The Blue Balloon and Natsumi

This story is nothing more than an old memory from youth, only one that all came back to me one day.

After that, vows eternal became something that had merely once existed, and the changing of sea to field completed the ending. That way, even after losing you, the winters that followed would no longer leave me cold all the way through.

Prologue

The horoscope book said that Libras would lose the thing most important to them in 2008.

I did not believe it. My luck had soared all year long in 2008. Even toward the end of it, I was still smugly boasting to everyone around me about how fortunate I had been, when your wedding invitation arrived.

Embossed in gold on the bright red card were the words: Groom, Matsuda Ryo. Bride, Shimizu Oto. The two names stood side by side, brilliant and blinding, like a cluster of violent light that made my eyes ache. My hand shook, and the invitation slipped to the floor. At that same moment, the phone beside me rang.

It was Ruko. In a careful voice she asked, "Did you get the invitation?"

I said nothing into the receiver.

She understood immediately and let out a heavy sigh.

After I hung up, I suddenly thought of you. I thought of that night when I called and asked whether we really had to become strangers from then on.

You had sighed like that too, heavily, and said, "Natsumi, I'm afraid we can never go back."

At that moment, my tears came flooding down.

Ryo, do you know what the cruelest sentence in the world is? It is not "I'm sorry," and it is not "I hate you." It is this:

We can never go back.

Never go back.

Just that simple sentence is enough to drive a wedge between two people who were once close and leave them coldly apart.

No one who has not lived through it will ever understand how much it hurts.

It was very cold that Christmas night. I had curled myself up in the dorm like a turtle.

After Ruko bombarded me with text messages at the rate of one per minute, I finally had no choice but to climb out of my warm bed.

The campus was lonely in winter, but the classroom building was lit from end to end, and colored lights flashed in some of the windows.

I had never liked noisy holidays like Christmas, so I had skipped the class party and hidden in the dorm to sleep. But Ruko would not leave me alone. She texted, Natsumi, our class rep is amazing. He dragged all the equipment from a dance hall into the classroom. The whole class has gone insane. It's so lively. Come feel the atmosphere.

I thought, It's just some lights. Listen to you. You'd think the person who goes clubbing every night wasn't you.

The moment I walked into Ruko's classroom, I saw her in the middle of the crowd, dancing wildly. The whole room was one blur of revelry and color, desks shoved in disarray around the edges. Ruko waved at me the moment she saw me. Out of habit I stuck a cigarette between my lips before heading over to her.

Then, without noticing, I caught my foot on something and pitched forward. Luckily there was a desk in front of me. I grabbed its edge and kept myself from falling. When I turned around, I saw your smiling face.

Matsuda Ryo, it was not as though I had not known who you were before then. At Seiran High in 2002, you were the honor student and I was the delinquent girl.

Your name sat on the school advancement board with a pile of prizes behind it. Mine was posted on the bulletin board beside a list of my various crimes as if the two belonged together.

You wore your uniform neatly and kept to yourself. I dyed my hair flaming red, painted on heavy eye shadow, wore oversized earrings, and usually had a cigarette hanging from my mouth.

We were like two planets far apart, each moving on a different orbit and minding our own business.

Faced with that calm, easy smile of yours, I was annoyed and embarrassed. I tossed away my cigarette and was about to snap at you when you held out a string to me. At the end of it was a sky-blue balloon from the ceiling. You nodded for me to take it. I leaned slightly toward you, and you bent to my ear and shouted, "For you, beautiful."

Matsuda Ryo, in that instant the warm breath of your words brushed my ear, and my heart, like wild grass across an open field, suddenly turned green and began to stir with reckless life.

Only later did I find out that you had simply lost a card game that night.

The punishment had been to give that blue balloon to any girl in the classroom. You said that for a card shark like you to lose had been a freak accident, and fortunately you'd seen me, otherwise you would not have known which girl in the class to give it to without making her read too much into it.

