Volume 1
Final Chapter Part
3
Translator : PolterGlast
It seems that children
who are not raised properly end up with some kind of defect.
Actually, I wanted
hope to live. I wanted to believe in happiness that might exist in the future.
But no matter what I
did, something was always missing.
So, I decided to
choose the happiest ending I could think of.
Before I started
elementary school, my parents divorced. I moved with my mother to my maternal
grandparents' house and began living in a small town in Hokuriku.
My mother always
seemed to be irritated about something. She would not tolerate anything that
did not go her way. If I did something that even slightly displeased her, she
would get upset, and if I didn't meet her expectations, objects would fly at me
without mercy. My father had given up on such a mother.
Living alone without a
father, my mother's presence was absolute for me as a young child.
“Hikaru, study hard and become more successful than
your father.”
My mother always said
this to me when she was in a good mood. When I replied, “Okay,” she would look
at me with an ecstatic smile. That look on my mother’s face, even now, is still
burned into my mind in a blurred form, as if it were backlit. I don't know
whether she was happy that her son had surpassed the man who had abandoned her,
or whether she saw the reflection of someone she had once loved in my face.
My mother was
beautiful even from my perspective, but academically she was terrible and
blindly believed that restricting entertainment and spending long hours at a
desk were the most effective ways to improve one's academic ability. I was
never given any games, and I never read any comics other than those in the
school library.
Not having a game
console didn't make me an outcast among my classmates. I was good at
socializing, and I was naturally outgoing, so I had no trouble making friends.
If you can communicate properly, you can build good relationships even with
some obstacles.
After graduating from
elementary school, I entered a university-affiliated middle school by passing
an entrance exam, rather than the public middle school that most students in my
grade attended. While enduring a hysteria that was a hundred times worse than
the emotional instability of mothers during the general exam period, I continued
my studies and, as expected, passed the entrance exam. The local middle school
entrance exam wasn't that difficult.
It was also around
that time that my new father appeared. He was a tall, well-bred man, just the
kind of man my mother would like. In some ways, he reminded me of my biological
father.
Following my parents'
remarriage, my surname changed. Natsuno Hikaru. It doesn't sound out of place
when I hear it, but it feels a bit strange when I write it down. Natsuno Hikaru
(Summer's light), it sounds so dazzling, and it doesn't suit me.
Living with my
stepfather, my mother's mental state improved slightly, but my circumstances
didn't change much. I was still forbidden from having any entertainment, and
when I couldn't meet her expectations, she would hurl emotional abuse at me and
demand unreasonably high academic achievements.
I think I could have
resisted. I had already surpassed my mother in height, and I was stronger than
her, so I would unlikely be physically attacked. Besides, my new father might
have intervened. There were things I could have done.
However, having lived
as my mother's son for so many years, I couldn't make that choice. As if to
avoid being cursed by a god whose presence I should never touch, I almost
unconsciously acted as my mother wanted. Partly because I simply didn't have
the willpower to do so, and partly because I lacked the awareness of how to
improve the situation.
In middle school, I
developed a liking for novels and movies. Althought my mother hated manga and
anime, she didn't place any particular restrictions on novels and movies. She
probably thought of them as something highbrow and mistakenly categorized them
as culture rather than entertainment. For once, I was grateful for my mother's
feeble mind.
In the winter of my
third year of middle school, I thought about comitting suicide for the first
time.
Although it was called
a university-affiliated middle school, it does not have an escalator system and
does not have a high school. Therefore, most of the students had to take the
entrance exam for the top public high school. While studying for the exam,
bombarded by my mother's hysteria, I became indifferent to everything. For a
very common reason, a very ordinary suicidal thought appeared in my mind.
It was not that I was
feeling depressed, but the words, "Let's end this," suddenly popped
into my mind, which was like a blank piece of paper. It was such a casual
decision. That night, I ran away from home and jumped into the winter river.
In the end, I didn't
die. I regained consciousness and washed up on the shore. I thought to myself,
with a cold head, that maybe I was not allowed to die after all. If I had just
stayed still, I might have frozen to death. But even that didn't matter
anymore, and I went home. I wanted to die because I didn't care about
everything, but even dying didn't matter anymore.
I felt that something
was missing in my life. I had no hope. I had no desire to change the situation
for the better.
