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10

The day after their fourth rehearsal, Ogami woke up past noon. He made coffee, heated up a stew from yesterday, and mechanically put them in his mouth. His body was sluggish all over. The sun went down while he lay down in front of the heater, and it was evening before he knew it. Every time they did a rehearsal, time seemed to accelerate. No, maybe it was more accurate to say his consciousness was slowing down. Either way, it was the same thing to Ogami. Time passing by quickly was desirable. Particularly now that he didn't have to worry about any practical life problems.

After 5 PM, he finally sat up, put on clothes, and got in the car for no reason. The navigation system asked his destination, but of course he had none. He couldn't even muster the will to go to the bathhouse. He considered going back to the room, but he wanted to make up for his squandered sleepiness somehow. In the end, he decided to drive around without thinking about anything.

As he focused on driving, he slowly started to wake up. At the same time, he didn't think a single extraneous thought. This must be why humanity loves cars so, Ogami mused. Their use as transportation is secondary. People get in cars because they don't want to think about anything. There's no need to even go over the speed limit; by putting yourself at speeds the human body wasn't made to account for, you can shove everything into a box of "that's neither here nor there."

After driving to the next town over, Ogami parked in front of a train station and walked for a while. He was starting to get hungry, so he searched for a restaurant, but couldn't find anything of the sort.

As he was about to give up and head back, a familiar store appeared before him. It was a brick building painted bright white, and only the door with a hanging "OPEN" sign was painted a refined color, hard to pin down as blue, green, or gray. In a town lined with sleepy houses, that refined shop stuck out like a sore thumb.

Ogami pushed open the door and entered the variety store. The wooden-floored shop was well-heated, filled with a scent of lamp oil and wood. Sitting on top of a heater surrounded by an iron fence, a large kettle was letting out steam. While the merchandise on the wooden shelves had been changed out, the rest of the shop had hardly changed at all from his middle school memory of it. Even the air and the creaking of the floor was the same as back then.

When he first came here eight years ago, Kujirai was with him. That time the two of them were looking everywhere for a place to buy a Christmas present for Sumika, an acquaintance had told them about a well-regarded store in a neighboring town.

Ogami didn't want the miscellanea they sold at this point, but it was a comfortable space, so he went around browsing the shelves. A collection of beautifully unnecessary things, even to someone who wasn't able to die, were put on display in a way that made full use of the space.

He didn't see any employees. Aside from Ogami, there was just a single customer, a young man. He wore a black down jacket, and had been standing in front of a shelf in the corner ever since Ogami entered the shop. He looked as if he might be seriously thinking about a gift for someone, though he also looked like he might simply be waiting for an employee to come back.

Come to think of it, where did I put those presents I bought for Sumika and Kujirai back then?, Ogami suddenly wondered. He definitely hadn't actually delivered them. After witnessing their secret meeting in the garage, his head was so full of thoughts he completely forgot about the presents. He believed he disposed of everything in his room when he left home after graduating high school, yet he didn't remember seeing the paper bag the presents were in.

When in the world did it disappear?

As he walked around thinking about that, he'd done a full lap of the store before he knew it. He took even more time gazing at the merchandise on the second lap. After finishing a third, he bought a notebook he had no particular use for and left the store. It was small enough to fit right in his jeans pocket, and used leather with a smooth texture for the cover. He wasn't sure whether the clerk at the register was the same as seven years ago. He'd completely forgotten their face.

There was an ashtray beside the store, so he decided to have a smoke there. As he lit the cigarette and did his first inhale, the door opened, and the man in the down jacket came out. Seeing that he was empty handed, it seemed he hadn't bought anything after all. Ogami quickly lost interest in the man and looked back down at the ashtray.

On his second inhale, he felt on the verge of remembering something. Something very important. It wasn't about where the paper bag with the presents went. It had to do with a more recent event, and it was unmistakably that man just now who stimulated the memory.

What could it be related to? Kasumi, Sakura, the acting troupe, the leader, the teacher, the detective, the educator... it wasn't any of those. It was a little bit older than that. Maybe even before coming to this town -

Sumika Takasago has killed herself.

The instant he connected that voice with the man in the down jacket, the memories came back to him all at once.

The inexplicable phone call just to inform him of Sumika's suicide. Now, he finally realized who that voice was.

Ogami hastily pushed his cigarette into the ashtray, and hurried in the direction the man went. He hadn't gone too far, so he caught up quickly. He was just about to get in a minicar parked on the side of the road. When Ogami called the man's name, he turned around. His expression of confusion, as he looked at Ogami's face, changed to one of pure astonishment.

Souma was a classmate from middle school. That was the only thing Ogami was able to remember about him. Despite having spent two years in the same classroom, he'd left as much of an impression in Ogami's mind as a person he only met once or twice. That was how little connection he had to this classmate. If they hadn't coincidentally met like this, he might have never in his life had an opportunity to remember him.

The two arrived at the restaurant they'd agreed to meet at right around the same time. After sitting in their seats and quickly ordering, Souma went "now then," faced Ogami, and laid out a few of those inoffensive phrases most people use when reuniting after some years. Ogami, too, gave inoffensive replies to them.

"What'd you buy?", Souma asked, indicating Ogami's paper bag.

"A notebook I've got no use for," Ogami answered. "What did you come looking for?"

"Nothing," Souma said with an embarrassed laugh. "I'm a college student with too much time on his hands. What are you up to, Ogami?"

"Managing to make ends meet working no-good jobs."

"That's an admirable thing."

There was silence for a while. Souma was the one who'd invited him for a meal, so Ogami continued eating in silence. Probably because he hadn't walked a long distance in a while, he was unusually hungry.

Eventually, Souma nervously broke the ice.

"Sorry about the strange phone call."

"No, I'm grateful," Ogami replied. Then he felt surprised that those words had come out of his mouth. Maybe resolving to leave this world had given him more peace of mind.

Souma smiled with relief. "Did you decide to come home because of my call, then?"

"Yeah. Haven't been back here since I finished high school."

"But you've been staying in town for a while now, right?"

"How do you know?"

"I passed by you on the street once. Though you didn't notice me then."

"I didn't know," said Ogami. "So then, why did you go out of your way to call me?"

Souma went silent again. Ogami noticed he hadn't been touching his meal at all. He kept putting his water glass to his mouth, but it hadn't even been half-emptied.

A waiter came over and took Ogami's cleaned plate. The restaurant was filled with evening customers and horribly noisy.

Souma spoke while looking at a family of four sitting next to them. "Hey, what did you think of Sumika back then?"

"Just how it looked."

"You liked her, huh?"

"Yeah. I was thinking about her 24/7."

"Well, so was I. You probably saw Kujirai as your only rival, not even noticing anyone else, but truthfully, most of the guys in that class were in love with Sumika. There was a long, long line behind you two. Did you notice?"

"No," Ogami said. It really was the first he'd heard of it. "But even if that was the case, it's not too surprising."

"That's why I thought you'd be someone I could share this joy with."

Joy, Ogami repeated in his head. In other words, had he hoped for Sumika's death?

"Maybe it's bad of me to use the word "joy" for it. It's not like I held a personal grudge or anything," Souma denied as if reading Ogami's mind. "But - and forgive me if I'm mistaken - as far as I know, even you, who was the closest to Sumika, couldn't become her lover. Isn't that right?"

"That's right," Ogami affirmed, not understanding what Souma was getting at.

"And then Sumika died," Souma said. "In other words, she finally couldn't belong to anyone. That warped joy was the first thing I felt when I learned of her death. And thinking you might be able to share in it, I called you."

"Pretty short call then, considering."

"I felt satisfied just telling you what I had to tell you," Souma said with a laugh. "But you know, that joy was shaken big-time when I passed you on the street the other day. Do you know why?"

Ogami shook his head, since he didn't.

"You were walking with a girl who looked just like Sumika. The moment I saw that, I was brought back to the classroom in middle school. Sumika smiling beside you, and me looking greedily from the corner. Ahh, I thought, so Sumika will always choose to be by Ogami's side."

"Sumika is dead," Ogami stated clearly. "That was her little sister, Kasumi."

"I know. I'm just saying that's the feeling I got." With that, Souma finally touched his meal. "I feel like I've been put at ease getting to talk with you directly. Sorry for dumping my pain and my relief on you."

"It's fine, everyone does it."

Souma ate about half of his cooled meal, put down his chopsticks, and said "I'd better get going soon." After paying the bill and leaving, Ogami found the night air unusually warm. Maybe because he hadn't had a proper meal in so long.

"This would normally be where people exchange contact info," Souma stopped and said, "but do you want to do that?"

"Nah," Ogami answered honestly.

"Good. Me neither," Souma said. "To tell the truth, there isn't a single classmate from middle school I still keep up with now. All the best people left town, so only the worst people like me are left. So I naturally stopped associating with any of them. But I think that's for the best. Just not having people who know my shameful past around gives me such immense relief. I don't dislike you, but I'd like to end it here if I can."

"Same here. I haven't contacted any old acquaintances even once," Ogami said. "Of course, I practically didn't have any friends from middle school on, but still."

"Weren't Sumika and Kujirai your friends?"

Ogami chose not to deny that. "Yeah. I had just those two."

"I think it's plenty to have two whole people you can still clearly say were friends after seven years. I don't have even one."

"And also," Ogami continued, "I never told anyone but those two my phone number."

Souma opened his mouth to say something, but stopped to think and remained silent.

"Just as you informed me, Sumika died half a year ago. That leaves only one person besides my family who knows my number. Souma, how did you learn my phone number?"

Souma didn't show any reaction for a while, as if he didn't even hear Ogami's voice.

But eventually, he smiled with resignation.

"You're right. I learned it from Kujirai."

"Where is he now?"

"I don't know. It's not like we had a personal relationship. About a year ago... no, ten months ago at most, he suddenly visited my house and handed me a note with your number on it."

"At that point -"

"Yes, at that point Sumika was still alive," Souma affirmed. "But Kujirai told me. If something happens to Sumika, let Ogami know. It was a sudden, one-sided request, so of course I could have refused. I didn't, because of the feeling I explained to you earlier. That wasn't a lie."

Ogami thought for a bit, then spoke. "Was Kujirai expecting Sumika to die?"

"Who knows. He worded it as "if something happens to her," so I'm not sure if he knew she would die. But he seemed convinced something would happen soon."

Ogami could detect no hint of a lie in Souma's words.

"I completely forgot I even made a promise like that. That's why I was so late to contact you."

"Did he leave you any other instructions besides that?"

"Nothing. Just to tell you the facts."

"What possible objective could he have in asking that of you?"

"I dunno. But you know, I didn't sense any malice in Kujirai's attitude then. Maybe he wanted to share a certain feeling with you, much like I did. At the same time, maybe he didn't want to share it with you directly."

Souma turned his back to Ogami and got in his car. He turned on the engine and drove off without even pausing. Ogami went back to his own car and lit a cigarette, gazing absentmindedly at the smoke filling the car.

Souma called me at Kujirai's instigation. Kujirai knew something would happen to Sumika. He felt a need to tell me, yet didn't want to tell me himself directly. Or maybe he wanted to, but couldn't.

Then did Kujirai kill Sumika after all? That would explain both him expecting Sumika's death and why he couldn't call me directly. It made sense. But judging him to be a killer just based on it "making sense" was really pushing it. You could have predicted Sumika would cause some major incident in the not too distant future even if you weren't Kujirai, and it's also conceivable that he simply didn't want to talk to me directly, like Souma said.

But all told, whether Kujirai killed Sumika or not doesn't matter to me right now. What's clear is that if Kujirai hadn't made this bizarre request of Souma, I wouldn't have come to this town, wouldn't have met Kasumi, wouldn't have seen Sumika's true colors, wouldn't have planned a double suicide, and wouldn't have arrived at this calm state of mind I'm in now.

Was there any other problem here?

The fifth rehearsal was their last. The spring equinox was just ahead of them.

Ogami and Kasumi went to the home improvement store and bought a portable shower that connected to a water tank. They tested it at the apartment, and it seemed to have no issues. "Make sure to charge it up," Kasumi instructed as she left. It feels like we're preparing for a vacation or something, Ogami thought.