I looked at you in contempt and said, "Oh, give me a break. If you've got a crush on me, just say it. You don't need to use such a stale little trick to meet me."

But you grabbed my hand and said, "You've already accepted the token of affection. Do you still have any reason to refuse?"

It was from Ruko that I learned you were not really the obedient model student people said you were just because you got good grades. You had had a dozen girlfriends already.

I had assumed that with the gap between our identities, being together would inevitably lead to conflict. Instead, we fit together almost absurdly well. At the pool table you were my rival. On the dance machine you were my partner. At the manga cafe you were my gaming teammate. In the movie theater you were the firmest shoulder to lean on. Even at roadside barbecue stalls, you ordered everything you knew I liked.

Ruko sat with us at a late-night barbecue stand, eating and clinking glasses. I slapped your shoulder and said to her, "See this? Isn't my boyfriend perfect?"

I had drunk a little too much that night. Turning to you with narrowed eyes, I shouted, "At least tell me what it is you like about me."

You looked at me and answered something else entirely. "Why do you get as stupid as a gorilla whenever you've had a little to drink?" Then you poured me a glass of water.

But I had clearly seen it. While you poured, your eyes were so gentle they might have dripped.

Ruko gave us both a look of utter contempt and said, "If you two regret not meeting sooner, why drag me out here to witness it?"

I rolled my eyes at her. "How can you say something so shameless and not be struck by lightning on the spot?"

Ruko snorted. "Please. I only came for the meat skewers. If I'd known you two were going to put on this act, I wouldn't have come even if lightning killed me."

You only smiled and watched us bicker, then carefully picked all the bones out of the grilled fish and laid the meat on my plate.

How could you be so gentle, so considerate, so good to me? Otherwise how could I have forgotten, in my happiness, that I was allergic to alcohol and gone on drinking so much?

So that when I opened my eyes, all I saw was white.

I was in a hospital.

In novels, whenever the heroine ends up in a hospital, some devoted male lead is always there beside the bed, pouring water and peeling apples. So the moment I opened my eyes I sat up frantically looking for you.

Instead I saw Ruko's sour face.

I was instantly furious. I knew alcohol made my whole body swell up and look awful, but if I was in the hospital you could at least have stayed by the bed and played the role of devoted protector. You could have stared at the sky, the earth, the windowsill, or even the flowerpot with no flowers in it.

But Ruko only rolled her eyes and pointed at the bed next to mine. I turned and looked, and in that instant I lost my voice.

You were lying beside me, pale-faced, looking even more fragile than I did.

I panicked and grabbed Ruko, demanding to know what had happened to you. Was your alcohol allergy worse than mine?

She rolled her eyes even harder. "Natsumi, I finally understand. You really do have the talent to torment living people to death."

I stared at her blankly. She shoved a cup of water into my hand and said indignantly, "I knew what you were like when you got drunk, so I should've run for my life. How did I end up with a friend like you? You get drunk and make your boyfriend jump into a river. Seriously, how much trouble can you be?"

That was how I learned the truth. We had been trying to take me home after I got drunk, but I insisted on going to the river to get some air. You, being softhearted, let Ruko indulge me. But once we got there, I pointed at the river and kept saying:

If you love me, jump.

Ruko said she had wanted to smack me on the forehead and wake me up. What kind of person tortures her own boyfriend like that? But because you were there and she knew you'd feel bad, she had stopped herself. And because she hadn't stopped me, I became even worse. I squatted stubbornly beside the river and refused to move, insisting that if you jumped, that would prove you loved me. While she was trying to reason with me, there came a splash.

You had really jumped from the bridge.

It was early spring. The river ice had only just melted. The water was cold enough to cut bone. But you went in without even thinking.

Ruko said that when you climbed back out, your whole body was like a block of ice. You were shaking all over, your teeth chattering, but you still forced a smile at her. Then you ran straight to the road to hail a cab and take me home. But in the cab you came down with a fever, so Ruko sent both of us directly to the hospital.

