(Toggle Theme) (Size Up) (Size Down)

[+]

7

Once the detective's car had left, Ogami went back into his room and shut the door. The cramped space was as cold as outside if not colder, and even turning on the heater didn't seem to be warming things up at all. It was as if the room had invited in a unique chill while he was away.

He took a shower and got right into bed, but his body heat escaped in no time at all, and an unpleasant cold swirled around his extremities. Getting up, he went over to the kitchen, heated some water and gulped it down raw, and returned to bed. Even then, drowsiness just wouldn't come.

Kujirai had been living in this room until not long ago, Ogami thought, staring up at the pitch black ceiling. He had simply assumed that his parents' house being vacant meant he had left town, but that wasn't the case. Kujirai had rented this room to stay in town, and furthermore, belonged to the same troupe as Sumika.

Neither of these could be coincidences, of course. Staying in town, joining the troupe, it was obviously because of Sumika's presence. Was Sumika someone special to Kujirai after all?

No, hold on. Ogami stopped and reconsidered things. Much like how I'm now a Sakura for Kasumi, isn't it possible Kujirai became Sumika's Sakura? Kasumi mentioned her being in a dangerous state after graduating middle school. So it wouldn't be at all strange if Kujirai, being both close to Sumika and having shown extraordinary aptitude for the task already, was selected as a Sakura.

However, if that were it, then it would also mean Kujirai failed in his duty as a Sakura. Was that a conceivable outcome? Could it be that a man with that much talent as a Sakura was unable to prevent the suicide of Sumika, someone he may have even had feelings for?

He would have also had disadvantages. Kujirai and Sumika had once acted together as Sakura for Ogami. Serving as a Sakura for someone with experience being one is like trying to counsel someone with counseling experience; it would surely come with many difficulties. Knowing too much about each other could also become a hindrance to that task.

But even accounting for that, Ogami couldn't accept it. That was just how highly he regarded Kujirai's abilities. Whatever the circumstances, he was a man who once deceived me utterly.

There, Ogami was struck by another possibility. A theory that he may have come to right away, if only he hadn't known Kujirai as a person.

What if it was Kujirai who killed Sumika?

Maybe he was betrayed by Sumika, just like the six members she deceived - or maybe Kujirai himself went unharmed, but the incident greatly angered him - and so he plotted her murder?

However, this theory felt less convincing than the Sakura theory. The Kujirai who Ogami knew wasn't the sort of impulsive person who'd harm others in anger.

There was so much he didn't know. He came to feel that there was no use thinking about it further with the information he currently had.

Still, as far as the coincidence of him moving into this room as if he were taking Kujirai's place, Ogami did come to an explanation he could be satisfied with. It was the same situation as with the photo hiding spot. We're strangely aligned in those sorts of ways. That was all there was to it.

As the pale morning sun began to shine through the window, Ogami finally got to sleep. His alarm rang three hours later, rousing him from his short sleep. For a while he couldn't remember why he'd set an alarm, but then he remembered: today was the day Kasumi was coming over.

From the day he left his parents' house all the way until today, Ogami'd had only a single acquaintance come to visit his room. A visit from one of his coworkers four years ago, with no advance notice whatsoever, was the first and the last.

She was a college student about two or three years older than him with a plain appearance. She did good work, but was awfully unsociable, sticking out about as much as Ogami did in the workplace. They often bumped into each other in the smoking area behind the shop, but it was rare that they'd converse, making her an ideal person for Ogami to associate with.

One day, Ogami was feeling sick and had her take over his shift. She was as unsociable as ever when she answered the phone, but agreed to fill for him in just two replies. She hung up without a word of concern for his health, which was comforting to Ogami. He even found himself thinking, "if everyone was like her, life would be a little easier for me."

So when she came over to his place at night, he carelessly opened the door jumping to the conclusion that it had to be some work-related matter. The instant he saw the shopping bag hanging from her arm and her strained smile, he regretted opening it. "She's one capable Sakura," his mind judged immediately.

She showed surprising tenacity. As much as he tried to drive her out, she wouldn't withdraw. "I know the feeling of not wanting anyone to bother about you," she said in a pacifying manner. "But you're too inexperienced to be living that life, it's too dangerous. You need to learn to lean on others sometimes, or you'll never manage."

After a thirty-minute back-and-forth, Ogami managed to send her away. The whole mess had worsened his condition, and he spent several days lying in bed. He felt like he'd said something cruel to her as she left, but his fever and headache made him forget what. Once he did return to work, she treated him with the same attitude as before, yet Ogami sent in his resignation the next month and fled from that town.

He didn't know whether or not she was a Sakura. But thinking about it now, he felt she probably wasn't. Maybe she only decided to visit because of their meager fellowship as people who didn't fit into the workplace, and nothing more.

These days, Ogami probably would've used more careful judgement. For instance, he could have accepted her kindness on the surface, then naturally put distance between them. But his Sakura Delusion was particularly severe at that time, so he saw everyone who spoke to him as Sakura.

At any rate, he didn't need to fear making that same mistake with Kasumi. He could just think about deceiving, and not need to consider being deceived. It made for a truly simple and relaxing relationship. Like interacting with a dog or a cat.

Kasumi rung the apartment doorbell right at 10.

Entering Ogami's room, she gave a brief look around the room, then stared at Ogami's face interrogatively.

"Ogami, is this room usually like this?"

"Like what, exactly?"

"I mean the temperature."

"I do have the heater on. Are you cold?"

"Igloos are surprisingly warm. Did you know that?", she said. "Well, it's about as warm as that."

"I've never been in an igloo."

"You'll wreck your body living in a place like this. Ogami, you don't exactly seem strapped for cash, am I right?"

"I don't like to have too many things. Because who knows when I'll be leaving here."

"Even then, this is just too terrible. Let's go buy something to warm you up."

It wasn't a bad suggestion. Truthfully, Ogami was unable to think up any ideas for how to deepen your friendship with a girl after inviting her over.

Arriving at the home improvement store, the two spent some time looking around. They gazed pointlessly at aquariums and the emergency supplies section, had discussions over bargain bin items with unclear uses, and after buying insulation sheets and thick curtains, went back to the car.

"It's been a long time since I went out in a car," Kasumi remarked, rather delayed.

"Is it fun?"

"Very."

Ogami imagined that with her parents being busy with volunteer work, they couldn't give much attention to Kasumi.

"Is there anywhere you want to go?"

"Are you going to take me?"

"As long as it's not too far."

Kasumi thought it over with an uncommonly serious expression.

"Do you like botanical gardens, Ogami?"

"I visited one once a long time ago, and that's it," he answered. "Want to go over there?"

"Absolutely." Kasumi nodded firmly. "In winter, I come to miss the warmth of that place. Even if it's been quite a while for me, too."

Ogami drove toward the botanical garden. They did some light chatting on the way there, but internally, he was deeply shaken by her speaking the words "botanical garden."

*

As he remembered it, he'd gone together with Sumika to the botanical garden not long at all after they became close. It was before Kujirai was assigned as his Sakura.

Before spring break, the school had that relaxed atmosphere characteristic of the end of a term. While Ogami was getting ready to go home after his afternoon classes, Sumika came over and invited him to go with her to the botanical garden.

"Until the end of this month, apparently the garden's staying open late into the night. That means you can see the greenhouse in the dark with the lights down. Doesn't that sound fun?", Sumika said, as if proposing a sinister plot.

Ogami obviously accepted the invitation. He was interested in seeing a totally dark greenhouse, and above all, it was an invitation from Sumika. He couldn't refuse.

With it being night on a weekday, the botanical garden was deserted. They bought tickets at the front desk and received small flashlights, then headed for the greenhouse.

Ogami saw the greenhouse at the end of a narrow path displaying insectivorous plants with poisonous colors. The lights were off, like Sumika had said, and with the lights from the path reflecting off it, you couldn't see inside.

When the automatic door into the greenhouse didn't open, the two nearly crashed into it. After stopping and stomping their feet a bit, the door clattered open.

"I was worried it was closed," Ogami said with relief.

"Automatic doors just don't respond sometimes," Sumika said, looking behind her.

"I've never had that happen before."

"It happens for me constantly."

"Is it a matter of height?"

"There are lots of people shorter than me," Sumika insisted, sounding insulted. "I'm sure there are body types the mechanism has a harder time detecting or something, right?"

Ogami couldn't particularly remember how the greenhouse at night differed from during the day. His heart was full from the fact that he was spending a night together with Sumika, so the plants weren't what caught his eye. Still, one thing he did remember was the distant green light of the emergency exit being unpleasantly bright.

There was a narrow bridge along the path, and when crossing it, Sumika kept her body right against Ogami's. He could hardly see her as she blended into the darkness, but that only made her presence feel stronger.

To extend their time just a little more, Ogami stood in front of plants he had no particular interest in and lit every nook and cranny with the flashlight, and retraced his steps for no reason. Despite his efforts, they were approaching the entrance before he knew it, and the two were once more returned to light. Sumika, too, remarked with regret that she wished they could've taken their time and looked around more.

While looking at a diorama display on the second floor, an announcement of the garden's closing played, and the two hurried out of the building. They bought canned coffee from a vending machine by the entrance, and sat down to take a break. There were specks of snow outside, but the heat of the greenhouse remained inside their bodies, so the chill was comfortable on their skin. Sumika remarked that it was like summer and winter had traded places in an instant.

Then, the two had a discussion about suicide.

Maybe because of the unordinary darkness they'd been cutting through, death felt closer to them than usual. In such darkness that you couldn't see your own limbs if you turned the flashlight off, they felt a floating sensation like they were souls who had left their bodies behind.

He'd been thinking for a while that he should speak frankly with Sumika about Kozaki's suicide. And there was no more appropriate timing for it than now. So he resolutely asked Sumika:

"What did you think about Kozaki's suicide?"

She must have been startled. Because the high-risk individual who she was watching over as a prompter had suddenly brought up suicide.

Sumika looked up into space, holding her empty can, and thought about the question for a while.

"If it were me, I wouldn't try to die in winter," she said. "I think I'd choose spring."

"Why?"

"Because I think I could sleep better in spring."

That's a strange reason, Ogami laughed. It is a strange reason, Sumika laughed alongside him.

Then she asked him back: "What season would you choose, Ogami?"

"I might pick winter, same as Kozaki."

"Why's that?"

"It's a season where lots of stuff is dying, so my death would be easier to accept."

Sumika put a hand to her mouth and went "hmm."

"But Ogami, don't you think you'd be more likely to go "if everyone's going to die, maybe I'll dare to try living"?"

"Maybe," Ogami admitted. "I guess I won't really know until that time comes."

I'd like to keep not knowing, Sumika said. Ogami agreed with that.

*

That was Ogami's grounds for thinking that Sumika's death wasn't suicide. If she were to kill herself, she would choose spring.

It was just as easy to brush it off as a frivolous remark she'd made in middle school. And yet, he felt her joke reflected at least some small part of her real feelings. In the first place, her position as a Sakura meant she should have denied the act of suicide entirely. The fact she gave a response like that in spite of this meant that the question was one she couldn't just yield to.

Because I think I could sleep better in spring.

Sumika was a girl who slept often. During lunch breaks, she'd often invite Ogami for "afternoon naps," in which they'd sneak into an empty classroom to sleep. Furthermore, for some reason this was restricted to times when Kujirai wasn't around; Ogami surely wouldn't have slept soundly otherwise. While napping, he would wait for suitable times to lift his head and gaze at her in secret.

Thinking about it, maybe she was just too timid to talk to Ogami when alone with him, and thus designated that time for napping. Or perhaps she was putting on the appearance that her heart was open to him by sleeping defenselessly in front of him.

However, what was clear was that her sleep itself wasn't feigned. She was indeed asleep. Ogami could tell, as an budding expert at feigning sleep.

The botanical garden was still there, the same as it was back then.

After paying the entrance fee, Ogami and Kasumi set their sights on the greenhouse. With it being afternoon on a weekday - he'd completely lost his sense for days, but it was probably a weekday - the garden was empty. They only others they spotted were a group of two young girls in a section displaying local plants.

