Chapter 26: 25

Chapter 25:

Room 610 Pt. 2

His next destination was, after all, somewhere he couldn’t reach with just a scooter. From Morioka Station, he got on the bullet train, and for the first time in nearly half a month, he headed back to Saitama City.

He was headed for his empty apartment, where his things were already packed up in preparation for a move. The one thing he had to absolutely check, no matter what, lay there.

 

He surrendered himself to the pleasant rumble of the bullet train, and turned his gaze to the scenery that flew by outside his window, and reflected on his memories of the day of the accident.

The missing fragment of memory was of an event that took place after they departed Saitama, at a highway service area where they had stopped for a bathroom break along the way to Nagano.

 

※※※

 

That day, I stopped the bus at the service area and stepped out for a brief moment. While massaging my neck and shoulders that had stiffened from the long drive and nerves, I took a cigarette from my breast pocket and lit it.

Now it occurs to me that I only ever smoked when I was trying to distract myself from my nerves.

It had begun to snow before I realized. I noticed my breath misting in the cold air, and as I looked around I saw a thin blanket of snow beginning to cover the surroundings.

 

“How pretty,” I muttered, and inhaled another mouthful of smoke into my lungs.

It was at that moment. I heard a somewhat hesitant girl’s voice from behind me.

 

“…excuse me.”

 

I looked back to find the speaker, and standing there was Shirakisawa Honoka. While she glanced to either side, she toyed with the ends of her scarf, unable to settle down. At last, nudged in the back by her friend, amongst murmurs of “Come on…” and “Stop it,” she finally stepped forward.

As soon as she looked me in the eye, she glanced down with a blush, and from then on her gaze was fixed on the ground. There was a long pause, where neither of us spoke. Right around the time when I was just about to ask if she was okay, my own heart pounding from her calling out to me, she opened her mouth at last.

 

“Um…” Her voice was terribly hoarse.

“Yes?”

“Please take the—this, and read it later, ple-please.”

 

Stumbling over her words several times, she timidly held out a blue envelope in both her hands. Although I was not that used to interacting much with girls, from her reactions and behavior, I had a vague suspicion what the gist of the letter contained inside that envelope might be.

 

“Uh, thank you.”

 

With an internal laugh that I wasn’t even sure what I was thanking her for, I accepted the letter cautiously.

 

“Sorry to bother ye—you.”

 

She spoke cheerfully and bowed her head. After examining my expression with upturned eyes, she turned her back to me and left. In a glimpse I caught of her face after, I thought I saw a faint blush in her cheeks.

Feeling cheered by her response, I tucked the letter away into my breast pocket.

 

※※※

 

…and until today, I had completely forgotten the existence of that letter.

He wondered why, lamenting how he could have forgotten something this important.

 

In the end, the letter had remained unopened, and because the accident had occurred several hours later, and he had spent the next few days on the edge of life and death, it would still be in the breast pocket of his suit from that day. Or it should be.

But in truth he couldn’t actually know. Was it actually still in his pocket? Or could someone have thrown it out? He had forgotten all about it until now, after all.

The latter case was absolutely unthinkable.

And so now, he had to check. He had to absolutely make sure. An unpleasant sweat began to form on his back as he continued to be jostled by the train.

 

He disembarked the bullet train at Omiya Station. He passed briskly through the ticket gate, and if it had been any other time, he would have taken the bus to cut back on costs. Only at a time like this did he hail a taxi. He didn’t have any time to waste taking the slow route.

He tossed aside any concerns weighing how much money he still had left after leaving his job against how much he would need from now on. He would just have to make do with however much money he had now.

His priority was to hold Shirakisawa Honoka’s hand in his own and confirm that she was still alive.

Anything else would have to come second to that.

 

The taxi stopped in front of his apartment. Paying no mind to the exorbitant bill that he ended up with, he paid up and got out of the car.

He climbed the stairs with a hand on the rusted railing, and unlocked the door to the apartment right in front of the second floor landing. He flipped on the breakers and switched on the lights, which illuminated the numerous cardboard boxes lining the cold room alongside the bed and television.

 

Now, where to start…

From inside the stacks of boxes, he searched for the ones stuffed with his clothes, and carefully opened them with a box cutter.

Going by his previous memories, he started searching the pockets of any suits he could have been wearing on that day. Though he was shocked that he still hadn’t found the envelope, he patted down the other pockets.

In the end, with every last suit he owned spread out across the floor, Osakabe crouched low and hugged his knees to his chest.

 

“It’s not here?”

 

Why? Curses fell from his lips.

He replayed the memories from that day one more time. Without a doubt, I was wearing a suit that day. I clearly remember putting the envelope in the inside breast pocket.

On the verge of giving in to the tears, he thought it over once more.

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“Or maybe…?”

 

Hanging onto that thread of memory, he opened a different cardboard box, and from that box pulled out a large ziplock bag. Inside was a dress shirt and underclothes, stained with blood.