I slept for one night.

You burned with fever for one night.

I thought you would scold me when you woke up. Instead you bared your little white teeth at me and laughed.

"I really can't let you drink ever again," you said. "Next time it'll be the Sumida River."

And then, for no reason at all, I started crying. "How can you be so stupid? Do drunk words really count?"

You laughed as you wiped away my tears. "The one who's drunk is the one who'd count them."

If I had still held any doubts about our relationship before that, the river settled them completely.

If you could treat one drunken sentence of mine like an imperial decree, then what did it matter if you never praised me or fed me sweet words?

At the restaurant later, Ruko said, "Natsumi, honestly, I've never seen Matsuda Ryo care about anyone like this. If you still don't cherish what you have the way you used to not cherish things, you really deserve a thousand cuts."

I said, "Why are you talking like Matsuda Ryo belongs to your family?"

She widened her eyes. "Is he not the only truly beautiful sentence our class has ever produced?"

You only laughed at the two of us from the side and did not join in.

Then another voice slipped into the conversation, soft and pleasant.

"Ryo, what a coincidence."

I turned and saw a girl dressed in white, smiling with perfect composure. When you saw her, something flickered in your eyes. You asked her what she was doing there. She said she had just transferred in.

That was the first time I met Shimizu Oto.

She had a pale, clean face and eyes as clear as still water. She was elegant and beautiful. And I, with my flaming red hair and my face painted like a palette, looked like a vulgar wild turkey. For some reason, the moment I saw her, I started comparing her with myself. That was something I had never done before.

Later I understood that a girl's intuition is rarely wrong.

Shimizu Oto had once been your girlfriend. You had grown up together.

I would be lying if I said that knowledge did not knock the wind out of me.

I had never known what your love life had looked like before, and those comparisons made me suddenly ashamed of myself.

Only a week after transferring to Seiran High, Shimizu Oto became famous all over school. Ruko said that after seeing her play piano at the school arts festival, nearly every boy at school had made her into the girl of his dreams. The number of people pursuing her could not be counted.

Ruko also said, "But Shimizu Oto is no saint. No matter how many love letters or invitations people sent her, she only ever said one thing: Sorry, I already like someone. And when people asked who, she'd say: Obviously one of the best students on the honor board. That's the slipperiest answer imaginable. Matsuda Ryo is the only one up there who's both first-rate and good-looking. The rest are all crooked melons. Tell me she wasn't aiming straight at him."

When I heard that, I stared at my fingers, yellowed by nicotine, and felt miserable.

You saw my mood and turned me to face you. "Natsumi, liking someone isn't about how outstanding they are. It's about looking at them once and knowing they've been the person you've been searching for your whole life."

Your words were beautiful enough to make me forget, for a while, all the comparisons and inferiority.

But even so, I would wake in the middle of the night from bad dreams and cry, because in my dreams I was always losing you.

This world has never made beautiful dreams come true. Only nightmares stay close.

My nightmare was not only losing you.

It was also Haruto.

Haruto was my ex-boyfriend, a little delinquent. His mother loved gambling so much that she was still playing mahjong when she gave birth to him, hoping for a winning hand, which was how he got the name Haruto. I had no idea why he suddenly reappeared after being gone so long.

He stopped me on my way home, grinning as he said, "Natsumi, I hear you've got yourself a new boyfriend. And he's top of the whole school too."

I looked at him coldly. He stepped forward and grabbed my arm. "I know you haven't gotten over me."

I shook him off in fury. "Haruto, get lost. I don't want to see you again."

He only laughed. "Long time no see and you've really grown some teeth. Fine. But don't regret it. One day you'll come crawling back to me. You'll cry and beg."

I did not know then that escaping Haruto had only left a bigger nightmare waiting.

