Then, one summer’s day, beneath the clearest skies I’ve ever seen, I watched as he soared off into the great wild blue—his plane growing smaller and smaller until he became nothing more than a tiny pinprick of light and disappeared.

Are you out there, Akira?

Can you hear me, wherever you are?

Is it somewhere safe and quiet?

Free of pain and suffering and sadness?

I can only pray that you’ve found peace at last.

For your life was as fleeting as a petal on the breeze.

I hope you’re at rest now—in a soft and gentle dream.

Chapter One: Early Summer

CHAPTER ONE:
EARLY SUMMER

The Old Air Raid Shelter

“SO YOU SEE…BY 1945, AS THE OVERALL LANDSCAPE of the war grew worse and worse, it became abundantly clear just how much of a disadvantage Japan was at… By that point, the US military was conducting firebombings all across the country, scorching the earth… Even our little town was subjected to a large-scale air raid in the final days of the war…”

The teacher’s throaty voice echoed through the room as he scribbled all over the blackboard. But I wasn’t paying any attention; my mind was somewhere else entirely. My elbow resting on the desk and my cheek resting on my palm, I cast my gaze out the window—into the square-shaped cutout of the vast blue sky held within its frame.

Why am I so irritated all the time lately?

I couldn’t explain it, but it felt like every single day now, I was on edge. Maybe it was the way my mom always lectured me about every little thing. How the school treated us like prisoners with all its stupid rules and regulations. Maybe it was the sweltering heat in this stuffy classroom. The incessant chirping of the cicadas pouring through the wide-open windows. Maybe it was the pompous attitude of our teacher, always talking down to us from the lectern. Maybe it was the sound of his chalk scuffing against the blackboard, or my classmates’ pencils scribbling in their notebooks. Or maybe it was all of it combined. Maybe everything in my life was conspiring to piss me off.

The hoarse choir of cicadas continued their unending song, as if determined to drown out all other sounds in the whole world with their shrill, obnoxious cries.

Shut up… Shut up… Shut up!

I could feel my blood beginning to boil—and it was already hot enough outside as it was. My brow furrowed. I glared out the window.

There was no textbook open on my desk; I hadn’t taken any notes the entire period, nor had I even pulled out any writing utensils to even pretend I might. Why would I, when I hated studying more than anything, with history being my least favorite subject? Why should I care about stuff that happened decades or even centuries before I was born? What good would that information do me now? I wasn’t going to school because I wanted to, and I couldn’t care less about scoring highly on my exams either. The whole song and dance felt utterly stupid and pointless to me—so why should I bother at all?

I hated school with every fiber of my being. Could there be any place on Earth more insufferable, more suffocating than this? I wished I could just stop attending altogether—but knew it would be an even bigger headache to deal with the constant lecturing I’d get from my mother and teachers if I were to go full-on truant. I had to begrudgingly play my part.

“Hey! Kano!”

Hearing my name blurted out, I knitted my eyebrows and slowly turned to face forward. I locked eyes with the teacher, who glared back at me with a stern expression.

“Have you been listening at all?!” he demanded.

“…I think I got the gist,” I replied.

“The ‘gist,’ she says… Why can’t you just pay attention like you’re supposed to?! You’d better be writing all of this down, because it’ll be on the next exam!”

His overbearing tone was loud enough that he was now verging on shouting at me. I didn’t know why all teachers felt the need to act so high and mighty with their students; did they really think their menial profession was something to puff out their chests and boast about?

“Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not.”

I could have lied and told him I was, I supposed, but I didn’t see any need to keep up appearances at this point. He was going to chew me out regardless, right? And sure enough, in the very next instant, the teacher’s face went redder than a ripe tomato.

“Don’t give me that crap!” he barked. “You think it’s funny, talking back to your teacher like that?! I won’t let you make a mockery out of me!”

Hey, you’re the one who asked, I muttered internally. I was just being honest…

I saw no point in bickering with him any further, so I just stared back at him in silence. Eventually, he gulped hard as if to swallow down his simmering rage, then said:

“…Fine, whatever. Just turn to page 120 and start reading from paragraph four.”

I let out an exasperated sigh, then pulled out my textbook and slowly rose from my chair. I could feel my classmates’ gazes on me—some of them turning their heads to look, others simply peeking out of the corners of their eyes. All of them were curious to see if we’d clash again. I could see a vein bulging from my teacher’s forehead, still pulsing with rage as he waited for me to begin.

I let out another heavy sigh, then started reading the passage I’d been assigned:

“…Desperate for any way to turn the tides of the war in their favor, it was at this point that Japan shifted its strategy toward suicide bomb—”

“We can’t hear you!” my teacher shouted, interrupting me.

That was enough to push my frustration over the line into fury.

“…I’m not feeling very well,” I said. “I need to go to the nurse’s office.”

Eyes downcast, I threw my textbook down and stormed out of the classroom. My teacher scrunched up his face and shouted after me, but I ignored him as I stomped right out the door. My classmates watched dumbfounded as I went—then immediately started chattering among themselves as soon as I was gone. For a group of cowards who always tried to act like I didn’t exist, they sure were taking an interest in me now. How pathetic. God, I hate this place… I hate everything about it.

I didn’t actually go to the nurse’s office, of course. Instead, I climbed the stairwell at the very end of the hall. Students weren’t actually allowed out onto the roof, but the lock on the door had been broken for a long time now. Gripping the rusted handle, I pushed open the old, faded iron door—and immediately, the humidity hit my skin like a crashing wave.

I stepped out onto the rooftop, my shoes scuffing against the sunbaked concrete as I made my way over to the water tower and lay myself down in its shadow. Even in the shade, it was so hot up here in the direct sunlight that I could hardly breathe.

There was nowhere I felt comfortable. Not at home, not in class—not even here beneath the bright blue sky. I had no escape, no haven where I could ease my frustrations. But at least here, I didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing me; that fact alone made it at least a little better than anywhere else.

I waited until the last bell rang and watched the sports teams begin to gather on the athletic fields for practice before I finally descended from the rooftop. I made a quick detour by the now-empty classroom to gather my things, then hurried off campus as fast as I could.

Featureless houses and apartment buildings lined the narrow roads on my way back home. Not that I was going home of my own volition, by any means; my legs were just taking me there as if by pure mechanical reflex.

My shirt was soaked with sweat as the red summer sun beat down on my back, still as scorching as ever, even as evening began to fall.

I walked this same path every single day—back and forth, back and forth. How many times had I made the trek now, I wondered? How many more times would I have to before I could finally be put out of my misery? Simply imagining the sheer number of commutes I had left was enough to put me in an even worse mood, and I sighed for what had to be at least the dozenth time today.

My life was completely colorless.

Day in, day out, it was always the same. I led a painfully dull and mind-numbingly tedious existence in which nothing ever changed for the better—only for the worse. I couldn’t keep doing this. I was going to pull all my hair out sooner or later. I needed a way out. But what could I even do? How could I escape the monotony?

Finally, I came to a stop outside an old, run-down apartment building. Walking up the rusted-over metal staircase, I made my way to the last unit on the first floor and approached the dreary, dimly lit doorstep.

This was my home, the place I’d lived together with my mother since as far back as I could remember. I’d never known my father—never even known who he was. My mother had given birth to me at age twenty-one and had raised me as a single parent ever since.

Having been brought up in such an environment, I’d always gotten the impression that my peers viewed me as lesser somehow. Some of them looked at me sympathetically, as though I was a stray animal, while others treated me like a leper to be avoided at all costs. The worst were the ones who talked maliciously about me behind my back, saying I was a perfect example of why having a baby out of wedlock was never a good idea. “Just look how she turned out,” after all.

As I fumbled for my keys, I could hear the sound of cicadas crying behind my back, screaming like the world was about to end. There was a home with a massive backyard next door to the apartment building, with several giant trees they’d let grow completely out of control. A huge host of cicadas made it their summer retreat every year. I hated them with a passion—both the cicadas and the homeowners.

After finally finding my keys, I unlocked the door and quickly shuffled into the merciful quiet of our apartment. It was hot and humid inside, almost suffocatingly so. I opened the living room window and switched on the standing electric fan.

I switched the TV to an evening news broadcast. Not because I particularly wanted to watch it or anything; mostly just because it felt a bit too eerie hanging out at home in total silence, and random news stories I couldn’t care less about would make the perfect white noise for me to sprawl out on the floor and fall asleep to.

“Seventy years ago today, a kamikaze unit took off from this very spot, heading due south. Their planes were full of explosives and only carried enough fuel for a one-way trip…”

The narration sounded so overdramatic, I couldn’t help but cast a quick glance up at the TV, where a series of black-and-white images and soundless videos flashed across the screen. First, a massive fortress-looking iron warship floating at sea. Then, a few tiny black dots made a beeline toward it from high in the sky. Apparently, those were the planes. One such plane managed to find its way into the hull of the ship, bursting into a giant cloud of white light as it crashed, followed by a massive soundless explosion. The warship only listed slightly to one side, although it didn’t sink.

Right… We were talking about kamikaze units in history class today, I recalled.

The whole concept always seemed so stupid to me. With all the shock and horror the media seemed to show when reporting on terrorist attacks and suicide bombings overseas today, it felt crazy to think that there was a time less than a hundred years ago when our country considered something not too dissimilar an act of heroism.

Well, not that I care much either way, I thought to myself. Whatever might have happened over fifty years before I was born, or whatever might still be happening today in some faraway country overseas, none of it made any difference to me and my life.

Still, I wasn’t in the mood to listen to some somber newscaster go on and on about World War II, so I changed the channel and turned my back to the TV.

I could hear the curtains fluttering in the wind as a lukewarm breeze blew in through the open window, caressing the back of my neck as I gently nodded off to sleep.

“Hey! Wake up!”

I was stirred from my slumber by a smack on the head. Brow furrowed, I opened my eyes to see my mother’s face staring down at me in anger.

Great, guess I’m getting yelled at again… Ugh. Just what I needed.

Already anticipating the lecture that was to come, I begrudgingly lifted myself up. Through the window, I could see that it was already getting dark out.

“Honestly, Yuri…” said my mother. “Why are you like this?”

She grumbled a few more complaints as she sat down at the dresser with a stern expression. She began putting on her standard bright red lipstick and gaudy eye makeup to prepare for her upcoming night shift. She worked at the supermarket during the day, then came home briefly to redo her makeup before heading back out to her second job at a local dive bar.

“I swear…” she went on. “Falling asleep on the floor, and without changing out of your school uniform, no less… Have you even done your homework yet?”

I didn’t respond—I just gave her a dirty look.

“What, don’t like being told what to do?” said my mother. “Well, maybe if you learned to act like a responsible adult, I wouldn’t have to give you so many reminders!”

“I was already planning to do my homework later,” I said. “Give me a break… I’m allowed to take a nap, aren’t I?”

Just then, my mother’s cell phone started ringing. She checked to see who it was, then answered the call.

“Yes, hello?” she said, affecting a sweet, cordial voice. “This is Kano speaking.”

And just like that, her previous sour attitude was gone. Seeing her pull a total one-eighty like this, at the very moment she talked to someone other than me, only irritated me more. I flopped down on the floor again and covered my ears but couldn’t help hearing bits and pieces of her phone call regardless.

“Yes, she is… Oh, I see… Of course, of course… I’m so sorry for the trouble, really… Yes, thank you again for letting me know…”

I could already tell from context clues and her apologetic tone that it was probably the school on the other end. After finally hanging up the phone, my mother turned to face me again—she was right back to furious.

“That was your homeroom teacher!” she shouted. “Yuri! You get up right now, young lady!”

Annoyed, I lethargically pushed myself up.

“He said you skipped class again today,” she said. “How many times is that now?”

“Who knows? I lost count,” I answered matter-of-factly. “Maybe ten or so?”

My mother let out a sigh and covered her face with both hands. When she hung her head like that, I could see the white hairs on the edge of her hairline all too prominently, and I instinctively looked away.

“I swear, you’re going to drive me insane!” she muttered. “First, you skip class while your mother’s hard at work trying to support you, and then, you come home and take a nice little nap without even doing your homework! The nerve of you!”

I could feel the blood rushing to my head.

“What, you think I owe you something just because you pay the bills?” I asked. “That’s rich. Last time I checked, I didn’t ask to be born.”

As soon as the words left my lips, I realized I’d probably gone too far. Well, I couldn’t exactly back down now.

“You’re the one who had a child you were in no position to support,” I went on. “Maybe you should’ve thought ahead before you went and got knocked up!”

My mother’s face went beet-red with rage in an instant.

“You spoiled brat!” she yelled—one of her favorite nicknames for me. “You know, I didn’t tell you, but I got a call from the school the day before yesterday, too! They told me you’ve been really acting out in class, and you haven’t been turning in any of your homework! Don’t you realize you’re a junior high school student?! Studying and doing your homework is literally your job!”

“Really?” I said. “Well, I don’t remember applying for it.”

“Why, you… Listen, I’m telling you this for your own good! If you don’t get good grades now, it’ll be you who has to suffer the consequences down the line! And I promise you won’t like what they are!”

“Oh yeah? For my own good, huh…? As if. You just don’t want people to think you’re a bad parent. If it weren’t for that, you wouldn’t give a damn if I died homeless and alone.”

“Wha… How dare you speak to your mother like that!”

“Ugh, would you shut up already?! It’s my life! I can do what I want!”

The moment the words left my lips, I felt a searing pain shoot across my cheek. My mother had just slapped me across the face. Rubbing my cheek, I simply glared at her—and she glared back at me like a woman possessed.

“You’re no child of mine!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “I don’t remember raising such an irreverent fool!”

No child of hers?

Well, of course I wasn’t. Why would she ever take ownership of the spawn of an unwanted pregnancy, one that robbed her of the best years of her youth?

That made two of us who wished I hadn’t been born, then.

I could already feel myself starting to snap.

“Well, good! Because I don’t consider you my mom, either!” I shouted back. “If you’re so sick and tired of me, then why don’t I just leave?! How ’bout that?!”

And with that, I grabbed my book bag and stomped right out the front door.

“Well… Guess I’d better find someplace to sleep tonight.”

I gazed up at the ominous blood-red twilight sky, wandering aimlessly beneath the dim glow of the streetlights, which grew fewer and further between. I made a turn at our neighborhood park and headed toward the outskirts of the residential area.

I knew if I walked along this road, I’d arrive at a small mountain—or at least, the locals here liked to call it a mountain, but it was really more like a big hill that led up into the backwoods. Wanting to go somewhere I could be isolated from other people, that was where I’d decided to hole up for now. I knew that at the foot of this so-called mountain was a bare cliff face with some kind of large cave or mine shaft dug out right in the middle of it.

“The old air raid shelter…”

I still remembered what my mother had told me about it as a kid.

“Yes, they dug that out back during the war so that people could take shelter from all the bombings and whatnot… But don’t even think about going in there, you hear me? …Why? Because it’s haunted by the ghosts of all those dead soldiers, that’s why!”

This was enough to scare me off of going anywhere near the place as a kid. It was only as I grew older that I realized it was probably just an old wives’ tale the adults here told children to keep them from going and playing around in there. I was almost in high school now, so I knew full well there was no such thing as ghosts. It would still be pretty creepy in there, no doubt—but I wasn’t in a position to be choosy.

I took a deep breath as the shelter came into view, then started slowly making my way over to it, step by anxious step. While there were still streetlights close by, what little illumination they provided didn’t reach beyond the threshold of the cave itself, so I was staring into a gaping maw of darkness. No matter how hard I strained my eyes to see, I didn’t have the slightest idea what might be lurking inside.

A few more steps, and I was standing right at the entrance to the shelter, trying my best to ignore my racing pulse as I stared into the pitch-black void. The sheer depth of its darkness was enough to give me goosebumps, but I urged my beating heart onward and took a defiant step forward before I could get cold feet. After all, this was the only place I knew where I could spend a night with a roof over my head with virtually no chance of anyone else seeing me or knowing I was there.

The moment I set foot inside, my field of vision was completely overcome by an all-encompassing wave of darkness. I froze in place, unable to take another step forward. But then, as if to shake off my fear, I threw my book bag to the ground and plopped myself down on top of it, determined to see the night through.

But then I felt a strange cold creeping up my legs—too cold for a summer night, surely, even if it was still only June. Sure, I expected it to be somewhat chilly, but this? This was beyond the pale. Was it because the sunlight hadn’t warmed the shelter during the day?

Or maybe it’s because… No. No, it can’t be. That’s just an old wives’ tale.

Now it was my own overactive imagination that was sending chills down my spine. Feeling quite cold all of a sudden, I pulled my PE tracksuit out of my book bag. I’d left it in my locker at school ever since spring had arrived, and just so happened to decide to bring it home with me today by pure chance. Quite the stroke of luck, I’d say, on a day I hadn’t originally been planning on sleeping outside. I threw on the track jacket and bottoms, then lay down on the cold, hard earth and made a futile effort to somehow get comfy.

It was dark all around me. I couldn’t see a thing. There could be something—or someone—just a few feet away from me, and I’d have absolutely no idea. Not wanting to peer any deeper into the abyss, I turned so that I was facing the entrance of the cave and gently closed my eyes to try to get some sleep.

“…Hm?”

I was suddenly awoken by the prickly feeling of my exposed skin rubbing against the hard ground. And yet, although my eyes were open, I still couldn’t see a thing.

That’s weird, I thought to myself as I sat up in my sleep-addled state. It was still pitch-black all around me, even though I felt like I’d slept for hours and hours. Could it really still be nighttime?

Just then, I realized that the prickly feeling that had woken me up a moment ago wasn’t just my skin rubbing against plain old dirt; I ran my palm along the ground to see that it was covered with sharp gravel. What the heck? It sure had felt a lot less rocky the night before; was I just so tired and anxious that I didn’t even notice?

Twisting my neck to survey my surroundings, I realized that, although it was almost entirely pitch-black in the shelter, a bit further down the shaft, I could see a thin line of light running along the ground. Thinking this odd, I got up and walked toward it—only to discover that it was sunlight creeping in from the gap beneath some sort of wooden door.

I was 99.9 percent positive there hadn’t been a door on the entrance to the shelter when I arrived here last night. Who in the world had decided to come and install one while I was sleeping? And how had I not heard it and woken up? Were they trying to lock me in here or something? Suddenly, my heart jumped in my chest; now that was a scary thought. Panicking, I rushed over to the door and tried giving it a good push.

“Oh… It just opens right up,” I observed. “Phew! Thank god…”

After letting out a huge sigh of relief, I swung the door all the way open. And in the next moment, I realized my mistake, as a brick wall of humidity hit my face.

“Ugh… Why is it so hot…?” I mumbled, taking off my track jacket.

Anyway… Now what do I do?

I still didn’t want to go home, so I supposed my best option was to just head straight to school… Though I did wish I could shower or something first.

Wait, what time even is it? I pulled out my phone to check; if my mother had already left for work, I could easily sneak in to take a quick shower and throw on some fresh clothes.

“…What? No service?”

That was new. Thinking perhaps being inside a literal cave might have something to do with it, I stepped outside—but no matter how far away I walked from the air raid shelter, my phone didn’t pick up any signal at all. I even tried turning it off and back on again, but that didn’t work either. Frustrated and confused, I shoved my phone back in my pocket and lifted my head. And then I saw it.

“Wait… Huh?”

As I saw the view spread out before me, my eyes nearly popped out of my head.

“Where… Where is everything?”

I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating as I walked around the area.

Everything that’s supposed to be here is just…gone.

All the houses and apartment buildings… All the telephone poles, the electrical lines, the paved roads, the traffic lights… The footbridge, the park, the school, the police station… All of it had vanished without a trace. And in its place, there was a wide open field of green grass.

“But why…? What’s going on?”

I stood there, stunned by abject disbelief, right in the center of the field.

Had the whole town really disappeared while I had been sleeping?

I started tottering forward subconsciously, desperate to find anything at all that might make this bizarre phenomenon make even a tiny bit of sense.

After walking straight ahead down a dirt path for a little while, I finally came upon a hint of civilization. But even then, I could tell that something wasn’t quite right. And, after mulling it over for about half a second, I realized what it was: All of the buildings, utility poles, signboards, and fences were made entirely out of wood, which gave the whole town a dirty, old-fashioned brownish hue. But more to the point: I didn’t recognize any of these buildings or establishments.

There was no doubt: This wasn’t the town I’d grown up in. This was somewhere else entirely. But confused as I was, all I could do was keep trudging onward, hoping beyond hope that I could find at least some landmark to orient myself. And so I walked and walked and walked—until all of a sudden, I realized my throat was incredibly dry.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t had a single drop of water since I left school yesterday. Not good, especially in this sweltering heat. I could feel the sun’s harsh rays beating down relentlessly on my bare skin; I’d only been walking for a little while, and my entire body was already coated in sweat. I could feel myself growing lightheaded, too—I needed to find something to drink, and fast. Thankfully, I still had my wallet, at least, so I could buy something as soon as I found the nearest vending machine or convenience store. But no matter how hard I looked, there didn’t seem to be any around here.

God, it’s so hot…

I could feel a migraine slowly coming on, along with a nauseated feeling in my chest. I was so dizzy, it felt like I was about to puke—so I covered my mouth with one hand as I collapsed by the roadside. It was so inhumanly hot and humid that I struggled to breathe. I could feel the specter of death looming over me, in a corner of my hazy mind.

What a boring life I’d lived. Had I ever done anything particularly fun or novel in my brief existence? Though maybe dying now was okay, come to think of it—it wasn’t as if I had any real prospects for the future anyhow. I was sure my mother would be grateful to be rid of her defiant failure of a daughter, too. Maybe now she could actually live for herself.

I buried my face between my knees, on the verge of tears.

“Hey, you there… Are you all right?”

A voice, soft and cool as a light winter breeze, called out to me.

Startled, I warily lifted my head.

A shadowy figure peered down at me—though I could only see the person’s silhouette, since they were backlit by the bright summer sun. But judging from their voice and build, I assumed they were a young man. Probably a fair bit older than me, too—maybe around college age.

My throat was hoarse and I felt sick to my stomach, so I couldn’t muster any sort of response. Perhaps recognizing this, the man crouched down beside me as if to get a better look. And now that he wasn’t standing directly in front of the sun, I could actually make out what he looked like as well.

Wait… What the heck?

My eyes went wide the instant I saw what he was wearing.

It looked like an old-fashioned military uniform—the sort I’d only ever seen in history textbooks. As I stared vacantly up at him, wondering where he’d even acquired such a bizarre getup, he suddenly reached out and placed one hand on my forehead.

I could feel his slender fingers, cool against my brow.

“…You’re burning up,” he said, genuine concern audible in his voice. He reached down and grabbed something from around his waist. “Here. Drink some water.”

I looked at the strange container he was holding out to me; it looked metallic, but it was wrapped up in some sort of canvas pouch. I’d never seen anything like it before. But the moment I heard the word water, my mind went totally blank. I threw all caution to the wind, twisted the cap off, snatched the flask away from him, and started loudly glugging down its contents. Thank goodness—despite its strange appearance, it really was full of water. I could feel my parched throat being brought back to life immediately.

Unfortunately, it seemed I had been a bit too hasty. Some of the water went down the wrong pipe, and I nearly hacked up a lung trying to cough it back out.

“Easy, there… No one’s going to take it from you,” said the man, chuckling a bit as he gently rubbed my back. “It’s all yours, so take your time. No need to chug.”

After drinking virtually the entire bottle in one go, I looked up at the man.

“Thank you…” I said. “I think you might’ve just saved my life…”

“Feeling a bit better now?” he asked, narrowing his eyes in a gentle smile.

“Oh, yes… Much better.”

“Good. Well, first things first—we should get you out of the sunlight. Let’s head over to the shade under that tree, okay?”

He pointed across the way to a large tree with vivid green leaves. It was casting a fairly big shadow, and it really did look much cooler over there.

Shakily, I tried getting up to my feet.