I could have chosen to
die because I didn't care about anything and saw no reason to live, and I could
have chosen to live for the same reason. I always had a dark sense of emptiness
about life.
I easily passed the
high school entrance exam and went on to attend the top local school my mother
wanted. I decided that this was fine.
I entered high school
with that missing something still not fixed.
Before the entrance
ceremony for high school, in the corridor right after entering the school
building, I had a fateful encounter. The word "fate" seems exaggerated
and clichéd, but I don't know of a more suitable word.
The reception area for
paperwork consisted of two long desks with four staff members, and parents and
children were lined up in four rows in a neat fashion.
At that moment, I
noticed a girl standing in the next row.
Yorunagi Rin. That was
the name written in the name column of her document that I glanced at.
Her name felt damp
just from looking at the characters. The kanji for “night” was dark to begin
with, and because of this, the two characters that followed seemed to have a
somewhat gloomy tone to them.
While I didn't like my
own name, Natsuno Hikaru, her name perfectly suited her.
She was a very
gloomy-looking girl. Even without meeting her gaze, I could sense it just from
a glance at her profile. She was the kind of girl that every school probably
has, one who seemed unlucky, expressionless, and silent.
At first glance, she
was just one of many new students, and I didn't pay much attention to her. To
say that it was fate would be an exaggeration.
A girl with a dark
expression, as if to say, "I don't expect anything from this world."
Her black hair brushed back over her shoulders and hid her profile. Without
putting her hair back behind her ear, she was passively observing the exchange
between the teacher and her mother.
As I stared at her,
her eyes turned towards me from behind her fine hair.
I felt something creep
up my back. I could still clearly remember that strange sensation.
"It's like the
deep sea," I thought.
Such dark eyes, like a
concentration of all the misfortunes of this world. If the bottom of the deep
sea had a color, it would be this color. Containing a mystery that seemed to
absorb even the light of fluorescent lamps and a stillness that seemed to tell
no stories, it captured my heart.
―There was something different about her.
That's what I
intuitively felt.
When I checked the
class list afterward, I didn't find the name Yorunagi Rin in my class. I didn't
have any interaction with her, not even in a neighboring class, but I could
easily imagine her situation. I unconsciously expected that she would be
spending her time alone, overlooking the class from a corner of the classroom.
So, I was surprised
when I saw Yorunagi Rin in the cafeteria, mingling with a flashy group.
I was surprised that I
felt betrayed by her. I know it was arrogant of me to expect and be
disappointed, but a nagging feeling of impatience lingered in my heart. Was she
not who I thought she was, and was I mistaken about the deep sea I saw that
day?
As it turns out, that
was just a groundless fear.
Even when Yorunagi Rin
was with the flashy group, her eyes were still that <deep sea color>.
Even when she was smiling or talking to someone, her eyes were jet black with a
deep blue tint, with light shimmering on the surface like thin waves.
Especially when I made eye contact with her from a distance, the <deep
sea> was at its most beautiful.
After all, there was
something different about her. There was an unusual attraction that could not
be visualized. I was drawn to it.
It was easy to spot
Yorunagi Rin in a group. Compared to her surroundings, she was noticeably
smaller. It was not about her height. Although her height was average, her
small head and thin body were significantly different from those around her. It
felt strangely odd, like a delicate mannequin had been mixed in with a group of
humans.
That day, when I went
to return a book I had borrowed from the library, I immediately noticed her
presence.
A slender girl in the
novel section. Even from a distance, I could tell it was Yorunagi Rin.
She was staring up at
the books on a high shelf, and after a while, she reached out her finger to
read one of them. However, it seemed that she could not reach it with her
height, so she tried to pull a nearby stand over to her, so I said, "Is
this it?" and took the book for her. It was a famous series of mystery
novels.
Yorunagi Rin, who
received the book from me, bowed her head slightly.
"Is that series
interesting?"
I asked, trying to
keep my voice down so she wouldn't notice my racing heart.
Yorunagi Rin glanced
around nervously before opening her mouth slightly.
"So so."
I thought her voice
sounded like a bell ringing in the silence.
This was the first
time I had ever had a conversation with her, and I was pleased to find that her
curt attitude toward me was exactly what I had expected.
"Do you like
reading books?"
"Not
really," Yorunagi Rin said coldly. "It's not that I like books, but
I'm looking for something I like from books. Like the writing or the
expression."
"Oh."