The bag had been stuffed with personal items from the day of the accident, still stained with blood that refused to wash out. In order to banish the difficult memories to somewhere he wouldn’t encounter them, he had intentionally stored these items in a separate box.

He opened the bag with trembling hands, and from within found the blue envelope, stained here and there with reddish-brown blotches.

 

“It’s here…”

 

Overcome with emotion, he clasped the letter to his chest, then cut it open with a pair of scissors.

 

His memories from this point on shattered into fragments. No matter how he turned the matter over in his mind, he could only assume that he was somehow blind to anything else around him.

If he had to explain the gist of it, first he cried upon reading the letter from Honoka. Written inside was of course a dazzling confession of love. In other words, her confession at the beach in Jodogahama was actually her second confession. It would not be an exaggeration to say it took two confessions before he finally looked her way. At the same time, his memories of the illusionary days he had spent with her were restored in vivid colors, and his chest felt suffocatingly painful.

Taking with him only the letter and its envelope, he dashed out of his apartment and went straight for Omiya Station. For the return route, he leapt onto the express train, and around the time he arrived in Morioka, darkness had already fallen.

When he checked in at a business hotel and sank into his futon, he finally felt drowsiness hit him. Incidentally, during this entire time, he had no clear memory of where, when, or what he ever ate.

It was just more proof that he no longer cared for himself, and was only concerned for her wellbeing.

 

The next morning, he hurried to check out from the hotel and set off on his scooter for Morioka Medical University Hospital.

He dashed through the hospital lobby and got on the elevator where he finally got off on the hallway to room 610, where Honoka was staying. Standing there was her twin sister—Mafuyu.

 

“Here again? You’re awfully persistent.”

 

Mafuyu gazed at him suspiciously, with a hand on her hip, though her mouth held a faint smile. The sting of her expression from before seemed to have disappeared.

Perceiving that her wariness had waned, Osakabe pulled out his trump card right away.

 

“Mafuyu-chan, I’m sorry to be so blunt, but would you read this letter?”

 

A strange expression passed over her face, and he held out the blue envelope he had received from Honoka. Mafuyu took it with a meek expression, and leaning against the wall, pulled out the contents.

As she glanced over it, Mafuyu’s face tinged with an expression of shock. Her mouth began to tremble.

 

“…w-wait just a second!” she shouted as she opened the door to room 610 and disappeared inside. Osakabe leaned against the wall where she had been standing just a moment before, and waited.

He continued waiting for several minutes.

When the door to the room opened again, Honoka’s mother peered out.

 

“You’re here to see Honoka. Come inside.”

 

Her tone was reserved. Dipping into a bow, Osakabe followed her inside. For the first time, he stepped into Honoka’s room and took in the white walls and ceilings, bright enough to give him pause.

The sound of several machines, beeping at regular intervals, came to his ears. The room was surprisingly large and warm, and a strange stillness hung over it.

Mafuyu opened the pale yellow curtains, which allowed him to see the bed where Honoka lay.

Although she was capable of breathing on her own, an oxygen mask had been affixed to her mouth. Her appearance hadn’t changed much from what he had seen before the accident, but her hair was longer, and her arms, stuck with several different IV tubes, looked thin.

 

“So you were the one my sister fell in love with,” Mafuyu said. “You should have said something sooner.”

“I had always thought the fewer things tying her to me the better, so I couldn’t really say it myself. I’m sorry.”

 

Standing to the side of the bed, he looked down at her face.

Looking at her like this, it seemed like she was only sleeping.

His heart had ached to think she might have looked like she was in pain, but he was relieved to see her expression was gentler than he had thought.

Her mother had said that sometimes she would smile, but in the end, until the day she awoke, she would never laugh, not even once.

But her pretty face also never contorted.

 

And so Osakabe was grateful for that too, right now.

 

He took her hand gently, as if afraid it would break.

It was warmer than he had imagined. Yet it was also smaller, more delicate than it had been in his memories. His heart grew painful suddenly as he held the unresponsive fingers.

The person in front of him now was without a doubt Shirakisawa Honoka.

Yet, the oxygen mask over her face. The delicate arms stuck with multiple IVs. The slender fingers, and the collar bone that stood out underneath her throat. The eyelids that did not open. It all pointed to the stark reality that she was different from the Shirakisawa Honoka he had seen during his dream-like stay at the guest house in Miyako.

And yet, Osakabe thought.

He held on tightly to Honoka’s hand. Gradually as he thought, his vision began to blur. But the tears began to overflow, and spilled one after the other, and he broke down. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking how pitiful he must look, and he broke into another sob.

And yet, he thought. I do love Honoka. Even if the memory of the day on the beach at Jodogahama where we whispered our confessions of love to each other was all a lie. Even if the night at the guest house where we lay next to each other and I held her was all an illusion.

I love Shirakisawa Honoka. I’m not lying when I say that.

Although he knew she could not respond, he whispered into her ear over and over, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” as well as, “I came for you. I love you.”

 

Osakabe’s words perhaps didn’t reach her until that day her eyes opened. And yet he whispered those same words to her over and over every day after that too.

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