The next day, the moment I got to school, I could feel that something was wrong. Everywhere I went, people's eyes washed over me, curious, excited, contemptuous, gleeful. The second you saw me, you grabbed my hand and said, "Natsumi, no matter what happens, you have to believe me. I'll stay with you."

I joked, "Matsuda Ryo, don't go blooming over the wall on me."

Then I laughed and headed toward the classroom. But you tugged me the other way, saying as you pulled me along, "You haven't eaten, right? Come with me and get something first."

"Are you kidding?" I said. "Class is about to start. I already had breakfast. Go on to class."

I turned and ran for the classroom door, still wondering why everyone was acting so strangely, as though some enormous secret had spread while I wasn't looking.

You shouted after me, trying to stop me, but that only made me more certain there was something to hide, and I charged stubbornly on.

The instant I reached the classroom door, I stopped dead.

Ruko was directing some classmates as they painted over the wall with white lime. But in the places not yet covered, the words scrawled in paint were still painfully clear:

Natsumi had an abortion.

Natsumi isn't a virgin.

Natsumi is a slut.

I stood there blankly. You rushed over, pulled me hard against you, turned me around, and pressed my head to your chest.

"Natsumi, don't cry," you said.

I said nothing.

The moment I had seen Haruto, I had already known that my bright life was ending.

And I really did not cry, because in that scorching summer long ago, my tears had already dried up.

Back then, I had been a girl in a white dress, my ponytail tied high, smiling as if the world were still pure.

Haruto used to whistle at me outside the school gate every day after class. He pursued me noisily and spectacularly, and because of that, I really believed he liked me. So I started going out with him.

He spent his days in game arcades, smoking, fighting, skipping school. After class I would go find him there. He took me out to meet his friends, eat, drink.

Then came that night.

I took him home after he got drunk. When we got there, the house was empty. He told me his father had died long before and his mother was out playing mahjong. I poured him water. He caught my hand in return and suddenly pushed me down onto the edge of the bed.

That night Haruto fell asleep afterward.

I lay there staring into the dark, at the torn strap of my dress and the red marks on my neck, and in that instant I fell into darkness myself.

A month later I found him at the arcade again. He was smoking and playing a game with total concentration. I tugged at his sleeve, but he shook me off and said, "Quit bothering me."

I waited outside until deep into the night. When he finally came out stretching lazily, the fear that had driven me there had already gone numb. So all I said, very calmly, was, "Haruto. I'm pregnant."

Haruto took me to a tiny clinic.

When I came out, pain had spread through my whole body like a blade.

That summer was, for me, a darkness without end.

To escape it, I transferred schools.

After that I started dressing like a gaudy wild turkey, piling my face with cosmetics, because somehow it made me feel a little safer. If I stared at people, I could do it recklessly. And when they looked back, it felt as though they were not seeing my real face.

Everyone at school said I was a delinquent girl. In truth, I was only trying, clumsily, to put distance between myself and everyone else. Looking at their bright, living, youthful faces always made the wound inside me ache.

I became seriously ill.

Haruto was truly my nightmare. The moment he reappeared, all the darkness of the past came crashing over me like a tide. Blood and damp and shadow closed over my head until I could hardly breathe.

I ran a high fever and babbled nonsense. When I woke, I found you at my bedside, your face drawn with exhaustion.

I smiled at you with cracked lips. You immediately helped me sit up and gave me water.

Only after drinking did I feel a little better. You tucked a pillow behind my back and held my hand. Your eyes were bloodshot. You must have stayed up all night. But you looked at me with unwavering seriousness and said, "Natsumi, no matter what happened to you before, I'll take responsibility for what comes after."

Matsuda Ryo, of all the love words I have ever heard or read, none has ever been more beautiful than that one sentence.

Even in later years, in those cold unbearable nights, thinking of it was enough to make me feel as though light had returned and warmth had filled my whole body.

You said you had to go to school that afternoon and would come back after classes. I nodded.