“Ah…!”

But my legs were too weak, and gave out from under me. Losing my balance, I nearly fell backward again—until.

“Careful!” said the man, quickly reaching over to support me.

“S-sorry…” I said.

“Don’t be. If anything, I should have thought to offer you my shoulder from the start; of course you wouldn’t be steady on your feet after collapsing like that.”

The very next moment, I felt my entire body being lifted up—and immediately, my dizziness and nausea were replaced by panic and embarrassment. I could feel my cheeks going bright red as he scooped me up like a small child, cradling me in his arms before effortlessly setting off down the street as though I weighed nothing at all.

“Do you mind holding on to me?” he asked. “It’s safer that way.”

Without even a moment’s thought, I did as I was instructed and wrapped my arms around his neck. A few short moments later, he set me down gently at the base of the tree, and I thanked him with a little bow of my head. That small motion alone was enough to make my head start to spin, and I started seeing stars. It was like I was suffering from anemia.

“Once you’ve recovered a bit, I’ll take you somewhere nice and cool indoors,” the man said. “Do you live around here? What school do you go to?”

He gave my outfit a once-over as if trying to recognize my uniform. But a moment later, his eyes widened in surprise as though he’d noticed something strange. Judging from his gaze, he seemed to be staring at my skirt—or more specifically, at the bare skin of my thighs sticking out from underneath it.

“…What in the world are you wearing?” he asked. “Are those supposed to be undergarments, or what? Why… I can see your entire leg, almost!”

Really? I didn’t think the hem of my skirt was particularly short, though—it went almost all the way down to my knees when I was standing up. I didn’t understand why he seemed so surprised about it.

“Where are your monpe? Did someone steal them?”

Monpe? I only vaguely recognized the term. Aren’t those, like…those baggy work pants women used to wear in all those black-and-white photos?

I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I just kind of stared at him blankly, until eventually he averted his eyes as if he realized he’d made a false assumption.

“Er, pardon me…” he said. “You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to, of course. Anyway, um… Right, I guess I haven’t introduced myself yet, have I? I’m Akira Sakuma.”

“Akira Sakuma…” I repeated, letting the syllables linger on my tongue.

Akira swallowed hard and then said, “Would you mind telling me your name as well?”

“Oh, sure…” I said. “It’s Yuri. Yuri Kano.”

“Yuri, eh… That’s a very lovely name.”

He grinned at me. It was a gentle, carefree smile I couldn’t help returning—mind you, I wasn’t generally one for smiling.

“How are you feeling now?” he asked. “Better, I hope?”

“Yes, I think I’ll be all right,” I replied.

I didn’t understand it. Even I knew I was a huge sourpuss, and yet when I spoke with him, it was so easy to get caught up in his pleasant charm. It was a strange feeling, almost like I’d turned into someone else entirely.

“Good to hear,” he said, sounding genuinely relieved. “Well, then… Let’s get you somewhere a bit more comfortable, shall we?”

He reached down to offer me his hand—he moved so naturally that I couldn’t help but take it, letting him help me to my feet.

“Let’s take it slow, okay?” he said. “Just walk at whatever pace feels comfortable.”

“Okay,” I said.

And just like that, I followed the man who’d just saved my life down the street beneath the bright summer sun—my sailor-style uniform skirt fluttering in the breeze.

“Hello?” said Akira, brushing aside the curtains as we walked through the doorway. “Tsuru-san, are you around?”

He’d led me to what appeared to be a restaurant on the bottom floor of an old Japanese-style house. A small sign outside the door read, “Tsuru-ya Mess Hall.”

A woman of about fifty soon emerged from the kitchen. Her eyes, like Akira’s, had gone wide the moment she laid eyes on my outfit. She, meanwhile, was wearing a white cooking apron over a kimono. She looked just like a mother character in an old historical drama.

I scanned the mess hall’s interior. It was sparsely decorated—and looked even older than I had originally suspected. But as I stood there, absentmindedly looking around the place, I suddenly felt Akira’s hand on the small of my back, urging me forward.

“This is Yuri,” he said. “I found her collapsed by the roadside, not too far from here. Would you mind if she and I rested here for a spell?”

“Oh dear… Are you okay, love?” said the woman—Tsuru, apparently—as she rushed over to where I was standing. “I know… It’s awfully hot out there, isn’t it? I hope you didn’t come down with heatstroke or anything like that.”

She sat me down in the nearby tatami room and poured me some water in a ceramic teacup. I bowed my head as I gratefully accepted—although the moment I brought it to my lips and took a sip, I momentarily froze in place. The water was lukewarm, maybe even slightly higher than room temperature. Why hadn’t she put some ice cubes in it? I wondered. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, so I kept my mouth shut and drank.

Come to think of it, the water Akira had given me from his canteen had been lukewarm too—though I’d been feeling too ill at the time to pay it any mind. Also, hadn’t he promised to take me somewhere nice and cool? Sure, it wasn’t quite as hot in here as it was outside, since we weren’t in the direct sunlight anymore, but it was still quite muggy and uncomfortable. Did they not have air conditioning?

I looked around the ceiling and walls, but I didn’t see any sort of A/C unit installed. This perhaps baffled me more than anything thus far. How could a modern business establishment of any repute not have A/C in this day and age? Surely there had to be an oscillating fan or something, I thought to myself as I scanned the room.

Aha! There, in a corner of the tatami room, was an electric fan—albeit a very old and antiquated one. Even the rotary blades were made of metal, and it was coated in a thick layer of dust.

“Oh, that old thing?” said Tsuru, noticing my gaze. “Yes, it broke quite a while ago, unfortunately… It’s totally kaput now. Sorry, I know you must be awfully hot…”

“Oh, no… It’s okay…” I said.

“You’ll just have to make do with this, I’m afraid.”

As I fanned my face with my hands, Tsuru offered me an uchiwa fan with a very retro pattern on it.

“Here,” said Akira, taking it from her. “Let me do that for you.”

“Oh, um… Okay… Thank you very much…” I mumbled.

As he started fanning me with the uchiwa, I could feel my flushed cheeks and neck gradually cooling off.

“It’s such a shame, really…” Tsuru grumbled idly as she handed me a wet towel to wipe my brow. “How many years has it been now since they stopped manufacturing electric fans for household use? I can’t even recall.”

Wait… They don’t even make them anymore? Since when?

That seemed like a rather dubious assertion to me. Although, come to think of it, we’d been using the same fan at our place for well over ten years now, and most homes did have air conditioning nowadays. Maybe there was no longer enough demand for electric fans to warrant producing them, and I simply didn’t notice?

“Yes, it’s really quite a shame,” said Akira, nodding. “I believe it’s been three or four years now, maybe?”

“I guess that sounds right…” said Tsuru. “I remember looking everywhere for a replacement when mine broke down, and I simply couldn’t find one anywhere. There’s nothing I hate more than making my customers feel uncomfortable, but what can you do?”

“Not much, especially when munitions production takes precedence over everything else.”

Munitions? This word wasn’t familiar to me, so I cast a curious glance over at Akira.

“Don’t worry, though,” he said—smiling first at me, then at Tsuru. “The war will be over soon, I promise.”

His tone was reassuring—but his words were anything but.

Sorry, did he just say, “war”? I hadn’t misheard him, had I?

I tried to wrap my head around this outlandish claim.

Was Japan at war right now? Surely not, right? I hadn’t heard anything like that.

To be fair, I didn’t keep up to date with international politics or anything. I never read the newspaper, and my mom and my friends at school never talked about those sorts of things. So even if Japan had gotten itself involved in some sort of conflict overseas, maybe it wouldn’t be too surprising if I were completely oblivious.

It was still a pretty hard sell, though, all things considered.

“Just you wait,” Akira went on, as I sat there dumbstruck. “Once my fellow soldiers and I get sorted, we’re going to hit their navy right where it hurts. We’ll deal the enemy fleet a devastating blow they’ll never be able to recover from, and they’ll have no choice but to surrender… That’s the whole reason I enlisted as a kamikaze pilot in the first place.”

Soldiers? Enemy fleet? Kamikaze pilot?

What were the words I was hearing? It felt like I’d dived straight into the pages of my history textbook. But Akira’s expression was as serious and steadfast as could be—he was so earnest, I almost felt bad for feeling discombobulated rather than reassured.

I turned my gaze to Tsuru, who was smiling back at him.

“I know,” she said with a nod. “I have every confidence that you’ll pull it off.”

“Bet on it,” said Akira. “I won’t let you down. I swear on my life, I’m going to personally sink an enemy ship—for His Majesty, for the Empire, and for all its people. That’s what I’ve trained for. That’s why I became a pilot.”

He spoke slowly and confidently, as if measuring each and every syllable.

But I still felt utterly lost and confused.

Even assuming, just for a moment, that Akira was an actual kamikaze pilot, why did he sound so calm—even enthusiastic about it? I remembered what the newscaster had said about them on the TV yesterday: that they were sent off with planes full of explosives, and only enough fuel for a one-way trip. In other words, their mission was to kill themselves. They had no purpose but to self-destruct, no hope of survival. How could anyone talk about this like it was perfectly normal, or even an honor?

I didn’t understand. But perhaps the more pertinent question was: Where exactly was I right now? Clearly, I hadn’t woken up in the world I knew. There was far too much about it that simply wasn’t adding up.

Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a newspaper lying on the table beside me. Even at a glance, I could see that the front page was covered with a bunch of difficult kanji I didn’t recognize. I reached down to grab it and checked the date.

JUNE 10TH, SHOWA YEAR 20

I blinked a few times.

What…? No, that can’t be right…

Showa Year 20—that would have been 1945.

The final year of World War II.

But then…wouldn’t that mean…

Was I in 1945 right now? Was that even possible?

A flurry of question marks was swirling inside my head like a raging tempest. Trying my best not to have a panic attack, I rephrased the question to myself:

Had I somehow been sent back into the past?

To seventy years ago? To World War II-era Japan?

Through some sort of…time slip phenomenon?

No way… I refused to believe it. It was completely, utterly impossible.

I tried to calm myself down and think rationally.

Thinking about it from a common-sense perspective, there was no possible way I’d actually experienced a time slip. That was just a convenient trope used in sci-fi or fantasy stories to make the plot more interesting. It was a product of fiction, not reality; there was no scientific basis whatsoever for time travel to actually occur.

But I had to admit, something like that would go a long way toward explaining all the bizarre things I’d encountered since I woke up this morning. The whole town vanishing, the lack of infrastructure, the unpaved roads, the wooden houses… The strange clothes that Akira and Tsuru wore… The lack of cold water and air conditioning…

I didn’t want to believe it—but all the evidence pointed toward the impossible. By all accounts, it seemed I really had traveled back in time to World War II-era Japan. The moment I came to terms with that…my vision blurred, and I blacked out.

“…Whoa! Yuri?!”

“Are you okay, dear?!”

I could feel Akira’s sturdy hands gripping my shoulders to keep me upright, but it was too late. The last thing I saw before I lost consciousness was the vague silhouette of Tsuru’s concerned face looking down at me.

“Ah, there we are… Are you waking up, my dear?”

I could feel something cold and wet on my forehead. When I opened my eyes, I could see Tsuru’s face smiling down at me. A few moments later, I realized that I’d fainted, and tried my best to sit myself up again.

“Oh, no, no!” said Tsuru, laying me back down. “You shouldn’t try to move just yet.”

She wiped the sweat from my face with the same damp cloth that had been lying on my forehead.

“I bet that feels nice, doesn’t it?” she said. “I just went and drew up some nice, cool water for you from the well.”

“Oh, thank you…” I mumbled. “You didn’t have to…”

Appreciative though I was, the mere notion of drawing water from a well only served to remind me that I was no longer in my own time, and I had to squint my eyes in protest to keep myself from fainting again.

“What was your name again, dear?” asked Tsuru. “Yuri-chan, was it?”

“Yes, that’s right…” I said.

“Where do you live, Yuri-chan? I haven’t seen you around here before.”

Of course she hadn’t. I was from somewhere very, very far away. I had no home to return to in this time—no place I belonged. The thought made tears begin to well up in the corners of my eyes.

“Oh no… What’s wrong, dear?” asked Tsuru, gently rubbing my back. “Wait, don’t tell me… Are you from the next town over? Did you lose your home in the air raid a while back? Oh, you poor thing…”

Her kind hospitality pushed me over the edge, and I began to weep.

“You know, I lost some of my relatives in those bombings too…” she said with a sigh. “I’m just glad my shop here survived. Otherwise, I don’t know what I’d even have to live for anymore. I guess every dark cloud has a silver lining, doesn’t it?”

Did she say, “air raid”? Those are still happening? Even way out here?

She made it sound very recent, too. Said she’d lost family members, even.

What kind of hellish world had I woken up in this morning?

I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to go home. To my own home, in my own time…

“…I’m sorry for all the trouble,” I said. “Thank you very much for your hospitality.”

I stood up and bowed my head deeply to Tsuru—then rushed out of the mess hall before she had a chance to respond.

Retracing my steps the way I came, I somehow managed to find my way back to the air raid shelter. I threw open the door and ran inside.

But nothing happened. I hadn’t been taken back to my world.

“No… You can’t do this to me!” I shouted. “Let me go back! Let me go home!”

Now on the verge of sobbing, I scoured every inch of the narrow underground shaft—crawling on my hands and knees, banging on the walls with my hands, kicking my feet into the ground—desperate to find an exit of some sort. There had to be a way out.

“…Why isn’t anything happening?”

No matter what I did, I couldn’t effect any change whatsoever.

I collapsed in a defeated heap on the sharp gravel floor.

Wait a minute. When I first realized I was in another time, it was right after I’d woken up, wasn’t it? Maybe if I went to sleep in the shelter again, I’d wake up back in my own time. That would make sense, right?

Tears streaming down my cheeks, I lay down on the ground.

I hate this… I hate this… I hate this… Let me out of here!

My mind was so distraught that it was difficult to fall asleep, but eventually, I got so exhausted from bawling my eyes out that I was able to pass out regardless.

When I awoke, I was still in 1945.

So I started sobbing profusely and fell asleep again.

It made no difference. Apparently, there was no going back.

“I’m so thirsty… And I still haven’t eaten anything…”

I staggered to my feet and walked out of the shelter.

I didn’t know what time it was, nor how many days had passed while I was in there.

“Guess I’m just…stuck here, then…” I mumbled to myself as I tottered aimlessly beneath the bright blue sky. My tears had all dried up by this point, so at least my vision was clear.

Suddenly, I remembered that I’d left my book bag at Tsuru’s place. Thinking I should probably go and retrieve it before I did anything else, my shaky legs started to take me down the dirt road in the general direction of the Tsuru-ya Mess Hall.

“Oh my goodness! Yuri-chan!!” Tsuru cried, rushing out to greet me as soon as I stepped through the doorway. “Where have you been?! I was worried sick!”

“Huh…?” I said. “You… You were?”

Why would she worry herself this way over a random stranger like me? Unable to take her words at face value, I simply stared at her dubiously—but she paid it no mind.

“Well, come in! Come in!” she said, urging me into the back. “My goodness, look how filthy you are… Just where have you been sleeping? We’ve got to get you cleaned up!”

She led me into the backyard, where a large washbasin was sitting. She filled it to the brim with water—then indicated for me to step inside.

“Go on!” she said. “Wash yourself off, dear.”

“Huh…?” I said, baffled. “H-here? With… With hose water?”

“What’s the matter? Didn’t ever bathe in cold water at home? Well, don’t worry—it’s summer, so it’ll feel quite nice, trust me!”

“But… We’re outdoors, though…”

“Worried about Peeping Toms, are we? Don’t be; that fence is there for a reason!” Tsuru sounded utterly unconcerned. “Now, go on! Take those filthy clothes off!”

“N-no, no, no! I’m sorry, I can’t! I’m not about to get naked outside!”

I shook my head furiously from side to side. Tsuru looked at me blankly.

“What do you mean, dear?” she said. “You’ve never taken a bath in the backyard?”

“N-no! Of course not!” I said.

“My, you must come from a very well-to-do household, then… Well, all right. In that case, follow me, dear.”

She led me back inside to what I could only assume was the kitchen.

In a corner of the dirt-floor area of the room was a large mound of clay—which I could only assume was one of those old-fashioned kamado wood-fired stoves—with two holes in the top that held a cook pot and a kettle respectively, and a cave-like opening in the bottom stuffed full of firewood.

“You can wash off over there,” said Tsuru. “No risk of anyone seeing you in here.”

“D-do you not have a proper bath, or…?” I asked.

“Why, no, dear… Everyone around here just uses the public bathhouse. Having a bath in your own home is quite an exorbitant luxury. Although lately, even the bathhouses can’t open for business most days, since they can’t get ahold of any wood or charcoal to heat the baths. Sometimes, we have to go without bathing for four, five days at a time—but it’s okay. We’ve all gotten used to it by now.”

You’re kidding…right?

I was aghast. The mere thought of not being able to take a bath every day—especially in a hot summer like this—sent a shiver down my spine. As I stood there, mouth agape, Tsuru got to work, dragging out a slightly smaller washbasin and filling it with water for me via a bamboo ladle.

“There,” she said. “Now let me go get you a change of clothes.”

And with that, she left me alone in the kitchen.

Well… I guess rinsing the sweat off here is still better than nothing.

Still feeling a bit anxious, I took off my dirt-coated school uniform and undressed completely before dipping a washcloth in the basin. I wrung it out before wiping myself down.

“Oogh… It’s so cold…”

Even in the summer, I found bathing in cold water very uncomfortable. But it seemed like I didn’t have a choice, and in fact should be grateful to even have a chance to clean myself off at all. As I dipped my hair into the basin to wash it, I heard Tsuru call out.

“I’ll just leave your change of clothes out here, okay?” she said, poking her head through the doorway.

My whole body seized up, flustered to be seen completely in the nude. Seeing this, Tsuru let out a muffled chuckle of amusement.

“What’s the matter, dear?” she said. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. We’re both women, aren’t we?”

“W-well, yes, but…” I stuttered.

“My, you’re so skinny, though…”

She walked over and grabbed my upper arm.

“Oh, dear—your bicep is thinner than my wrist! Surely, if your family could afford a house with a bath, you couldn’t have been struggling to afford food. You need to take your nutrition more seriously, dear! Get some meat on those bones! Luxury may be the enemy, but that doesn’t mean you need to be completely emaciated! Once you’re finished washing up, come out into the mess hall. I’ll fix something up for you.”

With that, she scurried off before I could even get a word in edgewise.

Once I was finished wiping myself down, I put on the fresh clothes Tsuru had laid out for me, folded neatly in a pile by the door. I wasn’t especially pleased to see that she’d selected a pair of monpe pants for me. They had to be at least a hundred times tackier than my bright-red PE uniform pants. On top of that, she’d given me a kimono to wear over them—and I didn’t really know how to put those on. I did my best, though, and then headed out into the mess hall.

“Why, Yuri-chan!” said Tsuru. “You’re supposed to wrap it around the other way!”

“Oh, okay…” I said. “Yeah, I had a feeling…”

Tsuru gave me a quizzical look; she clearly found it quite odd that I didn’t even know how to put on a kimono properly.

“You know, I was a bit taken aback seeing you wearing a sailor-style uniform and skirt in this day and age,” she said. “Nowadays, everyone wears monpe.”

“Yeah, I noticed as much, ha ha ha…” I said, awkwardly laughing it off.

“Anyway, have a seat! Eat up!”

On the dining table, Tsuru had laid out a steaming hot bowl of miso soup, a large portion of boiled yams, a little bit of preserved fish boiled in sweet soy sauce, along with some oddly brownish rice. I was a bit put off by the look of it, but since I hadn’t eaten in over a day, my stomach still couldn’t help but grumble loudly at the sight of fresh food.

“P-pardon my manners…” I said, my face going bright red.

Tsuru let out a hearty laugh.

“No need to apologize, dear!” she said. “Now hurry up and eat before it gets cold! It doesn’t look like much, I know, but I promise it all tastes great. I didn’t start my own mess hall for nothing!”

“No, it looks great…” I said meekly. “Thank you very much.”

Those were probably the purest, most sincere words of gratitude I’d ever uttered in my life. First, I took a sip of the miso soup. The miso flavor was a bit light, but I could really taste the vegetables in the broth; it was a gentle, heartwarming soup.

“It’s so good…”

The boiled fish and yams were scrumptious and filling, too; the only thing I hadn’t tried yet was the strange brownish rice. When she caught me staring at it, Tsuru chirped up to explain.

“That’s barley rice, dear,” she said. “Never tried it before?”

“Oh, no…” I said. “I can’t say that I have…”

“My, my… Your family must have been well-off indeed. White rice is so expensive nowadays, you see—it’s pretty hard to get ahold of. Most folks have to mix it with barley or millet or other grains to stretch it farther.”

The barley rice certainly had a different flavor and texture than I was used to, but it was actually quite good. Even the large slices of pickled daikon—which I assumed were mostly there just to help fill the stomach—had a simple, sublime flavor to them.

“Thank you… That was delicious,” I said, bowing my head to Tsuru as I set my chopsticks down.

“Anytime, dear,” she replied with a reassuring smile. “By the way, Yuri-chan… I was thinking…”

“Yes?”

“If you don’t have anywhere else to go, how would you feel about working for me here at the mess hall?”

“…Pardon?”

I blinked at her.

“There’s an army airfield not too far from here,” she explained. “It’s become a rather important base of operations for them lately, it seems, with more and more soldiers stationed there by the day. They’re my primary clientele, but it’s been getting harder and harder to manage everything on my own these days. So if you need a place to stay, and you don’t mind working for your keep, I certainly wouldn’t mind having an extra helping hand around here.”

Even an ingrate like me could tell what a considerate offer Tsuru was making; she thought I’d lost my home and family in an air raid and was saying she didn’t mind taking me in and letting me live with her. She must have known I’d probably feel obligated to turn down such a generous offer if it were made with no strings attached, so she was presenting it as a job offer instead.

I could feel a gentle warmth slowly building in my heart. Gripping the faded fabric of my monpe, I bowed my head to her as low as I could.

“…I’d love to,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

“Glad to hear it…” said Tsuru. “You’ll be a huge help.”

What a kind woman—taking in a random stranger off the street and giving them a place to belong, not knowing whether they would be of any use at all. Were it not for her, I’d probably have died hungry and homeless out on the streets in a matter of days here in this unfamiliar world.

It wasn’t just her I had to thank, of course.

Akira had saved my life as well, after all.

I hoped I’d have the chance to see him again.

I still had to thank him properly for what he’d done.

A Hill Where Lilies Bloom

A FEW DAYS HAD PASSED SINCE I’D STARTED LIVING with Tsuru.

My initial disorientation around being transported to another time was now slowly beginning to fade, and as my emotions calmed, I felt like I could more clearly and objectively survey the world around me. That keen eye extended to the restaurant’s primary clientele, which primarily consisted of workers who lived quite far away and commuted to work here at branch offices or iron manufacturing plants. They all came to eat at the mess hall on their lunch breaks. Virtually no locals ate at Tsuru’s establishment; they lacked the financial means and mental capacity. For the most part, only those who could afford the relative luxury of eating out walked through our doors.

And even then, despite being an eatery, it didn’t even serve white rice—apparently quite hard to come by these days. Instead, its main courses consisted of dishes like udon, boiled yams, salted potatoes, grilled corn, and soy flour bread. The side dishes weren’t much fancier, either—you could choose from boiled daikon with carrots, scrawny little white-meat fish, or stewed vegetables seasoned with some sort of mysterious “soy sauce substitute” (I was too scared to poke into that particular mystery any further). Aside from that, you could order some pickled vegetables, but that was pretty much it. Instead of rice, you’d get this water-thin rice gruel, with only a few grains of actual rice inside, garnished with daikon leaves and bits of yam vines to make the dish look more substantial. It was poor man’s food, no doubt about it; I couldn’t imagine anyone getting enough nutrition from a meal like this to have the energy to make it through a strenuous workday.

