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.