Ogami had decided not to do anything special in the three days remaining before the main event. He couldn't think of a single thing he wanted to take care of while he was alive, and didn't have any interest in writing a suicide note or cleaning out his room. Paying mind to various affairs that would occur after his death felt meaningless. Kasumi seemed to feel similarly, saying she would spend the remaining time like a student on spring break should.

The final three days began. The first day had good weather, not a cloud in the sky. The temperature was ten to twenty degrees warmer than the day before, so Ogami went outside and started breaking down the snow piles. He scattered the snow in places where there was no foot traffic, and repeated the process every few hours as the snow melted. While taking a smoke break, one of the icicles hanging from the apartment roof fell and cracked with a tremendous sound. He became worried whether they could freeze to death in weather like this, but according to the forecast, there'd be several days of snow again starting tomorrow.

True to the forecast, it quickly cooled down again the next day with a snowstorm. That day, he went to the library to do research. He looked around for books about people doing double suicides, then went to the reading area to read them over thoroughly until closing time.

He found fewer than ten books that met his criteria. Maybe he just wasn't searching the right way, or maybe public libraries opted not to carry such risky books. He went outside every hour to have a smoke. Beside of the snowstorm, his fingertips were shaking by the time he'd finished two cigarettes. Ogami thought it a shame that today wasn't the day, but upon further consideration, figured it was best to avoid a situation too far removed from their usual practice. Wouldn't they be able to die most peacefully if it was simply "cold"?

Reading descriptions of people who performed double suicides, they all seemed to have been left with no option but suicide due to circumstances that could only be called tragic. In particular, most stories about family suicides were miserable tales. Compared to these, his motive felt terribly flimsy. Probably because it was. A girl who wasn't even his lover, but whom he once admired, had killed herself. A commonplace event. That same sort of thing was no doubt happening somewhere in the world at this very moment.

But it's not as if everyone dies for such fine motives that they're left behind in literature, Ogami thought a little bit later. There must be tons of people who die for worthless reasons. And the majority of such people die alone, remaining in no records nor in anyone's memories.

In that sense, maybe I'm fortunate. Because I gained a companion in Kasumi, I wouldn't have to die alone. If I hadn't been chosen as a Sakura, such a miracle would never have happened. You could say the System did a fantastic job with my mental health.

Soon the closing announcement played, and Ogami returned the books and left the library. Wiping off his car with a snow brush, he warmed up the engine and stepped on the gas. Many cars seemed to have been brought to a standstill by the storm, making for heavy traffic on roads that would normally be empty. Ogami sat at the back of the traffic jam, watching the chain of red tail lights while having a smoke. I can wait all day, he thought, calmly preparing himself. It was the first time a traffic jam this bad hadn't made him lose composure. When the flow of traffic resumed, he actually found himself a little disappointed.

He planned to spend the third day at the apartment doing nothing, but while lying down on the tatami floor and looking at the ceiling, the question that occurred to him at the variety store a few days ago resurfaced. Where had the paper bag with the presents for Sumika and Kujirai gone to? Maybe it was still at my parents' house somewhere? I thought I disposed of everything when I left, but maybe that was the one thing I overlooked?

Even if he wouldn't have to worry about such things once he was dead, he at least wanted to confirm the bag's location while he could. He wouldn't be able to stand it if he remembered where it was just before freezing to death.

If his parents were at home, he intended to give up on the matter, yet when he went to the house, he didn't see his father's car nor his mother's. He unlocked the door and went inside without making a sound, and listened carefully in the entryway for a while. His parents indeed seemed to be out, so he stepped quietly up to the second floor. The hallway felt considerably smaller than he remembered, but he didn't feel especially nostalgic. Coming to the end of the hall, he gently opened the door to his room, the one place he had once belonged.

The room seemed to be serving as a storeroom after Ogami left. Of course, nothing major had been brought in, so it wasn't too much trouble to search. And sure enough, he couldn't find the paper bag. It must have been disposed of at some point or another, and he just forgot about it.

Relieved, he left his old home behind. Even at this stage of being about to die, he didn't feel the tiniest desire to meet his parents one last time. He didn't even see a need to justify that to himself. They had both just been unlucky.

The fact he remained unshaken even when setting foot in his old house gave him confidence. Ogami walked the route of his former commute, heading for the middle school. He passed by Sumika's house, went down the small path between the fields, and walked along the tracks. Soon he reached the railroad crossing, but the gate showed no sign of lowering, and even after he crossed, it kept its silence.

Standing at the gate of his old school, he gazed at the building. No matter how long he stared, it didn't feel meaningfully different from looking at a school in an unfamiliar town. It seems there's nothing more that can threaten me, Ogami thought to himself. It's less that I have no lingering attachments, but rather, I wasn't even able to pick up any attachments. But I don't really mind that.

That was how the three days before the main event went by. He'd expected them to be a longer three days, but time neither lengthened nor contracted. Thanks to some whiskey, he was able to get to sleep his last evening before he could think about anything unnecessary.

When he awoke, his last morning was already nearly over. He prepared a slice of toast, fried an egg left in the fridge, and made instant coffee. So this unsatisfying meal will be my last breakfast, he thought as he ate.

After eating, he went out and shoveled the snow that had piled up two days ago. Back in his room, he took a shower, reheated the coffee, and drank it. Then he opened his suitcase to produce a paperback book, and lay down to start reading it. It was a book that dedicated more than 500 pages to the claim that "by design, humans aren't made to be happy." Ogami didn't have enough insight of his own to judge if this claim was right or not, but he felt comforted by the simple fact that a fine individual recognized by society was denying human life. Back when he was still living an unstable life, that book had comforted him greatly. As long as he shut his eyes to the fact the author was still in good health.

Kasumi knocked on the apartment door late at night. Ogami checked that he'd locked up, then left the room. He'd loaded the shower and water tank into the car in advance. They both carefully checked the battery and amount of water, then set out.

Neither of them said a word on the way. Not because of nervousness or unease. They believed there was nothing left to be said by now. Every time the tires went over a rut and shook the car, the water in the tank made a sloshing sound from the back seat.

It took less than twenty minutes to reach the riverside park. Compared to when he visited with the detective before, the fallen snow was a bit easier to deal with. Even so, the ground was still entirely white, so it was nearly impossible to gauge distance with the narrow field of vision provided by the headlights.

Arriving at the area he believed to be the parking lot, Ogami parked under the streetlight that served as a landmark. After turning off the engine, a heavy silence descended over the car.

If they proceeded as-is, their Handcuffs would alert the System to their lives being in danger, so the two removed their Handcuffs and placed them on the dashboard.

Kasumi opened the glove box and took out a small bottle of whiskey. As if in response, Ogami took a box of sleeping pills from his coat pocket. They were over-the-counter, so he couldn't expect a huge effect, but for peace of mind, he poured several times the recommended dose into the whiskey. They then took turns passing the bottle and drinking from it, gradually relaxing their brains. Once the bottle was empty, they got out of the car and opened the rear door, taking out the shower and tank and setting them up. Then together, they carried them into the park.

After arriving at a plaza a sufficient distance from the parking lot, Ogami set down the tank. He'd brought a flashlight, expecting it to be difficult to work in the dark, but thanks to the moonlight, it seemed that was unnecessary. It was unfortunate that it wasn't snowing, but Ogami knew from experience that the night chill was more intense when the sky was clear like this.

Kasumi took off her coat, leaving just a thin one-piece, and held out both hands toward Ogami.

"Now then, do it."

Ogami nodded and powered on the shower. For a few seconds there was just the sound of it working, then as if remembering what to do, the shower head started gushing water. When the water touched her skin, Kasumi laughed ticklishly. If it had been summer, and the park was covered in the greenery of trees instead of snow, maybe this would have looked like a charming scene.

Once Kasumi had gotten fully soaked, the two changed places. Ogami took off his duffle coat and had Kasumi spray him with water. The water didn't feel that cold; it was probably warmer than the air was. But the water absorbed by his clothes was at once chilled by the wind, and he rapidly started to lose body heat.

While looking for a good place to sit down, Kasumi suddenly grabbed Ogami's arm. Before he could think about what that meant, Kasumi pulled him to the ground. The two were lying down face-up on the snow. Kasumi was laughing with a stifling giggle. Either the alcohol combined with the abnormal situation had induced a high, or she was pretending to be high. Ogami tried to sit up once, but changed his mind and laid back down.

For a long while afterward, the two looked up at the moon absentmindedly. The moon had a near-oval shape, too ambiguous to tell if it was a half moon or full moon. There must have been a proper term for that shape. Thought it would do them no good to learn it now.

"Why do you think Sumika chose to die here?", Ogami muttered as if to himself.

"I thought you might have some idea about that, Ogami," Kasumi said.

"One time, I went with Sumika and another friend to see the cherry blossoms here."

"Then that's the reason."

"Maybe so," Ogami agreed. "Though maybe she only remembered it as an inconspicuous place, rather than a place she remembered fondly."

"No, I'm sure it was a place she remembered fondly. Her choosing this place must have been some kind of message to you, right?"

"I wonder."

"Talking's a good distraction. Let's talk more."

Ogami thought for a while, then asked, "What were you doing the past three days?"

"I was imagining my life if I didn't die."

"Did you feel any attachments crop up?"

"The fact that I'm here now is your answer."

"Now that you mention it, yeah."

Ogami subconsciously dug in his jeans pocket for some cigarettes, but they had been completely soaked by the water earlier, so he threw them out.

"To tell the truth, I didn't have a will to die," he heard Kasumi say.

"Then you can stop," Ogami told her.

"It's my sister," said Kasumi flatly. "That wasn't suicide."

Ogami reflexively looked toward her. But her face was half buried in the snow, so he couldn't tell her expression.

"When I found my sister's suicide note, I had the means of reliably finding out where she was," Kasumi continued. "But I pretended not to know, only telling our parents that I'd found her suicide note. And I didn't let them know right away, either; I delayed for nearly half a day, until it was completely too late for her. Do you know why I'd do something like that?"

"I do," Ogami said immediately. "You didn't want Sumika to disgrace herself any further, didn't you?"

Ogami hardly even felt shocked by Kasumi's confession. Maybe he'd realized it quite some time ago. At least in the event that someone else killed Sumika, that was the only plausible motive.

He felt just a tiny bit guilty for suspecting Kujirai.

Kasumi went on. "I think my sister didn't truly intend to die. It was a staged suicide, based on the premise that I would rescue her. Maybe she wanted to make others believe that she regretted her actions, or maybe she wanted to escape to somewhere like a hospital. At any rate, it was no more than a step in a plan. And she executed that plan putting 100% of her trust in me. But I let my sister die. Moments after I found her note, I had already begun thinking of how to fake the time of discovery. I thought, this is a chance that won't come again. Because I knew the sister I loved was already gone. Because I didn't want Sumika Takasago to be sullied any more."

Kasumi's voice was trembling, but by then, Ogami's body also wouldn't stop shaking. So he couldn't determine whether it was from the cold, or from the height of emotion.

"Now then, what will you do?", Kasumi asked, seeming to have pulled herself together. "Now that you've found the killer of Sumika Takasago."

"I won't do anything," Ogami answered. "Besides, I think you're underestimating Sumika. You know how she is; she would have caught on to how you saw her long before then. She must have been considering the possibility that you'd leave her to die from the very beginning. With that in mind, what if she thought it would be fine either way, whether she was saved or left to die? If she intended on being saved for certain, she would have surely chosen another method, and prepared a backup plan if not two. She wouldn't have walked that tightrope if the winds of chance could interfere. What I think is, Sumika was having difficulty taking that last step, just like we were until a while ago, and that's why she chose such a half-hearted method. Like taking a bullet out of the chamber to leave a chance of salvation, so that pulling the trigger would be easier. If Sumika was betting on tails from the start, then that means you answered her expectations wonderfully."

He thought he'd just say some words that sounded right to distract himself, but upon considering them further, he felt that theory might not be so off the mark.

He could tell from her breathing that she was taken aback.

"That's a wonderful way of thinking," Kasumi said. "It doesn't change the fact I left my sister to die, but even so..."