When he told the story of him visiting the garden with Sumika at night, Kasumi was delighted.

"Please, tell me more stories like that."

"I will, if I remember any others."

"Well, huh. So you can see some interesting stuff if you come at night," Kasumi said with chagrin. "Let's come here again someday. After midnight this time, when it's darkest."

"I have to imagine they'd be closed after midnight."

"When it's decently dark, then."

After going down the path of insectivorous plants and opening the door, the two were engulfed in a humid summer air. The first smell to hit them wasn't the leaves, nor the plants, nor the fruits, but the thick soil that had just been dug up. It was a smell Ogami often caught a whiff of as a child.

There were, sure enough, no other visitors in the greenhouse either. There seemed to be an artificial waterfall somewhere, making a continuous sound like white noise, but it was quiet aside from that. They didn't hear anyone talking, and there was no music playing.

Taking their time, much like when walking through there with Sumika, Ogami and Kasumi proceeded along the greenhouse paths. They carefully read the descriptions on the labels, and looked over each and every leaf. There were dozens of different plants in the greenhouse, but they all seemed dwarfed by the banana plants reaching to the ceiling and the palm trees.

Kasumi was finding it unusually enjoyable. She probably hadn't come to a place like this in quite a while. But that can't be all it is, Ogami thought. No doubt she's enjoying it because she's with me. I should have a little more confidence in that.

As they proceeded along, they saw a bridge over an artificial lake. It was a thin bridge with no handrails, so crossing it side by side would be tricky. When they reached the bridge, Ogami casually held Kasumi's shoulders. Her body stiffened for a moment, but she soon relaxed, and let his arms guide her.

When he looked at Kasumi's face after crossing, her cheeks had become faintly red. So she does have at least some affection for me, Ogami noted, his confidence growing. Maybe it's sufficient to just preserve this relationship now.

After leaving the greenhouse and walking for a while, they found a shop doubling as a café. The shelves had a mix of merchandise, including decorative plants, bottles of jam, and stuffed animals. They decided to take a break to have a light meal at the café.

"My graduation is half a month away," Kasumi mentioned as they ate. "They're having us practice for it, but doesn't practicing for graduation seem kind of foolish?"

"That's true, I could see it lessening the emotional impact," Ogami replied. "On the other hand, I get the school not wanting you to mess up."

"I don't see any particular reason to cry at graduation myself, but strictly speaking, I suppose I could cry about that fact."

"You aren't sad?"

"Not at all. That said, it's not like I feel refreshed either. How was it for you, Ogami?"

"My high school graduation?"

"Yes. Did you cry?"

"I remember the gym was awfully cold."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"Sure enough, you're like me, Ogami." Kasumi's eyes narrowed in a smile.

"Personally, I'm surprised you're "with me" on that," Ogami responded. "You look like an honest sort to me."

"Looking honest to dishonest people means you're not an honest sort."

Ogami thought about it for a moment, then nodded. "Maybe you're right."

After finishing their meal, the two left the botanical garden.

In the car on the way back, Kasumi picked up where she left off.

"Speaking of graduation... This is truly a crude question, and I'm not asking with any ulterior motive, but..."

"Yeah?"

"Why did you stop meeting with my sister after you graduated middle school?"

He knew that question would be coming eventually. So naturally, he'd prepared an answer.

"There was a bit of a change in circumstances. I had a need to quickly learn how to live by myself, without depending on anyone. Before I knew it, we'd been estranged for quite a while, and I was unable to get an opportunity to restore our relationship. Thinking how she might have forgotten all about me and been getting on well with new friends, I couldn't work up the nerve to call."

"It sounds like you've had it rough too, Ogami." Kasumi nodded with a meek expression. "But I believe she always remembered you."

"I hope you're right."

"She didn't seem to associate with many people at all in high school, so she always came straight home and rarely even left the house on days off. I wonder if she might have been lonely after you two separated. She used to always be telling me about you, after all."

"In what way?"

"Well... I'll keep that a secret." Kasumi smiled nostalgically. "I should clarify, my sister feeling down after you left was only up until she joined the acting troupe. So I imagine her ending up the way she did had nothing to do with you."

Thanks, Ogami said.

What a shame, is what he really wanted to say.

If only my existence could have contributed to Sumika's suicide in some way.

When getting out of the car, Kasumi spoke up.

"I guess I made things kind of serious at the end there. Once things have settled, let's go to the botanical garden again together. At night this time."

Convinced that this wouldn't happen, Ogami nodded.

The appointed spot for his meeting with the teacher was a café at a train station. It was a major station, seven stops away from the Town of Sakura. Driving there seemed like it would be a hassle in many ways, so Ogami decided to take the train.

Sitting at an end seat in a car with plenty of empty ones, he gazed out the window for an entire hour until reaching his destination. He saw nothing especially remarkable. Forests grown along the tracks, fields buried under snow, and one old street after another passed by outside.

It was terribly crowded at the large station, so it took him some time to find the café in question. People bundled themselves in plain-colored coats, pacing quickly in the direction they wished to go in boots damp from snow. For the first time in a while, Ogami felt a sense of just how many people were living out their lives in the world. Living in a desolate town where he didn't interact much with anyone made the world feel like a tiny diorama. Or like a cramped stage, say.

Finally finding and entering the café, he saw "Teacher" already sitting down. He knew at a glance it was her because the troupe leader had told him in advance that she always wore dark black clothes.

Indeed, she was dressed as black as a crow. Her coat was black, but her skinny jeans were even blacker, making it look like a hole in space had opened near her legs. And despite being clad in that much black, the teacher somehow gave a casual impression. Taking a look around the whole café, she blended in more than she stood out. What a curious thing, Ogami thought. She must have learned the art of concealing herself amid the background, like a creature with camouflage.

Perhaps she was a superb black-clad prompter on stage, as well. Though of course, the need for prompters seemed to be rarer in modern performances.

The teacher carried the spaghetti in front of her into her mouth with a bored look. It wasn't that she had no appetite; rather, it was the way a person with no interest in the act of eating ate. As if she were saying "I'm only eating because you need to eat to live."

As Ogami greeted her and took a seat, the teacher spoke without looking up. "Sorry, but can you wait until I'm done eating?" She seemed to want to finish off her spaghetti as soon as humanly possible.

Ogami went to the counter, spent some time looking at the menu, then ordered a single coffee. The seats were nearly filled, with all the customers seeming pressed by something as they stuffed sandwiches in their mouths or typed on keyboards. The sounds of utensils touching and the calling voices of employees became one with the background music, creating a comfortable noise like rain.

By the time Ogami brought the coffee cup back to his seat, the teacher was wiping her mouth with a paper napkin and pushing her plate to the side.

"Now, I want to make sure of this first," she began. "Ogami, was it? What kind of acquaintance did you have with Sumika?"

"We were classmates in middle school. For a time, we were close friends."

"That's it?"

Ogami hesitated a bit before speaking again. "She was my prompter."

"Prompter," the teacher repeated. "You mean, supporting people who might kill themselves from the shadows - that kind of prompter?"

"That kind, yes. Though many people call them Sakura."

"I see." The teacher put her index finger to her chin and pondered what that meant. Then she asked Ogami: "Your Sakura, hmm. So, which type are you?"

"Meaning?"

"Are you honestly grateful to Sakura, or are you resentful?"

"Somewhere in the middle," Ogami lied. He had a gut feeling that this would leave a better impression on her than answering that he was grateful.

"I suppose that's about how it goes," the teacher nodded. "You've already heard the gist from the troupe leader, have you?"

"Yes. We thought you might know more details, since you were close with Sumika."

"I don't know anything major. Why, the leader might have more to offer than me. I left the troupe a moment too soon for its dissolution, so I missed the most important scene."

"Which means you were the first to notice Sumika's dangerousness. Isn't that right?"

There was a short silence. Then her expression suddenly relaxed.

"Yeah. That's exactly right. I noticed first, and I ran away. That might have still been too late, though. Really, I should have gotten away from that girl sooner."

"Could I ask what there was between you and Sumika?", Ogami inquired.

"I don't mind. Lately, I've finally been able to sort the matter of that girl out. I was just thinking I'd like to open up about it to someone. You appeared at just the right time, Ogami."

"That's fortunate."

"However, not to make it sound like a trade, but when I'm done with my story, there's something I want to ask you too. It's nothing major, though."

"I'll answer, as long as I'm able to."

"Good," she said with a smile. "Now, where to begin?"

The teacher reached for her glass and took a drink of water, then for a while just stared at the napkin holder, where in the past there would have been an ashtray.

Finally, she began to speak.

*

When Sumika joined the troupe, the teacher was the one who first offered a helping hand when she wasn't fitting in. She had always served the role of looking after new members, but this time, the nature of her motivation differed. She wasn't approaching her out of pure goodwill. In truth, it was a calculated move.

The teacher picked up on the depths of Sumika's talent sooner than anyone else in the troupe. It started from the root of "this girl doesn't give off the same scent as me." Which is to say, the scent of an ordinary person. It meant there was something special about her.

Historically, her hunches of this nature had been startlingly accurate. Almost all the people she'd perceived as special ended up finding success to some degree.

Sumika, having enough acting talent to win over their leader yet not knowing even the most basic fundamentals about theater, was like unprocessed ore. By approaching her while I can and taking on the position of her educator, I might be able to get involved in a kind of success I'd never be able to achieve myself - that was the teacher's scheme.

She had long given up on her own talents. She understood that there was no future for her in this cramped, dark, and dusty rehearsal hall. She always worked backstage in the troupe, supporting other members. Because she felt that by doing so, even if she didn't get to bask in the spotlight, she could at least feel the warmth from that light.

Currying favor with Sumika was simple. With Sumika feeling helpless without any members who'd be friendly, she just had to be nice to an extent that didn't come off as overbearing. Before long, Sumika came to adore the teacher. From there, the teacher didn't even have to take action, as Sumika actively came closer. She seemed to be the type who had trouble getting close, but once she did, she tried to see how deep a relationship she could build. Sumika was quite extreme in that regard, and just one month after getting to know each other, she was walking at the teacher's side like a friend she'd known for years.

Soon, Sumika started to imitate even the smallest things about the teacher's expressions and actions. What she wore, her tastes in books and music, the TV shows she kept up with, the sites she had bookmarked - anything that could be imitated, she did.

The teacher knew a number of girls like that. Girls who couldn't help but imitate everything about a specific friend. Before you knew it, they'd be using the same makeup and going to the same beauty parlor. She didn't understand the mentality behind it, but there was always at least someone like that wherever you went. (Oddly, she'd never seen this behavior from any men.)

If it had been anyone but Sumika, she might have felt a bit put off. But she didn't mind being imitated by Sumika one bit. In fact, she even saw it as something to be proud of. This superb lifeform is approving every facet of me. That thought makes me feel like I've gone up a step as a human being.

Thinking back, she had never even been close to talent in her life prior. That's just how it was as far back as she could remember. People with exceptional qualities depend on each other, while ordinary people build relationships separate from that. Even those who appeared at a glance to treat everyone equally were no exception.

She had witnessed that line being drawn in front of her countless times in the past. She was always on this side, not that one. Even in the troupe she was in now, there existed a clear boundary. Yet Sumika was the one person who would lean over from the other side of the line and smile at me over on this side - at least for now.

Out of a desire to not lose Sumika's respect, the teacher put in a grueling amount of effort in secret. She studied the fundamentals of theater from scratch, practiced by herself in a place separate from the troupe's rehearsal hall, and zealously went to see shows by famous troupes. She just kept on thinking about theater, even as she slept.

The troupe members recognized her positive changes as well, trusting her with important roles she never would have been trusted with before. Sumika was as delighted as if they were her own accomplishments.

If I'm with this girl, maybe I can bask in the spotlight too someday. That was what the teacher quietly thought in her heart.

That happy relationship of theirs lasted for about two years.

The teacher herself didn't remember where she read this story. Maybe it wasn't a book, but a play she watched.

There was once a man who was having some problems in his life. A person who was his exact double then appeared before him. The double initially appeared to treat the man favorably, and the man worked with him to resolve his problems. But the double was more skilled than the real thing, and slowly took his place. After being harshly jerked around by his double, those around him deemed the man a lunatic and sent him to a mental hospital.

