Starting a Night Shift Part-time Job at a Convenience Store.

“Are you uncomfortable with this kind of talk?”

“It’s not something pleased. But rest assured, I won’t quit so easily.”

“Hakamada, you work so hard, but that’s what I like about you.”

“But… that story is a bit disturbing, isn’t it, because it seems like they’re trying to make a spectacle of it. Though I do understand they’re in a pinch.”

“That’s a blunt way of putting it… But I believe it’s the last sign for people who are about to commit suicide.”

“Sign…”

“Right. I believe it is a casual SOS. If they no longer harbor any doubts, they would have entered the sea of trees without dropping by the convenience store, but those who come here are surely confused until the very end. They wish someone would recognize it, someone would call out to them. That’s why they come here… that’s only my interpretation, though.”

Indeed. Perhaps so, desiring salvation, people sometimes unconsciously sought to rely on someone else. I had to admit that this person was not wrong.

“So I can’t force them, but I try to guide them as best I can, even though I don’t know if it’s for their own good.”

If someone is silently dismissed, it means that nobody has been able to discern their will. On the contrary, it would be the final push. That was what Aoyama said.

Although he said he was uncertain whether it was truly the right thing to do, it was the way he would have chosen to approach the matter. I wondered what Hirai would have said. Had it been Takenaka, I wondered how he would have handled the situation.

I… I wondered what I would do… If it were me, what action would I have taken?

At dawn, when the manager and others emerged for the shift change.

“Those sort of people come again, manager,” Aoyama simply said.

The manager frowned at that and closed his mouth tightly.

“I hate it when more and more of them show up every year around this time… thanks for your efforts. Hakamada, too.”

Have a good rest. With these words, we were sent off from the convenience store and split up.

Despite the rising sun, the sea of trees was not thoroughly illuminated. The air was damp and the darkness cast by the trees gave the place an ominous feeling both day and night.

Having slept well into the early afternoon, I awoke quietly, thanks to the absence of my sister for the first time in a long while.

I wondered what really… happened to that man from yesterday. He was in tears at Aoyama’s words, and eventually left without buying anything. His forlorn back figure left a strong impression on me and I couldn’t shake it out of my head.

A sign… of a person in desperate times… an SOS―

With my eyelids nearly overlapping, I cast my eyes to the walls of my room. Stuck on the wall was a photo. A photo of me and Hyuga.

Probably the only photo of the two of us together. I couldn’t simply hide the photo I found in the mess that day in the closet. I attached it to the wall. Not out of nostalgia nor any other feelings. I supposed I did it to warn myself.

To never forget, ever again. And to engrave in my heart what an awful person I was. Perhaps it was Hyuga who made me do it.

To forget about her and live comfortably.

In the photo, Hyuga was smiling while holding me in her arms.

I, on the other hand, turned my head away with a scowl. What a horrible photo…

This was a photo taken at the school festival. Regardless of how much I told her not to follow me, Hyuga persistently chased after me… so one of my friends took this photo as a joke. They said, “Wow, you guys look like a couple”. Everybody was whistling at me and I was totally grumpy. My friends were annoying, the curious stares from the people around me were annoying, and Hyuga, who was the cause of all this, was annoying. I was deliberately treating that fellow who seemed to be enjoying herself in a nasty way.

Even if I didn’t have any ill intentions, Hyuga probably wouldn’t have had a good feeling about it. She was an idiot. I should have been more considerate of her at that time.

Calling him “senior, senior,” she followed me around like a chick. Not even once did I try to match her stride.

This photo was taken… just before Hyuga’s death. What was she distressed about? She was constantly wandering around, not in a fixed group of people, but always in the middle of any group. That was why I didn’t think she was isolated or bullied at all. It was hard to say since we were in different grades, though. Why was she, who was always smiling and laughing every day, why―

What happened? To the point of wanting to commit suicide―

[Why… didn’t you believe me back then―]

The person who appeared in front of me at that time may have been the real Hyuga after all. If those words were her true feelings, then the fact that she showed up in front of me and complained to me…

That may be an answer. The answer to why Hyuga committed suicide. Because of me. It was all my fault… Because I hurt her. That was why Hyuga died…

I didn’t know. I didn’t know but I surely failed to recognize her SOS. When I failed to notice and ultimately pushed her away, something crucial to her that I should have been there to catch fell and shattered. It made noise and shattered like glass…

She might have been asking me to save her. Perhaps she thought I might be able to help her. It made sense if I thought that way.

And yet, I―I couldn’t catch Hyuga’s sign.

A dark feeling stained my brain as though I had been covered with ink. Would I ever be able to discover the whole truth if I could recall everything that unfolded on that day? Why did Hyuga die? I throbbed for the whole truth of it.

As the days went by, that feeling intensified. The guilt I held toward Hyuga grew. Did I really kill her or was there another reason? But given what had happened, there was no doubt that I was related to her death.

I soliloquized these questions without any answers. In all honesty, it was maddening to carry on with feelings that would not clear up no matter how hard I tried to rack my brain. How long do I have to continue like this? Was there no way out? Would there never be an answer from this point on?

Hey Hyuga, you were just telling me this right now, weren’t you? You were telling me to suffer more… to be more distressed…

I wiped the perspiration from my forehead, covered my eyes with my arms, and imagined.

Had I been able to leap through time like in a Hollywood movie, I―I wanted to go punch myself in the face that day…

“Looks like you made it back in one piece, newcomer.”

A peal of cynical laughter resonated in the back room as the workday reached a halfway point with no one coming to the store’s back room.

When Hirai and I were taking a break from our tasks, I noticed that she had suddenly stopped talking about BL after just a short while of her eloquently discussing it. When I thought about what was going on, this happened.

“Not entirely unscathed but, hmm. You didn’t bring back any wicked ones, huh? That little boy… no, the other one was very attentive…”

She grinned, the corners of her lips hanging up sharply, as she cast a glance at the bandage over my forehead and the bandages covering my arms.

There she popped up. Hirai (mother). Also known as Hirai Ayame. Even though she was in Sapporo, Hokkaido, she was capable of communicating through the medium of her daughter’s body by compressing her consciousness into something that was equivalent to a living spirit. She was Hirai’s biological mother who would periodically manifest in front of me using this method.

Despite having Hirai’s outward appearance, she was absolutely different on the inside. Her once-soft and fluffy atmosphere abruptly altered, as did her eyes. Most notably, Hirai’s tone of voice was no longer present. Initially, I couldn’t believe that Hirai was possessed by her mother but recently I have gotten accustomed to it. Nevertheless, her face would surface just when I had forgotten about it.

“It’s bad for my heart, Ayame…”

“You don’t want Kaname to come out and say, ‘I’m switching to Maman from now on,’ do you?”

“That’s, well…”

I mean, wasn’t that the same as a phone call? Yeah… it was like a phone call, wasn’t it, with the state of Hirai right now?

“You don’t have to control your daughter’s body to meddle with me.”

“How disreputable. I have permission from Kaname to talk to you.”

“Oh… is that so?”

“So how was your first trip to the sea of trees? Tell me your impression.”

Ayame asked me with a grin as if daring me to gouge out something I didn’t want to recollect. She asked, “What, you don’t smoke anything but this?” as she grabbed for the pack of Seven Star cigarettes I had left on the table, popped one in her mouth, and lit it with my lighter.

“My impression…”

Please don’t say it like, “Tell me what the movie is about”…

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