Ugh, what I wouldn’t give for a bowl of sweet, sweet white rice right now… Or some meat… Or some eggs… Or some ice cream… Such were my thoughts as I worked myself to the bone, day in and day out. Above all, I didn’t want to make Tsuru regret her decision to let me stay at her home. I would wake up early to go draw water from the common well in the town square, fill the heavy bucket to the brim, and then try my best not to spill any as I lugged it back with both hands. Then, I would go to the icemaker’s shop and buy some ice to put in the mess hall’s “icebox,” where we stored our raw fish. Though in truth, it was less like a fridge and actually more akin to one of those travel coolers—just a large wooden box with some ice dumped into it that I had to replace periodically as it slowly melted.

It made me realize just how good we had it with modern-day refrigerators—not to mention vacuum cleaners and washing machines. In this world, you had to do all your cleaning with a broom, dustpan, and rag and do all your laundry with a washboard and basin. It made even basic chores feel like Herculean tasks. How did people even have energy for anything else afterward?

Once I was finished helping Tsuru around the house, it was time to clock in for my shift at the mess hall. My job wasn’t too hard; I just had to take the customers’ orders and bring the food out from the kitchen once Tsuru was done cooking it—but I still felt like I was on pins and needles at all times. I was desperately trying not to cause any trouble in this world that was still so unfamiliar to me, so I was always exhausted by closing time. Tsuru, bless her heart, did tell me I was free to take a load off after then. But after everything she’d done for me, I didn’t want to feel like a freeloader even a little bit, so I’d help her out with all of the evening chores as well until my legs were so sore and tired, they nearly gave out from under me when it finally came time for bed.

“Here, Yuri-chan,” said Tsuru, calling out to me from behind as I cast my exhausted gaze out the window one afternoon. “This one’s ready to go out.”

“Oh, okay!” I said, instantly snapping out of my reverie. “Be right there!”

I hurried back into the kitchen and collected the plate of pickled daikon—but as I was carrying it out to the customer, I saw the flutter of someone passing through the curtains hanging in the shop’s entryway.

“Hi, welco—” I started to greet them but stopped short. “Oh, hey!”

“Hello there… Wait, aren’t you—”

Before me was a small group of young men—and among them was none other than Akira Sakuma, the one who’d come to my rescue when I collapsed by the roadside.

“Uhm… It’s very good to see you again,” I said awkwardly. “Thank you so much for your help the other day.”

Still carrying the food tray with both hands, I bowed to him as best I could—and much to my surprise, Akira placed his palm on top of my lowered head.

“I’m glad to see you’re doing better,” he said. “Are you helping out here at the mess hall now?”

“Yes,” I said. “Tsuru-san was kind enough to give me a place to stay.”

“Hey, that’s great. Sorry, I couldn’t stick around until you came to the other day—I had to take care of some business back at the base. By the time I returned, you were already gone. I was pretty worried about you.”

I thought back to that day—the time I’d fainted upon realizing that I may have been sent back in time. I’d hardly noticed that he was gone when I regained consciousness. In all honesty, I was desperate to hurry back to the air raid shelter and see if I could return to my own time.

“Well, I guess ‘business’ isn’t strictly accurate. Really, I just went back to base to grab this,” said Akira. Then, he reached into the pocket of his military uniform and pulled something out. “Here. Hold out your hand.”

I set the tray down beside me, then held out both hands in front of me, and Akira placed a few small items in my palms. They were all tiny little cubes wrapped in paper, no larger than erasers.

“It’s field rations,” he said with a grin. “Just for you.”

“Huh? …Sorry, what’s that?” I asked.

“Oh, right. I guess you wouldn’t know military lingo…” He lowered his voice and explained in a hushed tone: “Well, don’t tell anyone…but they’re caramels, actually.”

“What? Caramels?” I exclaimed.

He held up a finger in front of his lips, shushing me for raising my voice. Panicking, I covered my mouth. I felt as though I’d just uttered some treasonous word that could get me sent to the gallows if the wrong person were to hear it. That being said, I was surprised they even had caramels in a world where plain white rice was considered a valuable commodity. I stared down at the objects in my other hand.

“Only the military has access to sweets like these nowadays,” Akira explained with a smile. “But judging from the way you fainted the other day, I think you need the calories more than I do.”

“What…?” I said. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. To be honest with you, as soon as you passed out that day, I got up and ran as fast as I could back to the barracks to retrieve them, but you were gone by the time I got back. Gave me quite the fright, but I’m glad I finally have the chance to give them to you now.”

Akira had placed three of these caramels in my hands; apparently, he’d gone out of his way to retrieve some of his precious military provisions as a gift for me.

“I don’t know what to say…” I said. “Thank you very much.”

Touched by this unexpected show of consideration, I bowed my head and thanked him once again. It was only after I looked back up again that I realized the other men in uniform who’d come in with Akira were now eyeing me curiously. I assumed they were also soldiers, probably stationed at the same base as Akira.

“Hey, she’s a cute one,” said one. “When’d you hire the new poster girl, Tsuru-san?”

“Sheesh, Sakuma… How long have you been hiding her from us?” said another. “Trying to make a move before the rest of us had a chance, huh?”

“Hey, little lady! How would you like some of my chocolates, too?!” said a third.

“I’ve got some cookies, if you want ’em!” said a fourth.

The tall, burly men all gathered around me and started handing me even more sweets, piling them one after another on my open palms.

“Hey, come on, you guys! Don’t crowd her!” said Akira, shooing the other men away. “Sorry about them, Yuri… They’re harmless, I promise.”

Even after they took their seats at the table, though, the military men continued to barrage me with all sorts of questions.

“So your name’s Yuri-chan, eh?” said one of them. “How old are you?”

“Fourteen,” I said.

“Dang, so young… What school do you go to?”

“Oh, uhhh…”

I wasn’t really sure how to answer.

“Come on, now,” said Akira, coming to my rescue yet again. “Let’s leave the poor girl alone and just order our food, shall we?”

Relieved, I took their orders and headed back into the kitchen to deliver them.

“Seems you’re quite popular with the customers, Yuri-chan,” said Tsuru.

“Oh, please…” I said. “I haven’t done anything, really.”

“Hard to believe my little shop’s finally got its own poster girl!”

Tsuru seemed very amused by all of this.

I kept an eye on the soldiers’ table after that, picking up bits and pieces of their conversation from afar. It seemed they were indeed all stationed at the nearby base that Tsuru had mentioned previously. I’d always had an image in my head of military men being a bit older—but these were all boys in their late teens or early twenties, tops. According to Tsuru, this particular group came to eat at the mess hall quite often, either after their training or on their days off.

“Man, that hits the spot!”

“I don’t know how you do it, Tsuru-san…”

“Tastes just like my mom used to make!”

“Well, when you think about it, Tsuru-san is kind of like a second mother to us.”

Tsuru watched from the kitchen, a warm smile spreading across her face as the men shoveled her food into their mouths with fervor and enthusiasm. Once they were finished eating, she walked out onto the floor and made idle chitchat with them for a while. Personally, I was beat, so I didn’t participate in the conversation. Instead, I opted to take a seat in a corner of the mess hall and just space out for a bit. Before long, though, Akira noticed this and got up from his seat to come see what the matter was.

“What’s wrong, Yuri?” he asked. “You seem a bit down.”

“Huh?!” I said, startled.

“Your complexion’s not looking so good, either. Are you still feeling unwell?”

I shook my head. Akira crouched down to my level and smiled at me.

“Well, it seems like the lunch rush is over, so you probably won’t get any more customers for a while,” he said. “Why don’t we step outside for a bit of fresh air?”

He led me out of the shop by the hand before I even had a chance to answer him. As we passed through the curtains, I looked back over my shoulder to see Tsuru waving goodbye, apparently giving me her blessing to play hooky.

There were quite a few people out and about. Everywhere I looked, I could see people dressed in kimonos or monpe or dirty, tattered undershirts. On either side of the road were rows of old wooden houses, all of which looked liable to collapse at any given moment. Out here on the streets, there was simply no avoiding the harrowing truth that I was trapped in a very different world from my own, unable to return home.

Hearing me let out a despondent sigh, Akira tilted his head curiously and looked over at me. He didn’t say a word, though; he just kept on walking.

Where was he even taking me, anyhow? By the time I realized something was up, we’d already walked quite a ways from the center of town and all its hubbub.

We were now walking down a cool, shady path winding through the nearby woods, surrounded on all sides by the lush summer greenery. Eventually, the path started angling upward at a gentle incline; apparently, we were heading to the top of a hill.

Akira—who’d taken the lead and was walking a few feet in front of me—suddenly turned and looked back at me with an easygoing smile.

“You doing all right back there, Yuri?” he asked.

“Oh, yes…” I said. “Just fine, but—”

“Don’t worry. We’re almost there.”

The incline began to level out; we were approaching the plateau. The thick greenery on either side of the trail began to thin, and I could see a bit more of our surroundings. When I lifted my gaze, I could see a bright blue sky peeking through the vivid green canopies. It felt like the first time in quite a while I’d actually looked up and appreciated the sky.

“Yuri,” said Akira. “Over here.”

I looked back down to see him beckoning me over. I jogged to where he was standing, just a few steps ahead of me.

“Well?” he said, turning his head as he spread his arms wide open. “Have a look.”

I followed his gaze—and couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Oh my gosh!” I shouted, unable to contain my disbelief.

At the top of the hill was a wide-open field of flowers—it must have been thousands upon thousands of lilies, covering nearly every last inch of the rocky summit, their white petals gleaming dazzlingly in the bright summer sun.

“This is incredible…!” I exclaimed. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

I’d only ever seen lilies in florists’ windows, or in bouquets—never in the wild, and certainly never in such great number. An almost chokingly sweet fragrance floated on the air, enveloping us completely. Wanting to get a closer look, I ran over to the field of flowers. So charming, with their smooth and elegant petals. Their leaves such a deep green, their life-giving veins running down their lengths. Their stems straight and narrow, pointing straight up to the sky.

“It’s so beautiful…” I said. “I can’t believe it…”

As I stood there spellbound, I heard a chuckle from over my shoulder.

“You like it?” asked Akira.

Had he brought me here because he thought it might cheer me up? Because he was worried about me? Had he chosen this place because my name meant “lily” in Japanese? I turned to look at him; he was inches away, smiling at me.

“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you smile,” he said. “I’m glad you like it. Guess it really was worth dragging you out here after all.”

His face was so close to mine, I reflexively recoiled a bit. Noticing this, Akira let out a sheepish chuckle.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Guess that was a bit awkward, wasn’t it? I have a little sister who’s about your age, so that might have something to do with it. She and I were awfully close.”

“…Were?” I said.

“Yeah. I haven’t seen her in years now. She’s still living with our parents back in my hometown.”

At this point, Akira suggested that we sit down and chat for a while. I nodded in agreement, and the two of us found a small grass clearing amid the lilies and sat down side by side. Glancing over, I could see Akira’s face in profile, illuminated by the bright summer sun, his expression every bit as soft and radiant as a celestial body as he gazed up to the sky.

He really was quite handsome, now that I could take a better look at him. His eyebrows were neat and sharp, and he had perfect double eyelids. The bridge of his nose was straight and shapely, and his thin lips curled into a soft, boyish smile. His well-tanned skin was clear and smooth, with nary a blemish to be seen. His broad shoulders, muscular arms, and torso made him look quite masculine and robust, despite his overall slimness. The junior high school boys in my class certainly had a lot of work to do.

It was only at this point that I had the sudden and belated realization that Akira was already a grown man, and therefore quite a few years older than me. The thought made me feel quite restless, actually; when I reflected on him having carried me in his arms, after I collapsed on that hot summer’s day, I could hardly bear to make eye contact with him. Especially after I had a second realization: I hadn’t bathed in days.

God, what I wouldn’t give for a proper bath. I may have been a fair bit younger than him, but I still had my dignity as a woman to consider.

“Is something wrong, Yuri?” Akira asked, suddenly turning his gaze to me once again.

“Er, no!” I said, my heart skipping a beat. “I was just, um…”

Flustered and on the spot, even I couldn’t believe the next words out of my mouth:

“I was just thinking about how handsome you are.”

Akira’s eyes went wide—understandably.

It was only upon seeing his baffled expression that I regained my better judgment, remembered what I had said, as my face flushed with shame. What was I thinking, letting a thought like that slip? As I sat there wracked with regret, I heard Akira stifle a snicker. I looked up to see that he was covering his mouth, trying as hard as he could not to laugh.

“You think so, huh?” he said. “Personally, I don’t see it, but thank you for saying so. I must admit, though—I’m not used to women being so bold and forward. You’re an interesting one, Yuri, that’s for sure.”

“…Sorry,” I said.

“What, for complimenting me? No need to apologize, silly.”

After we both calmed down a bit, Akira began to tell me a bit more about himself. As he recounted his life story in his usual soft-spoken tone, I hugged my knees to my chest among the lilies and listened close.

Akira’s hometown was somewhere far to the north. In the winter, a heavy blanket of snow would cover the entire landscape for months at a time. His mother and father were still alive, and he had two siblings—a little brother and sister, both several years younger than him. He left his hometown to pursue a higher education and had been living alone in Tokyo when he got that fateful letter informing him that he was being drafted. From there, he’d trained as a pilot at a military base in Kanto, before ultimately being transferred to the base he was stationed at now.

“Wait,” I said. “So you’re a college student?”

“Correct,” Akira said, nodding.

“How old are you?”

“Just turned twenty this year.”

This was a shock. Akira seemed so much calmer and more mature than twenty-year-old boys tended to be in my time. When I imagined one, I pictured the sort of laid-back party boy who went out drinking with his friends every weekend or was busy planning a big shindig for their coming-of-age ceremony. Admittedly, though, I didn’t know anyone like this in person—my only familiarity with college students was from what I’d seen on TV.

“How old is your little sister?” I asked.

“She just turned fourteen,” he replied.

“Wow, so she’s the same age as me… Huh. So I guess that means you’re a full six years older than me, Sakuma-san…”

“…Hey, could you do me a favor?”

He raised a hand as if to cut me off; I clammed up, wondering if perhaps I’d said something inappropriate.

“Could you, um…” he began. “Could you not call me ‘Sakuma-san’?”

“Huh?” I said.

“I dunno, it just feels a bit…weirdly formal, coming from you. Maybe it’s because you’re so close in age to my little sister? I’m not sure…”

He let out an awkward, sheepish chuckle.

“…What should I call you, then?” I asked.

“Just my first name is fine,” he said.

“So then…Akira-san?”

“Just Akira.”

“No honorific?”

“No honorific. Feels more natural.”

“Are you sure? Well, okay, then…Akira.”

As I repeated his name, he grinned broadly.

“My sister’s a strong-willed woman, just like you,” he explained. “She always called me by my first name too—never a nickname or anything like that. It feels almost nostalgic, hearing you call me Akira, as odd as that might sound…”

I was happy to be given the honor of calling him by his first name; it made me feel like the distance between us had been closed a bit—like we were no longer mere acquaintances. And yet, at the same time, I felt a bit mixed at how he seemed to be comparing me to his little sister so much; I didn’t want to just be a surrogate for her in his eyes.

On the way back from the lily hill, we encountered a group of girls around the same age as me walking down the street. They all had their hair either bobbed or in pigtails, and were all wearing monpe, which, it seemed, were indeed the most fashionable women’s legwear of the era. Aside from their fashion choices, I could have easily mistaken them for a group of junior high school girls from my own day and age. Guess some things never change, I thought to myself as I listened to their animated conversation as they passed by.

“That was so funny, wasn’t it?!” said one of them. “When Tanaka-sensei—”

“I know!” Another interrupted. “When he was writing on the blackboard, and—”

Hearing the words sensei and blackboard, I couldn’t help feeling wistful.

“Man, I miss going to school…” I mumbled.

“Same here,” said Akira. “Guessing your school got hit by a mobilization order?”

“Um… Sorry, a what order? I don’t know what that is…” I said, tilting my head.

“Wait, what?!” Akira’s eyes shot wide open. “You don’t? Have you been living under a rock this whole war or what?”

“Er, kinda… Ah ha ha…”

I tried to laugh it off. Akira shot me a brief glance of suspicion before explaining.

Apparently, the basic idea was that, due to personnel shortages in crucial industries like agriculture and munitions factories during the war, students as young as twelve from all across the country were being mobilized and removed from their schools to provide emergency labor services. Since all able-bodied men were being called into service and sent off to the front lines, there simply wasn’t enough of a workforce left to maintain Japan’s critical infrastructure, so women and children were being called upon to pick up the slack. At first, it was only a stopgap measure that was activated intermittently for short stretches of time, but as the war went on, many schools had canceled their regular curriculum entirely and were having students clock in at local factories every single day.

“My sister sent me a letter a while back, where she mentioned she ‘just wanted to go back to school’ to continue her studies, so I assume they’ve been mobilized too…” said Akira, gazing off into the distance. “I bet you probably feel the same way, huh?”

I had to think about that for a moment.

I’d always hated school—all the classes and studying and homework. Having to wake up early and trudge my way there, no matter the weather. Having to take part in group activities. Being confined to a tiny desk all day until the sun went down.

And yet, when I looked back on those days now, I couldn’t help but miss them. After all, I’d been waking up far earlier in this world than I’d ever had to in my own. Having to keep myself from nodding off in class was a sign of just how good I’d actually had it. If anything, I only had the luxury of spending the whole day sitting in a room listening to boring lectures because the world was at peace, and there wasn’t any rigorous work I needed to do for my country. Those girls we’d just walked past were probably on their way back from working at a military factory of some sort since the crack of dawn, where they probably weren’t allowed to sit down even for a moment outside of their lunch hour.

“Yeah… I definitely do,” I said with a nod. “It’s kind of funny, actually… I never realized how lucky I was to be able to go to school, learn things, and talk to my friends until it was all taken away… Guess you really don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

I hung my head and looked down at my feet as we continued walking along. The toes of my shoes were covered in dirt from our little impromptu hike.

“…You’ll be able to go back soon enough,” said Akira, placing his hand on my head.

I looked up at him, unsure what he meant by that. But he just kept facing straight ahead down the street, his expression firm and resolved.

“Once we beat the Americans, everything will go back to normal. You, me, my little sister—we’ll all be able to go back to school again… Well, maybe not me, if my unit gets sortied. But that’s a future I’m willing to lay down my life to ensure.”

It was only at this point that I finally remembered what he’d said before—about him being a kamikaze pilot. Was he truly prepared to sacrifice himself like that? Ready to fly a plane full of explosives into an enemy ship? Ready to blow himself up like a suicide bomber?

I didn’t understand it. It made no sense to me whatsoever.

“…Isn’t that kind of stupid, though?” I said. “Like, why should you—or anyone, for that matter—have to do such a thing? Why even start a war to begin with, if you don’t have the means to finish it without resorting to sacrificing your own people?”

I didn’t realize what I was saying until the words had already left my lips. Hoping I hadn’t struck a nerve, I peeked over to gauge Akira’s expression. After a brief moment of wide-eyed disbelief, his face relaxed into a soft, yet slightly bitter, smile.

“…You’re probably right,” he said in a somber voice. “If we’re just looking at the situation objectively, then yes, I think starting this war was a huge mistake. How many lives have already been lost, how much suffering has been caused… Not to mention how many people have been robbed of their freedom…”

I could only imagine how many friends, comrades, and acquaintances he’d already lost over the course of the war. Probably no small number, I had to assume.

“…But be that as it may,” he went on, “we’ve still got to finish what we started. If we lose now, after getting ourselves so deeply involved in this mess, Japan as we know it will crumble, and our nation will be plunged into the darkest days of its entire history. The victors will occupy our lands, seizing both our property and our liberty… They’ll take soldiers like me as prisoners of war and turn innocent civilians into slaves, or worse… It’s thoughts like that which scare me most of all, especially when I think of what it might mean for my family, or people like you and Tsuru-san… So that’s exactly why we need to emerge victorious, and why me and my fellow soldiers are willing to lay down our lives—so that such a horrific future can never be allowed to come to pass.”

His tone was quiet and calm, without a hint of hesitation. In his voice, I could feel his steadfast conviction—so strong, so pure, as if there was nothing anyone could possibly say to make his resolve waver. I could tell he wasn’t just parroting the words of his superiors, or of military propaganda, either; this was clearly a conclusion he’d arrived at himself after much reflection. He’d come to terms with his fate.

But to me, it was all so tragic that it made me feel…angry. Livid, even.

“…Listen to yourself,” I said—in a voice so low and furious, I couldn’t believe it was coming from my own mouth. “So you really don’t mind being sent off to die at all, then, is that it? How many more lives do you really think you’re going to save by sacrificing your own? By the way, what makes those lives any more valuable than yours? Don’t you see how ridiculous that sounds?”

Akira furrowed his brow, clearly unsure how to respond to my unexpected rant.

“…Listen, I get what you’re saying,” he eventually said. “I’m not trying to say it’s justified, or fair, or anything like that. It’s just the unfortunate reality we live in. The powers that be have decided this is our only hope of turning the tide of the war in our favor. I’ve accepted that.”

He kneaded his fingers gently through my hair, massaging my scalp like a father trying to soothe a whining infant. His childlike treatment only made me angrier.

“Fine!” I shouted, running off down the street. “Go ahead and die, then!”

Untainted Eyes

FROM THEN ON, EVERY FEW DAYS I’D SNEAK OUT OF the house in the middle of the night and try sleeping in the air raid shelter again—hoping beyond hope that when I awoke, I might be back in my own time again. But no matter how many times I tried, or how hard I prayed, the universe seemed determined to leave me trapped in 1945.

I wondered if there might be some other method of getting back home. I had to believe there must be some way, given that it’d happened once before, but I couldn’t think of anything—I was at a complete loss. As time went by, I grew more or less resigned to my fate, becoming more and more accustomed to my new life.

“Oh, Yuri! Good morning!”

As I was sweeping the mess hall one day, I heard a cheery voice call out to me from the entryway. I lifted my head to see that it was the local fishmonger’s daughter—a girl by the name of Chiyo—who’d come to make her daily delivery of fresh fish for the icebox.

“Morning, Chiyo,” I said.

“It’s pretty hot out there today,” she said. “You’re lucky you get to stay inside!”

“I know. I don’t envy you one bit, having to make your rounds in this weather.”

It felt a bit strange to be making casual small talk like this, knowing there was a war going on somewhere far beyond the horizon, where our fellow countrymen were fighting for their lives. I’d always had this image in my head of what it would be like to live during wartime—of everyone being gloomy and depressed at all times, like a whole society in mourning. But apparently, there was always room for levity, even in the midst of adversity.

“Hey, Yuri…” said Chiyo. “Could I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Do you think…Ishimaru-san will come by the mess hall today?”

As she bashfully asked me her question, I noticed her cheeks had flushed ever so slightly red. It was a fairly open secret that she had a bit of a thing for one of the mess hall’s regulars—the aforementioned Ishimaru, a soldier stationed at the nearby air base.

“Well, let me think,” I said. “I believe Akira…er, Sakuma-san and the others have the day off today. That usually means they’ll stop by for lunch, so I’m fairly certain he’ll swing by.”

“Heh-heh… Nice,” said Chiyo. “Do you mind if I come back a bit later, and we can pretend I’m there to see you instead?”

“What, again? That’s the third time this week… Okay, fine. I’ll try to make sure he doesn’t leave before you show up, then.”

“Thanks! Golly, you’re the best!”

Of course, just like in my time, people were always falling in love.

Really, there wasn’t that much that was fundamentally different about living in wartime, aside from maybe the propagandized slogans like “LUXURY IS THE ENEMY” or “WANT NOT UNTIL VICTORY IS OURS” posted here and there on utility poles and fences around town. If it weren’t for those, however, one might not even be able to tell our country was in the midst of a world war—at least not at first glance.