She thinks it went something like that.

In autumn two years after Sumika joined the troupe, that was more or less what the teacher experienced.

One day, she was summoned by the troupe leader and shown a video. In it was Sumika. It appeared to be footage from a rehearsal, but the teacher hadn't seen it before. Sumika's performance was perfect, and it would be instantly compelling even to someone who didn't know what kind of play it was.

As for what she was performing: it was the role currently assigned to the teacher, in the play their troupe was currently working on.

"What do you think?", the troupe leader asked, beating around the bush.

"Sumika should play the role for sure," the teacher replied immediately. It was clear he was looking for an answer like that, and their leader was a deliberate person, so he must have shown this video to the other members already. In this troupe, might made right. Even if she made a complaint here, no one would take her side.

It wasn't as if she felt no regrets about having her role usurped, but the fact that it was Sumika softened the blow a bit. It was likely the result of her frantically chasing after me, rather than actually setting out to steal my role. I taught her the basics of theater, so in fact, I should be proud that my education was effective. That's what she told herself.

Yet from that day forth, all the positions the teacher had been holding in the troupe were taken over by Sumika one by one. And not only did Sumika take her positions, she carried out the work they demanded several times better than the teacher ever had. Once she'd seen that, there wasn't a single thing she could do.

Before she knew it, she had nowhere to put herself. Losing sight of her reason for being, she found it difficult to naturally be a part of the troupe's circle. Just like Sumika when she first joined.

This is bizarre - does no one see anything wrong about this situation? The teacher looked at those around her for help. But no one seemed to have doubts about Sumika and the teacher swapping places. The troupe members entirely accepted the change, as if they had been hypnotized to.

Gradually, the teacher's duties returned to being mainly backstage work. But while she had taken the initiative to do them before, now she couldn't work up any enthusiasm at all for it. This isn't my true work. There's a place more suitable for me. Why had I ever willingly accepted these duties in the past?

By the time winter arrived, their positions had completely inverted. Yet even at that point, Sumika was continuing her imitation of the teacher unabated. Her clothes, her makeup, her words, her actions, everything. But it had ceased to look like Sumika was imitating her. Rather, the teacher looked like she was clumsily trailing behind Sumika. If they wore the same clothes, Sumika would wear them better; if they put on the same makeup, Sumika's would look better. If they said the same thing, Sumika would be admired more; if they did the same thing, Sumika would get the better reception.

Soon, the teacher was tormented by a sense of inferiority no matter what she was doing. She'd subconsciously compare herself with Sumika. Sumika would do this better, Sumika wouldn't mess up like this, a voice would whisper in her ear. Everything but Sumika instantly lost color, and she was struck by an immense powerlessness.

Maybe all it would take is to simply say "Please stop imitating me." Maybe Sumika would readily back down and hand back my positions. Maybe she would stop imitating me, and go try to become someone else this time.

But even if things did go that way, would I be able to behave the same way I had before in this troupe? There was no chance. Even if no one else minded, I already know. My identity is just a mass of unremarkable elements that can be reproduced by someone else.

The teacher remembered that in middle school, she'd often made her friends laugh by doing impressions of teachers and classmates. When she did them in front of the person in question, it would usually upset them. The more accurate the impression was, the deeper their anger. They must feel like I'm exposing secrets in their blind spot, she thought at the time.

She wasn't necessarily mistaken about that. But it didn't end there. Now, having become the one being imitated, she finally understood. To be imitated is to have something stolen from you. An excellent imitation brings the subject's very essence out into broad daylight, and then spits on it. By showing how it's not anything as special as they think, just a pattern that can easily be generalized, all its meaning and significance is smashed to pieces. People faintly detected that in my imitation of them, and that's why they were genuinely upset.

After Sumika had taken everything from her, leaving her an empty husk, the teacher gradually stopped showing up at the hall. She couldn't bear the members' gazes that seemed to say "why is she here?" - even if they were only imagined, and it was just her beat-up self-esteem talking.

Soon the teacher left the troupe, and cut all contact with Sumika.

*

"That's the end of my story," the teacher said. "Not very exciting, was it?"

Those words finally brought Ogami back to reality. Taking a drink of his water in which the ice had melted, he was finally able to formulate a decent reply.

"No, that's exactly the sort of story I wanted to hear."

"It's strictly just my perspective on events, you know. Perhaps I was subconsciously twisting the reality. Or maybe it was all a fantasy borne from my biases, and Sumika was simply someone more skilled and well-liked than me."

"I wouldn't say that's it at all. I think Sumika did it entirely consciously. Though I can't say I have a clue as to her motives."

"Yes, that's the key," the teacher said as if affirming a student's answer. "What could have made Sumika carry out that sort of harassment?"

The teacher then gave Ogami some time to think.

"I take it you've already come to an answer of your own?", Ogami asked.

"Well, yes. But let me hear your thoughts first."

"I can't even guess. That's like asking me to imagine how a natural disaster feels."

"A natural disaster," she repeated, seeming fond of the expression. "That might be relatively close to my idea."

"Which is to say, there was no motive at all?"

"No. In my opinion, that girl was an alien."

"An alien?"

"Not that I've ever met an alien before. But suppose there were an intelligent lifeform who was different from us in every way - their culture, language, science, religion. If creatures like that met us Earthlings, what would they do first? Probably, they would try to imitate us. Parrot our words back to us, hold out their hand if we held out ours. Doing that, they'd start to understand "ah, this corresponds to that thing we have.""

At this point, Ogami noticed that she had started posing like a mirror image of him.

"Perhaps that girl was only able to communicate with others by using that approach," the teacher continued. "Yet because she possessed such extraordinary talent for it, maybe it ended up inviting trouble. That would explain the "six-timing" incident. The men of the troupe surely viewed Sumika Takasago as a girl who God had made just for them. Because she instantly saw through to their essence, and matched it exactly. It would be difficult not to fall in love. And when someone wanted her, maybe all she could do was want them back, in an entirely pure way. Because she didn't know any other response."

"You have the most favorable opinion out of everyone I've heard from," Ogami remarked.

"Of course I do. I mean, I still like her even now, and I don't doubt she liked me up to the end." The teacher stopped mirroring Ogami and slumped back in her seat. "That's how I'm choosing to think. It's not that she had any grudge or ill will toward me, she just didn't know any other way to express her affection."

The teacher finished her story there, picking up her plate and leaving her seat. Left by himself, Ogami processed what she'd told him in his own way.

Up to today, I've considered a lot of different possibilities about Sumika as a person. In spite of that, I'd never once questioned the premise that she was a Sakura. But coming this far, that premise which had seemed like the foundation of the whole thing was beginning to wobble.

Let's suppose Sumika was the kind of person the teacher imagined - someone who could only repeat another's words, whose nature was like a living echo. If I liked her, then she would like me too, and if I hated her, she would hate me too; there would be simplistic mechanics like that at work between us.

That snowy day, I had accused that her goodwill was a sham, and Sumika admitted it. But thinking back, I never once spoke the word "Sakura" then. I just asked, "You never really liked me at all, did you?"

Yet supposing the words I spoke to mean "I've seen through you, you're a Sakura" had been interpreted by her as "I've seen through you, your goodwill is hollow," our conversation then still made a similar amount of sense. No, more than that, it was even possible her reply was nothing more than an echo of my words. Maybe all it meant was "if you're going to hate me, I'll hate you too."

Up to that point, maybe she did have an affection for me, however twisted.

But what I couldn't forget in all this was Kujirai. In his case, I had his word. He had clearly admitted to being a prompter. At the time, I didn't doubt that I was an individual with a high risk of suicide who needed a Sakura assigned, so it was only natural to assume Sumika was a Sakura too.

And even supposing she wasn't a Sakura, it wasn't like that changed anything. There's no question that everything I'd believed back then had been a lie. Even if our relationship hadn't collapsed in our third year of middle school, we would have surely arrived at a similar place.

Kujirai. Come to think of it, I need to ask her about Kujirai too.

When the teacher came back from cleaning her plate, Ogami questioned her.

"I hear from one of the troupe members that a man named Kujirai might have been involved in Sumika's suicide. I'd like you to tell me anything you know about him."

"Kujirai, huh?", the teacher said, as if caught off guard. "Haven't heard that name in a while."

"What sort of relationship did he have with Sumika? As you saw it."

"Kujirai and Sumika?" The teacher cast her gaze down and thought. "Publicly, Sumika acted like she was awkward with men, and Kujirai didn't come to rehearsals much either, so I never even saw the two talking face to face. I don't think they had any particular connection beyond being in the same troupe. This is the first I'm hearing about him being involved in Sumika's death."

Ogami passed along the things he'd been told by the detective. That Kujirai had returned to town just before Sumika died, and the two had been meeting in secret.

"I don't think there's any deep meaning to it," she said dismissively. "In fact, maybe it's just process of elimination? By then, she was hated by the troupe. Maybe Kujirai, who kept some distance from it, was the only person left who she could freely talk with?"

"Maybe so."

That was certainly one way to look at it. Perhaps there wasn't a deep meaning to it, like she said.

"What do you think the two talked about?", Ogami asked.

"Who knows. You'd have to ask Kujirai directly to know that."

So that's where this is leading after all, Ogami sighed. Just as the detective said, there would no further progress without finding Kujirai.

That said, he had gotten plenty of intel to bring back as a souvenir for Kasumi. It would surely be enough to convince her that he was diligently investigating.

"Well, no more questions, then?" The teacher started to get out of her seat.

"Nothing from me," Ogami said. "But didn't you say you had a question for me?"

"Right, I nearly forgot." The teacher hurriedly sat back in her chair. "You got to know the troupe leader through Kasumi, right?"

"Yes."

"How is that girl doing lately?"

"She's calm. It seems she's recovered from Sumika's death to some extent."

"Huh?", the teacher gawked, seeming surprised. Then she changed her question. "What's your relationship with Kasumi?"

"We used to only just see each other sometimes. We reunited when I went to visit Sumika's house, and now she's helping me look into Sumika."

"That's all?"

"That's all," Ogami insisted. He had no obligation to reveal his duty as her Sakura.

"Hmmm."

"Is something wrong?"

"I was just imagining that you might be a new emotional support to take her sister's place - to put it plainly, a lover."

"A lover," Ogami repeated without emotion.

"You probably wouldn't know this, but that girl was really moping just a short while ago. She was always inseparable from her sister, you see. Right after Sumika died, I hear she shut herself at home and didn't even go to school. We passed each other in town just once during that time, and at first I didn't even realize it was her. I'd never seen someone so worn out in my life. I imagine she wasn't eating or sleeping well. Even the troupe members were worried she might follow in her sister's footsteps."

"I'm sure she recovered on her own," Ogami said. "I only got involved with her last month, and she was doing just as well then as she is now."

"Or maybe she's pretending to have recovered around you?", the teacher mused. "Well, at any rate, she seems fond of you. You might see her as secondary to Sumika, but take good care of little Kasumi for me."

"I understand she's deeply wounded by her sister's death, really. Even if she won't show me much weakness, I hope I can be of some help to her."

"Good response," the teacher said with a laugh. "Supposing you ended up as her prompter, I think I could rest easy."

Of course, that was her idea of a joke. So Ogami made sure to laugh too.

[+]

8

Afterward, Ogami went to visit several more people related to the troupe, with the troupe leader serving as his go-between. Two of them were men who Sumika had six-timed, but they provided no information beyond what he'd heard from the leader, teacher, and detective. Just as the detective said, it seemed the room Ogami was staying in was the final stop. The only other way forward would be to locate Kujirai.

But he had absolutely no intention of going that deep into it. His investigation into Sumika's suicide was nothing more than an excuse to deepen his relationship with Kasumi. And by the time he'd done a full sweep of everything, there seemed to be no need for an excuse anymore. Kasumi was visiting his apartment every few days without a particular reason, having frivolous chats with him, even napping in Ogami's bed.

On weekends or days where her parents came home late, he would take Kasumi on drives lasting about an hour and a half each way. They never decided on a destination; if there was a place they liked, they'd stop there and walk around. It was evidently the time spent with Ogami that she enjoyed, so it didn't seem to matter where they went.

