Chapter 2 Part6 (2/2)

It seemed that Mamizu felt something like a complex about her body that glowed due to her luminescence disease.

“You’re you, Mamizu.” That was all I managed to say in the end, and then I finished setting up the telescope.

I peeked through it to make sure it was working. I could see the stars properly. Not bad for an amateur, I thought.

“The weather is good today, so you can see clearly,” I said, gesturing for Mamizu to take a look.

Looking timid for some reason, Mamizu peered into the telescope.

“… Wow, you’re right,” she said.

Mamizu was completely drawn into the world inside the telescope. Her reaction was like that of a child seeing a kaleidoscope for the first time. Her voice was filled with genuine surprise, as though she was amazed that there really were such beautiful things in this world. Hearing her voice like that, I felt satisfied.

“Say, Takuya-kun, do you have a girlfriend?” Mamizu asked, without taking her eyes off the telescope.

“If I did… I wouldn’t come to see you all the time like this, would I?” I said.

“I suppose that’s true. Well then, even if you don’t have a girlfriend, don’t you have someone you like?” Mamizu continued, turning back towards me and looking at me with a serious expression.

“I’m kind of scared,” I said, without looking into her eyes.

“Scared of liking someone?”

I couldn’t give a reply to that question. Meiko’s face suddenly flashed into my mind. As if shaking off that dark image, I shook my head lightly.

“I’m not popular,” I said vaguely instead.

“I don’t think that’s true.” Mamizu suddenly took two, three smooth steps towards me and lightly held my arm. She had cornered me at this distance completely in a rather spectacular fas.h.i.+on. “Shall we try a rehearsal? So that you can get a girlfriend, Takuya-kun.”

“I don’t need it,” I said, a bitter smile almost appearing on my face.

“I wanted to try it. Please, just for five minutes,” Mamizu said, and then pulled me next to the telescope.

“Is that another one of the things you want to do before you die?”

Mamizu didn’t reply; instead, she gestured for me to sit next to her and look through the telescope.

The sky suddenly filled my vision. Just like when I’d peered into a microscope during a physics experiment once, the scale of the world changed in an instant, and the stars that had been small and distant were now visible in detail. Although this was a telescope that I’d bought myself, it was a sight that I was seeing for the first time.

Perhaps looking at the night sky like this was another thing that I never would have done in my entire life if I hadn’t met Mamizu.

“Try saying something romantic.” Mamizu’s voice came from outside my vision, as if through telepathy.

“Huh? I can’t,” I said.

“A summer night, stargazing, an attractive person of the opposite s.e.x beside you – all the things you need in order to be romantic are gathered here, aren’t they?”

“You’d say that about yourself?”

“… It’s not really true.”

I was really troubled by this task. I searched the memories in my head, but no particular words came to mind. I’d hardly seen any romance movies at all.

“Something like, ‘I want to be with you forever?’”

I turned to look at Mamizu’s face and saw that she was making an expression as if to say that this didn’t click.

“I love you from the bottom of my heart?”

“Don’t say ‘from the bottom of my heart’ like you don’t care!”

“I wouldn’t mind dying if it’s for your sake.”

“Hey, are you motivated about this at all?”

“Isn’t this unfair?” I said, unable to endure this any longer. “I don’t think it’s fair to make me do this on my own while you throw in your quips.”

Mamizu tilted her head a little as if to say, “So what should we do?”

“I might feel more motivated if you say these with me.”

Say them if you can, I thought.

“… Alright,” Mamizu said, moving so that she was sitting half a step closer, basically clinging to me.

I jumped a little, but maybe because I was a little irritated, I stayed there without pulling myself away.

“It’s like the two of us are alone in the world, isn’t it?” Mamizu said, looking around the rooftop. It was late at night, and there wasn’t a single sign of anyone being around.

“If that was true, what would you want to do?” I asked.

“Then I’d have no choice but to marry you, would I, Takuya-kun?”

“What do you mean, ‘have no choice?’”