Before leaving, you kissed me on the forehead. I watched you smile on your way out and suddenly felt as though I had known you for much longer than I truly had, as if you were an angel sent specifically into my life, the one person who had quietly walked toward me when the whole rest of the world had turned away.

That afternoon I drifted in and out of sleep because of the fever. When my phone rang, I woke with a start and saw that the clock was pointing to four. You would be back soon.

I turned on my phone and found a single photograph waiting in my inbox.

It was a picture of you and Shimizu Oto embracing and kissing. The girl in a pink dress, the boy in a white shirt, beautiful as an advertisement.

Haruto's return had not made me cry. The words on the classroom wall had not made me cry. The contempt in other people's eyes had not made me cry.

But that beautiful photograph made my tears crash down.

I waited for you a very long time that day. You did not come until evening.

When you finally arrived, your face was bruised and swollen and your shirt was stained, but you said nothing, and I asked nothing. The photograph had wrung my heart into a knot. We sat there, each with our own ghosts, staring at the clock on the table. Later you said, "It's late. Take care of yourself. I'll come again tomorrow."

I nodded.

Your figure vanished with the closing of the door, and listening to your footsteps fade away, I felt the whole world collapse.

Ruko told me later that some little thug had been saying disgusting things to Shimizu Oto at the school gate, and you had played the hero and gotten into a fight for her.

The little thug had been Haruto.

Ruko said, "Matsuda Ryo is too kind. Everyone has misunderstood him."

As she said that, she kept forcing a laugh and watching my face. She was doing it on purpose, calling you kind, because that made it sound as though you and Shimizu Oto had nothing to do with each other, not in the slightest. You were only being kind. Only helping someone.

I burrowed into my blankets and said, "Ruko, you're every bit as talkative as your name."

After that there was no sound for a long time. I thought she had gone. When I finally peeked out, she was still sitting there beside the bed. When she saw me look out, she laughed and said, "You really are like a turtle. At least get better soon and go show your face at school. Let everyone know Matsuda Ryo's official girlfriend is still alive so the monsters and demons scatter."

"What am I, an exorcism charm?" I said.

Ruko stood up. "Hearing you talk like that means you're almost better. See you at school tomorrow."

When I went back, there was not the flood of rumors I had feared. Aside from the occasional whisper and sidelong glance, very little had changed.

The one thing that had changed was you.

You grew colder and colder toward me.

You had been the one to lead me through that unbearable time, and yet I could not understand why, just when I had finally opened my eyes to the sunlight, you were the one disappearing into the brightness.

I thought perhaps you had only pitied me. Perhaps that was why you had not abandoned me then. But now that the worst of it had passed, perhaps learning the truth of my ugly past had made you regret loving me. My exposed scars reminded me, with terrible clarity, that I was not worthy of you.

We began meeting each other every day in silence. Ruko kept trying to liven things up with jokes the way she always had, but I no longer answered, and you no longer laughed. We were becoming like wooden dolls, our faces less alive with each passing day.

At last, I surrendered first.

I could endure loneliness and solitude. I could not endure your silence beside me.

Before the second half of my final year of high school began, I dropped out. I had been unhappy for so long that my parents bought me a place at a junior college and sent me there early.

I still remember telling you that. You squeezed my hand and said, "Mm. That's good. Study hard there, okay?"

Your face was calm, undisturbed.

In that moment I felt terribly sad.

I said, "Then take care of yourself too. I hope everything goes smoothly for you."

That winter break, I left without saying goodbye to you or to anyone else. When Ruko came to see me off, she said I really had a heart of stone.

What I did not dare tell her was that I was afraid. If you had come to send me off and still worn that same expressionless face, I would have been hurt, more hurt than by not being with you at all.

Ruko wrote to tell me that you had suddenly become fiercely driven. Every day she saw you on your way to the library in a white shirt, straight and clean as a young poplar. Shimizu Oto had taken second place, close on your heels. The school leadership loved the two of you. Every speech, every meeting, they brought up your names. You had practically become the model couple of Seiran High.