“Here!” said Chiyo, smiling from ear to ear. “I’ll make it up to you by pitching in with the cleaning!”

As she snatched the broom out of my hands, I caught a glimpse of a bright fabric with a cute red floral pattern peeking out from inside the cuffs of her plain kimono.

“Hey, I like your undershirt,” I said. “That’s a really cute pattern.”

“Wait, you can see that?!” said Chiyo, pulling down her sleeves in a fluster. “I’ve gotta be more careful, then…”

Suddenly, I recalled something from class. Apparently, during the war, it was considered unpatriotic or even traitorous to be going around town wearing gaudy or brightly patterned clothing—though I wasn’t entirely sure why.

“Is it really that big a deal?” I said. “It’s not like you’re going around flaunting it.”

“Yes, it is!” said Chiyo. “A while back, one of my classmates got reprimanded by a military police officer just for wearing floral undergarments. We all need to be extra careful in case someone tries to report us—by the way, that goes for you, too!”

“Huh… I see.”

If you couldn’t even wear the clothes you liked without getting in trouble, maybe there was less freedom here than I thought.

“Still…do you mind if I gush, for just a minute?” said Chiyo.

“About what?” I asked, tilting my head.

“Okay, the thing about this shirt is…”

Chiyo took me by the hand and led me into a corner of the shop where nobody could see us, then pulled back the lapel of her kimono to give me a better look.

“It’s actually one of my mom’s old blouses,” she explained. “But I made a few alterations to it, so now I can wear it as an undershirt. Pretty cute, right?”

“What?” I said. “You did that all by yourself?”

“Yep. And look at this!” She pointed to a little embroidered rose emblem on the chest of the shirt. “I sewed this by hand, too. I’m really happy with how it turned out!”

“You’re kidding! It looks so good!”

“Heh-heh… I know, right?” she said with a proud grin. “It’s probably my best work yet. I’m really into sewing, honestly. I know—I’ll make something for you sometime!”

“Wait, you mean it? Wow, I’d be honored!”

“Of course! I mean, how cute would it be if I made you something with a lily pattern? …Ah!”

In a split second, Chiyo’s buoyant expression went stiff and tense. Outside, I could hear someone passing by the front of the mess hall. Chiyo quickly pulled the collar of her gray kimono back up to conceal her cute floral undershirt. It made me sadder than I cared to admit to see her unable to wear the products of her passion with pride, and keeping them hidden away as undergarments instead, where no one could see them.

“Hey, Chiyo,” I said, changing the subject. “Your school’s been mobilized too, then, I’m guessing?”

“Yes, that’s right,” she said. “I work at a silk mill during the week now.”

“…Don’t you ever get sick and tired of it? Don’t you wish you didn’t have to work every day?”

Chiyo looked at me blankly for a moment.

“What do you mean?” she said matter-of-factly. “Our soldiers defend the front lines, so it’s on us to protect the home front.”

“Pardon?”

“Wait—you’ve never heard that before?” Her eyes went wide. “It’s the motto of the mobilized students. Just think about it, though: the men all went off to war, where they’re putting their lives on the line to fight for our country, right? So for us girls, who can’t go out there and help them directly, it’s our duty to support them indirectly, by working in the factories and stuff. So no, I don’t get sick and tired of it or wish I didn’t have to work—if anything, I take pride in it. We all do.”

Wait… She’s proud of being able to help out with the war effort?

This I had a hard time wrapping my head around. But perhaps that had something to do with my modern-day upbringing. In my time, World War II was always referred to as a terrible atrocity—a grave mistake of the past that we needed to learn from, one we had to be very careful to make sure never happened again. It was hard to swallow the notion that the people who actually lived through that war and suffered its consequences firsthand, considered it a point of pride simply to be allowed to take part in it, in some small way.

This felt even more bizarre to me, perhaps, because it was the summer of 1945—it should have become abundantly clear by this point that Japan was at an extreme disadvantage. But I also knew that the national newspapers had been reporting on the war in a way that made it sound like we were winning battle after battle in order to keep up morale. I could see how the average citizen wouldn’t think there was any chance of Japan losing in the end. Still, I found it a bit unnerving to see how the whole country was rallying together to cheer on our troops as though they were representing all of us on the world stage—like it was the Olympics or the World Cup or something. But if I didn’t already know how it’d all end, perhaps I would be right there with them.

Once she was finished sweeping the floor, Chiyo waved goodbye, promising to come back later. After watching her go, I tried to shake these conflicting thoughts from my head as I carried the box of fish she’d brought into the kitchen.

“The fish are here, Tsuru-san,” I said.

“Great, thanks,” said Tsuru. “Could you stash them in the icebox?”

“Will do,” I said—before transferring them to the literal box full of ice which I’d thankfully refilled earlier this morning. Once I was done, I closed it back up tight, so as to keep the ice from melting as long as possible.

A little while later, there was a commotion or something coming from right outside the mess hall, so I stepped out through the curtains to see what it was.

“Oh, hey,” said a voice. “It’s Yuri-chan.”

Sure enough, a group of soldiers from the base had gathered outside. Leading the pack was Ishimaru, who waved at me with a smile.

“Why, good afternoon to you all,” I said as I invited them inside.

As they came in, I spotted Akira among the group.

“Hey, Yuri,” he said, patting me on the head as he passed. “You been well?”

Immediately, his fellow soldiers began to cry out in protest.

“Hey, no fair, Sakuma!”

“Yuri-chan’s like a little sister to all of us, y’know!”

“Yeah, no hogging her to yourself!”

“Wow, you’re awful popular, Yuri,” Akira said to me with a smile, before turning to face the other men. “Hey, I found her first, remember. Which means I have every right to hog her if I want to.”

“Sakuma, you dirty dog…”

The other men burst out laughing as they filed into the building, each of them patting me on the head as they went. As someone who’d never had a father figure or any older male relatives, I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to this treatment. I just stood there and took it, pouting in mild frustration—until I heard Akira let out a snicker.

“…What are you laughing at?” I said.

“That look on your face, it’s really funny, that’s all,” he said. “You almost look like a neighborhood troublemaker, annoyed that you did a good deed by accident.”

Okay, he was treating me like a kid again. I puffed out my cheeks.

“Fine, then!” I grumbled. “See if I ever do anything nice for you again!”

I could hear Akira snickering behind me as I stomped off into the building.

He and his fellow squad mates would always come to eat at the mess hall on their days off, or on days when training wrapped up early. They’d usually hang around for a bit after they were finished eating, too—either lounging and chatting in the tatami room, reading the newspaper, or playing games like shogi, go, karuta, trump, or hanafuda… They spent their time doing all sorts of stuff when they weren’t on duty. Our normal customers tended not to come in on days they knew the soldiers would be here as a show of respect, so they pretty much had the place all to themselves.

Tsuru always made them such lavish meals, too—well, relative to the time period, anyway—always adding bonus side dishes on top of the things they’d actually ordered. It wasn’t long before I realized that she couldn’t possibly be turning a profit like this, so one day, I decided to ask her about it after the soldiers had already gone home.

“Hey, Tsuru-san?” I said.

“What is it, dear?” she replied.

“Are you…sure you can afford to give them so much free food all the time?”

Tsuru just smiled at me and said, “It’s fine, dear. They’re kamikaze pilots.”

This left me at a loss for words. I’d known Akira was a kamikaze pilot, of course, but they all were?

“They’re giving their young lives to defend our country, so for the few months or weeks they have left with us, we must treat them like living gods,” said Tsuru. “It’s no trouble at all to give them a little extra hospitality in that time.”

Months? Weeks? Did she have access to information that suggested their unit was going to be sent out to die sometime in the near future? I was astonished by the notion that all those men could simply be gone mere days from now.

Although now that I thought about it, I’d noticed some changes to their group in just the short time I’d been here; there were a few new faces among them too. More concerningly, though, I could think of at least a few that had suddenly disappeared without warning. Warily, I asked Tsuru about it, and she confirmed my fears: They had received their orders to sortie in the next wave of attacks, and the new faces were replacements who had been transferred here to take their place in line.

According to Tsuru, once a soldier was stationed on the front lines for a kamikaze operation, it could be anywhere between a few days to a few months before they actually made their fateful final flight.

Ever since I’d learned that, I wasn’t really sure how to behave when interacting with them anymore. After all, any time I saw them could easily be the last; they could all be dead in a matter of days. That thought was always swirling around my head.

And yet, they still acted no different from your average young men—joking around at the table, gobbling down their food with reckless abandon, making light of their situation and of each other. They still had their whole lives ahead of them, and they were prepared to give that all up. Just watching them like this filled me with deeply conflicted feelings.

“Hey, Yuri-chan!”

A voice called out to me from the floor.

It was Ishimaru—Chiyo’s not-so-secret crush. He was sitting over in the tatami room with four other guys, Akira included. The other three were named Teraoka, Kato, and Itakura. Despite their somewhat varied ages and personalities, they were all members of the same unit and therefore always came to eat as a group.

“Come siddown and chat with us old farts for a bit, will ya?”

Ever cheery and playful, Ishimaru was definitely a social butterfly. At twenty, he was the only one who was the same age as Akira, and the two of them were quite close.

“Aw, c’mon… ‘Old farts,’ really? You’re going to scare her away, talking that…”

Kato, meanwhile, was twenty-six. He was the hot-blooded, no-nonsense type.

“Yeah, Ishimaru-san! You sound like my dad when he gets drunk…”

Then there was Itakura. He was the youngest—a boy of only seventeen.

“Why, you…!” Ishimaru growled, playfully hooking his arm around Itakura’s neck to give him a noogie. “I’ll teach you to disrespect your elders!”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Itakura wailed. “That hurts!”

The other three laughed, watching from the sidelines.

Itakura was apparently the fourth son of a large and successful family of merchants, and he certainly had the vibe of a sweet-but-naive, well-to-do youngest child to match. He was clearly well-liked by his older squad mates.

“I see you two are getting along as well as usual…” said the last man with a smile.

This was Teraoka—the eldest of the group at age twenty-nine. He was a tolerant, mild-mannered sort who exuded an aura of great competence. Even I could tell just how much the rest of the group relied on his judgment.

And then there was Akira—sitting in the background while the others bantered with each other, not actually taking part in the conversation. I leaned over to get a better look and saw that he was currently flipping through a thick book of some sort.

Noticing my gaze, Ishimaru clapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey, Sakuma!” he shouted. “Yuri-chan’s here to say hi! Get your nose outta that book already!”

“Huh?” said Akira. “Oh, right… Sorry.”

He lifted his head and hurriedly set aside his book. It was as though he truly hadn’t been paying any attention whatsoever for the past several minutes.

“This guy, I tell ya…” said Ishimaru. “As soon as he cracks open one of those dusty old hardcovers, it’s like the whole rest o’ the world just fades away…”

“Sorry… I just got to a really good part, that’s all,” said Akira, grinning sheepishly.

“A really good part, huh? ’Cause that tome looks more like one of your college textbooks than a tense page-turner to me…” said Ishimaru, squinting as he examined the book’s cover. “Oh yeah—he ever tell you about that, Yuri-chan?”

“Sorry?” I said. “About what?”

“Sakuma here’s goin’ to Waseda University to study philosophy. He’s some kinda whiz kid, I tell ya! He actually reads stuff like this for fun, if you can believe that!”

I had no delusions of ever being able to afford going to college, so I wasn’t especially familiar, but I of course recognized the name. I found myself less impressed by the weight it held, however, since I was overcome by another emotion entirely.

Even the brightest of our country’s college students, with incredibly promising futures ahead of them, were being sent off to die in a war. It was as though their lives were worth nothing at all. Not to suggest that their lives were any more important than those who did not or could not go to college, of course. But dragging aspiring scholars, who wanted nothing more than to create a better world for us all, away from their studies only to sentence them to an early grave felt so tragic, I couldn’t bear the thought.

Suddenly, I grew curious about what the others’ educational backgrounds were, so I asked—and to my surprise, they had all either been college students or were school teachers already. This was even more of a shock, given that so few people could afford to go to university in this day and age—at least compared to the era I grew up in. Although maybe that was also why school instructors used to command far more respect than they did nowadays; giving children an education was seen as an extremely noble profession by society at large, not an unambitious career choice for those with few other prospects for making a living.

But honestly, that only made it all the more surprising that the military would draw from that particular pool of talented individuals and designate them not for posts that would make use of their intelligence in the larger war effort, but instead sentencing them to simply “die an honorable death” for their country.

How backward was that? They claimed they would be laying down their lives to protect their country—but in the end, they were actually sacrificing their own nation’s future by throwing away its most valuable asset.

“What’s wrong?” Akira asked, his expression dubious.

Apparently, I’d let my misgivings show too plainly on my face. But since I’d always had a habit of speaking my mind, no matter how controversial, I decided to just lean into it and bring the uncomfortable subject up head-on.

“…Why did you all agree to become kamikaze pilots, anyway?” I asked.

All of the men turned to look at me, their eyes wide. Then, a moment later, the youngest boy—Itakura—lowered his head as though this comment had wounded him somehow. After a few more moments of awkward silence, I continued:

“You were all ordered to do this, right? Could you not, I don’t know, refuse?”

The silence continued unbroken. Eventually, Teraoka, as the oldest, spoke up:

“The five of us here… You should know that we weren’t selected for this against our will.”

He reached into his chest pocket and pulled out a single, faded black-and-white photo, which he then set down on the table. In it, I could see a young woman who looked to be around twenty holding a tiny infant in her arms.

“This is my wife and daughter,” said Teraoka, glancing up at me for a moment before lowering his gaze to the photo and smiling softly. “We just got married the year before last, and she gave birth to our first child this past winter. I still haven’t had a chance to meet her, though, because she was born after I became a soldier…”

“What…?” I said. “You haven’t met your own daughter?”

Only after the words left my lips did I realize how thoughtless my question had been. I could see in Teraoka’s gentle smile and lonesome gaze that that fact was something that pained him deeply. I mean—how could it not? He was going to be sent off to die before he ever had the chance to hold his daughter in his arms, after all.

I couldn’t believe my ears. It was a fate too cruel for words. How could such a thing be considered even remotely permissible, even in wartime? And yet, Teraoka simply looked at me, a fierce glimmer of determination in his eyes, and said:

“I consider it an honor to have been named a kamikaze pilot. It means I can use my life to achieve something greater than myself—to protect the woman and child I love.”

I was so unable to swallow these words that my mouth hung open, speechless.

What in the hell was he talking about? That didn’t make any sense at all. It was an “honor” to make his wife a single mother in her early twenties?

Honestly, the whole thing reminded me of my own mother—which only made me grow more incensed. That woman had been forced to work multiple jobs my entire life just to support me, a thought that both pained me and filled me with a sort of wistful reminiscence.

I wonder how she’s doing without me. What I wouldn’t give to see her again…

Struggling not to break down in tears, I replied in a low voice:

“…I promise you, your wife has to feel lost and hopeless at the thought of losing you, at least in private. It’s extremely, extremely difficult for a mother to raise a child all on her own. Having to raise a child while also working day in and day out just to support them is a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I guarantee that your wife would much rather have you alive and at home, helping her raise your family together.”

Teraoka listened attentively to my little rant before lowering his head slightly and pulling something else out from his chest pocket—a tattered old letter. Immediately, I could tell, based on how worn it looked, that he’d probably read it over a thousand times. The thought made me unspeakably sad, and I didn’t even know what it said yet.

He laid it out on the table, but the writer’s penmanship was so fancy and old-fashioned that I couldn’t read it. Realizing this, Akira read it out for me:

“My dearest Jojiro. I hope you’ve been well since last I wrote. Kayo and I have both been in exceptionally good health. I’m certain she feels quite proud, as I do, to know that her father is doing such noble and important work for our nation and for His Majesty. Please worry not for our daughter’s well-being, for I swear on my name that I shall raise her true. I ask that you focus wholeheartedly on your mission alone, with no regrets or misgivings about us weighing on your conscience as you carry out your duty. Though I cannot be there with you, rest assured that I will be watching from beneath a faraway sky as you fly south, praying the winds of fortune will be at your back. Forever yours, Yasuko.”

Her heartfelt, steadfast words rendered me speechless.

As I stood there in silence, it was the hot-blooded Kato who spoke up next.

“You know, Yuri-chan… I was a junior high school teacher myself,” he said. “And as the war went on and intensified, I’d heard through the grapevine that many of my former students had been pulled out of school for conscription, with several of them having already died in action… It’s an unbearable thought to me—my former pupils dying in air raids, or in faraway battles in the Pacific Theater… And I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. So when I got my draft papers, it honestly came as a huge relief. Now, I could finally stand up and do something to protect my students, just like a teacher should, I thought. So when the base I was stationed at asked if anyone wanted to volunteer themselves as a kamikaze pilot, you can bet I was the very first to raise my hand.”

He spoke with such passion and pride that, again, I couldn’t say a word.

“I’ve always wanted to be a soldier ever since I was little,” Ishimaru said with a bright smile. “Decided from a pretty early age that I was gonna join the army once I grew up and risk my life fighting for my country. Call me a slave to propaganda if you want, I guess—but for me, that’s just what it means to be a real Japanese patriot, y’know?”

It sounded almost like he was trying to make light of the situation, but Itakura shook his head.

“No, same here,” the younger boy said with a smile. “That’s why I joined up too.”

Akira was the last one to give a reason.

“One of my superior officers put it to us like this,” he began. “‘The situation’s not looking good at this point; we can’t hope to match our enemies in terms of resources or manpower. Our only hope for saving Japan now is if brave young soldiers like you are willing to step forth and give everything you have, your very souls, to the cause. Now tell me: Who among you is willing to lay down their life for their country, their emperor, and their dear friends and loved ones?’ For whatever reason, I was deeply moved by the way he spoke of it—and the thought of being able to give my ‘very soul’ to the cause of defending Japan. It was more than enough to convince me to raise my hand.”

I stared him directly in the eyes, and he looked straight back at me.

His eyes were untainted and unclouded, his pupils pure and clear.

What in the world was he saying? Could he even hear himself?

I didn’t understand it. How could he possibly be so delusional?

It must have been harder for me to swallow all this as someone who knew exactly how the war was going to end. There was nothing these men could do to keep Japan from surrendering in a few months’ time, meaning their deaths would be utterly in vain. A few sunken warships were not going to change the outcome at this point.

And yes, of course, losing the war would not be pleasant for any of us. It’d come with its fair share of pain and dishonor. But it wasn’t going to be the complete disaster these men clearly believed it would be. It would take quite some time to rebuild and recover, sure—but Japan would ultimately rebound and bring about an end to all the suffering this war had caused to our country and its people for so many years. I knew firsthand that this would eventually lead to Japan becoming an even more prosperous nation than ever.

All that is to say that there was no need for these men to die. What sense could there possibly be in sacrificing brave, earnest young men with so much left to live for to fight a war that was already lost? I couldn’t bear being the only one who knew it would all be for nothing; I wanted to shout from the rooftops that Japan was going to surrender. But I knew none of them would believe me; they’d only call me a traitor or a lunatic. So instead, I just said this:

“…It’s just stupid to volunteer yourself to die, no matter the cause. It’s a waste of a perfectly good life, and all the potential it carries… You might as well just be committing suicide. Anyone who’d follow an order like that without protest is just as blind and stupid as the stubborn, prideful old men giving them out. You don’t have to do this, you know… Just run away or something! Who cares what anyone else might think of you?!”

My voice was trembling. A moment after I finished, I heard Akira chuckle.

“…You really are honest to a fault, Yuri,” he said softly. “You wear your heart on your sleeve—it’s a good thing, don’t get me wrong.”

Teraoka and Ishmaru nodded in agreement.

“I understand what you’re trying to say,” Akira continued. “But see, the truth is…the war’s not going as well as the newspapers make it seem. If we can’t turn the tides even a little bit, Japan is going to end up having to make an unconditional surrender on extremely unfavorable terms. If that happens, our country will be crippled to the core; there will be no future for Japan as we know it. The only way for us to prevent that from happening, now that we’re at a distinct numbers and firepower disadvantage, is to throw all caution to the wind and try to hit them where it hurts, no matter the cost.”

He spoke calm and sure, with no hint of doubt or hesitation on his face.

It pained me to see how steadfast his resolve was in this. Desperate to see if I could somehow change his mind, I argued with him.

“Sure, but it still won’t change a thing,” I said. “You’ll just be throwing away your lives for nothing. Even if you do manage to sink an enemy ship, we’re still going to lose in the end.”

“You really are the most outspoken girl I know—I like that about you,” said Akira. “But I don’t consider that throwing away my life. I would consider it using my life to the fullest extent of its potential to save Japan and my fellow countrymen. Could there be any more noble or honorable purpose in life than that?”

I was silent. I didn’t know what to say.

How, Akira? How could you be so certain that Japan still had a bright future ahead, even if you wouldn’t live to see it? What made you so sure that victory was only achievable at the cost of your life? That your death would save your family’s lives?

It didn’t make any sense. It all just felt so blatantly wrong.

There was so much I wanted to say—both in protest and in reassurance—and so much I wished I could make him understand that my heart felt like it was going to overflow from the tempest of emotions now swirling inside my chest.

But I couldn’t think of a single word I could say that would convince these men to abandon the fate they’d chosen for themselves. Instead, I just turned on my heel and walked out of the room, gripping my serving tray tight.

I was irritated. And upset. Woefully, terribly, helplessly upset.

His Gentle Frame

“SAY, YURI-CHAN… LET’S CLOSE UP EARLY TODAY AND go out for a bit, okay?”

One morning, Tsuru offered to take me out to run a couple of errands with her.

The sun was high, and it was hot enough that I could feel my scalp burning even through the straw hat Tsuru had lent me. I didn’t ask where we were going—but judging from her expression, it wasn’t going to be anyplace fun. We turned off the main road onto a small, quiet side street, and after walking a few more blocks, we came to a stop in front of an old, abandoned temple that had clearly seen better days.

“They’re buried here…” Tsuru explained. “I come every month to visit their graves and pay my respects.”

I wanted to ask who she was referring to—but as I watched her gaze up at the temple with squinted eyes in silence, I couldn’t bring myself to say a word. Finally, and with heavy footsteps, she passed through the gate and made a stop at the temple’s main hall to offer her prayer before continuing on to the adjacent graveyard.

I followed behind her in silence, weaving through the worn, weathered gravestones. Flowers had been left in front of a few of them, though they’d all long since dried up and withered away. Most of the graves had been left completely neglected, I noticed—it seemed folks in this day and age had more important things to worry about than visiting the deceased.

Eventually, Tsuru came to a stop in front of a specific grave marker that featured several names on a single plaque.

“This is it,” she said. “My whole family’s buried right here.”

That caught me off guard—until I remembered what she’d told me when we first met, that her family had died in a recent air raid. She wrapped up the withered flowers from her last visit in an old newspaper, then used a linen cloth and some water from the bucket she’d brought along to clean the stone slab. She was wiping it down so carefully and methodically, it almost reminded me of a jeweler polishing a precious gem. It was heartbreaking to watch.

“Here,” I said in a soft whisper. “Let me help.”

Tsuru smiled and handed me the whisk broom, and I got to work sweeping up the dust and fallen leaves around the grave.

“Thank you, dear,” said Tsuru as she wiped the marker dry. “I’m glad I got to bring you with me this time. Usually, I only ever visit alone.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this, so I just gave a little nod. The thought of her being left by herself in the world, forced to visit her family’s gravesite all by her lonesome, saddened me beyond words.

Once we had finished cleaning the grave, Tsuru crouched down in front of it and lit some incense with a match. She handed me a stick, and I set it on the incense plate in front of the plaque. Tsuru then did the same thing herself. I watched for a moment as the wispy trails of smoke curled upward into the air, then closed my eyes before placing my hands together in prayer.

I could hear the leaves rustling in the trees all around us as the insects sang their song. With my head lowered, I felt the hot sun on the nape of my neck. When I finally opened my eyes again and looked up, Tsuru still had her hands clasped together. She hadn’t moved an inch or even blinked. She just stared right at the grave with eyes so lonesome, I couldn’t help but avert my own.