Ogami tried to give a reply, but his mind was already failing to string words together. The chill stiffened not only his limbs but his thoughts, and shivering got in the way of making precise motions. A heavy, uncomfortable numbness, different from cold or pain, was filling every corner of his body.

"This might not be as comfortable a way to die as I thought," Ogami said.

"Next time we do it, let's go with something else," Kasumi said with a laugh.

Once Kasumi's laughter stopped, silence filled the dark. They couldn't even hear the wind. There was just the pale night sky and the black shadows of the trees.

"I'm glad you were my Sakura, Ogami."

So Kasumi said, a long time afterward. No, maybe it had actually only been a few minutes.

Her voice felt strangely far away.

"Perhaps I was able to avoid dying until today because I knew you'd become my Sakura someday."

Ogami gave a short reply, but even he didn't know what he said. And the moment he finished saying it, an intense sluggishness overcame his mind and body.

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11

What reawakened Ogami's senses wasn't a feeling of icy cold, but an intense pain throughout his whole body, especially in his extremities. At first his fingertips hurt, and then the moment he recognized it as pain, his whole body throbbed with pain as if anesthesia had worn off. He immediately tried to stand up, but his limbs wouldn't move like he wanted, so he lost balance and plunged head-first into the snow.

When he raised his head, he realized his body was covered by the duffle coat he thought he'd left in the car. But his mind was unable to arrive at what that meant. He tried to stand up again, but it wasn't going well; even so, he crawled toward the parking lot where the car was parked to escape the agony his body was in. His senses were muddled, but his body remembered that he could get relief if he went there.

Ogami's body was hardly advancing forward at all, like trying to run in a dream. It almost felt as if there were an invisible force slowly pulling him backward. There must be a hollow under the snow, something like an antlion pit trying to pull me in, he hazily thought. But past a certain point, the path suddenly became flat, and he advanced slowly but surely walking on his knees.

He arrived at the car and reached for the door. But it didn't open when he pulled the handle. He dug through his pockets with his numb hand. The key was nowhere to be found. His senses were growing distant, but when he pulled forcefully on the handle again, this time the door opened with a hard sound. It seemed it hadn't been locked, but had just frozen shut.

He climbed up into the driver's seat, and turned the still-inserted key with his shivering fingers to start the engine. He cranked the heater to the maximum and waited for the hot air, but all that came out of the vents was a chilly breeze slightly preferable to outside. Repeatedly stepping on the gas to idle the engine as if praying, the air slowly began to heat up.

Ogami held his hands in front of the vents and warmed his fingertips, then warmed his neck with his fingers. He repeated this over and over. Remembering he had a blanket in the car, he pulled it from the back seat and put it over his shoulders like a cape. His chills weren't letting up, and as the temperature in the car increased, the unfathomable pain in his body only became more intense. His limbs were heavy and cold, as if they had been switched out for something else while he was unconscious.

This whole chain of actions had been done practically subconsciously. At some point, the sky had started to lighten. He took a reserve pack of cigarettes from the glove box, struggled to take one out with his numb fingers, held it between his lips, and lit it with the lighter. That was his first conscious action. When the smell of the cigarette filled his nose, he finally came to his senses.

I've survived, Ogami thought. He accepted this not as a good thing or a bad thing, just as the reality. He couldn't muster emotions of any kind about that reality. Just like how when a baby is born, it doesn't judge the good and bad of that fact but simply cries, he kept absentmindedly shivering.

Then the next thing he thought was: Where did Kasumi go?

Once his wet clothes dried, and his body warmed enough to walk properly again, Ogami returned to the place he woke up, still wearing the blanket. He picked up the duffle coat, wiped the snow from it, and took a look around. There was no sign of Kasumi, but he saw small footprints from around where she'd been lying down. Following them, he found they met up with the trail left by his crawling. He didn't bother to follow the footprints further, but they seemed to lead back to the car. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen her coat in the car. Nor her Handcuff. Had Kasumi retrieved her coat and Handcuff, put the coat over Ogami, and walked out of the park?

The chills were coming back, so he returned to the car. Just as expected, there were footprints that appeared to be Kasumi's going from the car to the park entrance. But following these footprints wouldn't let him catch up to her. They surely would have come to an end around the exit of the park.

By now, hunger and throat dryness were being added on top of the chills and pain. Thinking Kasumi might come back to the car, Ogami stayed in the park for about two hours. Of course, she didn't come back.

She must have stopped just short of death, and decided to leave here by herself. That was what he had to conclude for now.

If so, that was an entirely reasonable judgement, Ogami thought.

He returned to the car and left the park. His movements were still stiff as usual, but for whatever reason, he was able to drive the same as always once he grabbed the wheel. What a well-built machine, Ogami thought with delayed admiration. It didn't seem very appropriate for an automobile to be the first thing he was impressed by after reviving from the brink of death, but in that moment, Ogami felt automobiles to be the far superior entity to humans. With machines having no wills of their own, they made no mistakes.

Just to be sure, he drove around within a radius of a few miles from the park, but saw no figures that looked like Kasumi. This time he gave up for real, and returned to the apartment.

Arriving at his room, he turned on the heater and warmed up some leftover stew. He heated up water and took numerous raw gulps of it. He took a scalding hot shower, changed clothes, lay down in a comfortable spot, and slept there for hours. He started to wake up at one point, but then quickly fell back asleep, then woke up from hunger a few hours later so he had a meal, then fell into another long sleep.

By the next time he woke up, the date had changed. After three sleeps, his consciousness had regained some clarity. He thought it over again with a clear head. Where had Kasumi gone? He thought about calling her, but if she were willing to respond to a call, she surely would have contacted him a while ago. Or else she would have visited the apartment directly.

Remembering the conversation they had before he lost consciousness, he pondered at what point she could've had a change of heart. Even after Ogami aired his theory that Sumika's death was indeed a suicide, having just been presented as "a staged suicide gone wrong," her intentions hadn't wavered. She'd said that there was no changing the fact she left her sister to die.

"Perhaps I was able to avoid dying until today because I knew you'd become my Sakura someday."

Those were Kasumi's final words he could hear before passing out. Even when she spoke those, it indeed seemed she was accepting death.

Then Ogami suddenly realized. Maybe it's not necessarily true that she chose to live.

Maybe she just chose to to die on her own.

Maybe by saving my life in the end, she meant to make amends for the regret of letting Sumika die.

He must have had that mindset to thank. Because when the detective came to his room and informed him of Kasumi's death, he was able to hear it calmly.

Her body was discovered early yesterday morning, hanging in the woods a little over a mile from the riverside park. By the time it was reported and an emergency team arrived, she had already breathed her last.

The detective arrived just as the streetlights were starting to come on. Hearing the knock, Ogami opened the door, and saw him standing there emotionlessly. And he concisely informed him of Kasumi's death.

Ogami's reply was simply "I see."

"You're not surprised," the detective remarked. "Did you perhaps know this would happen from the start?"

If he wanted to smooth things over, there were plenty of ways to do so. But right now, Ogami didn't care about revealing the truth and putting himself in a risky spot. So he told him everything just as it was. Him being Kasumi's Sakura. Multiple Sakura being assigned to her. Exposing himself as a Sakura to her, and proposing a double suicide. Her confession about the truth of Sumika's death while carrying it out. And Kasumi having disappeared when he woke up.

"If her death were a murder, you'd be the first suspect," the detective said with a stunned expression. "And yet, you probably won't even be questioned. Since her death was clearly suicide, without a speck of doubt."

"Why do you know that much about the details?"

"Thanks to an acquaintance. I can guarantee it's reliable information."

Ogami went to the kitchen and heated up water to make coffee for two. Taking his coffee, the detective took a sip and continued.

"With Kasumi's death and what you just told me, I'm finally seeing the full picture of Sumika's death. There are still questions remaining, but those should be resolved soon enough."

"The full picture? Wasn't what Kasumi said everything?"

"If it were, then why did Kasumi decide to let you leave with your life?", the detective asked aloud. Then he sat down on the tatami floor and looked up at Ogami. "Sumika, Kujirai. Please, tell me what sort of relationship you had with those two. Honestly this time."

Ogami hesitated a bit, but decided to tell him everything. Maybe this man would be able to derive a different understanding from my past than I had. Maybe he would be able to repaint what that past had meant.

"They used to be my best friends," Ogami said. "Yet, it was only me who thought that, as in reality they were Sakura assigned to me. I became friends with Sumika in winter my first year of middle school, then Kujirai in spring of my second year. That relationship continued until winter of my third year. But prompted by me happening to witness a secret meeting of theirs, I began to suspect they were Sakura. Questioning them directly made them both admit it, so our relationship ended there."

Ogami also brought up how after hearing the teacher's story, he was no longer sure if Sumika had really been a Sakura. There was a possibility that Sumika Takasago had been no more than a mirror, and simply reflected back Ogami's suspicion. Meanwhile, there was no room for doubt that Kujirai was a Sakura. He'd left him a sharp parting remark of "I was always irritated by you."

After finishing his story, Ogami observed the detective's reaction. He felt maybe his explanation had been rather lacking and unclear, but the detective didn't have any questions or seek any supplements. Stroking his chin with the joint of his index finger, he was deep in earnest thought.

After a considerable silence, the detective said "I guess that does it."

"With what you just told me, I finally understand the truth about Sumika. There was no need to look for Kujirai from the start. If I'd just stubbornly pressed you, that would have taken care of it."

"How do you mean?", Ogami said. Even he was surprised by how loudly he spoke it. "Just what kind of answer did my side of the story lead you to?"

The detective smiled ambiguously, and put his hand to the floor to stand up. "It'll become clear sooner or later. You've already acquired plenty of material."

"I don't want to know sooner or later, I want to know now."

The detective shook his head. "I'll refrain from telling you everything myself. This kind of truth is better reached by your own power. If someone else told you it first, then it would become an already-read truth, so to speak. No matter how perfect second-hand goods look, you can't fully put your heart into them. That's why I'd prefer that you unseal it with your own hands. A brand new, unopened truth."

"I've been thinking about it myself this whole time. Yet I don't understand a single thing about what Sumika was thinking. Could you at least tell me something?"

"Then I'll give you a relatively harmless truth. If my prediction is accurate, you could wait here forever and not meet Kujirai."

With that, the detective left the room and shut the door.

I should probably be saddened, Ogami thought to himself. Because a girl who had once offered to put her fate in with mine had left this world on her own. But once the detective left the room, Ogami found he was already beginning to adjust to Kasumi's death. Of course it was a shame he'd never get to meet her again, but he got a sense that he'd only slightly accelerated a predestined farewell. Maybe part of that was because of what her father proclaimed.

Please don't trouble yourself over not being able to save Kasumi. She's been dead from the start. You've been holding onto a dead girl's hand.

And somewhere in Ogami's heart, he perceived Sumika and Kasumi as paired entities. Thus, Kasumi's death felt like an inevitable phenomenon that was an extension of Sumika's death.

It even made sense to consider that his relationship with Kasumi going so well was because she was dead from the start. There's no room for social phobia with the dead.

He accepted Kasumi's death, but it didn't bring this to an end. It seemed as if the detective had unraveled all the mysteries earlier, whereas Ogami had not. He still didn't know the truth behind Sumika nor Kasumi's death. Despite the claim that it would become clear sooner or later, it probably wasn't like someone would come and bring him the answer if he just sat around and twiddled his thumbs. It was up to Ogami, so that time could end up coming days from now, or even years from now.

Ogami decided to stay in the Town of Sakura until he could solve that mystery. For a few days afterward, he was racking his brain whenever he wasn't sleeping. If the detective was able to put together the truth of Sumika's death from Ogami's short story, that meant Ogami had been given what was necessary to arrive at the truth from the start. And then there was the meaning of "you could wait here forever and not meet Kujirai." Just by hearing about Ogami's middle school days, the detective concluded that he couldn't meet Kujirai - at least not in this apartment. Ogami's past connected not only to the truth of Sumika's death, but even Kujirai's whereabouts.

Was there really an element like that in my story? Where?

