Your Name

"The wind's come up," Okudera-senpai whispers, and her long, wavy hair rises softly. A sweet scent I smelled once, somewhere long ago and far away, reaches my nose faintly. Like a conditioned reflex, the fragrance sparks a melancholy inside me.

"Thanks for spending the day with me. This is far enough," Okudera-senpai says when I offer to see her to the turnstile at the station.

We ate dinner at the Italian restaurant where we'd worked part-time as students. Thanks to a promise I totally don't remember making—"Come to think of it, Taki, didn't you say you'd treat me after you graduated from high school?"—I ended up paying for Okudera-senpai. Even so, I felt a little bit proud picking up the check.

"You know, I had no idea the place we used to work had such good food."

"Yeah, all the meals they gave us during our shifts were like school lunches."

"We went for years without catching on."

We laugh. Okudera-senpai draws a deep, contented breath, then says, "All right. I'll see you later." She waves at me, and there's a band like a thin drop of water shining on her ring finger.

"You'll find happiness someday, too," she'd assured me earlier over an espresso, after informing me she was getting married. I couldn't manage a good response—I just mumbled something congratulatory.

I'm not particularly unhappy, I think, watching Okudera-senpai's silhouette descend the pedestrian-bridge stairs. That said, I don't really understand what happiness is yet, either.

Just a little longer..., I think one more time.

——————

Before I know it, the season's changed again.

An unusually typhoon-filled autumn passed, moving straight into a winter of nothing but cold rain. Tonight, too, the rain is whispering down unabated, like the memory of a pleasant chat on some bygone day. Christmas lights twinkle beyond windows beaded thickly with water droplets.

I take a sip from my paper cup of coffee, as if swallowing my scattered thoughts, then look down at my notebook again. Even now, in December, it's packed with job-hunting appointments.

Visits with former upperclassmen to discuss their work, information sessions, entry deadlines, paper schedules, interview dates. The range is chaotic, covering everything from major general contractors to design offices to old-town factories, and as I check the notebook against the schedule on my phone, even I'm a bit disgusted by it. I start organizing the main points from tomorrow onward writing them into my notebook.

"Y'know, I'd like to go to at least one more bridal fair."

Mixed with the sound of the rain, the conversations of strangers sound a bit like secrets. The couple behind me has been discussing their wedding for a while now, and it makes me think of Okudera-senpai. Their voices and bearing are completely different, though. There's a bit of an easygoing regional accent to their speech and their conversation seems completely relaxed, as if they're childhood friends. I'm not really listening, but my ears pick up what they're saying.

"Again?" The guy sounds annoyed, but even then, there's no mistaking the affection in his tone. "We've been to a ton of fairs already. They were all pretty much the same stuff."

"You said your dream was to have it in a chapel."

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I can't make up my mind that easily."

"But you said you did make up your mind," the guy quietly complains, and I chuckle.

The girl ignores him. "Hmm..." she murmurs, thinking. "Never mind that. Tesshi, you gotta shave off those whiskers before the ceremony."

I was about to drink my coffee, but my hand stops dead.

My pulse is speeding up, though I don't understand why.

"I'll lose a few pounds for you, 'kay?"

"But you're eatin' cake!"

"I'll start for real tomorrow!"

The two of them have already gotten up from their chairs and are pulling on their coats. The tall, skinny guy is wearing a stocking cap over his buzzed head. I just catch a glimpse of his profile. The girl is petite, and her bobbed hair makes her seem young, almost like a student. The pair turns away and leaves the café. For some reason, I can't take my eyes off their backs.

"Thank you for your visit." The café employee's voice reaches my ears indistinctly, mingled with the rain.

By the time I leave the café, the rain has turned to snow.

Maybe it's because of all the moisture up in the atmosphere, but the town is oddly warm in the falling snow. I feel strangely uneasy, as if I've wandered into the wrong season. It seems to me as if each and every person I pass is hiding some important secret, and in spite of myself, I keep turning back to look at them.

I go straight to the ward library, which is almost ready to close the evening. The sparseness of the handful of readers in the vast, vaulted space makes the air inside feel even chillier than outside. I take a seat and open the book I've retrieved from the stacks. The title is Vanished Itomori—Complete Records. It's a collection of photographs.

As if removing an ancient seal, I slowly page through the book.

Gingko trees and an elementary school. The shrine's steep stairs, with their view over the lake. A shrine gate with peeling paint. A tiny railroad crossing, like toy building blocks abruptly set down in the fields. A pointlessly expansive parking lot, two snack bars right next to each other, a drab concrete high school. A prefectural road with old, cracked asphalt. A guardrail that traces a winding hill road. Vinyl greenhouses, reflecting the sky.

They're the sort of ordinary sights you see all over Japan, so I recognize all of them. I can visualize the temperature of the stone walls and the chill of the wind, just as if I'd lived there.

Why is this so... ? I wonder as I turn the pages.