Ever since grabbing her shoulders at the botanical garden, Kasumi looked at Ogami a little differently. She would gently touch Ogami's body if she found an opportunity, with Ogami setting up such opportunities for her. She took a nonchalant approach, but she was trying to confirm something through it. Her physical intimacy implicitly said that "it's fine if we're like this."

When Ogami responded with the same approach, she laughed happily.

I wonder how close I am to achieving my objective by now? Ogami considered it every time he parted from Kasumi. If I confessed to being a Sakura next time we met, how hurt would she be? How much trust does she currently put in me, and how much does she depend on me?

For someone who's not explicitly her boyfriend or anything of the sort, Kasumi looks as attached to me as one could possibly be. But has her trust reached the same level as what I once felt toward Sumika and Kujirai? We'd been interacting for not even a month yet, too short a time. Normally, this point would be when you might finally find yourself at the starting line. But it was clear that she sought a new emotional support after losing her dear sister, so it wouldn't be surprising if all her affection with no place to go was being diverted to me, since I'd dominated that position.

If his communication with Kasumi were being conducted over devices like at work, Ogami might have been easily able to see the workings of her heart. He might have been able to sense the subtle vibrations of her feelings just from short messages. Yet hearing her real voice and following her actions with his eyes overloaded his sensors with information, rendering them useless.

Ultimately, the problem was his lack of experience dealing with people directly without anything in between. Since graduating middle school, he endeavored to not like anyone and not be liked by anyone. He strove to become numb to the goodwill of others. He came to think that behind any smile lurked something that couldn't possibly smile. The reason he had no issues being a Sakura on matchmaking apps was because people's affection was directed at a fictional character he'd made up. Whereas when the affection went toward him directly, there was too much static, making it impossible to use normal judgement.

He even seriously considered not meeting with Kasumi for a while and interacting only by texting for a while. That would make the conditions identical to those at work. But it's likely too late for that, he thought. I already know Kasumi Takasago as a person. Even if we did have exchanges of nothing but text, I wouldn't be able to help imagining her expressions, voice, and gestures.

Ogami honed his senses to observe Kasumi, trying to find something that would indicate her true feelings. This caused him to get incredibly fatigued after meeting with her, and he got stuck spending hours thinking about the meaning of casual actions and statements. As if he were a person in love.

Compared to that, his relationship with the detective was comfortable.

Around the time the investigation into Sumika's suicide came to a pause, the detective appeared at Ogami's apartment again. They hadn't contacted each other once since then despite having exchanged contact details, so his visit came as a surprise, as Ogami had assumed things were already over with him.

The detective first asked about the progress of his investigation. And despite finding that Ogami hadn't made a single substantial step since they last met, he wasn't shocked or disappointed. It seemed he was fully expecting that to be the case from the start. And he even knew that, naturally, Kujirai hadn't come back to the apartment since then.

"I came to visit today for a different matter."

After saying this, the detective went back to his car and brought something out from the trunk. In one hand he held a Boston bag, and in the other he carried a large black tube. When the bag was opened, Ogami saw something familiar: a small projector. That told him the nature of the black tube, too. It must have been the screen for the projector.

The detective removed the clasp on the tube, unfurled the screen, and skillfully set it up on the curtain rail. Then he set up a tripod, affixed the projector to it, and made minute adjustments to point it at the screen. Once done preparing, he told Ogami to turn off the lights.

Projected on the screen was practice footage of the now-defunct troupe.

"Our troupe tried to keep recordings of everything," the detective explained. "And we didn't just record, we made time to watch it over, too. It's absolutely fundamental to review your own acting objectively, but it can be surprisingly easy to overlook things because they're so basic."

Of course, Sumika was in the video as well. She had grown a few years from the 15-year-old girl Ogami knew, and become that much more beautiful.

He supposed this footage was from a year or two ago. But the cheap projector's rough video quality and crunchy sound presented the scene like it was from a more distant past than it really was.

Ogami watched the video in a trance. Before he knew it, a movie's worth of time had passed. The two hadn't said a single word the whole time. Ogami had even forgotten the detective was next to him.

When the video ended, the detective turned off the projector and asked Ogami: "What did you think?"

The voice brought Ogami back to his senses. "What about it?", he asked in return.

"I just thought maybe an old friend of Sumika like you would notice different things from us."

"I can't imagine I would notice something from this footage alone that the people actually there didn't."

"In that case, I'll bring a different video next time."

With that, the detective stood up and left the room without waiting for Ogami to reply, leaving behind the projector and the screen.

Following this, he visited Ogami's apartment numerous times with new videos. Each one was about two to three hours in length, and they were restricted to those that featured Sumika.

No matter how many of these he was shown, he wasn't going to make any new discoveries. I don't really care about the truth of Sumika's death in the first place, Ogami thought to himself. But he didn't drive away the detective, and faithfully watched through the long videos every time.

He continued to watch videos featuring a dead woman, next to a man whose name he didn't even know.

It was a strangely fulfilling time.

The night of the detective's fourth visit, Ogami made popcorn for the two of them. Some of it had burned, and there were many kernels left, but the detective ate it like it was delicious.

"There's a trick to it," he said, licking salt from his fingers. "It's better if instead of cooking them all the way through, you pop 'em all at once in hot oil."

"I'll keep that in mind," Ogami replied. And the next time the detective came over, he was able to prepare some impeccable popcorn.

Ogami saw a resemblance between the detective and Kujirai not because they were in a room Kujirai had once lived in, nor because they were watching videos on a screen together, nor because he had a natural air about him that made him feel inferior as a man. Rather, when he was with the detective, Ogami felt him to be semi-transparent. Despite him being a tall man with a strong presence, Ogami's mind didn't register him as a foreign substance. It was likely the man's conviction that he would be respected whether he was understood or not which brought about that sensation.

It was a sensation he hadn't felt in a long time, not since parting ways with Kujirai.

If this man weren't bringing the shadow of Sumika along with him, maybe we could've become close friends, Ogami thought. But if Sumika hadn't died, we wouldn't have gotten to know each other, and even if we had still met under those circumstances, he'd likely have not a shred of interest in me. Ultimately, it was just another meaningless hypothesis.

Some of the videos the detective brought included Kujirai as well, of course. Ogami only knew Kujirai up to age 15, yet he recognized him at a glance when he showed up on screen. His cheeks had sunken, and he had a somewhat more rugged face, but his general appearance had hardly changed. In Kujirai's case, it probably wasn't right to say he hadn't grown, but rather that he had already achieved perfection at age 15. It gave the impression that his age had caught up to his body.

The last time Ogami directly saw the two perform was on stage at the culture festival, in the summer when he was 14. Compared to then, their acting had advanced to an incomparable level. That was clear even to his untrained eyes. Not only did they not appear lesser next to the other actors, it felt like the two of them stood quite a bit above the rest. I'd stand out like a sore thumb if I stood on stage with them now, Ogami thought. Of course, one of the two had already left this world, and the other's whereabouts were unknown, but still.

As he continued watching their rehearsals through the videos, Ogami eventually stopped following only Sumika, and came to appreciate the plays themselves. He got accustomed to the grammar of theater, which differed from that of films and TV shows, and found his own enjoyment in it. In essence, this is a form of expression that asks for an active attitude from its viewers. If you aren't actively sharing in their madness, you might as well be watching the stage from 100 meters away.

One night, while watching a video with the detective and grabbing popcorn as usual, the video suddenly stopped. Ogami wondered if the projector had broken, but the detective showed no response. Focusing his eyes, he realized that the actor had just wordlessly frozen in place, and time was indeed passing on screen at the same rate as reality.

The actor in question was Sumika. She stood dumbfounded in the center of the stage. Looking up at a point in the sky, she was completely and utterly still. Ogami knew from having repeatedly seen the play that this silence was not part of the script.

Until then, Sumika had never forgotten her lines and tripped over her words. Even if she did forget, she should have been fully capable of ad-libbing something.

As Ogami was beginning to wonder if something had happened off-camera, Sumika returned to her performance as if nothing had happened.

"What was that about?", Ogami asked the detective. "That wasn't like her."

"I don't know," the detective said. "I wasn't present for this. It's certainly a strange mistake to see from her. Or maybe something was going on that forced the play to stop."

"When is this footage from?"

"Around autumn two years ago."

That autumn would be around the time Sumika started to take the teacher's place. But it was difficult to determine the relationship between that and this footage.

The video ended, and the screen went back to the startup menu. The detective lit a cigarette, and Ogami followed suit. The smoke in the air was made whiter by the light of the projector. The ashtray on the folding table was filled with both their cigarette butts.

"What was it about Sumika that charmed you?", the detective asked Ogami.

Ogami waffled over how to answer for a while, but decided to be honest.

"She reached out to me when I was troubled. That was in my first year of middle school."

"Troubled in what way?"

"I was isolated in class for saying something I should've kept to myself. She was the only one who came to speak to me during that."

"I see," the detective said. Then he smiled slightly. "I can picture it."

"What was it about her that charmed you?", Ogami asked back.

"She told me I was cool."

"You must be used to hearing that."

"Yes, you're exactly right," he admitted. "But in her case, it wasn't just that."

Then he quoted Sumika's words, as if reading out a poem.

You're always so cool, all by yourself.

Shall I make you uncool?

After smoking his cigarette to its base and pushing it into the ashtray, he spoke again. "It's a trite line when I say it like that, but those were the exact words I'd been wanting to hear for a long time. Though of course, I didn't realize that until she actually told me them. And she performed those words incredibly effectively. Much like she did for you, I'm sure."

Ogami was surprised by his used of the word "performed." "So you recognize that Sumika's affectionate behavior was an act?"

The detective nodded. "By no means do I think she earnestly loved me, nor do I think she was fully innocent. I just believe her death wasn't a suicide. It's a fact that she was having relations with six men at once. I'm surely no more than one of the people she used."

He then turned toward the heater and rubbed his hands together over it.

"It might sound like nothing but crying sour grapes, but I saw through Sumika's act from the start. I understood from the moment we started hanging out that the girl I was seeing was just a mirror reflecting my ideal, and the real her was lurking far behind that mirror. But it didn't matter if it was a mirror or what. As long as it was comforting for me."

The projector automatically turned itself off, and the room went dark. Neither of them went to turn on the lights. The detective's shape became lost in the darkness, with only the heater's "on" light illuminating the area.

"When Sumika gave up being my ideal girl, I didn't see it as her showing her true colors. Maybe you could say it was her act moving to its next phase. All I thought was, so she's decided to perform as a girl who I hate next. That's why I didn't feel any particular sadness. In fact, maybe the strongest emotion I felt was doubt. What was she trying to accomplish with this series of acts she was putting on?"

He went silent then, awaiting Ogami's reply. But Ogami's mouth stayed closed.

And it wasn't because he couldn't support the detective's opinion.

"To Sumika, even the troupe's destruction was probably just part of a process," the detective mused. "I can't imagine what she was aiming for past that, but it surely wouldn't have been suicide, at least. She didn't care for absurdist theater. She liked her tragedies clear-cut and her comedies clear-cut. When a character died, she wanted there to be a necessity to it. That's why I think the seeming lack of consistency to her actions in life means her play was unintentionally cut short."

After he finished, the detective stood up and turned on the lights.

It felt like the faint presence of Sumika that had been drifting in the darkness was dispersed in that moment.

Ogami gave a short comment on the detective's thoughts. "There's a surprisingly rational line of logic to that theory."

He smiled cheerfully. "You might be the only one who thinks so. All the troupe members look at me like I'm crazy."

"Being rational and being crazy aren't necessarily contradictory," noted Ogami.

The evening they finished watching the final video with Sumika, Ogami made a serious error. While helping the detective pack up the projector, and asking him where to put the cords, he carelessly called him "Kujirai."

The detective wouldn't just let that slide. He stopped what he was doing and slowly turned to Ogami.

"So you were close enough with him for that name to naturally slip out," he said calmly. "Did you keep quiet about it because you didn't want undue suspicion?"