Ogami kept walking around town, ruminating upon his talk with the detective and his last conversation with Kasumi. And he scribbled every little thing he remembered or thought of in the notebook he'd bought from the variety store.

Compared to when he first moved into the apartment, the coldness in town had calmed a fair bit. The sky was dull and cloudy as usual, but even when it snowed, it stopped before it could pile up. Most of the snow the plow had moved to the side of the road had melted, and the blurred boundary between sidewalk and road finally showed itself. The people living in town were wearing fewer layers, making them look more refreshed.

It wasn't such a bad season to be thinking about the dead.

The key probably wasn't going to be that Sumika was my Sakura. It was that I had convinced myself she was my Sakura. There was a big difference between the two. Let's first recognize that I had made a mistake in assuming she was a Sakura. Unless I work from that premise, I'm likely never going to arrive at the truth. Just like I'd failed to do for these past seven years.

Sumika Takasago wasn't my Sakura - in that case, how should I interpret the last conversation we had? If Kasumi was to be believed, Sumika choosing to die in that riverside park was some kind of message to me, and she'd continued thinking about me even after graduating middle school. If that's true, then what in the world made her say "I didn't like you at all"?

Perhaps it was out of consideration for me. Maybe she heard my question of "You never really liked me at all, did you?" as "Let me have a clean breakup with no bitterness." Maybe she was just complying with that request and nothing more.

But supposing that's true, how does that connect to her death?

Ogami's thoughts reached a dead end there. Like the detective said, at this point he should practically have the answer, yet he was subconsciously avoiding a certain way of thinking. So it might be more accurate to say he didn't come to a dead end, but had stopped walking himself.

One evening in early April, a snowstorm came to town. It was a violent one, as if it were trying to drive back the approaching spring.

The snow fell all night, then finally stopped the next morning. It became markedly more cold inside the apartment, so Ogami didn't leave bed for a while after waking. When he finally did crawl out of his futon, he heated some water and made coffee, then removed his Handcuff to go out on the veranda and smoke while shivering. He hadn't even put on sandals, so the soles of his feet felt like they were getting frostbite. He'd expected as much, since he heard the sound of the snow plow early in the morning, but snow pushed from the road had been piled like sandbags in front of the apartment.

He couldn't get his car out like this, so he went outside, found the snow-shovel buried in snow, and began clearing the snow in front of the apartment. Creating enough of a path for one car to get out would have been sufficient, but Ogami didn't stop until he had cleaned out all the snow in the area. He felt that moving around actively might help him think. But when he finished the work, he was left with nothing but a heavy fatigue.

As he stuck the shovel in a snow pile and went to return to his room, Ogami noticed someone looking down at him from the second floor. It was a man aged enough that you'd hear no objections to calling him an "old man." He wore a gray knitted cap and a long wool coat. When he made eye contact with Ogami, he didn't look away, and slowly walked down the outside steps. Ogami prepared himself for some kind of complaint, but once the old man came close enough for them to see each other's faces clearly, he mumbled out words of thanks for his work. It seemed he only wanted to thank him for clearing the snow.

After nodding with satisfaction at the snow piles Ogami had made, he made a beckoning gesture and went up the apartment stairs without a word. Though his intentions were unclear, he seemed to want Ogami to come with him.

The old man opened a door at the end of the second floor hall, turned around to confirm that Ogami was following, then went inside. He supposed the man was saying "come on in."

The room was a mess. A cylindrical oil heater sat in the center of the room, and lots of small things were scattered all around it. What most drew Ogami's attention were the piles of leaflets and newspapers. They were piled in a disorderly manner in the corners of the room, towering high. If there happened to be a fire here, the flames would probably spread in an instant. To make matters worse, the heater wasn't the only source of fire; there were used lighters on the floor here and there. The old man appeared to be a heavy smoker, as the whole room smelled of cigarettes. It was like the smoking area of an old Japanese inn.

The old man made tea in a kettle on the heater. It was average, unremarkable roasted green tea, but having it after working in the cold outside made it taste much more delicious. He'd been having nothing but coffee lately, so the simple flavor was kind on his tongue.

"How long you been living here?", the old man questioned. "Not that long, right?"

Ogami replied that he'd been here two months, though even he didn't remember exactly.

"The guy who was in your room before was a young man about your age too," the old man said as if recounting something from decades past. "Didn't notice for a while that you'd taken his place."

"That man was an acquaintance of mine," Ogami explained. "What was he like when he was staying here?"

"He shoveled snow," the old man said. "Every time there was heavy snow, he'd silently clean up the snow by himself. Think even that shovel you were using was his personal property. We talked once, but he was a shy fellow for his age."

The old man removed his Handcuff and took out a cigarette to light. Ogami was briefly taken by how smoothly he performed it, like only a person who's smoked for decades could.

"And he was away all the time," the old man said after flicking some ash. "He was a quiet guy anyway, so I didn't often notice if he was gone, but sometimes his car would be missing for days straight."

Ogami nodded. He couldn't expect much important information from him.

Once he was unable to remember anything else about Kujirai, the old man looked to the window and changed topics to the snow. The snow this year's been particularly bad, but there was an even worse year about three decades ago, he said. Fallen trees blocked roads everywhere, with the town becoming as isolated as an island for a week. There were power and water outages too, so with nothing else to do, he just drank with his friends constantly.

As the old man went to light another cigarette after coming to a pause in the story, Ogami thanked him for the tea and went to leave. Then the old man called after him.

"Hey. Why didn't I ever speak to you until today, do you think?"

Ogami shook his head to suggest he didn't know. He didn't even have a guess.

"'Cause I suspected you might be a Sakura," the old man said. "One of them actors who pretends to be a good neighbor to help pitiful old folk. When you live like this in a place like this, sometimes they'll send 'em your way. Not even realizing it's a hundred times more miserable than just leaving 'em be. So no matter who it is, I always watch 'em for a while. I carefully poke around to look for anything unnatural about their attitude, anything that seems forced. Seemed like you weren't checkin' on me - hell, you didn't even notice I existed. That's why I finally felt like talking to ya."

Ogami nodded wordlessly, and left the old man's room behind.

There was no chance the man would believe him if he said how painfully he understood that feeling. Rather, it would just further agitate his Sakura Delusion.

After returning to his room, Ogami imagined the life of that old man on the upper floor, living in isolation. It wasn't clear which came first; did Sakura Delusion make his life solitary, or did a solitary life invite Sakura Delusion? Either way, it was clear that if I kept on like this, I'd lead a similar life to that old man. The deeper your isolation, the higher the odds that Sakura will appear, furthering your delusion and thus your isolation.

If anything could save that old man - if anything could save us - what could possibly kick things off? If a person we could be 100% convinced wasn't a Sakura came out of nowhere and showered us with generous affection, could we be saved?

Most likely not. At that point, we'd just have to confront a new fear. We would be struck down by an obvious truth: people can put on acts and betray you even if they aren't Sakura.

Maybe what was keeping us locked in wasn't misdirected fear, but misdirected longing.

Ogami closed his eyes and recalled every individual thing he saw in the old man's room. The heavy oil heater, piles of newspapers and leaflets, tatami mats covered in stains, a tea table worn at the edges, a teacup stained from tea, a ceiling yellowed by long years of smoking. It was possible he was carrying out a protracted suicide in that room. Maybe the piles of newspapers and leaflets were meant as kindling for his own cremation.

Once he'd formed that picture, Ogami's focus suddenly turned toward his own room. Come to think of it, he'd never received leaflets of any sort since coming to this room. There were mailboxes for the apartments, but with them being in a hard-to-notice spot, he'd forgotten they existed until just now. Since he'd expected his stay in this apartment to be temporary, he hadn't forwarded his mail. So he probably hadn't received anything important there. That said, maybe the mailbox was overflowing with leaflets now.

He confirmed his mailbox number on the documents he received when moving in, and went to the communal mailboxes. He turned the dial and opened his up. There were only a few leaflets inside. Ogami bundled them up, closed the box, and headed back to his room.

Then something fell out of the bundle of leaflets, and landed in the snow.

Ogami bent down to pick it up.

It was a key. Judging from the size and shape, probably a car key.

And he knew from the moment he saw it that it had been left by Kujirai.

The key was attached to a keychain. It was a leather keychain shaped like a shoehorn, with a luster unique to leather that had been used for a long time.

It was the one Ogami had bought at the variety store seven years ago as a gift for Kujirai.

He finally knew where the paper bag went. That day he overheard the two conversing in the garage, he'd accidentally left the paper bag with the presents beside the garage. And Kujirai found it.

That was all well and good.

But the fact this keychain was here now meant that until just recently, he'd been using this gift from Ogami.

It didn't make any sense. Didn't Kujirai despise me?

He stood in front of the mailboxes for a while, holding the key in his hand.

At any rate, Kujirai wouldn't be coming back here. He must have left this key here because he already had no use for it.

There's no point in me having something like this.

Maybe I should just throw this away somewhere, Ogami thought.

And let that be the end, so I can forget all about it.

He decided to discard the key at the riverside park, where Sumika, Kasumi, and Ogami had all chosen to die. He felt it would be best for such fateful things to all be bundled together.

He parked in the parking lot, smoked a cigarette, and went outside. There was no sign of people in the park, as usual. Sticking his hands in the pockets of his duffle coat, Ogami walked through wet snow toward the river bank.

Bordered by snow, the river was dark, and flowed quietly. Ogami grasped the key in his pocket. As he was about to put his hand up and fling the key into the river, some snow piled on a tree branch above fell down in front of him. A heavy thump like a sandbag dropping echoed through the quiet park, and a spray of snow filled up his field of vision.

If he'd been just a few feet further ahead, he would have really felt the snow coming down on him. To check the safety of where he was standing, Ogami looked above him,

and there, he saw a sakura bud colored a faint red.

Thinking about it, this park had initially appeared before us in a way entirely unrelated to death.

Kujirai had been the one who suggested going to meet the cherry blossoms that day. We tried going south toward the cherry blossom front, so as to see them in full bloom sooner. Ultimately we took the wrong bus, and instead saw the blossoms in this park a few days later, but if not for that, we would have gone and met the cherry blossoms on that day, April 10th.

And as fate would have it, today was indeed April 10th.

He felt that Kujirai was waiting for him, at the boundary between buds and blossoms.

[+]

12

Ogami drove absentmindedly down the highway late at night, passing commercial vehicles and large trucks. He didn't put on music or the radio, focusing on driving. The monotonous sight of road lights spaced evenly apart sped past him as if flying by.

After traveling about half the distance, the navigation system suggested taking a break. He was conscious of his driving becoming sloppier, and getting in an accident now would be a total loss, so he went to a rest stop and parked the car. He bought canned coffee from a vending machine and headed to the smoking area. He searched around his hips for a cigarette, realized there wasn't a pocket where there usually was, then remembered how he'd gotten new clothes before getting on the highway. He'd hurried over to a department store just before it closed, and bought a new jacket, sweater, and shoes to wear.

It was strange. He had never bothered about his clothes when he was with Kasumi, yet the moment he decided to meet Kujirai, he suddenly started caring about his appearance. I can't show myself in front of Kujirai looking so shameful, he thought. I guess at this point, I'm afraid of disappointing him. Despite having cut ties with him long ago.

Even if I were going to meet Sumika, I probably wouldn't have worried much about clothes then either. Feeling that tension only for meeting Kujirai was probably because we were both men. The fact that we half-shared a set of values meant that we would pick up on more things than necessary.

Ogami put his hands in his pockets and lightly stretched the herringbone fabric, adjusting the jacket to his body. He didn't wear anything on top of the jacket, expecting it to get gradually warmer as he headed south, but right now, even after getting some distance from the Town of Sakura, his fingertips shivered, and the first puff of his cigarette had a whiteness that wasn't just the smoke. He couldn't call it great weather for going to see cherry blossoms, but regardless, they were already blooming in most parts of the country.

He discarded his cigarette butt and returned to the car, and woken up by the night air, thought about things again. What am I trying to do right now? Am I really correct in my prediction that Kujirai's at the cherry blossom front? I had no guarantee. In fact, you might as well call it total conjecture.

We're strangely aligned in those sorts of ways. That was my only basis.