“…Sorry for the wait,” she eventually said, rising to her feet after quite some time. “Let’s get going, then, shall we?”

I nodded and stood up with her. I was actually starting to feel a bit lightheaded. Placing the items we’d brought back in the empty bucket, we walked side by side down the road back the way we came.

“It was my husband we buried there first, after he died in the war,” Tsuru explained. “Then our daughter and grandchild, who died in that air raid I told you about.”

“…Right,” I said, unsure how to respond to this.

“Such a tragedy… My daughter had a lot to look forward to, you see. Blessed with a happy marriage to the wealthy heir of a large business the next town over, and a healthy child, to boot… But then their house was swallowed up by the flames in the firebombing, and the three of them perished together… I had to ask her late husband’s family to share some of their remains with me so that I could bury them here as well.”

Tsuru’s eyes were still dry at the moment, but her voice was hoarse and wavering. I could tell she was on the verge of tears.

“I’m glad they died together, at the very least,” she said. “There’s nothing sadder than an infant losing its mother, after all.”

I didn’t, couldn’t respond to this.

“Glad” they died together? I wasn’t sure I could agree. It was still a tragedy of equal measure, regardless, in my view. If it hadn’t been for that air raid, Tsuru would have gotten to watch her granddaughter grow up and spend the rest of her life watching over her daughter’s family with a smile—rather than the sad, lonesome look I’d seen her wear as she was tending to their grave. As the crying cicadas assailed my ears and the sun’s harsh rays beat down on my skin, I bit my lip with chagrin.

“Oh, come now,” said Tsuru. “No need to look so sad, my dear.”

She took me into her arms and squeezed me tight, then rubbed my back. Feeling her seemingly boundless warmth, I couldn’t help but break down and cry, my tears dripping down onto Tsuru’s shoulder.

“…You’re a good, sweet girl, Yuri-chan,” she said. I shook my head.

I wasn’t sweet at all. I was a foul-mouthed contrarian who’d hurt a ton of people, not least of whom was my own mother. I was about the farthest thing from a “good girl” anyone could imagine. And yet, Tsuru still warmly accepted me exactly as I was.

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault, dear,” she said. “There’s no use in crying over what’s already come to pass. Besides, I’ve got you now, don’t I? I’m far from lonely… Thank you for being here with me, Yuri-chan.”

“No, don’t say that…” I sobbed, hiccuping. “If anything, I’m the one who should be thanking you… You took me into your home, you gave me a job and a place to rest my head at night, you keep me fed…and I haven’t uttered a single word of appreciation… Thank you for everything, Tsuru-san.”

As I spoke, I thought of my own mother. Here I was, expressing my sincere gratitude to a woman I wasn’t even related to, and yet I’d never once shown a lick of gratitude to my own mother. I’m so sorry, Mom, I whispered internally.

“No need to be so formal, dear,” said Tsuru. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re already family to me… The only family I’ve got left now…”

I felt like I could see Tsuru’s eyes finally beginning to water.

I thought back on the names I’d seen engraved on the grave marker—the names of her dead family members. Oh, I see now—perhaps I really was something of a surrogate daughter to her. Not that I minded playing that role for her one bit; I knew her kindness and consideration toward me was the real deal, after all. If I could at least help ease the sorrow of losing her whole family in this stupid war, I was more than happy to play the role, assuming it was within my power to do so, of course.

Just then, I had a random thought.

Why was I so open to the idea of being Tsuru’s surrogate daughter, but so conflicted and put off by the idea of being Akira’s surrogate sister?

After that, Tsuru had to run another errand over at an old acquaintance’s house, so we made our way back over to the edge of town. We passed near the old army airfield and the base where Akira and his squad mates were stationed. It was a bit of a hike from town, so I couldn’t actually see the base itself, but I did see fighter planes taking off and landing from time to time, and I heard the sound of their engines revving up as they raced down the runway.

Tsuru was paying a visit to an old classmate from her elementary school days—a sweet old lady by the name of Takano. I introduced myself when she opened the door, and she politely smiled back at me. Tsuru handed her the kimono and pickles she’d come to deliver and received a bundle of fresh fruits and vegetables from Takano’s relatives in the countryside in exchange, which she then handed to me.

In this time period, even if you had money to spare, you couldn’t go out and spend it all willy-nilly to buy each and every little thing you wanted. Sometimes, when there were shortages, you had to barter or trade for things you wanted or needed with those who had access to them.

Just as I was about to place the bundle of fresh produce from Takano in my basket, I thought I heard a sound coming from somewhere nearby, so I turned my head.

“…Is someone there?” I asked.

There was no reply. And yet, I was all but certain I’d felt a presence. I walked over to the edge of the property with my basket in hand to take a look—and then gasped. Leaning up against the fence to the next house over, there was a small boy collapsed in a heap on the ground.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Are you not feeling well?”

As I got a better look at him, I found myself at a loss for words. Both the arms poking out from his filthy button-up shirt and the legs extending from his half-length suspenders were skinnier than any limbs I’d ever seen in my entire life. The phrase “skin and bones” came to mind.

“I’m hungry…” he said. “I’m…thirsty…”

The boy—he couldn’t have been any older than ten—slowly lifted his head and looked up at me with vacant eyes. His cheeks were gaunt, and his lips were dried and cracked. Through the collar opening of his loose-fitting shirt, I could see his ribs.

I glanced down at the basket in my hands, full of ripe, fresh produce. It all looked so delicious—far juicier and more appetizing than the produce you could get around here, which was generally just yams or pumpkins. You certainly didn’t see leafy vegetables and tomatoes in this neck of the woods; that was for sure—which was why Tsuru had traded one of her few precious kimonos just so she could offer the kamikaze pilots who came to the mess hall something a little special for once.

I knew that. But I couldn’t help myself.

Looking back over my shoulder, I could see that Tsuru was still busy chatting it up with Takano at her front doorstep.

Forgive me, Tsuru-san, I whispered in my mind, then grabbed a vegetable from the basket and held it out in front of the boy’s face. He practically snatched it out of my hands before I could say a word and sank his teeth right into it in no time. I could only imagine how long it had been since he’d last had anything to eat.

“…Take your time, now,” I said. “You can have the whole thing, don’t worry.”

The boy calmed down a bit at this, then nodded in understanding.

Once he was finished eating, he tried to get up and run off, but I grabbed him by the sleeve. He turned to face me and mumbled a simple, artless “thank you.” I smiled at him, then plopped my hand on top of his head. But in the next moment, his face twisted as though he was in agony.

“Wha… Oh, I’m sorry!” I said, flustered. “Did I hurt you?”

The boy shook his head, but there were still tears welling up in his eyes.

“Then what’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you injured or something?”

Concerned, I grabbed the boy by his frail, bony shoulders.

“…I got beaten over the head,” he confessed.

“What? Beaten? By who?!” I demanded.

“By the grocery store man…” As he spoke, his voice turned into a whimper, and tears began to spill out from the corners of his eyes. “Ever since my mom and dad died, I don’t have any food or money anymore… So I get hungry and go try to eat the stuff at the store, but the man there beats me every time… Over and over and over again…”

By the end, I couldn’t even make out what he was saying through the sobs.

“That’s horrible…” I said. “What kind of monster would do such a thing…?”

I said this without really thinking it through, but in reality, I knew the shopkeeper was probably struggling to put food on the table himself. Having someone steal some of the valuable goods he’d painstakingly acquired in the hopes of making enough income to support his family probably wasn’t something he could just allow.

I understood that. Really, I did. And yet.

“…I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said. “That must be really scary.”

Unable to do anything else for him, I held the boy tightly in my arms. He was so thin and frail that even a relatively small girl like me was able to wrap him up tight. Eventually, I could feel myself starting to cry as well. This poor boy had lost both his parents, been left all alone to starve, and when he finally resorted to stealing in order to keep himself alive, he got beaten ruthlessly for it.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to think.

Why did such horrible things have to happen in this world? Who was to blame for it? Who was at fault? Who should we direct our anger at? Who could we hold accountable? I had no idea. It was a scary realization.

The emaciated boy just kept on crying. He’d probably been holding it in for quite a while now. But with no one to rely on anymore, he didn’t even have a shoulder to cry on.

How lucky was I to have been rescued by Akira and Tsuru so quickly after I first arrived in this time period? Or to have food on my plate every day, even if it wasn’t a lot, in an era when so many little kids were starving and dying on the streets?

I wished there was something more I could do to help this boy—but I knew I didn’t have the means or the authority, and that was painful to me. I was in no position to lift someone up out of poverty in any meaningful way, as someone who was only off the streets myself thanks to Tsuru’s good graces. And even if I could help this single boy somehow, I couldn’t possibly save the countless others who were in similar situations, both here and all across the country. There was nothing I could do—it was simply a fact of life.

And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder.

If this boy had been born in my time, in an era without war, he never would have had to go through all this suffering. He wouldn’t need someone like me to offer him food just to survive; he and his family would all still be alive and living happily together.

“…This war just needs to get itself over with already,” I said—my voice surprisingly loud, compared with the boy’s convulsive sobbing. “We just need to hurry up and accept the fact that we’ve lost.”

With watery eyes, the boy looked up at me. I gently rubbed his head.

“Don’t you worry…” I continued. “Soon enough, we’ll all be able to go back to our normal lives… Japan’s going to surrender… I promise it will be for the best…”

“You there!” shouted a voice from behind me. “What did you just say?!”

Startled, I seized up for a moment. Then, turning to look over my shoulder, I could see a man in a police officer uniform standing directly behind me. He was taller than me and had a burly, muscular build.

“…Can I help you, sir?” I asked him curiously. The man, who’d been looking at me with a stone-faced expression thus far, suddenly grew infuriated.

“Don’t play dumb with me!” he barked. “If you think I’ll let you off easy just because you’re a woman, you’re dead wrong!”

I was flabbergasted by this sudden, violent outburst. Why was this man I didn’t know blowing up at me out of nowhere? I was so startled that I couldn’t even formulate a reply—but my confusion only served to aggravate the man further, his face turning bright red.

“You think I didn’t hear what you just said?!” he shouted. “Well, go on! Say it again!”

“I…beg your pardon…?” I said.

“Out with it, now! I already told you, playing dumb isn’t going to work on me!”

As the man yelled at me, he reached for his waist and pulled a long, thin baton out from a holster in his belt. Recognizing it to be a weapon, my blood ran cold, and I reflexively moved to protect the little boy, hiding him behind my back.

“…It’s not safe here,” I said. “You should run.”

The boy looked at me, then at the police officer, fear in his eyes.

“Go on,” I said. “Quickly, now.”

I pushed him lightly on his shoulder, and the boy fumbled to his feet and staggered off, looking back at me several times with concern as he went. I flashed him a smile to reassure him I’d be okay, and waved him goodbye.

“Are you trying to make a fool out of me?!” the officer shouted.

I could feel my simmering anger rising to a violent boil. It had been a while since I’d felt this mad; his oppressive, demeaning tone reminded me all too well of how my school teachers talked down to me in my own time. But this guy was somehow even more obnoxious. Accosting me angrily out of nowhere, and brandishing his weapon to intimidate me… I was scared, yes—but even more than that, I was downright furious.

“I could say the same to you, sir,” I spat back. “You come over here shouting in my face, and you won’t even tell me what I’ve done wrong? Are you on some sort of power kick? Or do you just think you can get away with abusing your authority because I’m a woman?”

I knew I was playing with fire by being this argumentative with him. One look at his reaction was enough to tell me I’d crossed the line.

“Don’t screw with me, damn you!” he said, raising his voice even higher as he gripped his baton tightly. “I heard exactly what you said! You said Japan’s already lost! That surrender would be for the best!”

“I did say that, yes,” I readily admitted. “And what about it? I’m entitled to my own opinion, aren’t I?”

“Wha… The nerve of you, woman! You traitorous scum!”

He grabbed me roughly by the arm, and my whole body seized up. As he raised his baton high over his head, I realized he was about to hit me. A beating from a large, angry man like this would probably do a lot more than leave a bruise. Instinctively, I closed my eyes and lifted my free arm to cover my face.

A moment later, I felt a blunt and powerful impact, and I could see stars on the backs of my eyelids. It hadn’t even been a direct hit—more like he’d just grazed my skull—and yet it still sent a searing pain down my scalp, a pain that sent me reeling backward.

“Owww…” I groaned. “What the heck was that for?”

But when I opened my eyes to glare at him, he had a terrifying look on his face as he raised his baton for a second strike—this one much stronger than last time. I shut my eyes again and braced myself for impact—but the pain never came. And yet, I could still hear the dull sound of the strike. Confused, I lifted my head—only to see a small-statured woman collapsed in the dirt right in front of me, holding her shoulder in pain.

“Tsuru-san!” I shouted, rushing to help her back up.

“It’s all right, my dear,” she said with a smile—but the pain was written all over her face. Realizing she must have blocked the second blow for me, I nearly started to cry.

“Tsuru-san, why…? Are you all right? Your shoulder… Is it okay?”

Tsuru just gave a silent nod, then hugged me tight, before turning to look up at the officer again—whose eyes went wide with realization.

“Wait, you’re…the old lady who runs the Tsuru-ya Mess Hall, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s right,” Tsuru said with a nod. “I’m guessing my little girl here must have said something objectionable without realizing it? If so, then allow me to take the blame for her. I’ll ensure it never happens again, so please overlook her ignorance just this once.”

She got on her knees and prostrated herself before the police officer.

“Tsuru-san, no!” I said with a gasp. “There’s no need for that! I haven’t done anything wrong, I swear! I didn’t say anything objectionable at all!”

Tsuru grabbed me by the wrist and shook her head with a smile, as if to say: It’s okay, dear. Just let me handle this.

“Still denying it, are you?!” the officer barked, glaring at me. “You know, I’d received multiple reports that the mess hall’s new poster girl was harboring anti-war sentiments, but decided to chalk it up to pure childish ignorance… Yet judging from her defiant attitude, I can see that it’s far more than just that. I can’t overlook this any longer; I hope you’re ready to pay the price for her treason!”

He raised his baton over his head again, and I dived in front of Tsuru to protect her. I simply couldn’t bear to let her take another blow on my behalf.

“No, don’t!” Tsuru cried.

I gritted my teeth and shut my eyes tight.

But once again, no pain of impact came.

Warily, I opened my eyes to see a well-built pair of shoulders right in front of me, draped in military garb. It was a broad but gentle frame, one I knew all too well.

“Wait… Akira?” I gasped.

I could see only a sliver of his face in profile, but even so, I knew it was him.

“No way…” I said. “But how?”

Akira had grabbed the police officer’s baton with one hand, right as he swung it down. Realizing this must have been the dull impact I heard a moment ago, my face went pale.

“Akira!” I cried. “Are you okay?!”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said, chuckling a bit. “I’m just fine.”

I was so relieved to see the smile on his face that I started tearing up.

Akira slowly lowered his arm, still gripping the officer’s baton tightly. The officer frowned and gave Akira a once-over, scanning his uniform from top to bottom.

“…A kamikaze pilot, are you?” he murmured.

Akira didn’t say a word; he just looked down at the officer in silence.

Taking this as an affirmation, the officer withdrew his baton.

In this time period, kamikaze pilots like Akira were heralded as heroes for giving their lives for their country—revered like gods among the living until their time came. Which was why, I assumed, this police officer couldn’t bring himself to strike Akira for his insolence in intervening here. Once I put it all together, I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

“This girl and I were just talking a few things over,” said the officer. “You’re not involved here. Please stand aside.”

The officer’s tone was brusque; I could tell he was very frustrated that he couldn’t reprimand Akira physically.

Akira’s tone, meanwhile, was calm and collected, with no hint of spite whatsoever.

“Sorry, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Akira, shaking his head. “Involved or not, I won’t stand idly by while you assault an innocent girl.”

“Excuse me?!” said the officer, his face reddening further. “I wasn’t assaulting anyone! I was doing my duty to discipline this girl for being a traitor to the Empire!”

“A traitor?” said Akira. “And what proof do you have of this?”

“I heard her say the words myself! She said Japan has already lost!”

“Yes, but what was the context? Did you actually hear everything she was saying from the beginning, or are you jumping to conclusions based on a few words you overheard in passing?”

Akira continued speaking softly to the man, never once raising his voice or changing his expression. In stark contrast, the police officer was clearly growing increasingly frustrated by the second. It only took one look to tell that he was utterly incensed at having his authority and pride as a police officer questioned in this way.

“…Silence!” he shouted. “I thought I told you to stand down!”

The man shoved Akira lightly by the collarbone in an attempt to push him aside.

“No,” said Akria, unmoving. “I think I’ll stay right where I am.”

This was the last straw.

“I said move, you damn brat!” he shouted—then he reared his massive torso back and shoved Akira as hard as he could, sending him flying across the road.

“Akira!” I shouted, attempting to run to his side. “…Ngh!”

My vision went dark as the large man stepped in front of me to block my path. I looked up to see him glaring angrily down at me, with his fist raised and clenched. I knew he was about to hit me—I’d probably be knocked out before I even realized what was happening. Yet for whatever reason, it felt like time slowed to a crawl instead.

I watched in slow motion as his fist grew closer and closer.

But just then, as I braced myself for impact, Akira dived in front of me.

And I could hear the dull crack of bone hitting bone through a thin layer of skin.

The moment the fist hit his skull, Akira’s entire body keeled over.

“Akira!” I cried so loud, it stung my throat.

He staggered unsteadily to his feet and pressed one hand against his brow where he’d taken the blow, before he fell to his knees on the dirt.

“Akira!” I said, hurriedly crouching down beside him. “Akira, are you okay?!”

A stupid question, of course—but it was all I could think of to say.

I didn’t know how to properly express what I was feeling in that moment.

This agony, this anguish gnawing away at my chest from within.

Trying my very best not to cry, I clung to Akira’s back as he hung his head.

“Ngh…”

I heard a groan escape from his gritted teeth. His eyes were tightly shut, his face grimacing as though it was taking everything he had to try to endure the pain.

“Akira…” I whimpered. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”

This was all my fault. He’d only gotten hurt because he was trying to protect me. All because I just couldn’t keep my stupid mouth shut.

Biting my lip with regret, I lifted my head to see the police officer towering over me, looking back and forth between Akira on the ground and his still-clenched fist as if even he couldn’t believe what he’d just done. He seemed downright baffled by the fact that he’d lost control of his emotions so badly, he had struck a kamikaze pilot in a fit of rage.

“Apologize,” I said—my voice a husky growl. “Apologize to him right now!”

Akira was still on his knees, covering his face with both hands. Behind him, Tsuru was looking down at him with concern, still clutching her own shoulder in pain from when she’d been hit. I could feel a fiery rage beginning to bubble in my chest, swirling and billowing like a raging storm. I was livid with this man, beyond belief.

“You make me sick…” I said. “Apologize to both of these people, right this instant! You scum of the Earth!”

The officer winced in pain as though my words had physically cut him.

“…Yuri…”

Suddenly, I felt a tug on my wrist from below. I looked down to see Akira gazing up at me, his face battered and pale.

“It’s okay, Yuri…” he said. “I just had my bell rung a bit… I’m fine now…”

He staggered shakily to his feet, and I followed suit. But when I looked up to get a better look at him, my heart skipped a beat. There was blood trickling down his face.

“A…Akira, you’re bleeding…!” I said, my voice trembling in horror.

He smiled weakly at me and placed his hand on top of my head.

“I’m fine,” he said. “It’s nothing. Just a little scratch, that’s all.”

“No it’s not!” I said. “Just look how much blood there is!”

“Like I said, it’s fine. Look, the bleeding’s already stopped.”

Akira wiped his brow with his sleeve—and to be sure, there was no more blood trickling out from the wound. That was a bit of a relief, at least.

“…Sorry, Yuri,” he said, gently rubbing my head. “Didn’t mean to worry you.”

His soft, reassuring voice made my throat tighten up, and my vision started to blur.

“D-don’t look at me that way…” said the officer. “I didn’t do anything wrong… I’m just doing my job, okay… Don’t blame me…”

He repeated the same sentiment over and over, as though he were trying to convince himself more than anyone else, before stumbling off on unsteady legs. After watching him go, I turned my gaze back to Akira and Tsuru.

“…Are you two okay?” I asked, my voice still trembling with anxiety.

They both nodded, smiling gently even after they’d each taken a beating on my behalf. I couldn’t hold it in any longer; I broke down and started to cry.

“I’m so sorry…” I sobbed. “It’s all my fault… Please, you two… Forgive me…”

I covered my face with my palms, but it made little difference. I could feel the tears trickling through the gaps between my fingers and down the backs of my hands.

Akira chuckled softly.

“Wow,” he said. “Didn’t know you were such a crybaby, Yuri.”

He wrapped his arms around my head and ran his fingers through my hair.

I clung tightly to him and started weeping uncontrollably into his chest.

“I’d better go tell Takano-san what happened,” said Tsuru, walking away. “I’m sure she must be worried about us.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Yuri,” said Akira. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was all that police officer’s fault.”

“…I know,” I said.

Pressing my ear against his chest, I could hear his heartbeat, slow and steady.

He’s alive, I thought to myself. He’s right here with me.

I could feel the raging torrent of emotions that had been swirling across my chest slowly beginning to calm.

“Maybe it’s not even the officer who’s ultimately to blame,” said Akira. “Maybe it’s something deeper than that… Whatever it was that made him that way…”

Every time he spoke, I could feel his chest quake against my cheek. It felt comfortable, just resting my head against him like this, so I closed my eyes for a bit.

Eventually, I pulled myself away and looked up at him.

“By the way, Akira…” I said. “What were you even doing all the way out here?”

For a moment, Akira looked at me, eyes wide, before bursting out laughing.

“Funny—I was about to ask you the exact same question!” he said. “This isn’t anywhere near your usual neck of the woods, Yuri. I can’t believe we ran into each other in this part of town.”

“Oh… Right. Well, you see…” I began. “I was out running errands with Tsuru-san, and she had to swing by an old friend’s house… They live out here.”

“Ah, that makes sense. Me, I just happened to be walking by when I heard people chattering away about some sort of ruckus nearby, so I thought I’d take a look.”

“What? A ruckus?”

“Yeah—I figured it was probably just a couple of drunks who’d gotten into a tussle over something or other, in which case I figured I could step in and help break it all up. Little did I know I’d find you here picking a fight with a police officer! Now that was unexpected!”

“Hey!” I said, pouting. “I wasn’t picking a fight!”

“You sure about that? You didn’t give him a dirty look or anything?”

“No! Who do you think I am?!”

“Ah ha ha ha!”

At least Akira was getting a hearty laugh out of all this.

It annoyed me to be teased over a traumatic experience like this, but simply hearing Akira’s laughter was enough to light a warm, cozy fire in my chest and allow me to brush past it.

Just then, someone walked right past us, and I quickly pulled myself away from Akira, embarrassed to be seen clinging to him like a small child. Next, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a vivid green glint on the ground—the leafy remnants of the vegetable I’d given the little boy earlier. Thinking back on that starving, emaciated child was all it took to make my spirits sink into the doldrums once again.

“Well… Can I ask you what did happen, then?” said Akira, apparently noticing the sudden tinge of glumness in my expression.

I nodded and proceeded to tell him everything that had happened. In the process, I could feel myself getting worked up all over again—and by the end of the story, I was on the verge of sobbing for what must have been the dozenth time today.

“It’s not right…” I said. “There’s something wrong with this country, I tell you…”

The words just spilled out from between my lips.

I knew I probably shouldn’t be saying that. Not in this time period.

But I thought that maybe, just maybe, Akira would understand.

If there was anyone in 1945 who’d be willing to hear me out, it was him.