Ignoring my protest, Mamizu gave me a profound-sounding laugh. “Try proposing to me,” she said with a somewhat intimate, over-familiar smile.

“In sickness and in health, I will love you, help you and devote myself to you.”

“I’ll love you forever, too, Takuya-kun.”

Mamizu looked at me.

I looked back at her.

“I’m joking, you know?” she said, as if making sure that I knew.

“How funny,” I replied, without cracking a smile.

And then Mamizu extended a hand towards the night sky as if to grasp it. “Hey, I wonder if even those pretty stars have lifespans.”

She sounded like she already knew the answer.

I turned the telescope towards the southern sky. Recalling the basic astronomy that we were taught in cla.s.s, I looked for a certain star.

“The stars that s.h.i.+ne red are close to the ends of their lifespans. The famous one is Antares, in the Scorpius constellation. In the end, they’ll burn out and die.” I aligned the telescope and let Mamizu have a look.

“I wonder if all of the stars in the night sky will turn red one day,” Mamizu sighed.

I tried to imagine it, but I couldn’t picture it very well.

“What happens when stars die?” Mamizu asked.

“They lose their light and become something like corpses. Or they become black holes.”

When heavy stars die, they collapse under gravity and become black holes. No matter, not even light, can escape being sucked in. Black holes grow by absorbing and combining with all kinds of stars, becoming enormous.

“I wonder if humans get sucked in by dead people as well?” Mamizu said.

Startled by these words, I turned back towards Mamizu.

“I don’t want to become a black hole,” she said in a terribly emotional tone.

n.o.body does, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud.

Antares was clearly visible, even with the naked eye. The heart of the Scorpius constellation. Now that I thought about it, that scorpion had wanted to become a star illuminating the night sky for the sake of someone else’s happiness, right?

I actually wanted to die like that, too.

“If all the stars became black holes, it would be boring to do something like stargazing, wouldn’t it?” Mamizu said.

“I think the earth will be destroyed before that happens, though.”

Earth’s final day. Like in science-fiction.

“What will happen to the universe in the end?”

“It’ll end, probably.”

That was what had been written in a book that I’d read in the library while killing time in the past. The universe would come to an end. Just like human lives.

“Then I wonder just what kind of meaning there is behind the existence of this world?”

“There is no meaning. Any meaning to it is a human misconception,” I said.

There was no meaning to living.

There wasn’t a single shred of meaning to anything. Entropy would increase, and the universe would head towards its heat death. Everything would be annihilated, and only silence would remain. Nothing would survive. History and language would disappear, too.

The universe formed through a sudden explosion, and during its cooling process, animals with consciousness flowing through their brains came into existence spontaneously. Now, we wandered and lived our pointless lives in search of meaning, and honestly speaking, all of it was painful for me.

“What part of that is supposed to be romantic?” Mamizu stuck her lips out a little as if pouting, and then her eyes returned to the telescope.

And then we became silent.

It might have been the first time we’d spent time together in silence like this.

Silence sometimes makes one lose their sense of reality. This was one of those times. Maybe it was because we’d been talking about stars and the universe. The world’s scale had changed, and I felt like we were nothing more than microbes.

Now that our conversation had stopped, Mamizu seemed to be completely absorbed in stargazing. “Beautiful, aren’t they… they really are.”

She had been completely drawn into the world within the telescope.

There was something I was thinking about as I was looking at her defenseless back. Like light spilling from a window through gaps in the curtains, her skin was peeking out through the gaps in her long hair, glowing white.

“Mamizu, I love you,” I said.

Mamizu didn’t turn to face me. She stayed completely still, showing no response, as though I hadn’t said anything at all.

“Five minutes have pa.s.sed already,” she said. Her voice was trembling a little.

I couldn’t see her expression. As usual, I didn’t know what she was thinking.

“I’m not joking,” I said in a serious tone.

A few moments of silence pa.s.sed.

I waited.

“I’m sorry.”

For some reason, there were tears in Mamizu’s voice.

End of chapter two.

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