He hurried to cover the remaining distance. When he opened the window, a cigarette in his mouth, he noticed the wind having a clearly different quality from before. It was somewhat soft, carrying a portent of spring's arrival.

He got off the highway at the GPS's suggestion, and after a few dozen minutes driving through downtown streets, he finally reached his destination. The bus stop stood in front of a massive bridge on the outskirts of town. Ogami went over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. The instant the headlights flicked off, the area was swallowed by darkness. He reached in his pocket to produce a flashlight, opened the door, and left the car. Now, he could clearly detect the scent he'd noticed when he opened the window earlier.

First, he did a stretch on the spot, loosening his stiff body after hours of driving. Retying the shoelaces of his unfamiliar leather shoes, then stomping the ground with his heel to judge its condition, he locked the car and walked to the bus stop. Sitting down on a crude plastic seat some random person had probably placed there, he lit a cigarette.

Well then, what to do now?

He pondered for a while with his cigarette, and concluded he should check to see if there were cherry blossoms in bloom in the area. He'd been driving down rural streets without much lighting, so he had been unable to afford to keep an eye out along the way.

He didn't see any such trees in the vicinity of the bus stop. Of course, Ogami wouldn't be able to recognize sakura trees if they didn't have blossoms on them, so he may have technically found one and just didn't realize it. At any rate, it was clear there were no sakura currently in bloom.

After taking one more look around the area, Ogami started walking into the dark, opposite the direction of the lights from town - following his gut feeling that this was what Kujirai would do.

With each step, the road became rougher, and the smell of greenery became thicker. After climbing a hill in search of a good vantage point, he spotted thin stairs coming from the side of the road between some thickets. They were old stairs made from logs, all of which were tilted to various angles. As if being guided, Ogami climbed up those stairs.

At the top of the long stairs stood a torii gate, indicating that it was the path to a shrine. It was a small shrine, as if it were built incidentally to something else. Ogami stopped in front of the torii to catch his breath. The paint on it had been stripped away by years of wind and rain, and the knotted rope connecting the two pillars was frayed, looking like it could break at any moment. At the top was writing that could have been the name of the shrine, but it had been worn away and become indecipherable.

Along the unpaved road past the gate, there were rows of the trees he had come here for.

Sakura.

Beneath the moonlight, their blossoms radiated a slight pale light. The flowers gently shaking in the night breeze made Ogami think of phosphorescent bugs on ocean waves. At this dark and desolate shrine, that pale light alone had a strange sense of vitality.

For a while, Ogami stood on the road and looked up at the sakura. Sometimes he was struck by a feeling like dizziness. It was like the flow of time itself was stretching and contracting to match the irregular movement of the branches. So he didn't know exactly how long he was standing there.

Truthfully, he'd noticed it from the start. Just after going through the torii gate, he caught a glimpse of something in the shadow of the shrine building. He was just unable to head over there right away for two reasons: disorientation from his half-wishful-thinking intuition having struck home, and a sense of reluctance that something significant was coming to an end.

Even so, he couldn't turn back after coming this far. Ogami traversed the road to the shrine and went around to the back. And he stood in front of a car in the corner of the premises, covered by fallen leaves. It was the same color and model as the one Ogami had driven here. Only the license plate number differed. It was no wonder the old man hadn't noticed one being replaced by the other for a while.

The key from the mailbox fit perfectly in the driver's-side door. When he turned it, the door unlocked with a grandiose sound. He opened it up and got in the car. After adjusting the seat's position and angle so he could relax in it, he let out a big sigh.

Of course, the car's owner was absent. The ashtray was filled with cigarette butts, but none of them felt like they were recent. Judging from the amount of fallen leaves on the car, it had been neglected here for a long time. A smell that was a mix of oil and rust filled the car.

It was hard to imagine Kujirai would leave his own car in a place like this. Even if some circumstance forced him to dispose of it, he wouldn't choose a method that left it to rot from exposure to the elements like this. He was that kind of guy. He could only imagine something happened to him after he got out of his car here.

Ogami gave the car a thorough search. He even checked under the seats and floor mats, but found not a single thing that would connect to Kujirai's whereabouts.

After exhausting all the places he could check, as he gave up and went to light a cigarette, he suddenly thought of something. Using his nails to lift up the handle pocket in the driver's side door, he easily removed the pocket part. And beneath it, he found a small cloth bag.

It was the exact same method Ogami used to hide coins in his own car.

Inside the bag was a notebook small enough to fit in your pocket.

After playing with the notebook in his hand for a while, Ogami pointed the flashlight at it, and pulled back the front cover.

*

I thought about writing a letter and sending it to you. But even I couldn't come to a decision about whether the truth I would've written in that letter was what I really wanted you to know. I even felt like it might be best to keep it all hidden to the end.

So I'm writing it in this journal, and hiding it in the car. It's more likely than not that no one will ever find and read it. More to the point, maybe the situation I'm fearing won't even happen. And even if it does, you might never learn that fact. And even if you do learn it, you might not even pay it any mind. And even if you do pay it mind, you might not bother to come back to town. And even if you do come back... in that way, there's a whole lot of "if"s you have to get past before you arrive at this car. Even if we did always align in weird ways, I'd say there's a 10% chance, tops. Because you might even make it all the way here, and just not figure out this hiding spot.

But it's better that way. When I think about how no one might ever read this, it makes me shockingly willing to be honest. If I knew for certain it'd be read, I'd subconsciously rewrite the story. I might depict myself as a victim. Or go the other direction, putting together an excessively self-punishing story. Even though really, I don't regret anything.

Really, what I should've done was tell you everything years ago. I didn't, solely because I didn't want to hand Sumika over to you. (Writing it that way feels a bit dramatic and silly to me, but that's exactly how it was, so what can you do?)

But to be clear so there's no misunderstanding, just because I didn't want to hand Sumika over to you didn't mean I wanted to make her mine, either. Of course I thought how great it would be if things could be that way, but I also thought it was fine that it wasn't.

To tell you the circumstances without any misunderstandings, I'll probably have to explain the relationship between me and Sumika from the start. But I'm just no good at explaining stuff in an orderly fashion, so I'll put the most important answers first.

Was Sumika your Sakura?

Nope, she wasn't.

Was I your Sakura?

Nope, I wasn't.

As far as I could tell, you didn't have any Sakura around you back then.

And the next question you've probably got after that: Then why did Sumika leave you?

The answer's something like this. Sumika was convinced you were a Sakura, too.

Of course, it's not like it was like that from the start. Until you pushed Sumika away, she thought of you as a real friend.

No, she thought you were her only real friend.

Sure enough, just writing the conclusion won't help you understand anything, huh.

Where to begin?

Let's start from the violin lessons.

When I was six, I went to violin lessons in the next town over. It was an economical sort of class, with the instructor using her own house as a classroom to teach about 15 students for a cheap tuition. My parents didn't have any musical grounding at all, which might be why they wanted their only son to get an education.

The lessons were only at night on weekdays at the instructor's convenience. At the time, I had no interest in violin itself, but I liked the special feeling of having an early dinner after coming home from school, then getting in the car to go to another town. It was like getting a second shorter day added to the end of a day.

Both my parents worked, and couldn't drive me a lot of nights, so I often rode with other students in their cars. There was a kid at school who happened to go to the same violin classes, and I often took lessons with her already, so it was convenient.

That kid's name was Sumika Takasago, which is to say we knew each other since we were six. Though I doubt it looked that way to your eyes.

During our car rides together, Sumika's mother was good at mediating between us. My first impression of Sumika was that she talked in a mature way. What she talked about wasn't necessarily mature, but something about the way she put out her voice, or her sense of timing when giving minor responses, felt clearly different from other kids our age. Like she had her screws in tight, so to speak. And if necessary, she could loosen those screws too.

But when the instructor and her mother left their seats and Sumika was left alone with me, she instantly became like a different person. After lessons, Sumika's mother was always talking at length with the violin teacher. So she had us go back to the car first to wait for her, and when that happened, Sumika always acted as if I didn't exist.

I figured that she was putting on an act around her mother and the instructor, and actually hated or scorned me. Even if we were getting the same teaching, I clearly didn't learn as well as her, and that kept her lessons from making much progress too. She was probably so irritated deep down that she wanted nothing to do with me, I thought.

But when I was being ignored by Sumika, I strangely didn't feel that bad. In a dark car with the engine off, a girl my age wearing real fancy clothes ignoring me with a demure look - it kind of just seemed right, in its own way. I'm not self-deprecating myself here. In fact, now it feels like something I could call "picturesque." And just being included in that picture was comfortable enough for me.

Lots of pictures like that are etched into my memory. Composed as if I'm a third party looking on from outside the car, with a backdrop that varied based on the season, but the two of us inside invariably being the same. A girl in the right back seat looking out the window listlessly, and a boy in the left back seat glancing at that girl out of the corner of his eye.

You could say the relationship between me and Sumika never moved from that composition up to the very end.

Two years after I started going to violin lessons, they suddenly decided to stop doing them. I don't remember the reason. Maybe the instructor just got tired of it, since the whole thing had always sorta been a hobby for her. It was a shame to lose the opportunity to go out at night, but I was getting pretty tired of violin myself since I wasn't getting any better, so part of me was relieved.

After my final lesson, the instructor said she had something to talk about with Sumika and had me leave first. Since Sumika had a sense for music, I'd imagine it was something about recommending she still keep up with music afterward.

That was the first instance of me and Sumika's mother waiting in the car for Sumika. Unlike her daughter, I saw no reason why her attitude should change when it was just us, but she was oddly reticent that day. I imagined she was wondering what the instructor was talking with Sumika about, but that was wrong.

Sumika's mother suddenly turned around in the driver's seat to face me, and spoke with a strained look. "She doesn't have any friends she can call friends, so I hope you'll keep getting along with her." "Because you're the only one she seems to open her heart to, Shogo."

I was stunned - like, what was she saying? Sumika having no friends, that I could get. But she only opened her heart to me? However you looked at it, she was decisively shutting it, wasn't she? To say nothing of when we were alone, even when her mother was mediating a conversation between us, she didn't seem to be enjoying herself by any means. If that's "getting along," then I must be getting along with everybody in the world.

Regardless, I replied "understood." I'd never had a serious request made of me by an actual adult before, and I did owe her for driving me in her car for two years. I figured odds were it wouldn't go well, but I decided I'd try to do what I could.

Next year, me and Sumika ended up in the same class for the first time. Her mother was right: she didn't seem to have any friends worth calling friends. I was a kid who was more unsociable than not, but with Sumika, it wasn't even a matter of sociability. Even in class, she behaved like she was the only person in the world, same as when she was alone with me in the car. It wasn't like she denied others either, since she'd respond normally if you talked to her, and thank you if you did something kind, but she never attempted to communicate by herself without being made to by a considerable amount of necessity.

When I saw Sumika like that, I remember feeling relieved more than surprised. "So she wasn't just ignoring me specifically," y'know. Maybe her mother's claim that she only opened her heart to me wasn't necessarily untrue.

So I started trying to get close to Sumika by trial and error. What motivated me then wasn't a sense of duty nor goodwill, but curiosity. I thought friends were something you just made naturally, so that unnatural way of forming a relationship felt fresh. I thought back on how I'd come to befriend all my current friends, and considered what'd happen if I tried those out on Sumika. I knew she wouldn't become friends with me over any old thing, so I made careful preparations. I wanna say I even ignored classes, thinking only about Sumika.

I knew I couldn't be hasty. If you try to quickly close the distance with someone like Sumika, you'll raise alarm bells and make her go into her shell. So I moved as carefully as if I was walking a minefield. I didn't have much self-control at the time, like any kid my age, but when it came to Sumika, I was able to exhibit surprising patience. Well, though half of it might have been me losing my nerve.

We changed classes twice in the four years up to graduation, but me and Sumika were never separated. I wonder if the school was trying to ensure Sumika wouldn't be isolated. Not to say my relationship with Sumika was much more than "technically having interaction," but I was still doing a bit better than anybody else.