“How messed up is it that there are little boys like him, left all alone to starve to death out on the streets?” I said. “How cruel is it to be beaten senseless like that, just for saying you oppose the war…? It’s not okay… If that’s what this war is doing to us, then there’s no way we’re doing the right thing by fighting it. There’s something deeply wrong with this country… With the Empire… A society like this should not be allowed to exist…”

My emotions were on the verge of bursting out of me uncontrollably. I couldn’t stop myself from saying exactly how I felt. I knew if anyone else were to hear this, I’d be branded a traitor to Japan all over again. Akira, though… He just listened quietly and attentively until I was finished speaking.

When at last he opened his mouth to speak, he looked me straight in the eye.

“Yuri, are you…” he began—but then stopped short.

I stared right back at him, waiting for him to finish his thought.

“You’re not suggesting that…that…”

Again, he cut himself short.

Not suggesting what? I was about to ask him to stop beating around the bush—when all of a sudden, Tsuru emerged from Takano’s house.

“Well, then… I suppose I’d best be on my way too,” said Akira, pivoting abruptly as he turned to leave. “I’ll see you later, Yuri.”

As he started walking off down the road, I wanted nothing more than to chase after him. Unfortunately, I needed to explain everything to Tsuru as well, plus I still had to apologize for giving some of her precious vegetables to that boy without asking. In the end, I just stood there and watched him go—his silhouette growing smaller and smaller, until eventually, he turned the corner and disappeared from my sight.

Chapter Two: Midsummer

CHAPTER TWO:
MIDSUMMER

A Momentary Happiness

FIRST THING IN THE MORNING THE NEXT DAY, I went to check on Tsuru’s wound.

“Tsuru-san,” I said. “Let me take a look at your shoulder.”

“What?” she replied. “Oh, I’m fine, dear… Don’t worry about it.”

“Sorry, I am worried about it. Now show me.”

Tsuru shot me a strained smile, then pulled back her collar to reveal her shoulder.

“Oh, man…” I said. “Yeah, that’s a pretty nasty bruise…”

“Well, yes,” said Tsuru. “But it’s just that, a bruise. Nothing more.”

“Still, though, I think it’d be best if you took the day off today.”

“I’ll be fine, dear. Really.”

“No, no, no! I’ve already decided—today is a day for healing!”

I forcibly dragged Tsuru over and sat her down in the tatami room, then put up a paper sign that read, “CLOSED FOR THE DAY” at the entrance of the mess hall.

“I’ll take care of all the chores today,” I said. “You just focus on resting up.”

“I feel bad, though…” said Tsuru.

“Well, don’t! I’m allowed to pay you back for your kindness occasionally, aren’t I? Just let me handle everything.”

“Mmm… If you insist, I suppose…”

Finally, Tsuru relented and took a seat. I breathed a sigh of relief and got to work cooking. As I chopped up the pickled vegetables on the cutting board, I thought back to when I was just a little girl.

Back when I was in elementary school and my mother and I still had a very good relationship, we’d always be working in the kitchen together. On days when my mother seemed too exhausted from work to cook, I’d always insist on making dinner all by myself that day and snatch the kitchen knife right out of her hand. Yet for whatever reason, as I grew older, I’d stopped participating in the cooking altogether. Or even checking in with my mother to make sure she was doing okay after a long day at work.

If I ever had the chance to see my mother again, though…

I’d want to make dinner together with her, just like old times.

With no restaurant work to take care of today, it felt like time was moving more slowly than usual. I finished all the housework by noon. As such, I figured I might as well clean the storefront while I was at it, so I headed out into the dining area—when suddenly, I heard a customer standing outside.

“Oh, sorry!” I said, opening the door. “We’re closed today…”

“Morning, Yuri,” Akira said, greeting me with his usual smile.

“Akira?” I said, blinking a few times. “You’re here? All by yourself?”

“Yep, that’s right.”

“Well, I’d love to serve you, but I’m afraid the mess hall’s closed today…”

“Not a problem. I didn’t come for a meal or anything, I just thought I’d check in and see how you and Tsuru-san were holding up after yesterday.”

Tsuru emerged from the other room; apparently, she had heard us talking.

“Well, if it isn’t Sakuma-san!” she said. “So kind of you to stop by!”

“Don’t mention it,” said Akira. “How’s your shoulder holding up?”

“Oh, just fine, dear! Doesn’t even hurt one bit!”

“Ah, that’s good… I’m glad to hear it.”

“How about you? Is your head okay?”

Akira took off his uniform cap to show his forehead. Above his brow, I could see a fresh, reddish scar—though it was a surface-level one, hardly even visible.

“A-OK here too,” said Akira. “The bleeding stopped really quickly, and I disinfected it as soon as I got back to base, so it’s all healed up.”

“It doesn’t hurt?” I asked.

“Not at all,” he replied with a smile. I couldn’t tell if he was just saying this to reassure me, but I was relieved to see that, at the very least, he was in good spirits.

I made some tea, and the three of us chatted idly for a while until eventually Tsuru suddenly clapped her hands together as if she had just remembered something.

“Say, I’ve got an idea!” she said.

“Oh? What’s that?” I asked.

“Why don’t the two of you go out and do something together?”

She flashed me a playful smile.

“Huh? Wait, what?! Wh-why do you say that…?” I stuttered, discombobulated, as she grabbed my hands and squeezed them tight.

“Why not?” she said, her eyes narrowing sweetly. “You have the day off, and so does he—that doesn’t happen very often, now, does it? You should make the most of it!”

I looked over at Akira. His eyes were wide with surprise too, but soon he was grinning at me as well. I could feel my heart skip a beat; he and I hadn’t really been able to spend any time together recently—at least not just the two of us.

“Go out and have some fun, Yuri-chan,” said Tsuru.

“But…you’ll be all by yourself for the rest of the day…” I said.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll stay in bed and rest like a good girl.”

I looked at her nervously, still unsure what to do.

“So, Sakuma-san,” said Tsuru. “Take good care of Yuri-chan, would you?”

She put her hand on the small of my back and gave me an encouraging push over toward where Akira was standing.

“Of course,” he said, nodding.

“Been a while since we’ve taken a walk like this, hasn’t it?”

Akira gazed upward as he spoke. I lifted my head up to the sky as well.

The summer sky was clear and blue, not a cloud in sight.

“Perfect weather for it, too, eh?” he said, looking over at me.

I tried to formulate a response, but my mind was too preoccupied by his sheer proximity to me that the words just wouldn’t come. I could feel my palms starting to sweat.

I was a gigantic knot of nerves, and I knew it. But how could I not be, all alone with a boy like him, walking through town together without any destination or goal in mind aside from indulging in each other’s company? I’d never done anything like that before.

Unable to say a word, I just stared down at the ground and focused on walking. Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. Rinse and repeat, again and again.

As I counted my footsteps, I racked my brain to try to remember how I’d made conversation with him so casually in the past. What sorts of things had we even talked about? I couldn’t recall; my mind was a total blank.

“What’s wrong, Yuri?” said Akira. “Are you not feeling well?”

I jerked my head up and shook it from side to side.

“No, I’m fine!” I said. “Sorry, I was just spacing out a little.”

“Ah, I see,” said Akira, nodding. “Well, is there anywhere you’d like to go?”

He flashed me a welcoming grin, but I couldn’t think of anything at all. As long as I was with him, anywhere would be fine with me, I caught myself thinking—then immediately got bashful and started feeling a bit tight in the chest.

“W-well, not especially…” I said, scrambling. “I still don’t know that many places around here, I’m afraid…”

“Ah, I see. Fair enough,” said Akira, nodding. “Honestly, me either. I don’t really get to go out and just wander around like this very often.”

“Right, yeah… That makes sense.”

“Still, we should make up our minds and do something, at least. It’d be dangerous to loiter too long on a hot day like this.”

“Dangerous? Why’s that?”

“Well, we wouldn’t want you to start feeling faint, and need me to carry you again.”

He craned his neck and looked over at me with an ever-so-slightly impish grin. His face was so close to mine that I panicked. I pretended to be offended in a hasty attempt to conceal how flustered he had me.

“Look, I had a lot going on that day, okay?!” I said. “I can handle the heat now!”

“Is that so?” said Akira. “I have to admit, I was definitely caught off guard, seeing a girl collapsed by the roadside like that… Had to wonder how you ended up in that predicament in the first place.”

“Oh, hush, you! I couldn’t help it, all right?!” I grumbled.

“Okay, okay! Sorry,” he said, chuckling. “But in any event, we really should figure out something to do… Hrrm…”

Akira scanned the vicinity, then suddenly came to a stop.

“Wait, I’ve got an idea!” he said, turning to look at me. “Come on!”

He grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me over to a nearby cafe with the words CONFECTIONERY & SWEETS written on the edge of its awning.

The moment I saw the word SWEETS, I let out an audible gasp.

You see, sugar was considered an almost priceless commodity in this day and age. One certainly couldn’t buy it in any old store like you could back in my own time, and it only got rationed out to the general populace every once in a blue moon. Even then, it was only given in very scarce amounts and would be used up in no time. As a result, the only remotely sweet things I’d eaten since arriving in this time period were things like boiled pumpkin and steamed yams, and those weren’t exactly desserts.

“Wait… They have sweets here?” I asked. “You’re kidding… Like, with real sugar in them? Seriously?”

I could hardly contain my excitement as we walked into the cafe and sat down across from one another at an open table.

“I’ve heard the store owner here has a supplier that can get them as much sugar as they want,” said Akira. “It’s the only reason they’ve been able to stay in business.”

“Whoa… I guess there must be a story there, huh?”

“So, Yuri… What do you feel like having?”

“Uhhh, let me see…”

I looked up at the menu, which was written in ink on wooden plates that hung side by side on the wall above the kitchen—but I genuinely couldn’t tell what sorts of dishes the words that were written on them were supposed to represent. I had no idea what to order. Akira had apparently mistaken my confusion for me worrying about the prices, though, as he placed his hand on top of my head.

“Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it. You and Tsuru-san are always treating me and my squad mates at the mess hall; it’s the least I can do to treat you to something nice for once.”

“…Are you sure?” I asked. He nodded.

“Of course. Go ahead—order whatever you like.”

“Well, if you insist…” I said, then looked back at the menu, the menu which I, unfortunately, still couldn’t even begin to decipher.

Thankfully, Akira noticed my indecision and threw me a bone.

“If you can’t decide, maybe we should just get shaved ice?” he suggested.

“Wait…” I said. “They have that here?!”

As my eyes went wide, Akira gave me a dubious look.

“Of course they do…” he said. “It’s a sweets shop.”

“Whoa… No way…”

How was that even possible in an era without proper refrigeration?

“Okay, yeah!” I said. “Let’s do that, then!”

I could feel my cheeks stretching as I smiled from ear to ear.

Akira couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight.

“Wow,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so happy before.”

He might have been right, now that I thought about it.

I’d been so frazzled and hard at work every day since I arrived in this era that any brief moments of happiness I’d had here were far outweighed by painful or depressing ones. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been this elated—either in this time period or my own. Not that I’d always been an easily irritated stick in the mud, of course—I could certainly remember being full of childlike whimsy when I was much younger—but it had been years since I felt like I wasn’t stuck in a perpetually bad mood.

“Guess it was worth bringing you out here after all,” Akira said with a smile.

How could he always have such a soft, warm expression on his face, I wondered? He was like the complete opposite of me—somehow able to stay positive and chipper, despite all the pain and suffering he encountered every day just by living in this time period. There was something genuinely astounding to me about that.

“…If you keep staring at me like that, you’re going to bore a hole through my head, you know,” said Akira, chuckling awkwardly.

It was only after he pointed it out that I realized I’d probably been ogling him like an idiot for several seconds now without a word, to the point that I’d even forgotten to blink. Embarrassed beyond belief, I averted my eyes as fast as I could.

“Now then,” he said, still chuckling, “do you want sleet or snow? I’m guessing they’re all out of adzuki beans, so we probably can’t get the kintoki…”

“Pardon?” I said, tilting my head. “Snow?”

I knew he was talking about the shaved ice, of course. I’d heard of sleet before; it was shaved ice with honey on top, if I remembered right. And I believed I’d seen kintoki before at old-fashioned sweets shops as well. But what in the world was “snow”?

“Wait…” said Akira, eyes wide. “Have you never even had shaved ice before?”

“What?! No, of course I have… It’s just, well…”

The flavors of shaved ice that I was most familiar with were things like strawberry, lemon, melon, and Blue Hawaii—but I knew that if I told him that, he’d probably just be confused, so I just kept my mouth shut.

“…You know, Yuri…” said Akira. “Sometimes, when I talk to you, it almost feels like I’m trying to have a conversation with someone from a totally different country.”

There was a curious amusement in his tone—but in a way, he wasn’t wrong. I had been born and raised in a country very different from this one, even if it was still technically Japan.

“Well, not that it matters, I guess,” he said, changing the subject. “So basically, sleet is just shaved ice with syrup or sugar water on top.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I knew that much, at least.”

“Ah, okay. Well, kintoki is shaved ice with sweet boiled adzuki beans on top. But like I said, those beans are hard to come by nowadays, so I doubt they’ll have any here.”

“Right.”

“And then snow is just plain shaved ice with sugar sprinkled on top.”

“Oh, I see… Yeah, I’d never heard of that before.”

I was fairly certain that wasn’t really served anymore in my time. But I did like the name—the idea of eating “snow” in order to cool off in the summertime felt rather fitting.

Curious, I decided to give it a try. Akira, meanwhile, ordered the sleet.

The cafe was completely empty aside from the two of us, so the old lady running the place brought out our orders in no time at all. As she set the black lacquerware bowls in front of each of us, I noted that our orders looked almost identical—just large mounds of white, with no food coloring whatsoever. At a glance, it really did look like a pile of snow that could have been scooped out of someone’s backyard. And yet, it still looked surprisingly delicious—maybe because I hadn’t seen a cool dessert like this all summer.

“All right,” I said, placing my hands together. “Let’s give it a try.”

“Enjoy, you two,” said the old lady, smiling as she walked away.

I dug my bamboo spoon into the shaved ice, and it made a light slushing sound—like snow crunching beneath one’s feet in wintertime. And as soon as I took my first bite, my whole mouth filled with a pleasant coolness, along with a sugary sweetness.

“Wow…” I said. “That’s really good…”

When was the last time I’d had a nice, cold treat like this? I honestly couldn’t even remember. I could almost feel myself flashing back to simpler times as a mild brain freeze set in.

“It’s so sweet and yummy… It tastes like pure bliss… Like happiness, you know?”

It sounded strange, I knew—but it was the only way I could think to describe it.

“It does, huh?” said Akira, smiling. “I’m glad.”

Then he just kind of looked at me for a moment and quietly added:

“You’re very cute, Yuri… You know that?”

“…Pardon?” I said, dropping my spoon on the table.

I could have sworn I just heard the word cute. Surely though, he couldn’t have been talking about me, of all people. I must have misheard him. I just kind of stared, my mouth hanging wide open—until eventually he snapped out of it and looked away.

“…Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” he said. “Forget it…”

He cast his gaze downward slightly and covered his face with one hand—but through the gaps in his fingers, I thought I caught a glimpse of the slightest hint of red on his cheeks and the tips of his earlobes.

“Akira… Are you blushing?” I asked.

Called out, he lowered his hand and smiled sheepishly at me.

“Just do me a favor and pretend you didn’t hear that, okay?” he said.

Now that he was looking straight at me again, there was no mistaking it—his face was bright red. Heck, I was probably blushing up a storm too; my heart had been racing a thousand beats per minute since he called me cute.

“…Let’s eat, shall we?” I said. “Before it melts.”

Desperate to shatter the awkward tension, I picked up my fallen spoon and stabbed it back into my shaved ice.

“Right,” said Akira, doing the same. “Good idea.”

For a moment, we both just sat there eating our shaved ice in silence. But the vibe had become so unnatural and awkward that after a beat, we both burst out laughing at almost the exact same time.

“Jeez, Akira!” I said. “It’s not like you to be so quiet!”

“I could say the same thing to you, Yuri!” he retorted.

“Well, granted—but can you really blame me?!”

As we stared into each other’s eyes, trying as hard as we could to contain our laughter, I could say one thing for certain: I’d never known a simple bowl of shaved ice could taste so sweet.

After leaving the cafe behind, the two of us strolled around town for a while.

We didn’t have any particular destination in mind; we just kind of went around in circles, wandering wherever our feet decided to take us.

It was crazy to think I’d been so nervous this morning that I couldn’t even make simple conversation with him, yet now the ice between us had been completely shattered and we were talking just as naturally as we always did down at the mess hall.

As we were walking down the main drag, a horse-drawn cart came racing past us down the street at incredible speed. It startled me so badly that I nearly lost my balance—but Akira swooped in and caught me before I fell over. From that point on, he insisted we hold hands, “purely for your own safety, of course.” And just like that, I once again found myself hopelessly flustered, feeling as if my heart might burst right out of my chest.

But I knew I was happy.

Just holding his big, soft hand in mine.

It made me feel calm, even though my heart was racing.

It felt so natural, somehow—as if we’d been this way for years.

As if we’d still be holding hands like this for many years still to come.

I was truly, genuinely happy. Maybe for the first time in my entire life.

I wanted nothing more than for our time together to never end.

Even though I knew that was the one wish that could never, ever come true.

And still, when I was with Akira, I felt so content—so full inside.

Why was that? What was this funny feeling in my chest?

I was almost afraid to find out. Afraid of what it might mean.

And so I bottled up my emotions and tried my best not to think about it.

The Encroaching Flames

IT WAS NOW MID-JULY, AND THE SUMMER HEAT HAD officially hit its stride. The region was always hot and humid this time of year, mind you, but by now, it had become borderline unbearable.

The soldiers at the base had the day off from training today, so they’d gathered at the Tsuru-ya Mess Hall in the late morning for an early lunch. Akira’s unit, however, was apparently on cleaning duty or something, so they’d be arriving a bit later. As I waited on some other customers, I noticed they were wearing much grimmer expressions than usual, so I listened in to hear what they were talking about.

“I heard the Okinawa defense force got totally wiped out, too.”

“Man, are you kidding me?”

“Wish I was. Sounds like the island’s already under UN control.”

“Looks like things are finally coming to a head…”

“Read in the newspapers that they’ve been doing major air raids in Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya, too. Big firebombings with B-29s.”

“Damn… They’re going after every single major city, huh…?”

“They’ve been evacuating people out into the countryside, but who knows how long it’ll be before they start bombing out in the boonies too…”

I could feel the foreboding tension in the air. I let out a sigh.

From what these men were saying, the allies had been conducting so-called “carpet bombings” in places like Tokyo and Osaka, with civilian casualties numbering in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. Fleets of American fighter jets so numerous they blocked out the sky were dropping an endless supply of bombs on anything and everything, burning homes and schools to the ground, covering entire neighborhoods in a “carpet” of flames. The goal was not just to take as many lives as possible, but also to destroy our material resources and demoralize the Japanese people to the point where we would lose our will to fight. It was a horrifying way of waging war; I shuddered just to think of it. It felt so surreal to think that these atrocities were happening not in the pages of a history book, but right here and now, in the era of Japan that I was currently living in.

What could have compelled the Americans to commit such wanton acts of destruction? Well, honestly, I knew that it wasn’t just the United States; Japan was no doubt doing things just as bad or even worse to the Americans and their other enemies. After all, I’d been taught in my own time that the US only entered the war after an unprovoked attack by Japan on one of its naval ports. I wondered how in the world relations between our two countries had deteriorated to such a point that we were warring like this—treating each other like mortal enemies over a grudge for which there was no remedy but senseless killing.

It was especially crazy to me, given what great allies Japan and the US were back in my own era. I wished I could somehow convey to everyone here that in just seventy years’ time, Japanese citizens and American citizens would be on such good terms that we’d be vacationing in each other’s countries, studying abroad, and getting married to each other. Not to mention all the American foods we’d adopted in the modern day as staple parts of our own cuisine—hamburgers, French fries, pancakes… The list just went on. And I knew the same was true in reverse as well; there were many Americans who adored Japanese food and culture and were huge fans of things like manga and anime. It wasn’t even uncommon for Japanese people and American people to meet over the internet and bond over their mutual passion for such things.

It was entirely possible that the children and grandchildren of the very men who were out there fighting and killing each other right this minute would become friends, lovers, or even family in the not-so-distant future. When I thought about it that way, it really did make the whole war feel pointless and futile—just a tragic means for our respective governments to pursue their own geopolitical ends.

As I let out another wistful sigh, I heard Tsuru call my name from the kitchen, so I headed back there to see what she wanted.

“Would you be able to go run a quick errand for me?” she asked.

“Oh, sure thing,” I said. There wasn’t much that needed to be done at the mess hall, so I didn’t mind.

“Thing is, we’re almost fresh out of rice, you see. It won’t be nearly enough to feed all the soldiers who’ll be coming by today, so it’d be great if you could take this over to the Tajima household and trade it for a bag of rice.”

She then handed me a gorgeous purple kimono—one she’d shown off to me before as though it was one of her most prized possessions. It was made from the finest meisen silk, so it had a beautifully elegant sheen and was incredibly smooth to the touch.

“What…?” I said in disbelief. “Are you sure? I mean, you love this thing…”

“Yes, dear. I’m positive,” she said with a bright smile. “No point in an old bat like me owning a lovely kimono she’ll probably never wear anyhow. Far more important to make sure our soldiers go home this evening with a full belly.”

Just like the men in Akira’s unit, her eyes were unclouded and free from any doubt as she spoke. I folded her precious kimono up in cloth and clutched it tightly to my chest.

“You headed out, Yuri-chan?” said one of the soldiers at a table I’d been waiting, as I was leaving the mess hall. “Be careful out there.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I will.”

I waved goodbye to the men, then stepped out into the hot summer sun.

I was glad I’d brought a hand towel, because I was sweating like a dog after just a few steps. Thank goodness I took a bath this morning, I thought to myself as I consulted the map that Tsuru had drawn out for me.

I noticed that the people who were out and about today were all wearing similarly grave expressions as the soldiers at the mess hall. Everyone seemed on edge now that large-scale air raids were happening on the mainland, not to mention the fact that Okinawa had fallen. It was like a wave of fear had washed over the entire town, and people were beginning to wonder if maybe Japan might lose the war after all. I was sure it was the same all across the country.

I got turned around along the way, so it took me a bit longer to get to the Tajima household than expected, but I did manage to find it in the end. It was a very large estate, and when I called out from the entryway, a very refined old lady came out to greet me.

“Oh my,” she said. “And who might you be?”

“I’m here from Tsuru-ya Mess Hall,” I said.

“Ah, so you’re Tsuru-san’s new helper girl.”

“Yes, I am. Um… I was asked to bring you this,” I said, showing her the kimono.

“Ah, yes,” she said, nodding as though this was a regular occurrence. “Hoping to trade it for some rice, I assume?”

The woman walked back inside and returned a few moments later with a cloth sack full of rice. I had to say, it was much smaller than I was expecting—but I supposed that just went to show what a valuable commodity white rice was in this day and age, when even the finest kimono could only afford you a bag so small you could carry it with one hand. There was something deeply depressing to me about that, but it wasn’t my place to call it unfair, so I simply thanked the woman and left the Tajima estate behind.

As I made my way back toward the Tsuru-ya Mess Hall, my bag of rice in hand, I could hear the rhythmic clanging of metal from the local ironworks nearby.

Then, from somewhere far off in the distance, I heard another sound.

…RRRM…

Confused, I stopped in the middle of the road and strained my ears in an attempt to make out what it was. It was like a low, constant whirring sound that gradually grew higher in pitch—a sound that felt as though it was growing closer by the second.

…VRRRRRM…

Finally, I realized what this deeply unsettling noise was: a siren.

The other pedestrians around me began to murmur among themselves, gazing upward to see if they could spot anything in the skies overhead. Then, a moment later, another siren began to blare out—this one much closer, and ear-piercingly loud.

This was not a drill. This was an air-raid alarm.