"That's part of it," Ogami admitted. "But it's not like I was trying to protect the guy. Me and Kujirai being friends was back in middle school, and there was nothing there that would relate to Sumika's death. So I thought it didn't really need revealing."

The detective spoke after a short silence. "I believe you."

The two left the room with the projector and loaded it into the black four-by-four.

"In your eyes, Ogami, what sort of man was Kujirai?"

"He's a little like you."

"Well now," the detective said with interest. "So did he seem like the kind of person who'd kill Sumika?"

"Not a chance," Ogami immediately replied. "Now if Sumika had asked him to kill her, that's another story."

"It seemed you trusted him a fair bit."

"It's different from trust. It's an objective fact. He simply wasn't that kind of person."

The detective nodded. "But you know, the type of person who could kill someone isn't the only type who kills people."

His car drove away, and after its tail lights were out of view, Ogami thought back on his own words from earlier.

If Sumika had asked him to kill her.

Were he to hypothesize Kujirai as the culprit, that felt entirely valid as a motive. Seeing a person he cared for since childhood slowly lose her sparkle must have been hard for Kujirai to bear. If Sumika herself had requested it of him, he might have carried it out without hesitation. Like picking a wilting flower, gently putting it between paper, and making it a pressed flower to preserve it.

When he felt too restless to sit around in his room, it was always Ogami's custom to get in the car. He'd think about what to do and his destination once he was inside. That impulse only ever struck him at night, so most places were already closed. Thus, his destinations tended to be a similar bunch of places.

Since coming back to the Town of Sakura, one of his common destinations was a bathhouse along the highway. It wasn't too close nor too far from the apartment, and most importantly, it was open until late at night. Whenever he went home after soaking in a spacious bath, he was able to sleep soundly that night.

He used the bathhouse again that night, and sat on a wicker chair in the lobby to cool off his warmed body. It was around 11 PM, the quietest period in which the night customers switched out for the midnight customers. Closing his eyes, he sensed the smell of the old building. A mix of wood, tatami mats, cigarette smoke, sweat, all sorts of things.

When the woman came into the building, Ogami was moments away from drifting to sleep. So he didn't even notice her coming straight toward him from the lockers.

"Excuse me," she said to Ogami.

Looking up, Ogami saw a refined-looking woman standing in front of him. She looked in her mid-thirties, had a medium build, and her dry hair was tied back simply in a bun. She looked irritated with something, but maybe that was just how she always looked.

The woman had spoken to Ogami, but seeming to have not considered anything past that, stood frozen in silence for a while. Then as if suddenly having an idea, she opened her handbag and dug around, then produced something to offer to him.

It was a light-pink envelope.

After a beat, Ogami's heart started racing.

He felt the ground shaking beneath his feet.

I made a mistake somewhere, he thought. I must have let my guard down. The System once again judged me to be a weakling who needed the support of a Sakura.

Of course, his story didn't make logical sense if you stopped to think about it; as Kasumi's Sakura, he wouldn't be assigned a Sakura of his own, and Sakura are never to reveal themselves in front of high-risk individuals. But having just woken up, his mind didn't make it that far.

If she hadn't quickly corrected his misunderstanding, Ogami might have fled in the next moment.

"I'm Kasumi Takasago's prompter," the woman said. "Like you, Mr. Ogami."

Ogami's slightly-hovering body settled back in the chair, and he let out a large sigh.

He could feel the cold sweat running down his sides.

The woman put the envelope away in her bag, and quietly sat down in the wicker chair next to Ogami's.

"Why do you think I'm one, too?", Ogami asked first.

"Because there's no chance I would be chosen as a prompter and you wouldn't," the woman said. "My apologies for tailing you. There'd be a risk of Ms. Kasumi seeing me elsewhere. Here, this is me."

The woman handed him a business card. It was a monochrome card with no frills, with just the word "Educator" and the name of the high school she worked at. Ogami put the card in his pocket without making particular note of the woman's name. He didn't even want to know the names of Sakura other than him.

"I've been Kasumi Takasago's homeroom teacher since last spring," she informed him, supplementing the info on the card. "I was selected as her prompter around September. Since then, I've been striving to prevent her from taking her own life. I recognize it's rude, but I came to check a few things with you."

This was the second "teacher" Ogami had met since returning to the Town of Sakura. Since this one seemed to be an actual teacher by occupation, he decided to refer to her as "the educator" for convenience, to differentiate her from the troupe's "teacher."

"Aren't you supposed to be forbidden from revealing yourself as a prompter?"

"That's correct. However, these are circumstances where those rules have to bend."

"Meaning?"

"Are you aware of how many prompters Kasumi has had before you?"

Ogami was briefly at a loss for words. "You mean it's not just us two?"

"That's right," the educator confirmed. "I'm not aware of the exact number, but even just counting those I've confirmed, there are three besides you. Including those I haven't confirmed, it's six."

"Six people," Ogami repeated out of surprise. That was a situation where you could rightly expect every person who's friendly with you to be a Sakura. "Is that even possible?"

"I've never heard of such a circumstance before either. Hers must be quite the special case."

Ogami thought it over for a bit, then spoke. "Supposing it's true she has six prompters, and her suicide risk is high enough to warrant it, doesn't it seem like we've passed the time for prompters?"

"Then would you forcibly drag Ms. Kasumi into involuntary hospitalization?", the educator said in a rigid tone. "On the surface, she looks entirely normal. We can't intervene to that degree based solely on the System's diagnosis."

"Do you suppose her parents know? That their daughter's been assigned a whole crowd of prompters."

"Who can say. It's such an unprecedented thing, after all."

The educator didn't appear to be lying. Nor did she look like the type to decide things based on assumptions. For now, he'd just have to accept her statements as the truth.

With Ogami's questions done, this time the educator started asking.

"Numerous prompters have failed to become good friends for Ms. Kasumi up to now. And I'm one of them. Mr. Ogami, you alone are succeeding at forming an ideal relationship with her. What sets you apart from the other prompters, I wonder?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's because I feel the least will to save her. She's attuned to that sort of forced behavior."

"I see..." The educator seemed a little disappointed by Ogami's answer. "What are you thinking regarding the cause of Ms. Kasumi's suicidal thoughts?"

"Just looking at it straightforwardly, it'd probably be her sister's death. She seemed to revere her like a god."

"That's true. But don't you think there's more to it than that?"

The quiet hour ended, and more guests started coming and going. They were largely people who came by themselves, and passed by Ogami and the educator without even a glance.

"It's true, the death of family is a sad thing," she said with sympathy in her voice. "I have experience with that myself. It's all the sadder when it's someone for whom you had a special adoration. However, all emotions come to a peak. Once that point is overcome, even intense feelings that seemed they would never tire will slowly weaken."

Ogami was about to object, but finding that maybe she was right now that she mentioned it, he shut his mouth. His grudge for Sumika still remained, running deep enough to make him plot a substitute revenge on Kasumi. But whether his emotions remained as intense as they were back then was something he couldn't say decisively and with confidence.

"She is young. She has strong problem-solving capabilities, and is skilled at controlling her emotions. In addition, by gaining an ideal friend in you, she seems to be gaining enthusiasm for life lately. At a glance, everything seems to be going well. Yet in spite of this, her prompters seem to be multiplying even now. Mr. Ogami, you are not her final prompter. Given this, I have to think there is a cause besides her sister's death."

"You don't think it's the System being faulty?"

"That was what I questioned first. That perhaps Ms. Kasumi possesses some factor that the System tends to misinterpret, and this was brought on by a mistaken diagnosis. From what I've researched, such a case can't be entirely ruled out. But in the event of repeated unnatural diagnoses, the System is supposed to quickly correct its standards."

"Then maybe it's just slow to make that correction."

"Indeed, I pray that's the case," the educator said. "This winter marks my last chance to be Ms. Kasumi's prompter. Once she graduates and leaves high school, I'll surely be removed from duty. We have only a weak connection. In the end, I was unable to do anything teacherly nor anything prompter-like for her. So I thought I should at least tell you what I knew, given that you're likely to continue accompanying her."

The educator bowed her head deeply and left. What a dutiful person, Ogami admired. I've never seen such a stand-up teacher. No, actually, maybe there were teachers I've met who were as finely-intentioned as her. Maybe some of my teachers' hearts ached seeing me lie low in the corner of class and not make any friends, wanting to do something for me somehow.

He'd gotten chilly, so he decided to go warm up his body again. Dipping into the bath up to his shoulders, he closed his eyes and let the heat slowly permeate to his core. And he thought back on his conversation with the educator.

What must it feel like to be surrounded by six Sakura? I wouldn't be able to bear it. Heck, it sounds like a living nightmare. Of course, Kasumi herself probably hadn't noticed that, but what would happen if I told her?

No, there's no need to tell her everything. In fact, it was more convenient to let her think I was her only Sakura. The shock of learning she had six would only soften the wounds from each individual betrayal. To increase the purity of being betrayed by everyone she trusted, I ought to claim I'm her only Sakura.

Just like Sumika back then, Kasumi seemed to show no resistance to letting Ogami watch her sleep. She'd say "My body feels sluggish today" or "I couldn't sleep well last night," and frequently use Ogami's room for napping. Seeing her fall asleep in no time after lying down on his futon, it seemed that her being sleep-deprived was no lie.

So he'd had plenty of chances. That day, Kasumi fell asleep while having a frivolous chat with Ogami. He laid her down on the futon, then picked up her smartphone on the low table. After double-checking that Kasumi was sound asleep, he touched the power button.

It was locked with a good old passcode. Not getting his hopes up too much, Ogami entered Sumika's birthday. He didn't like that he still remembered it even now, but it came to his aid in that moment. He unlocked the phone in one try, and a home screen appeared that looked untouched from the factory settings.

He felt anxious about how easily he'd broken through, wondering if it suggested there was some trap laid for him, but he couldn't be turning back at this point. He went into any app that seemed like it might contain private information and gave it a check. They were all abnormally clean for the phone of a girl her age, making him wonder if this was a secondary phone used for work. Come to think of it, Ogami realized he'd hardly ever seen her use her smartphone except to make calls.

Just as he was about to give up and put the phone to sleep, he remembered a place he hadn't looked. He'd neglected to check the photos. Despite being the first thing you ought to check if you wanted to learn private information, it was so basic that he'd overlooked it.

He opened the photo album.

And he gasped.

The screen was filled with photos of Sumika.

No matter how far back he scrolled, he could find nothing but photos of Sumika. And it was thorough. Not only was there no sign of Kasumi herself, there wasn't even any trace of her parents or people who looked like friends. He couldn't even find any photos of scenery or food.

That said, it wasn't like it was all that unexpected to Ogami. He was aware that Kasumi's attachment toward her sister was extreme, and had noticed her lack of interest in anything else. With Sumika leaving this world, it seemed that attachment had practically entered the realm of worship.

But as he was looking at one of the photos, a cold chill ran up Ogami's spine.

The date on the photo was around summer of last year. If Ogami remembered right, it was one week after Sumika died.

And even past the date on that photo, photos of Sumika had been taken daily, without fail.

It was a ghost album.

But when he enlarged the photo to examine the details, that notion quickly fell apart. Through makeup, hairstyle, and angle, it was cleverly made to appear like Sumika, but it was no more than Kasumi in disguise.

Why was she continuing to take such photos? To meet her sister, no doubt. By transforming into her sister to update the album, she could immerse herself in the illusion that Sumika was still alive.

He felt like he'd finally gotten to catch a glimpse of her pathology.

After Kasumi woke up and Ogami took her home, he returned to the apartment to eat dinner by himself. When he went to have a drink after eating, he found the bottle empty, so he walked to a nearby liquor store to buy some more. Yet it was long past the store's closing time, and there was nowhere else within walking distance where he could expect to buy some alcohol. Giving up, he headed back to the apartment.

While walking through the night, he casually glanced at a bulletin board on a street corner, and a suicide-prevention poster caught his eye. It was the same kind as the one he'd seen posted in the supermarket's rest area.

He initially walked right past the bulletin board, but rethinking it, he walked back and stood in front of it. There was a phone number on the poster, which Ogami memorized. Thanks to the use of a simple mnemonic, he didn't even need to write it down.

