessary.”
Excuse me? No one told me that! I’d thought all types of siblings were forbidden to marry. If I’d known that wasn’t the case, this never would have happened.
“So you’re saying…everything we did…”
“…It’s not your fault. You didn’t know any better. And it’s partly our fault for being insensitive to your feelings… Now tell us, Koyomi. What exactly did you two do in there?”
I was prepared to confess everything. It was now painfully clear that our childish plan was destined for failure from the very beginning. Thus, the best course of action was to be honest about every last detail so the adults could fix this.
“In order for us to be together, we needed you two not to get married. And if neither of you ever got divorced in the first place, you’d never need to marry each other. We wanted a parallel world that would fit the bill. So we climbed into the pod together…and we shifted.”
They exchanged another glance, and this time, they were frowning.
“You shifted? How? The machine is incomplete. It wasn’t even powered on!”
“I don’t know! Shiori and I just prayed to go to a world where you guys never got divorced, and it worked!” I yelled.
“You just prayed, and it worked? You shifted to a parallel world?”
“Yeah. That same method worked for me once before, actually.”
“…That time we found Shiori in the pod all those years ago?”
“Technically, it was right before that. Anyway, yeah, we repeated that same process, and…well, at the very least, I managed to shift. I made it to a world where you and Mom weren’t divorced, so I was gonna look for Shiori to see if she was there, but…then suddenly I was back here, and she was there in the pod with me, but…she wasn’t breathing…”
“What happened to her?”
“I don’t know… I swear…”
That was honestly everything I knew. I had no way of knowing what had happened to Shiori while I was in that other world. Neither the director nor my dad was angry with me, but truthfully, that only made it worse. Yell at me, damn it! Hit me! Tell me how to fix this!
The next day, Shiori was moved to Kyushu University Hospital. The director supposedly had a lot of connections there. She entrusted the ISRI to my dad and flew off to Fukuoka to be with her daughter. She wouldn’t let me tag along either; instead, she convinced me to stay home by assuring me she’d keep us posted. I obviously couldn’t say no to her.
True to her word, she updated us on the situation right away.
And that was how, through my dad, I found out that Shiori was brain-dead.
At the time, I didn’t know anything about the condition, but the implications of the term were more than enough to fill me with despair. Then, I heard that patients who experienced brain death were all but guaranteed never to wake up again.
That was the day my world lost its color. All at once, Shiori was gone, and so was my life’s meaning.
✦ ✦ ✦
After that, I trudged through life like an empty shell. I didn’t want to think about anything. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to think about. But it was painful to sit around at home alone, so I wandered around outside. I had no destination in mind—I was just unable to stay in one place.
As I found myself walking in the direction of the train station, my feet changed course to a spot I’d wanted to visit with Shiori during summer break.
Chuo-dori Avenue, the main arterial, ran north from the train station, and after a ten-minute walk, it intersected with Showa-dori Street running east and west. This was the biggest intersection in our whole city. The southwest corner boasted a patch of greenery and a bronze statue called the Leotard Girl.
As I waited there for the crosswalk light to turn green, however, I thought to myself, Why bother? Why not just walk into traffic while the light was still red? That way, I could see Shiori again.
Supposedly, her heart was still beating—or more accurately, it was forced to beat through the power of medical technology. So she wasn’t dead yet, technically. But at the same time, I was told there was basically a zero percent chance that she would ever wake up again. So what difference did it make? Either way, Shiori was no longer a part of my world…and I had directly contributed to that.
I took an experimental step toward the street. A horn honked loudly, and I jumped back on reflex. Nope. I didn’t even have the courage to die.
After a while, the cars stopped coming; the traffic light on Showa-dori Street had turned red. That being said, the other traffic lights didn’t automatically turn green as a result. To prevent accidents, there was a recurring point at which every light at this intersection was red at the same time.
But during that brief moment when no one was supposed to be on the street, out on the crosswalk that by all accounts should have been empty…I saw a fuzzy patch of space.
Was I just seeing things? No, it was real. Something—someone—was right there on the crosswalk.
That was when I saw her.
A girl my age, with long black hair cascading over her white dress, faded into view.
A girl I recognized.
“…Shiori…?”
At that, the translucent girl looked up suddenly.
“Koyomi-kun…”
Her voice seemed to echo in my head. I recognized it immediately.
“I’m sorry, but…I guess I’m a ghost now.”