I felt a jolt of fright course through me, and a cold sweat ran down my back.

What would I even do if I got caught in an actual air raid?

Obviously, I knew that the sirens were merely a precautionary measure, and there was no guarantee there’d be an air raid in your immediate vicinity just because they started ringing. But for whatever reason, maybe because of all the doomsaying at the mess hall this morning, I had a bad feeling about today. I could feel my heartbeat quicken. I wanted to believe our little neighborhood would be fine, but it was hard not to panic.

I needed to get home, and I needed to get there fast. I knew this—yet, for whatever reason, it felt like my shaky legs were bolted to the spot in fear. As if to heighten my anxieties, the discordant sound of sirens near and far overlapping with one another was harrowing enough to make all my little hairs stand on end.

Then, all of a sudden, the skies overhead grew dark in an instant. Reflexively, I cast my gaze upward to see a flock of small, jet-black silhouettes cutting a course across the bright blue summer sky, blotting out the sun.

“…There they are!” someone shouted. “Bombers!”

Everyone around me began crying out in terror.

“Run for your lives! Get to the air raid shelter!”

“Hurry! They’re coming!”

I watched in horror as a rain of bombs poured down from the sky. They looked no larger than sesame seeds at first, yet they grew larger by the second as the planes drew closer and closer. But I was in such a state of shock that I simply stood there motionless, as if the fear had sucked my soul right out of my body. All around me, people were shouting and running frantically to and fro. Several of them even bumped into me amid the pandemonium, nearly knocking me off balance.

“What are you doing?!” said an older lady, clapping me hard on the back. “Run!”

The shock finally snapped me back to my senses. Clutching the cloth bag tightly to my chest, I sprinted back down the road in the direction I’d come. Over my shoulder, I could hear the sound of bombs dropping from the sky—followed by a massive boom. I looked back over my shoulder and saw that the ironworks I’d passed by a moment ago were now engulfed in a sea of fire that was expanding by the second.

“They’re incendiary bombs…!”

“This whole place is going to be swallowed in flames!”

“Evacuate the air raid shelter! Now!”

I could hear firefighters shouting orders to the pedestrians around me.

As Tsuru had explained to me before, incendiary bombs were a fearsome type of weaponry that would be filled with gasoline or some other sort of fuel that would ignite. They exploded upon impact, resulting in massive fires that could span blocks or entire districts of a city—and if an air raid shelter happened to be caught within that expanse, they would no longer be safe to take refuge in. It seemed to me the sole purpose of such bombs was to indiscriminately take as many lives as possible. And this time, that might include mine.

From every side street and alleyway, I could see people rushing out of their homes with as many of their belongings as they could carry—some of them even using handcarts to try to escape with as much as they physically could. I had little choice but to let myself get swept up in the flood of people and vehicles that were now congesting the main drag.

“They’ve already hit the south part of town! And the fire’s expanding fast!”

“We’ll have to escape to the north… Either get to high ground or take cover by the river…”

The sound of wooden buildings crackling and burning all around us only served to heighten the pandemonium. Everyone was panicking, their eyes bloodshot, as they scrambled to get to higher ground. But this wasn’t the direction I wanted to go, so I turned against the current and pushed my way backward through the crowd.

Before I could properly evacuate, I needed to go back home first.

Something told me this might be the last opportunity I’d get.

The bombs fell ceaselessly, with no end in sight.

I looked up and saw a plane zip right over my head at a shockingly low altitude, pelting the next street over with a hail of machine gun fire.

The firebombing left gaping holes in the walls of just about every building nearby, and I could see the flames reaching up to the wooden rafters within.

If even one of those bombs landed anywhere near me, I’d be done for.

Shuddering, I picked up the pace. At one point, I glanced back over my shoulder to see another rain of machine gun fire coming toward me just a hundred meters or so down the street, and I had to duck into a nearby alleyway.

I was so scared, I couldn’t even scream. It felt like I was an NPC in a video game, running helplessly in circles as the player ran around the map shooting at any moving target they could find, just for the fun of it. Eventually, though, I could hear the sound of plane engines growing more distant, and I could feel the tension in my nerves lowering ever so slightly.

But just as I was beginning to let my guard down, the eaves of one of the houses nearby suddenly burst in flames and smoke, and a gust of hot wind enveloped my entire body. With the sleeve of my shirt, I wiped the sweat from my forehead. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop sweating; there were so many fires all around me, large and small, that it felt like I was walking through a raging furnace. I could feel my throat being scalded from smoke inhalation, and my eyes began to water. I held my hand towel up to cover my mouth and nose so as not to breathe in any more smoke as I ran down the street.

A little way further off, I spotted a young girl collapsed by the roadside.

“Are you okay?!” I cried out as I rushed over and knelt down beside her.

But the moment I placed my hand on her shoulder, a chill ran down my spine.

Her body had gone completely and utterly limp. Fearfully, I leaned down to bring my ear close to her lips—but she was no longer breathing. I looked over at her face as she lay there on her side. Her cheeks were covered in soot. Her eyes halfway open. Her pupils hollow and lifeless, despite the flicker of dancing flames reflecting brightly within them.

I closed her eyelids and wiped her cheeks, then staggered back to my feet.

No sooner had I started walking away than I felt a sudden tightness in my stomach, followed by the taste of bile in the back of my throat. With a groan, I keeled over and vomited by the roadside, before wiping my tears and running off as fast as I could—though it was really more like stumbling, with how unsteady my legs were.

Shortly thereafter, I saw a mother and child standing in disbelief outside the smoldering wreckage of their home. There was nothing I could do for them, so I simply moved on. I could already feel myself growing numb to the tragedy of it all.

Perhaps this was the nature of war.

All this pain and suffering—so many innocent people losing their lives, their homes, their loved ones—all because two countries’ governments decided they couldn’t settle their differences through any means but violence. Only now that I was seeing it with my own two eyes did I understand the true horror and stupidity of it all.

Another rain of machine-gun fire came blazing down the street. I knew if I stayed out here in the open, I’d be a sitting duck—so I hid myself briefly inside a nearby building, peeking out through a crack in the doorway until the plane had passed. As it flew directly overhead, the loud hum of its engine combined with the sound of gunfire made my ears ring so sharply that, for a moment, I feared I might have gone deaf.

And it was in those few soundless seconds that, out of nowhere, I could see an old man burst out from the house across the street, right into the middle of the road.

I tried to cry out to him, but my voice didn’t reach.

He was running for cover to a bunker in the yard.

But the rain of bullets arrived before he could make it there.

I was powerless to do anything but watch it happen.

The bullets pierced right through the old man’s body, sending spurts of blood bursting from every exit wound. Then, after he fell to his knees on the ground, the plane dropped a parting gift right in the man’s yard, which exploded mere inches from his lifeless body, splattering his remains across the outer walls of his home.

It all happened so fast—in the span of a split second, as the plane zipped right by.

I waited until I couldn’t hear its engine anymore, then stumbled back outside.

Bits and pieces of the man were scattered all over his front doorstep.

I stood there in stupefied horror, right in the middle of the road, as the bright red flames and pillars of jet-black smoke grew higher and higher all around me.

…Why was this happening?

What had any of these people done to deserve this?

They were just living their lives—just trying to survive as best they could in a world where you had to sell your most precious belongings just to scrape together enough food to eat. Surely, they didn’t deserve to be slaughtered mercilessly like this.

I can’t do this. I can’t take it anymore…

Somebody, please—just make it stop.

Put an end to this stupid war already.

What are we even trying to achieve here?

Is it really worth losing our homes? Our lives?

What’s the point of winning if the cost is this steep?

Can’t you see we’re only hurting ourselves in the end?

Japan, America, whoever—I don’t care. Just call it off, already.

This is madness, I tell you… Have we all gone completely insane?

“There’s something wrong with us… With Japan and America both…”

Just then, I heard a rumbling sound from one of the houses behind me, followed by the crackle and roar of billowing flames. I turned to look—and my jaw dropped.

The building was about to collapse right on top of me. I could tell.

I couldn’t move a muscle. Couldn’t possibly dodge out of the way in time.

All I could do was close my eyes and cover my head with my hands, curling up into a ball as debris from the burning wreckage rained down on top of me and pushed me into the ground. I heard the sound of the house’s main supports finally giving out—a sound so loud, it nearly ruptured my eardrums. I braced myself, gritting my teeth as I waited for the pain to be over, praying I wouldn’t be crushed to death.

Fortunately, I wasn’t—but once it was over and I tried to sit myself up again, I felt a searing pain and heat in my right leg. I looked down and saw that a burning pillar had fallen on top of it, pinning me to the ground. Not a moment later, a huge chunk of the house’s roof—somehow, it had still been standing—fell down right on top of that, and another jolt of immense pain ran through my entire body. I was now trapped in the rubble, unable to pull my leg out no matter how hard I tried.

As the flames whirled around me, it felt like I was being cooked alive.

Was this it? Would this be how I died? All alone in a place like this?

No… I’m not ready to die… Not yet…

Somebody, please… Help…

“…Somebody…”

Save me…

Covering my face with both hands, I prayed for a savior.

Please… It hurts… It burns… I can’t breathe… Help…

“Yuri!”

I heard someone calling my name—their resounding voice piercing through the roaring flames as it found its way to me, swift and sure.

“Yuri, where are you?!”

As my consciousness grew hazy, I slowly opened my eyes.

I couldn’t see anything but fire raging all around me.

But I would know that voice anywhere.

“Ah…”

I tried to cry out to him, but my throat was too dry, my voice too hoarse.

But I had to reach him somehow. Had to call his name.

“…ki…ra… Akira…”

I took a deep breath and tried again.

“…Akiraaaaa!”

I lifted my head up to the sky, so bright and blue this morning, now dyed black and red by the smoke and flames. And I called out as loud as I could.

“Akira… A-kira! Over here!”

The jet-black smoke billowed higher and higher.

The bright red flames stretched their grasping fingers skyward.

The raging heat distorted my vision, as if I were looking at a mirage.

But through the fire and smoke, I could see the faintest of silhouettes.

I strained my eyes and tried to make it out as it grew closer and closer.

Please, come quick… I’m scared… I don’t want to die alone…

“Yuri…!”

And there he was, pushing his way through the rubble to stand right before me. The very savior I’d been praying for—Akira, and none other.

“You idiot!” he shouted. “What are you doing here…?!”

With an uncharacteristically panicked look on his face, he knelt down and grabbed the burning pillar that had fallen on my leg. Luckily, he was wearing thick leather gloves—but it was still extremely hot. Still, he didn’t hesitate for a moment as he hoisted it up and onto his shoulder for leverage, before gritting his teeth and lifting it up to create enough space for me to quickly scoot out from under it. Seeing that I had dislodged myself, Akira let out a sigh of relief, then dropped the pillar back down onto the ground.

Behind me, I heard the crackling sound of some of the house’s few remaining support beams beginning to finally give way due to the flames. Akira reached down and grabbed me brusquely by the arm to drag me to safety.

“Akira, I don’t know what to say…” I said, burying my face in his chest as the smoke billowed around us. “Thank you…”

He put one hand on my chin and turned my face up to look at him. Up close, I could see that his face was covered in soot—and his expression was extremely stern.

“Why didn’t you flee to the river with the others?!” he shouted. “Why did you run straight into the heart of the fire?!”

“I…needed to deliver this to the mess hall…” I said, showing him the cloth bag I had been clinging to my chest for dear life.

“Idiot!” Akira shouted. “Your life is more important than some measly rice!”

It was the first time he’d ever raised his voice at me like this, and it was actually quite intimidating. He screwed up his face and squeezed me tighter in his arms, forcing my ear up against his chest. I could hear the rapid thump of his heart. He’d probably sprinted all the way here.

“But then…what were you doing here, Akira?” I asked.

“I’d just gotten to the mess hall when I heard the siren,” he said, laying his chin atop my head. “Tsuru-san was on the verge of tears, frantically telling me she’d just sent you out to run an errand…”

“…So you came looking for me?”

I looked up at him, and he gazed back at me with his usual, gentle smile. I could feel my heart skip a beat for the umpteenth time today—only this time, it wasn’t due to fear.

“Of course I did,” he said. “Don’t you remember what I said before? You’re like…”

He stopped short for a moment, then continued in a softer voice:

“…You’re like a little sister to me, Yuri…”

The moment I heard those words, a wave of melancholy washed over me.

“…Don’t call me that,” I muttered.

I’m not your little sister, I wanted to say.

Immediately, I wished I had kept my mouth shut.

“Sorry?” asked Akira, tilting his head curiously.

Apparently, he hadn’t heard me. Okay, phew. Thank god.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” I said, shaking my head.

Just then, a cloud of sparks started spewing forth from the house next door.

“Let’s go,” said Akira. “It’s not safe here.”

“Okay…” I replied.

But when I tried to stand up, a sharp pain shot down my right leg. And even after the initial stab of pain went away, there was a dull, throbbing ache that persisted. Terrified, I looked down to see through a hole that had been burned in my monpe that the pillar had left a large, bright-red welt on my thigh. Honestly, I was relieved at what I saw; as far as burns went, it could definitely be a lot worse. It still hurt quite a bit every time I moved my leg, though. Thankfully, Akira picked up on this and reached his arm around my back to help keep me upright.

“Doesn’t look like you’ll be able to walk on that,” he said. “Here—hop on.”

He crouched down in front of me, and I wrapped my arms around his neck. As he looped his arms around my legs, I suddenly felt rather embarrassed to be given a piggyback ride by him.

“Y-you know what, I’m fine,” I said, trying to push away. “I’ll just deal with it…”

Akira looked back over his shoulder at me, clearly confused.

“Wait…what are you blushing for?” he said, chuckling lightly.

“I-I’m not blushing!” I said.

“Really? Your face is bright red.”

“Shut up!”

I smacked him on the shoulder as hard as I could, but judging from his mischievous grin, it didn’t even seem to register with him.

“Come on,” he said. “Stop pouting and let’s skedaddle, already. I’m gonna run as fast as I can, so be sure to hold on tight.”

With that, he rose to his feet and hoisted me up before I could even get a word in edgewise. I didn’t know how to feel; since I’d never known my father, this was the first piggyback ride I’d ever been given by a man.

Akira immediately took off running. With his every stride, I could feel myself lurching upward; had I not been holding on tight, I probably would have already fallen off. I squeezed my arms tightly around his neck, clinging to his broad, muscular shoulders. As long as I held fast, I knew I’d be safe and sound—though I was embarrassed at the thought that he might be able to feel my fluttering heartbeat against his back.

Even still, I clung to him as tightly as I could. I wanted to be as close as physically possible—to never be apart from this man who’d run into a sea of fire to rescue me.

Suddenly, I realized that I hadn’t heard any bombs dropping in a little while now. The thought that the worst was over came as a slight relief.

Unfortunately, the terror had only begun.

The road leading to the Tsuru-ya Mess Hall was so utterly ablaze that it looked completely impassible, so we started making our way toward the largest river in the vicinity—the idea being that the fire couldn’t reach beyond the water.

Along the way, we passed through areas where the fire had already died down, simply because there were no more buildings left to burn. Clinging to Akira’s back, I could feel my blood run cold as I looked around at all the destruction.

“How could this…be…” I mumbled.

It was all I could think to say—but my voice was too quiet for Akira to hear as he ran full speed ahead, apparently. I gazed wordlessly at the smoldering remains of the streets I’d walked down just days prior.

The blood-red sky overhead.

So many houses, all charred, empty husks.

The smell of burning wood hanging in the air.

And the corpses—so many corpses, just lying in the streets.

Some of them carrying infants close to their breast.

Some of them siblings, hand in hand.

Some of them completely alone.

All of them motionless.

I could feel the reflex to vomit coming on again. I shut my eyes tight and tried my best not to think about the horrors I was seeing. But even without looking at them, I could still hear them burning—still smell the pungent scent of roasting human flesh. Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I turned my head to the side and puked onto the ground as Akira ran. All I’d eaten this morning was a thin rice porridge with a few vegetable scraps mixed in. I’d already vomited that up earlier, so this time, all that came up was pure stomach acid. I was sure Akira must have heard me puking, but he didn’t say a word.

On our way to the river, we encountered yet another horrific sight—a man with his entire body on fire, screaming in pain as he rolled around in the street.

“Hold on, Yuri,” said Akira, setting me down.

He stripped off his jacket as he ran over to the man, then attempted to use it to bat away the flames. But the fire refused to go out, and before long, the man went limp as a ragdoll on the ground. He reached up a trembling hand in agony—but then it fell back against the hard earth as well, and the man stopped moving entirely.

Akira just stood there for a moment, looking down at the man by his side—but he had his back to me, so I couldn’t see his expression. A few seconds later, he turned around and walked back over to where I stood waiting.

“…Let’s go,” he said, his voice exhausted.

I looked up at him, and he smiled weakly back at me. It was his usual, gentle smile, but this time, his eyes betrayed his feelings of deep sorrow and powerlessness. I could tell he was racked by regret—blaming himself for not being able to save the man.

He had to be the most kindhearted person I’d ever met. But the kindness came at a price; he was so full of empathy, it was like he felt the pain and suffering of total strangers as if it were his own. If he couldn’t help them, he’d consider it a failure on his part.

Perhaps that was part of the reason he’d become a kamikaze pilot. Perhaps to him, his life was a small price to pay if it could help him save as many people as possible.

“…Akira,” I whispered hoarsely, taking his hand in mine.

It was black with soot and covered in burns. A hand that never hesitated to reach out, to do all that it possibly could to save a fading life, one that did not tremble at the thought of piloting an aircraft directly into oncoming enemy fire, one that was prepared to extinguish itself to help others.

The thought made me so unbelievably sad, I couldn’t help but weep.

“…Yuri?” said Akira, his voice full of concern.

I held his hand up to my cheek, and watched my tears roll down along his slender fingers as if to wash away the soot.

“…You’ve got a good heart, Yuri,” he said, rustling my hair with his other blackened hand. “Anyway, come on—we’re almost to the river.”

I climbed up onto Akira’s back again, and we hurried off.

As we approached the river, the roads grew more and more crowded. All around us, I could see people with severe injuries and burns. There were kids crying by the roadside, ones who’d been separated from their families. Everyone was too focused on saving themselves to even give them a second look.

Not Akira, though. The moment he spotted one such little boy, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out a helping hand.

“It’s not safe here,” he said. “You should come with us. I’m sure your mother and father are already down at the river, wondering where you are.”

The boy bawled and bawled, but he took Akira’s hand all the same. And so the three of us headed for the river—me on Akira’s back, and the little boy holding his hand.

A huge crowd of people had already formed around the bridge that spanned the river. Some of them were down by the banks, using the river water to slake their thirst or soothe their burns. Some were face down, motionless as the river carried them away.

But the little boy’s family was nowhere to be found.

We waited by the riverside until the fires died down a bit, then headed for a nearby elementary school that had been designated as an evacuation site. Word among the crowd was that the area around the mess hall was still ablaze, so it wasn’t a good idea to head back there yet. I was still beside myself with worry for Tsuru, but I knew I probably couldn’t get there on my own two legs right now, and I didn’t want to burden Akira any more than I already had either. All I could do was pray she’d made it out alive.

Dozens upon dozens of corpses had been laid out in lines on the elementary school’s sports field, all of them with sheets of cloth over their faces. There were also quite a few people going around from body to body, lifting up the cloths one by one to see whether their family members were among them. I shuddered at the thought that we might find the little boy’s parents there—but Akira simply walked right through the field without stopping to look and headed into the wooden school building instead.

All the classrooms were already filled to the brim with people, but by some minor miracle, we at last managed to find an open spot where we could squeeze in and sit down. There were infants crying all around us. Children whimpering in pain. Families whispering to each other in hushed tones.

After sitting there idly on the floor of the room for a while, I suddenly heard a voice call out, “Yoshio-chan!” from the doorway. I looked up to see an older lady in singed, tattered clothing looking right at us with a wide-eyed stare. According to the little boy, this woman lived in his neighborhood. Immediately, the boy started bawling again, relieved to finally see someone he recognized. Akira walked him over to the lady, and they exchanged a few words before he entrusted the boy to her care. Finally, he walked back over to where I was sitting.

“How’s your leg, Yuri?” he asked.

“Feeling a lot better,” I said. “The burns are pretty mild, honestly.”

“I see… We really ought to treat those ASAP, but it sounds like nobody’s got enough burn ointment to share…”

“I’ll be fine, silly. It really doesn’t hurt that bad.”

“Oh… Are you sure?”

He still seemed a bit worried, but I could tell from his expression that he was feeling utterly exhausted himself, so I grabbed his hand and urged him to sit down with me.

“Akira, you should rest for a bit,” I said.

“Right…” he said. “Thanks.”

He gave me a little smile, then leaned back against the wall, folded his arms, and gently closed his eyes. Good, I thought to myself. That’s what I like to see.

Hugging my knees to my chest, I finally took a good look around the room.

I could see people with bloody bandages wrapped around their arms and legs. People with blood trickling down their faces who had passed out from exhaustion. People with burns all over their bodies. Someone staring dazedly down at their legs, which had been mangled and twisted at strange, unnatural angles.

Just looking at them made me feel even more scared—so I buried my face between my knees. I didn’t know how long I spent retreated into myself like that; but when I eventually opened my heavy-lidded eyes, I could tell that it was already dark outside.

“Akira…” I said, absently calling his name as I lifted my head.

He slowly opened his eyes as though he’d only dozed off for a moment.

“You should try to get some sleep too, Yuri,” he said.

“Yeah, I know…” I said. “Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay.”

He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer, so I leaned my head over onto his chest as I closed my eyes.

I knew I should have been utterly exhausted, and yet I just couldn’t seem to fall asleep. Every time I closed my eyes, the horrors I’d witnessed during the air raid flashed across the backs of my eyelids. The flames burned red. The houses on fire. The dead little girl. The rows upon rows of corpses.

My eyes snapped open once again. I was too afraid to keep them closed; too afraid of more flashbacks. I knew there was no escaping the horrors either way, of course; even in the darkness, I could still see the vague silhouettes of air raid victims all around me, packed like sardines into this tiny classroom. I could hear them crying out in distress.

“It hurts… Oh god, it hurts…”

“Mommy… Daddy…”

“I can’t breathe…”

“I’m so thirsty… It burns…”

“Water… Need…water…”

But there was no medication here to treat their wounds, not even a thimbleful of water they could drink. There was nothing at all that could quell the chorus of agonized groans that filled the room from floor to ceiling.

I couldn’t bear listening to it any longer.

I closed my eyes and covered my ears.

This is hell.

What other word could even be used to describe something like this? All these innocent people, condemned to suffer and burn and die? It was hell, plain and simple.

I couldn’t even bring myself to cry anymore. I just glared angrily into the darkness, not moving a muscle—not even blinking.

“…Yuri?” said Akira.

But I didn’t respond. I could hear him calling my name, but I couldn’t bring myself to say a single word. Couldn’t budge from the spot even if I wanted to.

“Yuri, are you okay?” he said.

Again, I didn’t, couldn’t reply.

“Hey… Yuri.”

I just sat there in silence.

“Yuri!”

He shouted my name and slapped me lightly across the cheek. I sucked in a gasp of air, then turned to face him. He was looking at me with a desperate, panicked expression.

“Get a hold of yourself!” he said, gripping my shoulders tight with both hands.

“Akira…” I murmured.

It was only at this point that I realized my hands had been trembling like crazy. It wasn’t just my hands—my legs and shoulders were quaking so badly, you could hear it.

“Are you cold?” he said. “Is that it?”

He took off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders. Oddly enough, even though the cold wasn’t the problem, being wrapped in his residual warmth and scent did seem to calm the shaking.

“No… I’m not cold…” I said weakly. “I just… I can’t take much more of this. It’s so wrong, you know? Why do these people have to suffer like this? They… They haven’t done anything wrong… It’s not fair… It’s not fair at all… I don’t want to live in a world like this anymore… I just wanna go home…”

Even my voice was trembling now.