Even after getting back to the room, he hesitated to call for a while. He sipped on the tiny bit of whiskey left at the bottom of the bottle, and smoked a cigarette under the ventilation fan. Around the time he finished that, the light in his room suddenly went out. It seemed his lightbulb had reached the end of its lifespan. Luckily, a small light in the kitchen still survived. But the room becoming darker made the cold feel that much more severe.

Ogami took his smartphone, and dialed the number he had memorized earlier.

Of course, he wasn't calling to actually talk through suicidal feelings; he had a different objective in mind.

The call was picked up right away. This is the phone consultation center, a man's voice responded. It wasn't too high nor too low, not too distant and not too familiar, a voice that comforted the listener. A voice suited for recitation, skilled at reading not just lines, but other kinds of writing as well.

"What would you like to discuss today?", the counselor asked.

"I have a friend who seems like they might be considering suicide," Ogami said. After saying it, he realized it sounded exactly as if he were doing a consultation on behalf of someone who was resistant to calling a suicide hotline. Not that there was any real problem with him being misunderstood. "Is a case like this acceptable for consultation?"

"Of course," the counselor confirmed. From his tone of voice, Ogami could tell he was giving a deep affirmation. "In fact, from certain perspectives, it's more desirable than consulting with the person themselves. There's only so much we counselors can do, but there's much someone in a position like yours can do. You're able to give them that support."

"Is that right?"

"Indeed, so please, don't hesitate to discuss it."

"This friend - she's a girl - a relative of hers killed herself a little while ago. It seems like she still hasn't escaped that sadness even now, so while she seems cheerful at a glance, there are also sudden moments where she looks very precarious."

"Precarious in what way?"

"More than wanting to die, it's like she wants to assimilate with the dead... I'm not really sure how to put it."

"No, I understand that well," the counselor said with sympathy. Indeed, his voice carried genuine sympathy, not a professional "listening and sympathizing." At least, Ogami heard it that way. Maybe this counselor actually did understand. To prove it, he tried rephrasing Ogami's words. "It may be a slightly inappropriate expression, but... it's not that she's trying to end her life, but that she's longing for the grave."

"I see. It might be something close to that."

"Could you describe your friend some more?"

"She's rather young, but she's rational and sometimes takes the long view on things; for someone like that, I'd expect suicide to be the furthest thing from her mind. Yet, when it comes to said relative, she can do things that defy common sense."

"Has anyone other than yourself noticed the crisis your friend is in?"

Ogami recalled his conversation with the educator. "There are several. However, I'm the only one of them she's close with."

"I see," the counselor assented. "So that's what made you call. You made the right decision not to try and resolve it on your own."

After a thoughtful pause, the counselor continued.

"From what I've heard, I imagine your friend having someone like you nearby is, in itself, her greatest protection. You have the affection to want to do something for her, calmness to look at the situation objectively, and you're able to ask for help instead of overestimating your own abilities. You're an ideal individual."

"And yet, her condition seems to be worsening by the day."

"It's easy to imagine that without you there, she would have died already," the counselor said encouragingly. "Currently, you are the one most contributing to her survival, and you're fulfilling that duty to the utmost. My concern, rather, is that you may push yourself too much and break before she does. You seem like a deeply responsible sort, after all."

What a way with words this guy has, Ogami quietly admired. He might be able to easily coax someone who's been cornered into a situation that's given them tunnel vision.

"And also, suicidal thoughts can be contagious. Just as you have an influence on her, she has an influence on you. The more cordial you are to others, the more that influence can take hold. It's not uncommon to try to pull someone up, yet find yourself being pulled down with them."

"That's true. I'll be sure to be careful of that," Ogami said. "Although, you're mistaken about me being deeply responsible."

"That's how all truly responsible people think," the counselor said with a laugh.

"See, I'm her prompter."

He could sense the counselor's expression freezing over the phone.

"I don't have a serious will to save her. I'm accepting the duty out of curiosity for now, but who knows when I'll abandon it."

The counselor fell silent. This time, the silence didn't feel carefully calculated like before.

"I see," the counselor said at length. "It must have been hard not being able to open up about it to anyone else. These conversations are private, so please be at ease."

"Is that right? Well then, I'll be completely frank and speak without reservations," Ogami said. He could feel himself getting a dark enjoyment out of this conversation. "This girl in danger of suicide, her name is Kasumi Takasago."

Again, the call went silent. It was a heavy, tactile silence.

That convinced Ogami that he'd hit the nail on the head.

...Since my sister died, both my mother and father have been doing a lot of volunteer work. For suicide prevention, you see. You know, talking with people about their troubles over the phone. Apparently a lot of people who need support like that call late at night. So the real work begins after everyone's gone to sleep.

The counselor finally opened his mouth. "Did you hear from Kasumi that I was working as a counselor here?"

"That's right," Ogami said. "Though I didn't imagine I'd hit the jackpot in one try."

"You're working as Kasumi's prompter," Kasumi's father said to confirm, "and you called to tell me that?"

Despite having just been informed his daughter was at risk of suicide, he had already returned to his usual calm.

"Could it be you already knew?", Ogami asked.

"No, it's not like that," Kasumi's father quietly denied. "It's just, I thought it was probably something like that. It's an unfortunate thing."

He phrased it as if lamenting the misfortune of a friend he wasn't particularly close to.

"Is there perhaps something you know?"

"No, nothing like that. It's just..."

His voice suddenly cut off. Ogami thought he'd put down the receiver, but listening close, he still heard some faint noises.

"Is it all right if I call you again later?", Kasumi's father proposed, then continued in a lower voice: "It's difficult to talk about it here..."

Ogami pictured a place like a call center, with rows of operators. Even if they got more calls late at night, it surely wasn't like they were always on the phone. Maybe some unoccupied counselors were listening in on his conversation.

"Understood," Ogami said. "Later, then."

Sorry, said Kasumi's father, then hung up.

The return call came an hour later. First, he apologized for the delay. I'm in a place without anyone else around now, so we can talk freely, he said.

"Where are you calling from?", Ogami asked out of curiosity. It surely wasn't from home, at least.

"A phone booth," Kasumi's father replied. "It's on an street so empty, it's almost bizarre that they set up a phone booth here. Whenever I passed by, I'd wondered who on Earth would call from a place like this, but I never expected to be using it myself."

"Are you always doing consultation this late every night?"

"Not as often as that. Only for about half the week. Chatbots never take a day off, so a good one can respond to people anytime. Even so, there are many people who want a real conversation partner for discussions of this nature, so we have to answer the call, so to speak."

"That kind of volunteer work is generally unpaid, isn't it?"

"That's correct. It's a very difficult problem," he said gravely. "But speaking to my personal experience, I feel I get sufficient value out of it. Not that I took this job expecting something in return by any means, but I've learned many things from my exchanges with the people who call."

"Like what, for example?"

"Well, for instance..." He paused to take a breath. "That in the end, we can only save those with no desire to kill themselves."

Ogami first chose to take those words literally.

"But aren't people with suicidal thoughts the only ones who call?"

"That's surely how they recognize themselves," he said with a roundabout turn of phrase. "Of course, this has nothing to do with off-base claims like "the kinds of people who say they have suicidal urges don't actually kill themselves." What I mean to say is, many people who call are mistaking something similar as suicidal urges. Our role is to gently correct that misunderstanding in such a way that they don't even notice."

"And what if it's not a misunderstanding?"

"Then there is almost nothing we can do. Beyond offer words of pity like "you've done well to make it this far," I suppose."

"And it's not a misunderstanding in Kasumi's case," Ogami inferred. "Is that how it is?"

Kasumi's father neither confirmed nor denied it. So Ogami slightly altered the question.

"What about with Sumika? When did she start showing signs like that?"

"With Sumika, hmm..." He spoke bit by bit, as if retracing his memories. "I'm still uncertain when she started having such thoughts. It's possible the System detected it early and assigned her a prompter, but unless that person comes forth personally, we have no way of confirming that. We - my wife and I - only noticed something wrong with Sumika about a month before she took her life."

Sumika's suicide was half a year ago, in August. So this would have been around July.

"I believe it was drizzling that night, as the rainy season was on its way out. All of a sudden, we were contacted by the college Sumika went to. They were calling to confirm if the signatures on the withdrawal form Sumika had given them were indeed from her parents. Naturally, this was completely out of the blue to us. I hurried to contact Sumika, but my wife stopped me. She said that directly questioning her would be pointless; after all, she was going as far as to forge our signatures to drop out of college, and didn't even try discussing it with us first. So we should calmly wait and see for now. And indeed, she was right. Sumika was always an obedient girl, but once she decided on something, she wouldn't give it up. Us trying to convince her would only ensure she'd never be convinced."

"Even so, I decided I would try going to see Sumika. I came up with a few reasonable excuses, and went by myself to visit her apartment. I intended to not bring up the withdrawal form, nor even ask "how college was going" with feigned ignorance, but just have a light chat with her for a few minutes. I didn't let her know in advance I'd be visiting. I hadn't really contacted her about prior visits to her apartment, so I thought suddenly doing it this time would only invite suspicion."

He took a breath there in a way that resembled a sigh.

"Sumika wasn't at home. And yet, the door was unlocked. At first I thought she might have been pretending not to be there, but when I entered the room calling her name, I found it completely empty. Not just in the sense that the room's owner wasn't there. There was nothing there; not a bed, a table, drawers, a bookshelf, a refrigerator, a microwave, a washing machine. There was only a futon laid out in the corner of the room. It hadn't been in that state when I visited before, of course. It had been an entirely typical room for a young girl to be living in."

Ogami was reminded of Sumika's room - the one that now belonged to Kasumi.

"It looked to me like the cleaned-out room of a person who had resolved to die. By then, Sumika had caused an incident with the acting troupe she belonged to, forcing it to dissolve - are you familiar with that?"

"Yes, I heard from Kasumi."

"Thinking about it now, that was probably just another part of the "cleaning" she did. She was trying to cut ties with everything she belonged to and become unfettered. The fact she so thoroughly destroyed the troupe, paradoxically, may have been because she felt such a strong bond with them that anything less couldn't sever it."

"I see," Ogami remarked. This felt like the simplest and most logical theory he'd heard so far.

"Seeing that this was happening, I couldn't take a leisurely view. My wife and I did everything we could to prevent Sumika's suicide. We asked many people for assistance in not letting her isolate herself. But she kept escaping from place to place as if she'd already planned against all of it, solemnly continuing her process of cleaning. And at last, she'd abandoned everything but her family blood ties."

"Ultimately, we were left no other choice but to forcibly bring Sumika back home and keep her under 24-hour surveillance. We paid even more caution to her than when she was a baby, dedicating our lives to preserving hers. I don't recall letting up for a single moment. And yet in spite of it all, we couldn't prevent her suicide. We realized she had vanished, and the next time we saw her, her life had been lost. When she seriously set out to do something, no one could stop her."

He went silent there. As if expecting agreement from Ogami. Or perhaps wanting some words of sympathy. But Ogami said nothing. He wasn't even quite sure how to take the man's story.

"Kasumi resembles Sumika quite a bit," her father said after some time. "And I feel a similar air about Kasumi now as I did from Sumika back then. In fact, I might call it the very same. If it's come to this, there's nothing more that we can do. Only watch over her so that she can spend her last days carefree."

"So you're bravely giving up on Kasumi, and dedicating yourself to saving the other lives you can save?"

"If you prefer to put it in such an ironic way, then yes, that's how it is."

Like daughter, like father, Ogami thought.

"Do you suppose Kasumi's suicidal urges were caused by Sumika's death?", Ogami asked.

"What are your thoughts?", Kasumi's father asked back.

"I just can't bring myself to think it's only that. Although I couldn't tell you why I feel that way."

To that, he let out a small breath. It didn't sound entirely unlike a voiceless laugh.

"I think your instinct is probably correct," he said. "But to speak honestly, my wife and I don't want to know about it."

"You don't want to know?"

"Forgive the vagueness, but... apparently, just before Sumika took her own life, she seemingly did something horrifying. It's possible Kasumi had some part in it as well. And yet, now that it's too late for them both, we don't feel any desire to uncover the truth of that."