In a new city and a new school, I began to live quietly. Junior college was easy, and no one cared much about each other. On sunny days I lay on the grass and read. On cloudy days I hid in the dorm and watched movies. I made it through.

Later you took your university entrance exams. I heard you got into a school in Tokyo, and that Shimizu Oto followed after you with unwavering determination.

After that, mysterious text messages began appearing on my phone from time to time: It's cold, wear more clothes. Take good care of yourself. I never dared call back and ask who it was, because Ruko said you had asked her for my number.

I did not know what I would even say if I called you. Would I ask how you were in Tokyo? Would I ask whether you and Shimizu Oto were together?

Whenever I thought of the photograph I had seen, and the fight I had heard you got into for her, it hurt. People say pain never lasts a hundred days. But even after a hundred days had passed, why did it still hurt so much when I remembered?

Ruko had gotten into the same school as you. She liked to say, "Natsumi, I am your strongest undercover operative."

Every so often she would tell me some scattered little detail of your life.

My hair grew, then was cut short again. The tea on my desk went hot and then cold. Books I had finished filled an entire shelf. The movies I had watched piled up in drawers.

And then your wedding invitation arrived.

Everything stopped.

Ruko faltered and said, "Natsumi, I really don't think Matsuda Ryo ever let Shimizu Oto get very close. Not really."

I only smiled, looked out at the sunlight beyond the window, and took her hand. "Little sister, don't think too much. It's because you've always protected me that I've grown up this well."

Yes. Ruko was actually my cousin. That was why she had always been so loyal to me, always on my side.

She said, "Who knows what counts as a blessing in disguise. If I hadn't wanted to spy on Matsuda Ryo for you, I never would've exploded with good karma during entrance exams and gotten the highest score of my life."

Very late that night, while I was still online, LINE gave a soft series of beeps. There was a message in the stranger tab, from an icon showing a little penguin running.

It said, Hard to believe you're still awake at this hour. Thinking about that pretty boy again?

I opened the profile and saw Haruto's name. My hand went straight to the mouse to delete him. I had no idea where he had gotten my LINE. But before I could block him, another message popped up.

Shimizu Oto really is something, he wrote. Back then she told me she could get Matsuda Ryo, and would you look at that, she pulled it off. Ran into her two days ago. She says they're getting married soon.

My heart started pounding so hard it hurt. My hands shook over the keyboard as I typed: How do you know Shimizu Oto?

Haruto sounded smug even through text. She came to me first, he wrote. I was losing money at cards. She said she'd pay me if I put on a little show for her, so I showed up in your life again. Honestly, you were pretty good to me, but gamblers have no sense at all, so I said yes.

It felt as though my whole world had gone blind. I could barely breathe. It was as if I were standing on some enormous plain under a sky gone black with storm clouds while thunder crashed down from above.

Then LINE dragged me back again with another burst of sound. Haruto kept typing, filling the chat window.

Still, that pretty boy really was sincere about you, he wrote. Even after I had those things written on your classroom wall, he still didn't leave your side. He almost beat me into the hospital that day. Though I got some hits in on him too. You're really something, Natsumi. Shimizu Oto told me that when Matsuda Ryo was with you, you even made him jump in a river to prove he loved you. Even though I lost our fight, I had plenty to humiliate him with, so I told him that when I chased you, I'd confessed by jumping in a river too. Only back then it was summer. Who knew a fool like you would be moved that badly by it.

He kept going. I did exactly what Shimizu Oto told me to do. I told him I had photos from that night at my place and that if he didn't leave you, I'd put them online and all over your school. You were really good to me, you know. Even after leaving me, you helped me make a fortune. Shimizu Oto has so much money. But Natsumi, don't blame me for speaking frankly. Give up on that pretty boy. You're no match for Shimizu Oto. And you and he never belonged to the same world anyway. Same way you and I didn't.