Over four years, I feel like the distance between us was lessened by about three centimeters. Whether you should take that as "only three centimeters or "a whole three centimeters" depends on your point of view. As usual, she wouldn't say anything unless you drew it out of her, but when pressed into mingling with classmates by some circumstance, she'd come to depend on me, strictly by process of elimination. That was all. But that alone was big progress in her case.

Even if everyone other than herself was a potato to her, I was the finest potato of them all.

That was enough for me. As long as no better potatoes showed up.

Just what I've written so far probably doesn't adequately communicate Sumika's idiosyncrasies. Truthfully, I think Sumika wasn't that peculiar of a person back then. She wouldn't become full-on strange until a little later.

That being said, it wasn't like there weren't signs as early as elementary school, either. I noticed them when watching as a third party as she talked to someone else.

There were other students besides me who attempted to get close with Sumika. About once every six months, some fearless individual would ardently approach Sumika to become her friend. Sumika did have an attractive force to her - but I guess that doesn't need explaining for you at this point.

I didn't try to force my way into such situations, instead just carefully watching Sumika to see if I could learn anything of use. I was curious what sort of reaction the forceful approach I'd been avoiding would elicit from her.

To cut to the chase, it did in fact have the opposite effect: the deeper the interest someone directed at her, the more Sumika seemed to lose interest in them. But that much I knew from the start. What I found odd was the movement of her eyes.

One day, I noticed that when forced into undesirable communication, Sumika wouldn't look at that person, but instead look toward unrelated people who happened to be present. Almost like the person talking to her was just a representative, and actually it was everyone present who was talking to her.

By now, you might know what that means. But I didn't know at the time. I thought nothing more of it than "she probably doesn't like being seen talking to people."

After advancing to middle school, Sumika's personality mellowed a fair bit. She made a few female friends, and blended into the classroom like a normal girl. Sure enough, when you get to around that age, you start running into more practical problems if you don't have friends. She probably found she couldn't be looking demure by herself anymore. I should've accepted it as a favorable change, but it was also a lonely one for me. Making new friends meant fewer chances for her to rely on me.

However, it was clear even as an onlooker than Sumika wasn't opening her heart to those makeshift friends. The walls around her remained as thick as ever; she just started having exchanges with those outside the walls. That put me at ease a bit.

With the change in situation, new tactics for talking to her became necessary. The role of a kind boy speaking to a lonely classmate wouldn't work anymore. Thus, I acted out a sort of sibling-like relationship, suggesting to others at every turn how me and Sumika had a connection since youth. Thanks in part to us not having many common acquaintances in our new class, the act was reasonably successful. I could hang around her all I wanted, and everyone would accept it as natural. I imagine Sumika was the one person bewildered, though.

Needless to say, by then I'd started perceiving Sumika in a romantic way. I adored every little thing that comprised her. I clearly comprehended that I wouldn't be given anything greater than this in my life to come.

To this day, I still think that instinct in itself was accurate. Even if I was wrong about everything else.

For you, the decisive turning point may have been that winter in the third year of middle school, but the first turning point for me came two years earlier, in the winter of our first year.

You remember the skating classes during winter break, I'm sure. The ones the three of us slacked off at as second-years. Well, when we were first-years, me and Sumika took them seriously.

While I pretended to be fooling around with a male friend, I was paying attention to Sumika the entire time. The bunch she usually hung out with all had lousy reflexes, hardly accomplishing anything on the rink before they retired to the bench and chatted up a storm. Sumika alone remained on the rink, sliding around silently.

While searching for an opportunity to talk to her, a boy from another class took a big tumble in front of Sumika. He'd probably been trying to pull off some fancy move. She nearly fell over herself trying to avoid it, but just barely kept her footing. But it seemed she sprained her leg in the process. Her face contorting in pain, she put a hand on the wall and exited the rink, dragging her leg along.

Not wanting to pass up this opportunity, I went after Sumika. Standing in front of her as she untied her skates on the bench, I asked where she'd hurt herself. Sumika bluntly replied that it was no big deal, she was just resting a little, but I sat down next to her anyway.

For ten minutes, we watched the skating rink together in silence. Before I knew it, the sun was setting, and the rink lights came on. The dry sound of skate blades cutting along the ice and the youthful laughter of our classmates sounded oddly distant. There was a whole crowd of people just over there, yet it felt like I was alone with Sumika again after so long. The silence had the same feel to it as the silence in the car back then.

Thinking about it, that was the first time Sumika opened her mouth first.

"You don't have to force yourself to be nice to me," Sumika said. With her eyes still fixed on the rink, sounding a little apologetic.

I recited a pre-prepared line: I'm not forcing myself, I just wanted to take a break too.

"That's not what I mean," Sumika said with irritation.

Then I decided to be honest. I'm not intending to be kind, I'm just doing it because I want to be next to you. But if you feel bothered by it, I'll stop that too.

She was silent for a while. Personally, I saw it as the best profession of my love I could've managed at the time. It came out of my mouth much more smoothly than I'd imagined. To the point that I only realized what it meant after saying it.

I felt like I'd anticipated every possible response. Whether she accepted or rejected my goodwill, and whatever way she chose to express it, I wouldn't be surprised.

"An exemplary answer," Sumika said with a dry laugh.

An exemplary answer?

Unable to understand the intent of her words, I felt her rapidly growing distant from me.

Perhaps the gutter between us was far deeper and wider than I'd imagined, I thought to myself.

From the other side of that gutter, she asked me, with eyes full of conviction:

"You're a prompter, aren't you?"

Even as a middle-schooler, I knew about the prompter system. And that said system was producing sufferers of Sakura Delusion. So that single line from her thawed everything out. The many mysteries that surrounded her were explained in an instant.

This girl had Sakura Delusion. And a very serious case of it.

She saw everyone other than herself as a Sakura.

She was convinced everyone was putting on an act in front of her.

She peered deep into my eyes. As if trying to determine the size of the ripples her question sent through me. And she saw clearly how great my unrest was. Taking that as a tacit affirmation, she lonesomely muttered "Sure enough."

Ever since that day, I've thought about it again and again: if I had immediately dispelled her suspicion then, would things have played out differently later? But that was a meaningless question.

"She doesn't have any friends she can call friends, so I hope you'll keep getting along with her."

Whatever my feelings were now, that was where it all started.

I absolutely was a Sakura, with the sole difference being who put me up to it. Unless I were a first-rate actor, there would be no hiding that guiltiness.

Before I could recover from my confusion, she retied her skates and returned to the rink. I couldn't go after her. There was something I had to think about first: my next strategy. A paradoxical approach that was, indeed, based upon the fact she suffered from serious Sakura Delusion.

Even after winter break ended, I didn't change how I interacted with Sumika. I didn't take any action at all to clear her suspicion that I was a Sakura. In fact, I actively did things that supported her suspicions.

Whenever someone showed signs of approaching Sumika, just like her mother had done, I made a request of them while Sumika wasn't around: "That girl doesn't have friends, so get along with her for me." Those who accepted the request were more friendly to Sumika than necessary, so detecting the scent of a Sakura, she forcefully shut the door on them.

In that way, I provided fertilizer for her Sakura Delusion.

Since I couldn't make Sumika mine, was I trying to create a situation where she couldn't belong to anyone? That was certainly one angle to it. In fact, that pretty much is where it started from. But it's hard to imagine a negative motivation like that is what let me persist for nearly a decade.

Did I have a grudge against Sumika for not becoming mine, and was I trying to dispel that grudge by trapping her in her shell? That's not it either. I hadn't been irritated with her. Not even once, to this very day.

Most likely, I think that upon learning about Sumika's Sakura Delusion, I fell in love with her - Sakura Delusion and all.

To preserve the Sakura Delusion that made up her core. That was more or less my aim.

However, in February, my scheme quickly started to collapse.

That's right. Sumika reached out to you.

Of course, it was the first time I'd seen her do such a thing to anyone but me.

For about a month after that, I kept a little distance from Sumika. Collecting data from afar, I tried to determine the nature of your relationship. But that was really only secondary; I think I was actually afraid to compare your attitude toward Sumika with my own. So I temporarily pretended like I'd lost interest in Sumika.

You know what happened from there. Using the play, I approached you and formed a friendly relationship. Of course, I did that so I could observe you up close. I had to do whatever it took to figure out what about you charmed her.

At a glance, you were a somewhat gloomy middle school boy you could find anywhere. It's not like you had any notable faults, but no particular merits either. Still, you must have had some secret I didn't know about. With some nature that was beyond us, or some method we couldn't imagine, you must have busted through the thick walls surrounding Sumika.

Yet the more I learned about you, the deeper the mystery grew. As closely as I observed, I couldn't find a single special thing about you - just like me.

Yes, you were like me. Of course I could name plenty of differences if I wanted. But at our root, we were similar enough to be long-lost brothers. Not on a surface level, like our personalities or tastes or whatever. We have the same core. So even if our routes differ, we always end up at the same place.

In the end, maybe it was nothing more than chance. Even your remark about Kozaki wasn't a decisive factor, nor was the classroom isolation that resulted from it. You don't have any decisive factor, on the outside or the inside.

But through the interplay of different factors, you just happened to pull at Sumika's heartstrings.

It placed you outside of her Sakura Delusion.

I think maybe that's the truth.

In other words, I just didn't have that luck.

From there, a year and a half passed in a blink. My instinct was telling me that if things kept on like this, you and I would be lifelong friends. That part was something to be welcomed. But us being lifelong friends meant I'd have front-row seats to your romance with Sumika. I would continue to have the thing I couldn't get thrust in my face, and yet wouldn't be able to hate you as I writhed in agony.

That said, if I ditched you, Sumika would unmistakably go with you. I'd half-given up, thinking, do I just have to sit here and twiddle my thumbs?

It was right around then when Sakura Delusion started to bud in your head.

Because I'd seen a case like Sumika's up close, I noticed it right away. Maybe her delusions were infecting you without you realizing. Or maybe me performing in front of you as an actor somehow kicked things off.

I decided I'd do the same thing I did to Sumika to you. I'd water your Sakura Delusion into a fine tree. You'd become like Sumika had been. A solitary tree in the wild, unable to believe anyone, unable to love anyone.

I weighed something like love and something like friendship on a scale, and the scale easily tipped toward the love-like something. My priorities had become clear.

Once your Sakura Delusion was sufficiently grown, I called Sumika to the garage. And I told her that I was a Sakura, as well as suggesting that you were too. As if it had just slipped out of my mouth after giving a serious confession.

The degree to which this shook Sumika was immeasurable. I had never seen her that out of sorts before. She said that was a lie, and tried to make me admit it. But I calmly threw one line after another at her to agitate her Sakura Delusion with pinpoint accuracy. Finally, she burst into tears like a child, and ran out of the garage.

I don't know how exactly the fateful moment came after that. But some day or another, it seemed Sumika had a decisive breakup with you.

I felt no guilt. I just thought everything had been returned to how it should be.

For now, I'm relieved to have written up to the important part.

I'll try to keep the rest brief.

Sumika and I went on to the same high school. She'd gone back into her shell like before. She stood emotionlessly on the train platform every morning, didn't speak to anyone - me included - and left before anyone else once class was over. She stayed at home on days off, not meeting anyone. She got skinnier by the day, and her eyes glazed over.

But there was something clearly different between elementary school Sumika and high school Sumika. Her eyes had always looked distantly, but before, it wasn't as if her gaze was looking at something. She was just averting her eyes from something nearby. But now, she was looking straight at something far in the distance.

One winter morning, Sumika was standing alone on the train platform like usual, and I looked at her from some ways away. As she stared into the middle distance, it looked as if she were waiting for something other than the train. She wasn't waiting for the snow to stop, nor for spring to arrive. It was like she was continuing to patiently wait for someone who wasn't showing at the appointed meeting spot.

Something struck me then. Maybe she's waiting for a Sakura to appear.

Of course, any person looked like a Sakura to her. But that was limited to people she interacted with on a regular basis. To turn that around, it meant she didn't see people with no relation to her as Sakura. Between those two ends, she probably recognized people she used to have a relation to as "ex-Sakura."