"Sounds pretty irresponsible to me."

"Indeed. It is irresponsible. And you'll fail to fulfill your responsibility as a prompter too, won't you?"

Ogami couldn't say anything back after being told that. Because he never had any desire to fulfill that responsibility to begin with.

"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."

With that, Kasumi's father hung up.

A dead girl's hand, huh, Ogami thought after lying down in bed.

That hand was far warmer than mine.

[+]

9

On March 1st, the day of Kasumi's high school graduation, it was lightly snowing all morning. At Kasumi's request, Ogami was going to pick her up from school at 1 PM. She asked him to take her on a little drive afterward. Her parents were apparently too busy volunteering as usual, and wouldn't be at the ceremony. They must have seen no point in attending the graduation of their already-dead daughter.

After crawling out of bed just before noon and eating a combined breakfast and lunch, he put on his duffle coat and left the apartment. Along the way, he bought coffee at the convenience store, then parked his car at a park a short distance from Kasumi's high school. The snow was intermittently stopping and starting back up, but either way, the sun was hidden behind thick clouds. It looked like it would be a gloomy day, not very befitting of a graduation.

He waited for Kasumi while sipping coffee and leisurely smoking. After finishing his cigarette, he reclined the seat, lay down using his hands as a pillow, and closed his eyes. The voices of children playing in the park were carried to the car on the wind. He could just barely hear their shrill screams, perhaps from a game of tag.

Why do children scream so much?, Ogami wondered. There's probably lots of reasons, but maybe the primary one is that it's simply fun to scream. Maybe vibrating your throat to emit a sound that shakes the air is just too much fun not to do. So there's no meaning to the actual words being screamed.

Thinking about it, that didn't change much even as an adult. The majority of people's conversations are meaningless. They're like animal cries that can represent a handful of emotions. And fundamentally, that's all a conversation has to be. If people aimed to only speak things that had meaning, everyone would eventually just go silent.

I suppose I'm thinking about things like this because I've had a lot more meaningless conversations with others - that is, Kasumi - in the past month, something I hadn't done for a long time outside of work. Conversations whose content had no real meaning, whose only purpose was to mutually affirm friendship.

But that's going to end today. I'm going to reveal my true nature to her. I'll coldly tell her that my kindness toward her this past month was no more than my duty as a Sakura, and that I had actually found it only a burden.

I'll push her down the same hole I was once pushed into.

There was no room for doubt that Kasumi was a person at serious risk of suicide. Dealing a blow to her now, as she stood at the edge of a cliff, might be the last push needed. In fact, it was almost certain. I wouldn't be directly getting my hands dirty, and likely no one would blame me, but I would know that it was murder.

If she died, I would have to carry that sin for the rest of my life.

Is it worth going that far for this revenge?

It is, Ogami answered himself after some thought. Inflicting that great of a wound on someone is the only way I can strike back at this world. I have to prove that I'm not someone who just suffers wounds, but can also inflict them. Until I fulfilled that, I would be forever looked down upon as a weakling who can't put up any resistance.

With his decision solidified, his head felt clear, and energy flowed through him. He felt like he was about to truly become free. He hadn't even felt this refreshed at his own high school graduation.

Ogami sat up in the seat, and waited patiently for Kasumi to arrive.

Before long, he saw her entering the park. She had her usual uniform on under a coat, but she wore a corsage on her chest, and carried a tube containing her diploma under her arm. Once she made eye contact with Ogami, she waved and jogged over.

As Kasumi sat in the passenger seat, Ogami remarked: "That's nice."

She didn't seem to understand what he was referring to at first, but noticing Ogami's gaze focused on her corsage, she laughed with embarrassment.

"Want to try it on, Ogami?"

"What am I gonna do wearing that around?"

It's fine, it's fine, she said, taking off the corsage and putting it on Ogami's chest. It seemed to use a clip, making it easy to remove.

It was a corsage of artificial cherry blossoms.

Around graduation season, sakura didn't really bloom in the Town of Sakura. The earliest you could see them in full bloom was mid-April. So they weren't really a symbol of goodbyes or new encounters, instead leaving a stronger impression as something you went to see with new friends to deepen your relationship.

A corsage of cherry blossoms, in a town where they wouldn't bloom for a while yet, felt like a consolation to bring about at least a little bit of that spring feeling.

"You sure you don't want to be with your friends?", Ogami asked. "Don't friends do lots of stuff together after graduation?"

"I didn't have any friends I was that close with," Kasumi said. "They were a bunch of people I could figure I'd never meet again after graduation. So it's more fun being with you, Ogami."

"Well, thanks," Ogami said, starting up the engine.

Exiting from the park onto the main street, there were still graduates wearing their corsages around. Likely not wanting to make eye contact, Kasumi put her head right up against the headrest and looked straight forward. Soon afterward, as the graduates went out of sight, she unbuttoned her coat and let out a big sigh of relief.

After driving around for nearly two hours with no destination, they entered a shopping mall at Kasumi's suggestion. It was an old mall, with not a single store suited for young people, and they noticed some spots left empty, hidden by partitions. There was a gathering of elderly people at the benches by the escalator, which was the only lively spot in the whole place.

Entering a ticket-operated cafeteria on the top floor, the two had soba noodles together. The whole west wall of the cafeteria was a giant window, and because Kasumi had chosen a window seat, the evening sun was blinding.

After eating, they took the elevator to the roof. By then, the sun was starting to set. The rooftop was used as a plaza, but they saw no else one there.

After having a cigarette at the smoking area in the corner, Ogami walked along the edge of the roof with Kasumi. Unfamiliar sights from an unfamiliar town stretched out below them. It looked so mundane, it could be replaced by another town while you weren't looking and you wouldn't notice.

"I think the feeling of graduating is finally starting to sink in," Kasumi murmured.

"Congrats," Ogami said.

"Thinking back, they weren't very decent years of high school." After saying that, she looked toward Ogami and laughed. "But I'm really glad you were there for the last month of it. I might not have made it through this winter if I were by myself."

"I've been helped a lot thanks to you, too. And it's been fun," Ogami remarked. It wasn't exactly a complete lie. If he hadn't encountered Kasumi after returning to the Town of Sakura, he probably would have been at a loss for what to do. She gave him a clear objective, and that kept him from ever being bored this past month.

Kasumi was quiet on the drive home, occasionally holding her mouth to stifle a yawn. Ogami said she should sleep if she was sleepy, so Kasumi replied "I'll do that" and closed her eyes.

Ogami slowed the car down and drove gently so as not to disturb her sleep. It was best for her to rest up while she could, so that she would have a clear head once they reached the essential scene.

Even upon arriving in the Town of Sakura, Kasumi didn't wake up. Bits of snow had started to fall slightly before entering town. It was a modest snow; even if it continued all night, it was dubious if it would reach even a centimeter.

While waiting for a stoplight, he glanced casually back at Kasumi sleeping. Then, as if sensing that, she opened her eyes, caught Ogami's glance before it could flee, and smiled.

"How long did I sleep for?"

"Thirty minutes or so," Ogami answered. "We're almost at your house."

"Oh, sure enough. Feels like kind of a waste..."

Despite it only just turning 7 PM, the town was totally silent. The sort of silence you'd expect around 3 AM. Ogami drove slowly down the roads, considerably narrowed due to the snow pushed to the side by snow plows.

Soon, their destination came into sight. He could discern the yellow and black warning colors even from a distance.

Right as he was about to stop the car in front of the railroad crossing, the warning bell started up, and the gate began to lower.

What an ironic coincidence, Ogami thought.

And that coincidence was demanding that Ogami do it here and now.

"Hey," Ogami said. "You know about prompters?"

Kasumi seemed to immediately discern the change in Ogami's tone. He could sense the sudden tension in her limbs.

"What are you talking about?", she asked back with unnecessary cheerfulness.

"Prompters. Some people call them Sakura."

"I know that, but..."

"When the System finds someone who might kill themselves, it chooses a Sakura from people close by. Sakura bear the duty of acting as a good friend to them, to prevent their suicide. Forbidden from revealing themselves, they're expected to act like they're doing it of their own volition."

Kasumi glanced at Ogami to judge his expression. "Ogami, are you angry about something?"

"I'm your Sakura," he said.

Even after the train roared past the railroad crossing, Kasumi was still silent.

When the gate went up, Ogami drove the car forward, and parked on the side of the road past the crossing.

The bits of snow were swallowed by darkness the instant the headlights turned off.

The videos the detective brought had featured hardly any clues toward understanding Sumika's inner thoughts. The camera had only captured Sumika Takasago as an actor. With each change of role, she became like a different person, sometimes giving the feeling that even her physique and age changed to match the role. These transformations were enough to make you doubt if she even had a true self, an authentic self.

As an actor, Sumika excelled at ad-libbing. During rehearsals, she often spoke lines that weren't in the script. You would know as much if you knew the script, but if you didn't, they would have scanned as perfectly natural. They didn't affect the big picture, and also didn't confuse the other actors.

But strangely enough, when you heard the original lines after seeing her ad-libs, it felt like it was the original that was wrong. You came to view it not as if they were ad-libs, but that only she had been handed the real script, which she was just acting out as-is.

In reality, she probably didn't think of it as ad-libbing. Maybe she read the script diligently, and in attuning her senses to the mood of the show, intuitively realized "no, this isn't it." This line is somehow obstructing the natural flow of things. And so she caught hold of a more natural, more appropriate line, which she then spoke.

What happened to Ogami here, past the railroad crossing, was something similar to that. The script he had prepared in advance had only lines meant to hurt Kasumi written in it. It was a script he'd spent much time polishing, but when he went to act it out, someone in his head spoke. No, this isn't it. Those aren't the words that would come naturally. That's a tortured, dead line produced by artifice. There's surely something else you ought to say here.

Of course, it's not like he could arrive at the correct answer instantly like Sumika. It took some time. So first, he decided to walk things back a bit. If he traced it from the beginning, maybe it would become clear where he was getting stuck.

"When we first met, that wasn't the case yet," Ogami began. "When I reunited with you in late January, I wasn't your Sakura yet. I'd been informed of Sumika's suicide, and returned to town to determine if it was true or not. As soon as you confirmed it, my business was done, and I left town. That was supposed to be the end of it. But when I got back to my apartment after that, a light-pink envelope had arrived. It was a notice that I had been selected as a prompter, and you were named as the individual at high risk of suicide. So I returned to town, rented an apartment, and interacted with you once more."

Ogami paused there and gauged Kasumi's reaction. Her hands sat on her lap, and she gazed at the darkness outside with pursed lips. But there was no tension or unease on her face. He could imagine that from the first word of his confession, she'd anticipated everything up to the conclusion, and was quietly confronting her sadness alone.

Ogami continued. "The whole time, I was wondering why someone like me was chosen as a Sakura. There should have been plenty of more suitable candidates, I thought. But it would seem I'm not your only Sakura. You have multiple others assigned to you. According to what one of them told me, it's somewhere around six. And I'm one who came in rather late. It must be they ran out of viable Sakura choices, forcing them to pick someone like me who might as well be an outsider."

He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it without opening the windows. After taking a puff, he thought to himself: this too is part of the act. A prop to fill space in the conversation, while silently indicating that you've given up on caring about the person in front of you.

"The other thing I found bizarre was the very fact that you were wanting to kill yourself. At a glance, you didn't look at all like someone who would do a thing like that. I even thought the System had made a faulty diagnosis at first. Or maybe there was something about you that could be easily misinterpreted. But recently, after sneaking a peek at the photos you've been taking, my thinking changed. I may not know a clear reason, but you are in fact trying to die. And of course, I can tell it's something to do with your ties to Sumika. Because your world revolved around her."

After reaching this point, Ogami suddenly became conscious of the corsage on his chest. He unclipped it, and after some indecision, placed it on the dashboard. The fabricated flowers had a life and glossiness to them as if they had just bloomed, glowing faintly in the darkness.

In the way an ad-lib calls for an ad-lib to follow it, he continued naturally with words not in the script.