It felt as though someone had driven a knife into me. Pain spread outward from the center. My hands shook so hard over the keyboard I could barely type, but I cursed him with the ugliest words I knew. I told him he was an animal dressed in human skin and that he deserved the worst death imaginable.

Then I dragged his icon into the blacklist.

I did not sleep that night. I could not eat. At last I could bear it no longer and picked up the phone to call you.

It rang only once before you answered.

All the words jammed in my throat. Then your voice came, bright with surprise. "Natsumi? Is that you?"

I said, "Ryo, is this really it? Are we truly meant to go our separate ways?"

At once you fell silent.

Then I heard you let out a deep sigh.

"Natsumi," you said, "I'm afraid... we really can't go back. Oto is pregnant."

I laughed, though it felt like something breaking.

"Ryo, since when did we become a late-night soap opera?"

Then I hung up.

Ruko told me that Matsuda Ryo and Shimizu Oto had always been childhood sweethearts and that their families had business dealings, so both sets of parents approved. Even if Oto got pregnant, they welcomed it. They were old enough to talk seriously about marriage, and she didn't even need an internship. She said she could give birth first, then go abroad to study and come back gilded with prestige.

Everything Ruko was talking about suddenly felt impossibly far away from me. So your future had already been arranged. We had all grown up. Grown old enough to be responsible, to ourselves and to the people around us.

Haruto, that bastard, had been right about one thing.

You and I were never of the same world.

Just like the way we first met, we had always been like two distant planets, moving on different orbits. Even if our paths crossed by accident, that crossing was only ever a beautiful mistake.

I did not go to your wedding. Ruko, traitor that she was, did go, and even joined in the wedding-night games.

When she came back, she was a little drunk and terribly excited. "Sis, you are something else. Even if you're not around, your legend still is. During the wedding games there was one called Ask the Groom. The bride got to ask the groom ten questions, and he had to answer honestly. Two of them made Shimizu Oto cry."

"Why?" I asked.

Ruko said that the two questions were:

What is your most beautiful memory?

And who have you loved the deepest?

Matsuda Ryo, do you know what happened to me when I heard your answers?

I cried too.

Then, as though remembering something all at once, Ruko laughed for a little while and then started crying as well.

She grabbed my hand and kept saying, "Sis, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I only found out today. I was the one who completed the two of them. That night we had gone out to eat and sing together, but halfway through I left to go on a date with my boyfriend, even though Matsuda Ryo tried to stop me. Oto told me today that it was that night, when he got drunk, that the pregnancy happened."

Ruko cried so hard she could hardly breathe. "Sis, I'm sorry. I ruined the happiness of your whole life. Matsuda Ryo once told me that after graduation he would take over the family business and then come back for you. By then, he hoped he would have grown into someone invincible, someone powerful enough to shield the sky with one hand, so he could hold you tightly and make sure no one ever hurt you again. Sis, I'm sorry..."

I held Ruko and said, "Don't cry, don't cry. None of this is your fault."

Ryo, how I wish I could tell you this:

That dark summer, after the procedure, Haruto stopped paying me any attention, and yet the only thing I remembered from that whole time was that he had once jumped into a river to confess to me. Out of terror and pressure, I developed mild depression. Whenever I saw a river, I would keep repeating the same sentence:

If you love me, then jump.

That night when I was drunk, my nerves were worn so thin that all the old darkness came back in the dizziness.

That was why I had been so stubborn, saying it to you over and over again.

If you love me, jump.

But Ryo, even if you had not jumped, I still would have loved you.

Because you once gave me a blue balloon.

Because you once gave me a splendid dream.

Because you turned my whole youth into color.

Because on every midnight after that, when I woke from a nightmare, I no longer had to shiver through the cold alone.

And yet, my dear Ryo, no matter how many times I imagined losing you, I never imagined that I would lose the one person I had wanted to love for life, the one I would once have traded the whole world to keep.