Normally, when an individual is at high risk of suicide, a Sakura is selected from the people close to them. But what if there isn't a single such person around? The System would still have to pick someone anyway, wouldn't it? Surely the standards for "close" just drop lower and lower, and it becomes about picking the least bad option.

For instance, a former best friend you cut ties with.

Essentially, I considered this: What if by driving herself into a corner and limiting her relationships to the extreme, Sumika was trying to narrow down the possible Sakura candidates to a single person?

What if she was thinking, "if Ogami can become my Sakura again, I can start it all over from scratch"?

Yes, by then, Sumika's plan had already begun.

After graduating high school, I went to the same college as Sumika. My parents had to sell the house and leave town to look after my grandparents, but I rented a cheap apartment to stay in town.

The one regret I had about leaving the house was that garage. Even after you and Sumika stopped coming, I spent a lot of time in that garage. I watched movies by myself, ate popcorn by myself, boiled in the heat by myself, shivered in the cold by myself. I never once invited any high school friends there. Maybe I felt like if I did invite someone, something similar would happen all over again.

Four or five days after saying goodbye to the garage and moving to the apartment, an unfamiliar envelope was delivered to me.

I had been selected by the System to officially become Sumika's Sakura.

I don't know whether God loves me or what, but at least the System was on my side. I thought, I've been given a valid reason to walk by her side.

If Sumika was in fact trying to call you back as a Sakura like I expected, I would unmistakably be the greatest obstacle to that happening. As long as I did my duty as a Sakura diligently, the odds of a second one being sent to her were low. If Sumika had really wanted to die, it would be a different story, but I'm sorry to say that she had hope. It was no more than a feigned desire for suicide. When she looked out into the distance, she was looking forward to a life with you.

In autumn that year, Sumika joined the acting troupe. Having a comprehensive grasp of her tendencies, I'd joined them in advance. There were auditions of a sort, but I got through them without difficulty. I was always skilled at acting, and my twisted relationship with Sumika and you had gotten me used to falsifying myself.

And yet sure enough, Sumika was the one with far more talent as an actor. All the world was a stage to her. From as early as she could remember - or perhaps since she learned about the concept of prompters - she recognized the people around her as actors, and watched their every move. And she carefully observed what behaviors of her own drew out what reactions. I was no match for someone like that.

Through her work in the troupe, Sumika was slowly recovering from the wound inflicted by leaving you. All the people in the troupe were putting on some sort of act at all times. And because they didn't even try to hide this fact, it must have given her Sakura Delusion relief. Maybe going to the side of deception lessened her fear of being deceived. Beginning to give up on getting you back, she was adapting to real life in her own way.

Though I took care to not let her Sakura Delusion wither completely, I was honestly delighted that she'd recovered enough to once again respond when I called to her. My ideal Sumika was the way she'd been in elementary school, and she attained a similar state once she started fitting into the troupe. I prayed that it could last as long as possible.

Even after I successfully pulled you apart from Sumika, I was always afraid. I was constantly having bad dreams that woke me up in the middle of the night. What if one of you arrived at the truth someday? If you knew it was all a trap I'd laid, you could have reconciled in the blink of an eye. Having lost each other for a time would make your affection even stronger, and this time there'd be no gap for me to wedge myself into.

But two, three years went by, and seeing no sign that your relationship would be repaired, my wariness gradually eased up. Sumika had kept wanting you all that time, but didn't realize that you (probably) kept wanting her too. Both convinced you were the one who had been abandoned, you constructed a life based around that misunderstanding.

I stopped hanging around Sumika 24/7, frequently going on long trips. Even I'm not sure why I started doing that. It's certainly not because I wanted to get away from Sumika, but that said, I wasn't running from myself either. Maybe I just realized I'd been stuck in the same place for too long, and it was a kickback from that.

Two years after joining the troupe, by the time even I'd nearly forgotten that I was the culprit behind you two separating, the gears suddenly meshed in Sumika's head. As if she'd been waiting a long time for my guard to lower.

At the time, Sumika was acting in a famous play. She wasn't the lead or anything, but it was a pretty significant role for someone who tended to work backstage. It was a common tragedy about a man and woman having a misunderstanding and both losing their lives, and she played the role of a short man who tries to make peace between the couple, but who neither will listen to.

While she was reciting the lines on stage, her voice suddenly came to a halt - of course, I wasn't present for this, so I'd only heard about it.

Sumika had never forgotten her lines even once before, so at first everyone thought it was an ad-lib. But the silence went on too long for that. She stood there frozen for ages. One of the members whispered the rest of the line to her, but it didn't reach her ears. She was completely inattentive, and didn't move a muscle.

That night, Sumika visited my apartment. And she begged me: please, tell me the truth. Were you and Ogami really my Sakura?

I relented quickly, telling her everything. After revealing the truth, I remember feeling pretty relieved. Like being the last guy in hide-and-seek who's finally found past evening.

Despite learning that I'd been deceiving her for years, she wasn't irritated. She didn't rejoice that you didn't hate her after all, nor lament the fact that she'd hurt you; she just looked at me with eyes of pity.

And so Sumika resumed her plan.

She thoroughly destroyed the relationships she'd built over the past few years. She worked to make all the troupe members forsake her, cut contact with people who had even a slight connection to her at college, quit her job without advance notice, and aimed to be despised by everyone but you.

Naturally, she turned against me as well. I'll spare you the details, but I was honestly impressed how malicious she could become if she put her mind to it. She know my weaknesses more accurately than I did, and attacked them mercilessly. The only reason I wasn't broken like the others was probably because I was broken from the start. Even Sumika didn't have the means to break what was already broken, it seems.

You might think it's strange. Why would Sumika adopt such a roundabout method? She didn't need to tear through Sakura candidates until you were chosen as one, she could just meet you and talk. If she just told you in person "that was all a misunderstanding, I've liked you this whole time," that would be that.

But it had become a kind of obsession to her. She was strongly convinced that unless you appeared before her as a genuine Sakura, there could be no true reconciliation. Indeed, even if she went and told you at this point, you wouldn't believe her that easily. For good or ill, that past had already become an important element of who you are. To deny it would also be to smash the ground beneath your feet.

She must have considered the angle of what it would take for her, trapped by Sakura Delusion like you, to be able to believe in someone else's words. And so she arrived at the idea of giving you the position of a Sakura. A situation where both of you were Sakura would be inconceivable. If you became her Sakura, then you would be able to trust Sumika completely.

And so she went on nipping every bud, until finally I was left. It seemed that as long as I remained as a Sakura, then you wouldn't be getting pulled as one.

Sumika's desperately trying to push me away. But sooner or later, she's sure to realize that's impossible. When she does, I think I can imagine what she might do, in her current madness. She'll probably take the simplest and most foolish option.

I imagine I'll be killed by Sumika. And I intend to assist her as much as I can. Because for the first time, I figure Sumika will be genuinely grateful to me.

I suppose I should apologize to you. But apologizing on the verge of death just feels kind of cowardly. So I think I'll accept your resentment. Even after I'm gone, feel free to hate me all you like.

If you'll let me say just one selfish thing, I really kinda liked the time I spent in the garage with you.

It's all I ever think about lately.

I wonder how nice it'd be if you were sitting next to me now.

[+]

13

What made him willing to meet with that woman again was that he'd detected a simple sense of gratitude in her message. He'd always avoided second contact with people related to past jobs, but when he tried giving her a call, it turned out she had also, like Ogami, quit doing work on matchmaking apps recently. She too seemed surprised to hear that Ogami had quit.

"What are you doing now?", Miwa asked.

"I'm doing nothing," Ogami answered. And he really wasn't.

"In that case, we can meet right away."

Miwa said she'd be waiting at the same café as their last meeting and hung up. Ogami put a light jacket over his T-shirt, got in the car, and headed for the café.

The rain that had gone on for days finally cleared up that morning. The trees along the road were dripping water from their leaves, and puddles on the pavement brightly reflected the sunlight. It was humid in the car, so Ogami opened the driver's-side window all the way. But he was still sweating, so he parked the car on the way and took off his jacket. Then he was finally comfortable.

Miwa had arrived at the café before Ogami. Meeting her again after months, Ogami felt her cheeks were a bit more plump than in his memory. Maybe it looked that way because she was smiling.

She greeted Ogami with a more favorable attitude than when they last met. Ogami returned the greeting.

"I called you to thank you directly," Miwa said, then quickly explained the circumstances that led to her quitting.

After receiving Ogami's advice, Miwa diligently put it into practice. She strove to observe "anxious-looking men," and trained to perceive the anxieties users were having. She traced men's thoughts, and earnestly imagined what sorts of words they were most wanting to hear right now.

And as she did that, she said she started to empathize with the users.

"An honest man showed up who just made me feel too apologetic to be deceiving," she recounted happily. "So despite being a Sakura, I got the urge to go to meet him in person..."

How things went from there needed no explanation. She quit her job and was thanking Ogami, so the rest was obvious.

"Congrats," Ogami commended. "Guess you being a Sakura will be a lifelong secret."

"No, I spilled the beans right away. I'm not skillful enough to keep someone's company and hide something like that."

"What was his reaction?"

"He said he didn't care."

"Glad he's a tolerant guy."

"I knew he was that kind of person. That's why I wanted to meet him."

Miwa continued to brag about her lover for a while afterward. Ogami listened and nodded along. He hadn't heard a voice directed at him in a while, so it almost felt like listening to music from a foreign country. A song sung in a very distant part of the world, yet it was by no means bad to listen to.

"Come to think of it, you also quit your job, Mr. Ogami."

"Yeah."

"Why'd you quit? It was your calling and all."

"Got tired of it."

"Hmm," she mused. "At any rate, I guess we're both going from being deceivers to being the deceived."

"Guess so. I'll be careful."

"So will I," she agreed, then thought of something. "That said, being deceived isn't all bad."

"Like in the case of your boyfriend?"

"Like that," Miwa said with a smile.

Miwa was right that being a Sakura on matchmaking apps had been Ogami's calling in a way. He could deeply understand the feelings of love-starved people and accurately select the words they wanted to hear - that was one of the reasons.

But it wasn't just that. Ogami had gotten a kind of healing from that work. Being able to artificially fill in a loneliness that wasn't looking for anyone in particular, and above all, realizing that there were many others besides him who were starved for love yet only able to obtain forgeries, eased his pain just the slightest amount.

The biggest reason he decided to quit was because he no longer required that healing.

Ogami turned his thoughts to all the people he'd deceived as a Sakura. There were many honest people, but just as many dishonest people. Some couldn't abandon their pride and put on a bluff, while others abandoned too much pride and became self-debasing. Some were half-mad from being starved for love, while others had gone past starvation, no longer able to even imagine what it was like to love or be loved.

Even so, they were still several steps ahead of me, Ogami thought. At least they were reaching out. They were trying to grab hold of something. Even that simple action took an unbelievable amount of courage for me. Indeed, my emotions have only just started to walk past where they were at age 15. Right now, I can't imagine how far I'll need to walk before I even see their backs.

But there's no rush, Ogami told himself. All I can do is take it at my own pace. Even if all I do is make it back onto the same course as them, I'll just have to be grateful for that.

He left the café and said goodbye to Miwa in the parking lot. While parting, she gave him a little wave with her hand around her shoulder. Like the one Sumika gave him every morning.

Her Handcuff sparkled in the sunlight along with he movement of her arm.

"Goodbye, Mr. Ogami. Take care."

I'll probably never meet her again, Ogami thought for no particular reason as he watched Miwa go. He felt that was as self-evident as the fact he'd never meet Kasumi, Sumika, or Kujirai again. She symbolized many of the things Ogami had been associated with before his Sakura curse was lifted, and so it felt like she had come at the end to say goodbye.

Being deceived isn't all bad.

While driving home, Ogami thought back on Miwa's words.

Was that really true?

Looking back on his own past, many of his problems had come from being deceived, or trying to avoid deception. And as for the people Ogami deceived for work, he might have temporarily shown them a dream, but in the end he just wasted their time and money. It leading to a positive result like Miwa's was surely an exception among exceptions.