"But to tell the truth, I don't care what the reason is. All that's important is that you have a powerful desire to die, incomparable to your average suicidal person."

Behind the car, the railroad crossing's warning bell began to ring again.

The flashing lights dyed the deep blue darkness a faint red.

"We can cooperate with each other," Ogami said. "And if you want to know why, it's because I'm fed up with living, too."

*

Three nights later, Kasumi came to the apartment. Seeing Ogami's face, she didn't put on her prior friendly smile, simply bowing her head with a "Pardon me." Then she went into the bathroom with her shoulder bag, quickly changed, and came out. It was a dubious outfit for the season, a gray camisole and shorts a slightly darker gray. On top of that, both were soaking wet, with water dripping from them.

"I'll go out first," Kasumi said without even meeting eyes with him. Then she unlocked the window and stepped out onto the veranda. Ogami spent a while smoking a cigarette, looking at the drops of water she'd left on the floor. Once he finished it, he took off the sweatshirt he'd been wearing, leaving just a T-shirt, and headed to the bathroom.

The shower water was still on a cold setting, and he felt like he was suffocating the moment it touched his skin. Even so, he grit his teeth and got his whole body wet. Then, dripping water onto the floor, he quickly moved to turn off the lights, exit onto the veranda, and close the window.

There were two chairs out there, side by side. Kasumi sat in one, her thin shoulders already starting to shiver. Ogami sat down in the other. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey placed on the air conditioning unit, opened it up, and took a straight swig. His throat instantly heated up like it was burning.

"Can I have that too?", Kasumi asked.

Ogami handed her the bottle. She opened the cap with shaky hands and lightly poured it into her mouth. Calmly gulping it down, she quietly said "I see, so this is how it tastes. I can't fathom the minds of people who would drink this willingly."

Even so, alcohol was an indispensable prop. According to Kasumi's research, drinking greatly increased your risk of hypothermia. Getting your clothes wet was also effective, and fatigue, hunger, and lack of sleep boosted it even more. With all the conditions in place, it was possible to freeze to death even on a calm spring night.

Of course, the veranda couldn't be called a suitable place for freezing to death. The handrails served as a wall protecting from the wind, and only a single window separated them from an ideal place to take refuge. This was just a dry run. They wanted to know in advance how much suffering it would actually involve, or to reword that, how much resolve they would need to have.

It's foolish to be putting in more practice for freezing to death than for graduation, Ogami thought. But the stage and date had already been decided, so for now, all they could do was rehearse.

Ogami had invited Kasumi to a double suicide, and she accepted the invitation. The next morning, Ogami's world had changed completely. The thin frost on the window, the long icicles hanging from the roof, the piled snow in the parking area, the oppressive leaden sky - that morning, all of it had a picturesque tinge, as if being viewed through an old film.

He felt as light as if he were released from a job he'd worked for a decade. So light, in fact, that it made him uneasy. He found himself looking for reasons to suffer, thinking "I shouldn't be able to feel this at ease, I must be overlooking something important." Soon he realized he couldn't find any such reason, and he felt both relief and a touch of dissatisfaction. It was that kind of lightness.

Kasumi had proposed three conditions.

Rather than do it right now, I want to wait until the spring equinox.

If we die, we should do it in the same place as my sister.

If possible, we should freeze to death.

When Ogami asked why it couldn't be right away, Kasumi replied "because it would stand out."

"Apparently, many students who kill themselves do it at the end of spring break. I want to slip in with them if I can. Spring break only just started, didn't it?"

He felt it was pointless for a person who was about to die to be concerned about things like that, but the spring equinox did seem just right as a dividing point.

"Or are you feeling pressed for time, Ogami?"

"No, there's no real rush. I'll match with you."

Kasumi nodded silently. Then she asked after a short pause:

"You said you weren't interested in why I wanted to die, Ogami, but I'm interested in why you do."

"The same as you," Ogami answered simply. "My ties to Sumika."

"Is that the truth?", Kasumi asked dubiously. "I mean, wouldn't it be odd that you were chosen as my Sakura if you yourself had suicidal desires? Shouldn't you be having a Sakura assigned to you?"

"I did have one, long ago. That experience trained me such that I could deceive the System."

"Is that something you can do with mere training?"

"It's not like Handcuffs are looking into your very mind. As long as you know the standards for its diagnoses, you can counteract it."

"Then would it also be possible for a healthy person to pretend to be considering suicide?"

"There's plenty of people in the world making such an effort. But I've never heard of any who succeeded. It seems they won't be treated as suicidal without some pretty clear evidence. Innocent until proven guilty, so to speak."

Kasumi's eyes turned to her Handcuff, which she removed and placed next to the corsage. Then she turned to Ogami with a smile that looked weary. "So in trying to stop my suicide, the System instead set up a double suicide."

"That's what happened, yeah."

"If you're going out of your way to invite me, are you afraid to die alone, Ogami?"

"I am," Ogami said. "And you?"

"If I weren't afraid, I wouldn't have waited until six Sakura were assigned to me," Kasumi said with a laugh.

Kasumi was right to choose freezing as the method, Ogami thought after their first rehearsal. It was indeed painful. The wet clothes stole away your body heat in a blink, changing from simply feeling cold to a discomfort closer to pain. As your consciousness became hazy, you started to think of nonsensical things. On the back of his eyelids, he saw a jumble of fragmented memories even more disjointed than a dream.

But it didn't have the sense of death. It felt like strictly an extension of everyday suffering. The intoxication may have also helped there. And maybe another part was having been born in a snowy place, and being used to the cold. It had this feel to it like you could go all the way without even realizing you were stepping toward a fatal situation.

When they returned to the room, the two took off their freezing clothes before anything else. They took turns taking a hot shower, sat in front of the heater, and bathed in the warm air for a while. Once they'd recovered enough to sufficiently move their bodies, they had some premade stew and drank hot cocoa. But even then, they were having a hard time removing the chill that had reached their core. Putting something warm in your mouth only warmed the area around your stomach, and warm air only heated up your skin. Their feeling in parts of their limbs had dulled, a symptom that didn't heal even by next morning. Several languid days passed, like after getting a high fever, and they frequently felt sleepy.

"Why did you choose freezing to death?", Ogami asked a few days later.

"Why indeed?", Kasumi repeated. "I'm not really sure myself. Maybe because I was born in a cold town, I wanted to make use of it at the end."

It was strange logic, but he felt like he understood what she was getting at. Just being born in a place with lots of snow is a kind of punishment. You can get some benefit from it on rare occasion, but there are far more negatives overall.

Yet if they could make that their ally in the very end, maybe they could believe there was some small meaning to being born in this place.

Even if the very idea of it "having meaning" was meaningless.

After he'd put it into words once, his thoughts had hardened before he knew it. From an impromptu line that came about in his talk with Kasumi, he finally came to understand why he had returned to this town, and why he accepted being Kasumi's Sakura.

In short, I was unable to abandon my hope, he thought. In returning to the Town of Sakura and following the trail of Sumika, a part of me had been hoping that some comforting truth would arise.

What if her being a Sakura had actually been a total lie, and she had some deep reason for having to keep me away? Or what if it was true she'd been a Sakura, but while performing as one, she found her feigned affection becoming real? What if she only realized her affection after we completely cut ties, and up to the moment of her death, she was dragging that past behind her?

What if she had kept thinking about me the way I'd kept thinking about her?

What if her death was caused by that regret?

What if, had I simply offered reconciliation, she would have gladly accepted it?

Maybe I'd been hoping for a sweet regret such as that.

But learning about her hidden face from members of the troupe and her own father, that faint hope was completely extinguished. The conclusion revealed when all those different perspectives were combining into one was this: Sumika was no more than a mirror who reflected other people's ideals. There was no other way to explain the logic behind her actions. She was the ultimate people-pleaser, and in a sense, like a kind of hollow doll. Even what Ogami thought was affection had just been a reflection of his own.

Then again, if it was just despair over that, he surely wouldn't have gone as far as considering death. He probably would have gone on to live an even more hopeless life than before, but suicide should have been at least a few steps further off.

What was it that pushed me over the edge?

Maybe it was Kasumi's influence after all, Ogami thought. I was poisoned by her, and became captivated by death - perhaps that's ultimately all there was to it.

It's hard to be sure what the truth is. Perhaps the effect came before the cause - rather than dying because I have a reason, I had been searching for a reason to die. It's conceivable that returning to my hometown after so long just has me temporarily depressed. But if you were to ask the System, you would probably get an awfully complex motivation, not explainable by one simple reason. That was surely it: on the whole, I want to die.

Kasumi became addicted to their freezing-to-death rehearsals. Every few days she'd come to Ogami's apartment, take a shower in her clothes, and go sit in the cold wind on the veranda. Ogami accompanied her each time. And in those moments where they had to return to the room or there'd be no coming back, and not the moment they went back to the warm room itself, he found that he was enveloped in a bliss that was hard to describe. Most likely, it was a sense of harmony that arrived when his mental closeness to death aligned with his physical closeness to death. Ogami imagined Kasumi kept repeating these rehearsals, too, because she was enchanted by this feeling.

While at the start of each session his attention was drawn to the shivering, lightly-dressed Kasumi, once his body heat started to drop below the heat in the air, his senses gradually turned inward, and everything else became a vague "external," allowing him to relish a feeling of truly being alone. When he retreated into his inner consciousness, all these things from the past came to mind one after another. It wasn't exactly his life flashing before his eyes, but it was as if his brain were re-evaluating if this life was worth living or not.

When he thought back on it all, it was 22 years with hardly anything happy or enjoyable. Opening the lid on his fatal middle school memories only revealed complete nothingness. The life of a ghost, who can neither touch or be touched by anyone. No, maybe there had been just a little bit of good in there. But it wasn't enough to stick in his memory. Indeed, other people were mirrors - so as a person without mirrors in his life, he couldn't recognize his self, and accordingly, was unable to remember any events surrounding that self.

Still, while patiently dredging through the depths of his memory, his fingertips touched a faint warmth. It wasn't a very significant memory. In fact, it was so shabby that it only felt more miserable to hold it up as a good memory.

About half a year after he started doing work on matchmaking apps, his work as a Sakura was once praised by the company president. When passing each other by, he said something like "you do some pretty good work, huh?", slapping him on the shoulder. That was it. That was literally all there was to it.

The president was a man so listless you couldn't imagine he was the president of a scamming business, and he lacked any dignity or style, yet he was reasonably admired by the staff for his effective cunning. He wasn't the sort of person who did flattery, so Ogami was able to honestly accept praise from him.

Even looking back on it now, it truly was a meager event. But as much as he searched himself, that was about the only heartwarming memory. All his other memories were covered in frost.

I guess it's no surprise I'd freeze to death, thought Ogami.

During their third practice run, it snowed. It was fine snow that fell in bits and pieces, looking like dust on a projector. It was a windless night, so the snow didn't get onto the veranda, but Kasumi stood up on her bare feet and leaned over the handrail, opening her palm to try and grab the small snowflakes.

"Ogami, did you know?", Kasumi said as she looked up to the sky. "Double suicides are generally only done by family or lovers."

Ogami figured it was something total strangers could do too, but it was a pain to move his mouth stiffened by the cold, so he just said "Hm."

"It's something family or lovers do," Kasumi repeated. "Maybe it'd be more natural if we matched that, too."

Kasumi picked up her folding chair, stuck it next to Ogami's, and sat down. Her bare, thin shoulder touched Ogami's arm, but he couldn't afford to feel anything. He just thought, her shoulder's cold.

"Ogami, you liked my sister, didn't you. Then since I'm so much like her, you must like me at least half as much, right?"

"Well, sure," Ogami said.

"Huh, is that right?"

"Sure," Ogami repeated.

"Hmm." Kasumi pondered while cracking her numbed knuckles. "I was just imagining you'd reject me. I guess it's worth speaking your mind."

"But we can't become lovers."

"Why not?"

"I like the idea of dying with a stranger."

Kasumi looked at Ogami's face emotionlessly for a while, then soon smiled weakly.

"You have some strange tastes, don't you."

She let out a small sigh. The breath coming from her frozen body didn't even turn white.

Part 4

Novel List