Chapter 1 part6 (1/2)

Aimi City, a city in the neighboring prefecture with a population of less than half a million people, didn’t have any characteristic features.

It was paved evenly with concrete and overrun by chain stores. The students attending my high school would never come here to enjoy themselves. It was too far, and there were too few things that were actually better here.

Of course, there was a reason I had made the effort of going on a three-hour journey by train to get here.

Mamizu’s father lived in this city.

The reason her father lived in this faraway place was because, as Kayama had said, Mamizu’s parents were divorced.

Apparently through discussions between Mamizu’s father, who was managing a company, and her mother, Ritsu-san, it had been decided that Mamizu would live with Ritsu-san. But Mamizu had never heard the reason for the divorce directly from Ritsu-san. Even when she asked, the question had always been avoided.

“I want to ask my father why he and my mother got divorced.”

This was Mamizu’s “thing she wants to do before she dies” this time.

Isn’t that a bit too heavy to ask someone else to do? I’d thought.

“Please. I’m really serious; I want to know before I die, no matter what. But I haven’t been told my father’s phone number or e-mail address. I don’t know what to do.”

Indeed, Mamizu requested this of me very seriously. With a serious tone that was different from any other tone of speech she had used before.

“Could it be…?” Something had occurred to me. “Have you been testing me up until now so that you could ask me to do this?”

When I broke the snow globe, Mamizu had told me that she wanted me to do the “things that she wants to do before she dies” in her place. That snow globe was a treasured possession given to her by her father.

That snow globe might have been the scenery in Mamizu’s imagination.

A world inside a glass sphere in which snow continued to fall, as if time inside had stopped.

Perhaps for Mamizu, the house inside had been a reminder of the happy household that she’d once belonged to.

Hadn’t she wanted communication with her father instead of that snow globe? Yet she couldn’t meet her father. Isn’t that why she had come up with the idea of making me do it in her place?

Hadn’t all of the things up until now been a test for this task? Hadn’t she just been hesitant to make such a heavy request from the beginning? This was what I’d thought.

“… There’s no way that’s true, is there. I was just playing around by making you do crazy things, Takuya-kun.”

“Well, alright.”

In the end, I’d begun feeling like I couldn’t really turn down Mamizu’s requests once I’d heard them.

“I’ll do what I can,” I’d said as I left the hospital room.

The only clue I had was that I knew his address. Mamizu’s father had left the house where their family had once lived, and was now apparently living in his own house. That house was in Aimi city. Relying on my smartphone’s map application, I found that house.

The doorplate read, “Fukami.”

I was a little nervous, but I boldly rang the intercom.

“Who is it?” said a man’s voice.

Was this Mamizu’s father?

“Is Fukami Makoto-san here?” I asked.

“There is nobody by that name here.”

There was something incredibly dark in the man’s voice. And there was something like wariness in it as well. But I’d definitely heard that Mamizu’s father lived here. What was the meaning behind telling me that that he wasn’t here?

“What is your business?” the man asked.

“Umm, my name is Okada Takuya. Actually, I’m an acquaintance of Mamizu’s… Mamizu-san’s. There is something I would like to talk to you about, if you could allow me.”

“Has something happened to Mamizu?” The tone in his voice had suddenly changed; it had a sense of urgency now.

And then the voice cut off. A short while later, a middle-aged man hurriedly came out from the house.

He was an unshaven, muscular man with dark, suntanned skin, and his clothes could only be described as pajamas. I didn’t really have a clear impression of him.

“I am Fukami Makoto. I am Mamizu’s father,” he said.

Honestly speaking, he was far off the stereotypical image of a president who ran a company. That was my first impression of Mamizu’s father.

“I see. I understand.”

I’d been let inside Makoto-san’s house, and I explained to him why I’d come here today at the table in his living room. The fact that Mamizu wanted to know why he and Ritsu-san had divorced.

“Mamizu-san… how do I put this? It seems that she thinks her illness, the fact that she has luminescence disease, was the cause of the divorce,” I said. “She thinks that maybe she was discarded out of disgust.”

“No… I think that the fault lies with me for not having gone and told her the truth,” Makoto-san said, looking at me with a direct look in his eyes. “By the way, are you Mamizu’s boyfriend, Takuya-kun?”

I accidentally spat out the tea that I’d been offered. “N-no! I’m, how do I put it… just an acquaintance,” I said.

“But it seems that at the very least, Mamizu trusts you. She wouldn’t ask a mere acquaintance to do something like this for her.”

That’s… I wonder, I thought. What does Mamizu think of me? It’s like I understand, but I don’t.

“By the way, Takuya-kun, what do you think of me?” Makoto-san asked.

“Huh?”

I got the feeling that this was my first time meeting an adult who would ask this question. To think that Makoto-san would be concerned about how he appeared in the eyes of a high school student – his question felt a little unusual to me.

“I kind of think you’re really wild,” I said honestly.

Makoto-san gave an indifferent laugh. The way he laughed was a little similar to Mamizu’s.

“I don’t look like the president of a company, do I?” Makoto-san said, still laughing but with a sharp look suddenly appearing in his eyes. That part of him was a little like Mamizu, too.

“No, that’s…” I was at a loss for words.