For our first meeting,
she was quite talkative. She wasn't shy, it seemed.
From that day on, I
started going to the library after school and would say a word or two whenever
I saw her.
While talking, I never
made eye contact with her. She really didn't seem interested in me. Our
conversations were so disjointed that it could not even be called
communication. Even so, I was happy that her voice was being sounded for me.
What I learned from
talking to Yorunagi Rin like this was that she didn't recognize me at all.
Once, I tried to talk to her as if we were meeting for the first time, but she
didn't point out that we had met before, and she probably didn't even realize
it.
Rather than not being
interested in other people, she didn't even seem to recognize others as
individuals. She would even respond if a voice from the void spoke to her. She
would just reply because someone was speaking to her. I guess that was what a
conversation meant to her.
As Yorunagi Rin became
more and more accustomed to that fancy group, her visits to the library
diminished. After school, I saw a slender girl among the group entering a café
near the school, and it was Yorunagi Rin.
It was strange. She
was smiling along with the others in the fancy group, and yet she still had
<those eyes>”.
What kind of person
was she?
The more I saw her,
the more I thought she didn't fit in. She didn't belong in a group of noisy and
boring people.
Around that time, I
already had a kind of faith-like affection for her.
She was different. I
felt that the core of her being was fundamentally different from ordinary
humans.
I thought back to the
day we met.
It was such a vivid
encounter that I had an intuition that she was the one who would fill the void
in my life.
Perhaps only she could
understand something that I lacked. Such a faint feeling was born. I couldn't
help but cling to this hopeless thing.
One day, while I was
going about my usual, unchanging days, I realized something terrifying. The
<deep sea> in her eyes was fading. The deep, pure color was gradually
losing its density.
I was extremely
impatient. I knew it was a selfish feeling, but I was so bewildered that I
almost became distraught.
She was about to
become a normal human being. A shiver ran down my spine. That wasn't her. Even
though I hardly knew anything about her, I strongly felt that way.
Why was she changing?
Because she had made friends? Because she had mistaken those people as friends?
I felt a selfish sense
of disappointment towards her. I realized that I had expected so much from her.
In November of my
first year of high school, Mitsuya Serina confessed to me.
She was a noisy girl
who often hung out with Yorunagi Rin. That was the extent of my knowledge of
her, and I wasn't interested in romance at all.
"I'm sorry,"
I said with a smile, and Serina's eyes welled up with tears.
"Likewise," she said and ran off. As I followed her back with my
eyes, I noticed Yorunagi Rin's figure at the corner of the corridor.
Her gaze was dark. Her
eyes seemed to be filled with contempt as she looked at me. She was looking at
me with dark eyes, the <deep sea> gone. I wanted to believe that it was
nothing more than resentment toward the man who had hurt her friend. I wanted
to believe so.
Even though she was
becoming an ordinary person, I couldn't give up the expectation.
On the last day of the
second semester, Mitsuya Serina confessed to me again.
"I'm sorry,"
When I said that, she looked visibly disappointed. Tears welled up in her
averted eyes, and her tightly pursed lips trembled slightly. I felt like I was
the one who had done something wrong, and it was simply unpleasant.
"Is there someone
you like?" Serina asked with tear-filled eyes.
It was not that I
disliked cheerful girls, but rather that I disliked people who seemed to live
carefree lives without thinking. I didn't want to have that kind of
relationship with her.
I was about to say
something safe to get over the situation when I remembered Yorunagi Rin's
figure, radiating a brightness like a spark.
The shiver that ran
down my spine the first time I saw her.
The true nature of the
hazy feeling that had been nagging at the bottom of my heart ever since that
day.
I finally realized.
"Yorunagi
Rin."
It was the first time
I had ever uttered her name. And yet, the name seemed strangely familiar, with
a soft sound, like rolling a piece of rum candy on one's tongue.
Contrary to the warm
feeling that was welling up inside me, my heart was beating rapidly.
"I love
her."
It was certainly a
kind of faith. I was trying to make her a god. I was trying to idolize her, to
think of her as everything to me, as the reason I was born.
By doing so, I tried
to fill in something that was missing.
Therefore, I don't
want her to be just an ordinary person. I was afraid that she would cease to be
my god.
I wanted her to give
me a reason to live. Even if it was an illusion. I didn't mind as long as it
healed something that was broken.
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