Chapter 3.2 (2/2)

Our school was a private combined middle and high school, so those entrance exams were considered to be quite difficult. Apparently, Kayama was running a high fever due to influenza at the time. He had a fever on the very day of the exams. Despite being nervous, Kayama managed to take the exams. But his mind was hazy and he was unsteady on his feet. On top of that, he had terrible nausea. Despite having managed to endure during the exams, he apparently ran to the toilet and vomited during the breaks in between.

When Kayama returned to the cla.s.sroom for the next examination, he was at his limit. His legs gave out and he collapsed onto the floor. That was when Mamizu rushed over to him.

“Are you alright?”

Kayama said that she’d looked like an angel as she called out to him.

“Let’s go to the infirmary. I’ll follow you there,” Mamizu said gently.

“No. I want to take the exams no matter what,” Kayama replied.

“Well then… let’s do our best. Let’s take these exams together and make absolutely sure to meet at the entrance ceremony.”

Apparently, Kayama was touched by her strong words of “make absolutely sure” instead of “I’m sure we will” or “I hope I see you there.” And Kayama did his best in the entrance exams, encouraged by those words.

And apparently, Kayama thought that he wanted to become someone who would help others in their time of need, just like her.

Kayama saw Mamizu at the entrance ceremony. But she was in a different cla.s.s. The two of them didn’t make contact with each other. After that, Mamizu had always been on Kayama’s mind.

He somehow managed to gather his courage and go to talk to her, but that was when Mamizu stopped coming to school. Kayama heard rumors that her body was in poor condition due to unknown causes. Apparently, during her last day at school, she had been reading ‘One Ray of Light’ alone in the library. She seemed to have been absorbed into the world within the book, and didn’t notice Kayama’s gaze. Watching her from afar like that was the last time Kayama saw her.

After that, Kayama awaited the day that Mamizu would return to school, but that day never came.

During the first homeroom of our first year in high school, when it was decided that someone should visit Watarase Mamizu’s hospital room, he’d thought that this was his chance. But he felt that he was too dirty to meet Watarase Mamizu back then. And so, he decided to have me check things out instead.

He wanted me to create some common ground for the day when he eventually went to visit her himself.

Kayama revealed all of this to me.

s.h.i.+zusawa Sou’s grave was in quite a remote place. This was possibly a reflection of the misanthropic, eccentric personality he had while he was alive, just like the character in his book.

“This is quite tough.” Beads of sweat had formed on Kayama’s forehead.

I was a little worried about him, but I couldn’t say, “Shall we go back?” Exchanging few words, we continued walking.

And then we finally arrived at s.h.i.+zusawa Sou’s grave.

“It’s kind of… is this the right place? It’s a lonely grave, isn’t it?” Kayama complained.

Maybe graves are lonely things to begin with, but even so, just as Kayama said, this grave was a very lonely sight. It was different from an ordinary graveyard; there weren’t any graves of anyone else. There was only a single grave, standing there alone. It was covered in mold and moss, and it had been significantly weathered. There weren’t any signs that anyone had visited it. It was difficult to imagine that this was the grave of someone who had attained a certain degree of success as an author. It was said that s.h.i.+zusawa Sou had no relatives at the time of his death.

The characteristic feature of the grave was that his name wasn’t written on the gravestone. Neither his pen name nor his real name was written on it. Only a single character had been carved into it.

TLN: This kanji is p.r.o.nounced “mu” and roughly translates to “nothing.”

That was s.h.i.+zusawa Sou’s epitaph. Of course, I’d looked up information on the internet beforehand, so I’d known this, and this was unmistakably s.h.i.+zusawa Sou’s grave, but looking at the real thing, I got the impression that it was quite an eccentric grave.

“‘無,’ huh. What a strange grave,” Kayama said, frankly speaking his mind.

Apparently, this strange grave had been made in accordance with s.h.i.+zusawa Sou’s will. Supposedly, when someone asked him the meaning behind it while he was alive, he’d replied with a single sentence: “That is my view of life.” This had been written on the internet.

Indeed, when humans die, they become nothing. They don’t go to heaven or anywhere else. Nothing remains afterwards.

That is probably the truth.

I took out my phone and took a few photos to show Mamizu.

We went down the path we came and descended the mountain.

“… I’m going to confess to Watarase Mamizu,” Kayama said to me in a serious tone while we were riding the train back.

‘I like Watarase Mamizu, too. I confessed. But she rejected me.’

I couldn’t say those simple words to Kayama.

“Let’s go visit Mamizu together next time,” I suggested to him instead.

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