And yet, supposing a world where people always spoke their true feelings without falsehood, Sumika would have never fallen to Sakura Delusion, and thus might not have had any special feelings for Ogami. Kujirai wouldn't have fallen in love with Sumika either, and wouldn't become friends with Ogami.

And all told, Ogami thought, those twisted friendships born of suspicion and scheming were, at the moment, the best ones in my life.

By the time he had dinner and got back to the apartment, it was 9 PM. The living room still had some leftover warmth from daytime. Ogami opened the window, turned off the lights, and went to the bathroom. He took a longer shower than usual on account of how much he'd sweat. After cleaning himself thoroughly with soap, he left the bathroom and dried off with a towel.

Changing into sleep wear and returning to the living room, the heat from the day had left, and the smell of a spring night filled the room instead. He went to the window to close it, but then decided to leave it be. Without turning on the light, Ogami sat on the sofa. The comfortable night wind shook the curtains as it blew into the room. Listening close, he could hear distant bugs in the trees.

Over at the kitchen, he poured some whiskey into a glass and put ice in it. As he headed out to the veranda with it in hand, something broke the silence. It was a ringtone. Ogami looked toward the smartphone on his desk. He thought it was Miwa, but it was a call from an unknown number.

The ringtone wasn't stopping. Ogami put down his glass, picked up the phone, and answered the call. An unfamiliar voice spoke an unfamiliar name. Waiting for them to finish speaking, Ogami informed them they had the wrong number and hung up. Then he laid the phone down on the desk, picked up his glass, put on sandals, and went out to the veranda.

Sitting in a folding chair, he drank the whiskey and looked out at the town. It wasn't much of a sight. Aside from the faint light coming from people's houses, the systematic lines of streetlights, and the cars on the road, the rest was just sprawling darkness. And yet compared to winter, the scenery had become considerably more friendly.

Of course, maybe the change of season isn't the only reason I feel that way, Ogami thought. Until just a while ago, no matter where I was, anywhere I went was a town of Sakura. There was surely a lurking threat of Sakura there, so I couldn't let my guard down for a second.

I recalled the name "Blossom Killer" for the first time in a long while.

To borrow that expression, my "sakura" had indeed been killed.

He took out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and took off his Handcuff to place it on the cigarette pack. He took a deep inhale of smoke, then let it out bit by bit. Then he looked toward his Handcuff again. Even that, which had bound him for so long as a symbol of Sakura and the system that produced them, now just looked like a regular bracelet.

Ultimately, even this is just a part of the stage setting that makes up our world.

Because the problem always lies with us.

The smell of the cigarette mixed with the night air. Cigarettes tasted different in spring than in winter. It was actually etched deeper into his memory than the smell of the seasons themselves. The smell of a new season is always fresh, and no matter how many decades he lived, Ogami imagined spring would always bring him a surprise.

The time flew by before he knew it. Apparently he had nodded off. Real sleep would probably be coming soon. He had to get back to the room. He needed to sleep properly in his bed, and cultivate the courage to live another day.

But still, why is it so warm tonight?, Ogami thought with wonder. And before he could arrive at an answer, he fell into sleep as if it were swallowing him up.

*

The first action Ogami took after learning the truth of everything was to burn the notebook, the sole piece of evidence.

Once he'd finished reading through the notebook three times, he had no more need for the flashlight. He put the notebook in his pocket, opened the door, and left the car. In the deep blue known as night, a faint orange was starting to mix in. From the trees surrounding the premises, he heard birds chirping. With an animal's cry from one direction being answered by a cry from another, then yet another, the woods gradually became bustling.

He sat down on the hood of the car and put a cigarette in his mouth. Instantly, he was hit with an intense lethargy. It was like the accumulated fatigue of the past few months caught up with him all at once. He struggled to put energy into his limbs, and his head had a dull ache when he tried to move. He felt like he'd aged a decade in one night.

After lighting the cigarette, Ogami took the notebook out of his pocket and lit it aflame as well. The air was dry, so it burned quickly. Ogami watched intently as it turned to ash alongside the truth of that chain of events.

Sumika had wanted only Ogami up to the end. He didn't know how to accept that reality at this point. Indeed, it was because he had always wished for that to be the case that there were countless "but"s surrounding it. A deep conviction had taken root in Ogami's mind that his greatest wish specifically would never be heard.

However, it had been none other than Kujirai's confession. He had to believe it. I have to accept that head-on, Ogami thought. She wasn't just a mirror reflecting back my goodwill. The Sumika my eyes saw back then was simply the real Sumika. Even after we parted, she continued thinking of me for nearly seven years.

It felt like having an all-too-convenient dream. But in reality, maybe it was more fair to say he'd just woken from a nightmare.

Ogami thought about that nightmare once more. You never really liked me at all, did you? That day seven years ago, how had she felt hearing the words I hurled at her across the train tracks? When forsaken by the one person in this world she could trust, how much despair did she feel?

And despite having just been subjected to such a cruel thing, she wrung out the willpower to reply "Yeah. I didn't like you at all."

May Ogami at least be able to leave me cleanly, with no bitterness.

He wanted to go back to that moment if he could. He wanted to run across the tracks to her and embrace her in his arms. He wanted to tell her it was all just a misunderstanding. He wanted to say that he needed her just as much, if not moreso, than she needed him.

But it had already ended seven years ago. As much as he raised his voice, there was no way of conveying those feelings to their past selves.

Images of another present that could have been came to mind one after another. It was impossible to stop them. Compared to that present, this reality he was in now seemed to have no value at all.

Once his cigarette was mostly ash, Ogami hastily lit up a second cigarette. And he focused his mind on the taste of the smoke. If he didn't distract himself like that, it felt like something swelling up in his chest was going to burst.

To shake away the thoughts, Ogami looked up at the cherry blossoms overhead. Seeing them in the faint light of dawn, they looked to him like common white flowers. Indeed, they were merely flowers. They were appreciated only because they went so quickly; if they bloomed year-round, people would quickly tire of them.

I wonder what Kasumi would say seeing this, Ogami suddenly thought. She liked the botanical garden, so no doubt she would have liked cherry blossoms as much as anyone. She had hoped to go see the botanical garden at night with Ogami. In the end, that promise never came to fruition. She was unable to enjoy this year's cherry blossoms. Those cheap artificial ones must have been the last she saw.

But no doubt her resolve wouldn't have changed even if she'd gotten to see some real sakura. At some point or another, she would vanish from Ogami's sight, and fulfill her original objective with a firm will.

Now that the mysteries of Sumika and Kujirai had been revealed, Ogami could easily imagine the reason Kasumi decided to die alone, too.

"Perhaps I was able to avoid dying until today because I knew you'd become my Sakura someday."

Her last words. By coincidence, they also described Sumika's true objective while she was alive.

When she realized that, she must have also realized the true meaning of the terrible mistake she had made.

I was convinced my sister had changed for the worse, but what if that wasn't it at all?

What if she was just wearing an elaborate mask, and behind that mask was the very same sister I had loved?

What if once she achieved her goal of reuniting with Ogami, she was ready to immediately discard that mask and return to her old self?

And I took that chance away from my sister forever.

There was no path left for Kasumi to turn back to. So the last thing she did was push Ogami, the man which her sister would have done anything to get back, over to the side of the living.

Maybe she realized that if she didn't do that, she would be taking even Ogami from her sister.

Feel free to hate me all you like, Kujirai had said in the notebook. But oddly, I didn't feel any anger toward him. It wasn't because he had received enough punishment, nor because the last lines of the notebook had moved my heart.

It's just if I'd been asked to pick one or the other, I would've picked Sumika without hesitation.

That was all there was to it. We were both in disadvantageous roles, but compared to the fate he arrived at, maybe I had it a little better.

It's a little different from forgiveness. And it's not sympathy, either.

Maybe the closest word for it is "recognition."

Finally, he decided to go back inside the car one more time. When Ogami opened the door, he found it strange that he didn't see Kujirai. It felt as if he'd been talking with Kujirai there all night. But all there was inside the car was a faint smell of rust and oil.

Leaving the door open, he lay down in the driver's seat and watched the dawn fully turn into morning. When the sun shone brightly on the sakura, they regained their specialness. Yet Ogami closed his eyes, and gazed upon the scene behind his eyelids instead.

It was the first day of their third year of middle school. When he arrived at school, Sumika was looking at the class roster posted at the entrance, but suddenly hid her face and covered her eyes.

When Ogami asked what was wrong, Sumika shook her head silently, then said "hay fever" in a nasally voice.

"My face is really something right now, so you shouldn't look."

"What kind of pollen sets it off?"

"Cedars, cypresses, rice plants, wormwoods, and dandelions."

It was very clearly a lie, but Ogami just said "sounds rough" and left it at that.

At a later date, he talked about it while alone with Kujirai.

"It startled me since she suddenly started crying," Ogami said. "What was that about?"

"She must've been so happy to be in your class she cried, duh," Kujirai said like it was nothing. "I was real happy myself that the three of us didn't have to go our separate ways."

The frankness he spoke with made Ogami falter.

"Happy, sure, but enough to cry?"

"I was nervous enough to puke that morning. If I ended up separated from you guys, I was thinking of playing dumb, carrying over a desk, and attending your class."

"I'd kinda like to see that."

"What about you? What would you have done if you were separated from us?"

Ogami thought it over for a while. "I might've felt the futility of life and secluded myself."

"Now that I'd like to see," Kujirai said in a raised voice and laughed.

When Sumika appeared later, the two asked her the same question.

Sumika pondered it with a serious expression.

"In that case, I'd have to take Ogami or Kujirai's place each day."

"Dressing up in a boy's uniform?", Kujirai asked.

"Yes. We'd trade uniforms so you could do the same with me."

"With your talent for acting, Kujirai, that might actually work out," Ogami remarked.

"I really wouldn't think so," Kujirai said in an imitation of Sumika. The impression was accurate enough that even Sumika held her sides with laughter.

In that moment, we really were best friends, Ogami thought.

He felt something inside him break. A door he'd firmly closed so as to never open it again was torn open, and he felt the old feelings pushed within flooding out. It was a rush of emotion that felt like dizziness, and he grit his teeth to endure it. But the more he tried to resist, the more it picked up speed, with no limit in sight.

Why hadn't everyone told me the truth sooner?, he wanted to scream. If even one person had revealed the reality before it was too late, things might not have ended in such an awful way. There could have been a world where Sumika, Kujirai, and Kasumi were all just living as normal.

And the biggest fool of all had been me. If I'd had the courage to take another step to confirm Sumika's feelings, if I'd had the guts to confront Kujirai directly, this absolutely wouldn't have happened. Sumika probably would have believed me, and as much as I fought with Kujirai, we could've made up in the end. Even Kasumi could have been an entirely happy girl if she hadn't lost her beloved sister.

And so I was left alone. Maybe I should follow the three of them right away. If I do that, at least I won't be left out. I won't have to worry about or regret anything anymore.

But Ogami knew that in truth, he had no desire to die. Likely the Handcuff on his wrist knew that, too.

As much as he wallowed in sorrow, no Sakura would appear to console him.

A person who'd had two genuine best friends had no need for Sakura.

To stay here by myself, and continue to think of them. That must be the role I've been given.

That's what he felt.

Ogami started by remembering the day Sumika first spoke to him. Then he went day by day, digging up everything he could remember in order. And from each and every one, he went removing the label that marked them as "fake." Like picking the individual petals off a flower.

*

It was about time to return to town. Smoking one last cigarette, Ogami left it in the ashtray and got out of the car. He walked down the shrine road lined with sakura trees, taking each step firmly. The wind, still retaining a slight chill, blew through the premises, rustling the trees and scattering petals.

He went through the torii gate, down the log stairs, and back to his own car. When he sat in the driver's seat, it felt like an awfully nostalgic place considering he'd only been away from it for a night. He slightly adjusted the angle of the mirror, put on his seatbelt, grabbed the wheel, and waited in that position for his senses to get accustomed.

Taking a final deep breath, he turned the key to start the engine. The car shuddered, and the gauges lit up.

The navigation system activated, and asked him his destination like usual.

The Town of Sakura, Ogami replied without thinking.

"I couldn't find "The Town of Sakura,"" the navigation system said after a short pause.

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