“You’ve just gotta hang in there a little longer, Yuri,” Akira whispered in my ear as he squeezed me tight. “We’re going to put an end to this war, just you wait. We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure it’s not a complete loss for Japan…and then the world can be at peace again. There won’t be anything for you to be afraid of anymore. And if I can help make that future a reality…then my life is a small price to pay.”

No… That’s not what I want to hear at all… That’s not what I want you to do…

And yet, his voice was so soft and soothing, and my throat was so sore and dry that I couldn’t bring myself to say a word in response.

“Don’t worry… I’m right here with you,” he said, squeezing me. “I’m right here…”

As he enveloped me in his warmth, I could feel my eyes beginning to water, the hot streams of tears running down my cheeks. Akira rubbed my back as if to reassure me, over and over and over again. It felt so nice I actually managed to doze off at last.

With my head against his chest, there were no more scary flashbacks.

With his arms around my shoulders, I couldn’t hear the groans of agony anymore.

“That’s it, Yuri…” he whispered softly. “Just fall asleep…”

And just like that, I did.

After even the darkest of nights, morning always comes.

But as the light of dawn streamed in through the windows, I couldn’t help but feel like such a beautiful sunrise was ill-suited for the morning after a waking nightmare of horrors and hellfire. Sleepily, I opened my eyes to see Akira still there beside me.

“Good morning,” he said with a smile.

“Morning…Akira,” I replied.

“Think you’re ready to get up?”

“Yeah…”

I lifted myself up and took a fresh look around. There were still a ton of injured people all around us, but it seemed like while I was sleeping, some first aid supplies had arrived from the fire department and the military. The wounds were slowly but surely beginning to be treated, so the air in the classroom was far lighter than it had been the night before.

“Sounds like they put the fires out last night, too,” said Akira. “We should be able to go check on the mess hall now, if you’re up for it.”

“Yeah, I’d like to,” I said. “I’m worried about Tsuru-san.”

The moment we stepped outside the school, though, we stopped dead in our tracks.

“…What in the world…” Akira rasped.

“Oh my god…” I said, gripping his sleeve.

The entire landscape had changed overnight. Our little town—the place we all called home—was nowhere to be found.

Was this what people meant by “scorched earth”? There was nothing but burnt rubble and cinders as far as the eye could see. The devastation was so thorough and vast that I could even make out the hazy, silhouetted skyline of the big city off in the distance, draped in the morning mist—something that had never been possible before, with all the buildings jutting up against the horizon.

There wasn’t anything to say. We just started to walk.

Through the rows upon rows of burnt-down houses, I could see townspeople dragging their dead along the ground behind them—charred corpses, tied with wire to sheets of corrugated metal. There was still smoke rising here and there amid the ruins. Still, the smell of smoldering ashes lingered in the air.

We hadn’t escaped from hell just yet.

I wondered if Tsuru was okay. If Chiyo had been hurt. If the other soldiers at the base had made it out okay. I hung my head in distress, unable to quell any of my rampant anxieties.

At that very moment, Akira called my name. He gently took my hand, squeezing it tightly in his palm. And funnily enough, for whatever reason, this alone was enough to steady my quivering heart again. It was as if his hands bore some mysterious power, one that could wrap up my entire soul in a soft, protective cocoon and soothe my every fear.

I remembered the same thing happening when we went out for a walk together the other day, and then again yesterday as we fled. And now today, it was the same refrain—all it took was the simple touch of his skin to calm my fluttering heart and fill it from the inside out with a gentle warmth. With him by my side, maybe even a crybaby scaredy-cat like me could learn to be strong someday.

So please, Akira… Don’t ever leave me.

…Words I knew I could never say.

Hand in hand, we made our way down the road toward Tsuru’s place. Luckily, it seemed the fires somehow hadn’t reached the mess hall—the one small mercy I could find among this entire hellscape. And it appeared as if Tsuru was just fine as well.

“Yuri-chan!” she cried, rushing out from the building to wrap me up in her arms. “I’m so glad you’re okay, dear…!”

“You too…” I said, trying not to cry.

She furrowed her brow and examined my face, no doubt still pitch-black with soot.

“Did you get caught up in the fires?” she asked.

“Yeah, unfortunately…” I said. “But Akira came to rescue me, so I made it out okay.”

“Oh, thank you, Sakuma-san…” said Tsuru, bowing her head deeply.

“Don’t mention it…” said Akira. “Yuri’s like a little sister to me. I’d never let anything bad happen to her.”

There he was, comparing me to a little sister again. I would have normally been peeved, but then Tsuru placed her hands on my shoulders and looked at me apologetically.

“I’m so sorry, dear…” she said. “That must have been so terrifying…”

“Wait, huh?” I said. “What are you apologizing for?”

“It’s all because I asked you to run that errand for me…”

“No, no! It’s not your fault at all!” I shook my head wildly.

Then I let out a gasp, realizing I was no longer carrying the cloth bag full of rice. Had I left it somewhere? I knew I was still holding it when Akira rescued me; I’d made sure to fasten it to my arm with a knot when he lifted me up onto his back. But I couldn’t recall what happened to it after that; the horrors I witnessed as we ran through the sea of flames to the riverside made me forget all about the rice. And the hellish, gruesome sights I’d seen shook me so deeply that I hadn’t had the presence of mind to make sure I still had it on me once we got to the school.

“…I’m sorry, Tsuru-san…” I said. “Your rice…”

I was on the verge of tears, I felt so bad. She’d traded one of her most precious possessions for that small bag of rice.

But Tsuru just looked at me and smiled softly.

“What are you saying, dear?” she said, shaking her head. “Who cares about a few grains of rice at a time like this? I’m just glad you’re safe… Your life is so much more important to me than that…”

As her voice trembled and tears began streaming down her cheeks, I could feel myself starting to cry as well.

“I’m so sorry…” I said, now weeping openly. “I’m so sorry, Tsuru-san…”

“I don’t know what I would have done if something were to happen to you…” she said. “How could I ever show my face to your parents in the next life…?”

I thought of my mother, living seventy years in the future.

I remembered all the times we’d fought.

“You’re no daughter of mine,” I recalled her saying.

And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder whether she’d worried about me after I suddenly disappeared that day. If she’d been afraid of losing me, like Tsuru was.

I wondered if I’d ever be able to go back to my own time again.

I’d been so caught up in my reality, simply trying to survive here, that I honestly hadn’t even thought about wanting to go home in quite some time.

But when I thought about my mother, I felt a sudden pang of nostalgia.

I found myself curious what she was up to right about now.

My single mother, who’d raised me all by herself.

And yet, it was Tsuru who’d cried for me when I was gone.

It was Akira who’d risked everything to save my life.

My mind was a mess of so many conflicting emotions.

Did I still want to go home, or was this my new home?

Even I couldn’t say for certain anymore.

Beyond the Starry Skies

THE TOWN WAS EERILY QUIET IN THE WAKE OF THE air raid, its once-bustling streets still as death. It had been almost a week now, and still, there weren’t nearly enough supplies to go around. The thought of rebuilding still felt like a dream within a dream, with everyone already struggling enough just trying not to starve to death.

And I was among them. By day, I did everything I possibly could to earn my next meal, while by night, my dreams remained haunted by visions of flames and rotting corpses, as I relived the horrors I’d experienced that day over and over and over.

“…Luckily, the whole family was out of the house, so at least we made it out with our lives. But all our clothes, our belongings, our bankbooks, our ancestors’ memorial tablets… It all went up in flames.”

One of the mess hall’s regulars—an old man who’d lost his house in the air raid—was lamenting his situation to Tsuru, who seemed unsure how to respond.

“No point in moaning about it, though,” he said. “Told me it might take months to get a replacement bankbook, so I won’t even be able to start rebuilding our house until then. Nowhere left to stay in town, so we’ll be moving out to stay with my wife’s family in the countryside for the time being.”

“Oh, is that so…” said Tsuru. “Well, we’ll certainly miss you…”

“You’re tellin’ me! I’ve been living in this town all my life! Gonna be hard to say goodbye, even temporarily, but oh well… What can ya do?”

The man let out a weak, halfhearted chuckle.

I didn’t understand. How could he so easily shrug off such a horrid state of affairs with a simple “oh well”? It wasn’t just him, either; everyone living in this day and age seemed to readily accept these kinds of atrocities as a simple fact of life. Losing their homes, or their most precious belongings, or a family member—though tragic, to be sure—was seen almost as an expected loss in these times of war. I’d seen many people grieving their dead loved ones, but not a single one seemed all that resentful about it.

But is that how they really felt? I wondered. Were they really willing to write this horror off as something that simply couldn’t be helped? I couldn’t understand it at all.

Nor could I understand why anyone would aspire to be a kamikaze pilot. It wasn’t even a matter of viewing one’s sacrifice as a necessary evil—Akira and his other squad mates had told me time and time again that they actually felt proud to give their lives for their country. Like it was some sort of privilege, almost.

These were the thoughts running through my head as I watched the old man rise from his seat and thank Tsuru for one last meal, before saying goodbye.

“You be well, now, Yuri-chan,” he said on his way out.

“Thanks,” I said. “Um… Take care of yourself.”

“Will do. Thank ya kindly.”

Tsuru and I walked him to the door and waved him goodbye.

“…Looks like things are going to start getting pretty lonely around here,” I said to her quietly as we watched him go.

“Probably,” said Tsuru, smiling sadly. “But what can you do?”

Most of the people who’d lost their homes in the air raid had no money to rebuild, and were thus forced to move away to live with distant relatives out in the countryside or something like that. Colloquially, people called it “evacuating”—since moving to a more rural area with no bases or weapons factories meant you were far less likely to be targeted in another air raid.

I wondered why, in that case, it didn’t make sense for everyone to move out there—but I knew it was a hard sell to ask people to uproot their entire lives and say goodbye to all of their friends, not to mention the land they’d grown up on. So instead, they all chose the path of least resistance—crossing their fingers every day and praying that their city might be spared from the firebombings. But even those who weren’t so lucky would generally only move away for a short time, vowing to return to the place they felt they truly belonged. Maybe it was more about attachment than survival after all.

As I was wiping down the old man’s table after he left, I heard a commotion outside. Come to think of it, the soldiers at the base had the day off today, didn’t they? Thinking it might be Akira and his squad mates, I rushed outside.

“Akira!” I said, greeting him with a smile. “Good to see you!”

Both Akira and Ishimaru patted me on the head almost simultaneously.

“Hey there, Yuri,” said Akira.

“Wow, Yuri… I see how it is,” said Ishimaru, pouting his lips like a petulant child. “No greeting for poor old Ishimaru, huh?”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Sorry, Ishimaru-san,” I said. “Of course, it’s good to see you too. And everyone else, for that matter.”

“Hey, we have names too, y’know!” said one of the other three.

“Ah ha ha! I know, I know!”

I ushered the five of them into the building, and they sat down at their usual table. As I helped Tsuru plate their food, I peeked out from the kitchen at them from time to time—and almost immediately, I could tell that something was different about them today. They were still chatting it up like usual, but there was a different vibe around the table.

Suddenly, I had a harrowing thought, and my heart started racing.

Ishimaru was joking around, same as always.

Itakura was complaining about being teased.

Kato was attempting, and failing, to arbitrate.

Akira was laughing along as this all played out.

And Teraoka watched calmly from the sidelines.

From afar, it looked just like any other night.

But something felt decidedly off about them.

At every lull in the conversation, I could feel it.

The way Teraoka looked down at his cup, smiling softly.

The way Itakura awkwardly hung his head.

The way Kato kept looking up at the ceiling.

The way Akira scanned the mess hall in silence.

But every time there was an awkward pause, Ishimaru would crack another joke, bringing their gazes right back onto him as a peal of laughter resounded across the room.

The longer I watched them, the more my pulse quickened with anxiety. What could have happened? Why were they acting like this? It can’t be.

I tried to act natural as I brought out their food.

But my suspicions were on the money.

As soon as they were finished eating, the men rose from their seats and straightened out their backs to address Tsuru as if standing at attention.

“We’ve received our orders,” Akira said calmly. “We’ll all be sortied three days from now, at thirteen hundred hours.”

His words hit me like a truck. Like someone had just bashed me over the head with a shovel.

I stood there, stiff as a board, as Tsuru simply bowed her head.

“Congratulations,” she said.

“Thank you,” the men responded in unison.

…What are you saying?

They’re being sent off to their deaths, aren’t they?

What do you mean, “Congratulations”?

As I hung my head in disbelief, I could feel my right hand beginning to shake—so I reached over with my left and tried to stop it. Then, I realized that my left hand was shaking too.

I felt like I was going to puke. I covered my mouth with my trembling hands and ran out of the mess hall as fast as I could, not saying a word.

“Yuri!” Akira called after me.

I tried to ignore him and just ran faster.

But he caught up to me in no time.

“Yuri…” he said. “Yuri, please…”

He grabbed me by the wrist and spun me around.

I broke free from his grasp and covered my face with both hands.

“Stop… Don’t look at me…” I said, certain I looked like a sobbing mess. “I’m sorry, I just… I need some time alone. I want to sort out my thoughts…”

I knew that if I stayed with him, I’d probably say some things I’d end up regretting, not to mention some things that there was no point in saying since it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. I just told him to leave me be, avoiding his gaze until he let out a sigh.

“…All right,” he said. “Just don’t go too far, okay?”

He rustled his fingers through my hair.

I nodded—then promptly started walking off without even turning back to look at him. After rounding the corner, I crouched down in a corner of an empty lot, hugging my knees to my chest.

They’re being sortied in just three days.

Which means three days from now…

Akira and the others will be—

My head was swirling with so many emotions that I couldn’t even begin to put my thoughts in order. How utterly cruel was it to be tormented by the knowledge that somebody you knew would be dead in just a few days’ time? How could you even look that person in the eyes after that? What do you even say to them?

Not “Congratulations,” that’s for sure.

Why did people in this time period celebrate things like getting drafted and sent out to die on the front lines? I didn’t understand it at all. What were you congratulating them for? For the possibility of dying in combat? Or, in Akira’s case, the certainty?

I couldn’t do it. I could never bring myself to say it. Gun to my head, I could never say, “Congratulations on dying for our country!”

Not when I knew that wasn’t how I actually felt, deep down.

Those weren’t the words I truly wanted to say to him.

After that, I just kind of sat there for a good, long while—staring at the ground, gazing up at the sky, looking around at all the burnt-down buildings around me. I watched as a line of ants marched across the dirt just a few inches in front of my feet. It was funny to think that they didn’t even know there was a war going on; the whims of men made little difference to creatures as tiny and adaptable as them.

Random, pointless thoughts like this occupied my mind until, eventually, I looked up and realized that the sky was starting to grow dark and dim. I should probably be heading home, I thought to myself. Tsuru-san must be worried.

But just as I rose to my feet, I heard frantic footsteps running in my direction. Akira’s footsteps—I could recognize the sound of his gait. Reflexively, I looked over to see him racing down the street, turning his head from side to side as he looked all around.

“Akira!” I called out. This got his attention, and he rushed my way.

“Yuri! There you are!” he said. “Have you seen Itakura?!”

He was far more flustered now than the last time I’d seen him.

“Itakura-san? No…” I said, shaking my head.

“Shoot, okay… Thanks,” he said—then started looking around again.

“Why?” I asked curiously. “What happened to him?”

Akira hesitated a moment before lowering his voice and answering:

“…We can’t find him anywhere. He just disappeared without a word. Didn’t leave a note or anything…”

“What…? You’re kidding… But why?”

“Wish I could tell you…” He furrowed his brow and shook his head.

“Here,” I said. “Let me help you look for him.”

Akria looked at me, his eyes wide.

“No, no—it’s getting late,” he said. “You should head back home before it’s too dark.”

“But wouldn’t we be able to cover more ground together? Don’t you need to find him as quickly as possible?”

“I mean, yes… Honestly, we need to track him down before our superior officer finds out he ran off…”

“Then we’d better hurry. Come on—you go that way. I’ll check over here.”

I ran off down the street before Akira had a chance to shoot me down.

“Itakura-san!”

After searching high and low for a while, I spotted a familiar figure trudging down the road on the outskirts of town and called out to him from behind.

Itakura slowly turned around to face me—but as soon as he realized who I was, he nearly jumped out of his boots and took off running. His gait was so slow and unsteady, though, that even I was able to quickly catch up to him. His complexion was ghostly white.

“Itakura-san… Are you okay?” I asked with concern.

“Yuri…chan…” he said, his face screwed up in agony. “Let me go! I’m begging you!”

He raised his voice, then prostrated himself before me.

“Please!” he shouted. “Pretend you didn’t see me! I can’t do it… I just can’t…”

“Huh…?” I was dumbfounded. Absolutely speechless.

He looked up at me, his face pale and covered in cold sweat, and pleaded:

“…I’m not ready to die…”

Not ready to die.

The moment I heard him say those words, it felt like the weird haze that had been hanging over my heart ever since I’d arrived here dissipated all at once.

Of course… Yes, of course not. It should have gone without saying.

After all, no one in their right mind would ever want to die—right? That went for kamikaze pilots just as much as it did for those innocent civilians who had to flee their homes in the air raid. It was human nature to do everything you possibly could in order to survive! Who could ever be okay with their entire life being stolen away against their will?

I knelt down beside Itakura, his fists trembling against the hard earth.

“…Hey, I’m not here to apprehend you, or anything like that,” I said. “Nor am I in any position to report to the others on whether I saw you or not. I just heard from Akira that you’d disappeared. I got worried, so I decided to come looking for you. That’s all.”

Hearing this, Itakura slowly and nervously lifted his head. His eyes had been so hollow a moment ago, yet now it felt like they were finally starting to focus again. I could see a bead of sweat drip down to the ground from his temple.

“W-wait, so then…you won’t tell them?” he asked, his expression so full of disbelief it was as if he’d seen an alien. But I didn’t think I’d said anything too shocking. All I’d done was acknowledge that if he wasn’t ready to die in three days, it wasn’t my place to tell him he had to. It felt like common sense. And yet, it was like he couldn’t believe his ears.

How tragic was that?

Didn’t we all have the right to free will?

To wish? To live of our own volition?

The people here didn’t even have that.

I rose to my feet, pulling Itakura up by the hand.

But as he staggered to his feet, I heard a voice.

“Itakura!”

Akira shouted out as he ran over from across the way.

As soon as Itakura saw him, his face went deathly pale once again.

“That’s it—I’m done for,” his expression screamed.

Shoulders slouched, he stood before his fellow squad mate, who towered over him like an authority figure. I leaned over to try to get a better look at Akira’s face—his eyes were placid and calm, no discernible emotion held within them.

Suddenly, I got worried. Surely, Akira wouldn’t drag Itakura back to the base against his will, would he? He didn’t seem that heartless to me—but I also knew deserting one’s post was a grave military offense. It wouldn’t surprise me if Itakura’s comrades could be considered complicit if they knew it was happening and did nothing to stop it, either. I also knew Akira had a very strong sense of responsibility, so it was entirely possible he’d consider it his duty to bring back Itakura.

“Um… Akira, listen…” I began—but he shot me a sidelong glance and shook his head. Stay out of this, he seemed to be saying. So I simply bit my lip, chagrined. Then, Akira narrowed his eyes, almost smiling at me—before turning to face Itakura again.

“Itakura,” he said.

“…S-Sakuma-san…” said the other man, his voice low and hoarse.

Then, all of a sudden, he fell forward and clung tight to Akira’s chest. Akira reacted quickly, reaching both his hands up to support Itakura’s weight.

“Please, Sakuma-san!” Itakura cried, his eyes glossy with barely held-back tears. “Please…you have to look the other way! I can’t… I can’t die yet! There’s still so much I need to do!”

It was only after seeing him so desperate and disheveled like this that I was reminded of something incredibly important: Itakura was seventeen years old. In my time, that would make him a second-year student in high school, just three years my senior. Still a mere child—yet he’d been given absolute orders to die for his country and was expected to nod his head and simply go along with it. Of course there were things he still wanted to do; he’d only lived a mere seventeen years on this Earth. He had his whole life ahead of him.

There was no sense in these kamikaze tactics. It was wrong, no matter how you sliced it. I could feel an indignant rage welling up inside of me as Itakura continued his plea:

“Sakuma-san, I… I just need to go home. I need to go back to my fiancée.”

Akira’s eyes widened.

Still clinging to Akira’s chest, Itakura lowered his head and began to explain.

“…She was my best friend growing up,” he said. “But she lost her whole family in an air raid… She herself managed to survive, but got paralyzed from the waist down… The doctors say she’ll never walk again. After that, she was convinced she’d never marry…but that didn’t matter to me. I loved her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, no matter what disabilities she might have. So I finally proposed…and she was so happy, she broke down in tears… A few days later, my draft papers came in the mail.”

He furrowed his brow in anguish, then took a deep breath before continuing.

“I told her I’d make it back alive, no matter what—that she just needed to have faith and wait for me. She looked so forlorn at the thought of being left all alone, but she nodded and said she believed me. Then, on the day I left, she came out to see me off at the station—trying as hard as she could to walk on her own with a cane. When I saw her struggling like that, I swore to myself I’d do whatever it took to make it back to her.”

Akira didn’t say a word. How could he? He just listened and looked at Itakura with calm, patient eyes.

“…I regret volunteering myself as a kamikaze pilot. It wasn’t something I wanted to do. Never in a million years. I knew full well I didn’t want to die. But everyone around me had already volunteered…and I could feel my superior officer glaring at me, the only person who wasn’t raising his hand. I didn’t know what might happen to me if I didn’t follow suit… And so I just went with the flow, hoping I could maybe get out of the assignment later.”

He let out a groan of anguish.

“…I hate myself for being so weak,” he said. “For caving to the pressure of my peers. Why didn’t I have the courage to stand my ground back then? I regret it so deeply, it makes me nauseated just thinking about it. For a while, I just kind of resigned myself to my fate, as the consequences of my own actions… But now…”

He looked up at Akira with a surprisingly resolved and earnest gaze.

“I can’t die,” he said. “For her sake, more than anything else. I’m all she’s got left in this world. If I don’t come home to her alive, she’ll be forced to go on living all alone in this world, struggling every day just to survive. She’ll have lost everything, including her own autonomy. I don’t really have a choice in the matter… I have to go home.”

His steadfast expression hit me right in the heart.

It wasn’t just that he was afraid to die. No—far from it.

He wanted to live. Not for himself, but for someone else.

For the one he loved most.

He’d resolved to live on and survive this war—even if it came at the cost of being hated by his peers. At the cost of being called a coward, of being looked down on with contempt.

But to me, he’d made the most honorable choice there was.

I looked up at Akira, whose stone-faced expression had finally begun to soften.

“…Then go, Itakura,” he said, softly.

Itakura looked at him, dumbfounded.

“What…?” he said. “Sakuma-san…?”

“I said go. Live your life.”

He pushed the other man on the back, urging him forward. But when Itakura turned back over his shoulder, his eyes still full of disbelief, Akira smiled at him gently.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll just have to sink an even bigger ship for the both of us. What you need to do is focus on living…and protecting the ones you need to protect.”

In an instant, the dam broke, and Itakura’s eyes welled up with tears. He turned back around to face Akira and bowed his head deeply .

“Thank you, Sakuma-san…” he said. “I will never forget this!”

“Go on, already,” said Akira, still smiling.

As I watched from the sidelines, I couldn’t help but linger over Akira’s words.

“You just focus on living,” he’d said. But I could read between the lines.

“Let the rest of us die in your stead,” was the implication.

The thought made me so sad. It was so tragic, I couldn’t bear it.

You should never be made to die to protect that which you hold dear.

Please, Akira… You don’t have to die either. Why can’t you realize that?

Just then, I heard the sound of footsteps—quite a few of them, too.

I looked over to see Ishimaru, Teraoka, and Kato running over toward us.

Now, Akira’s entire unit was here.

“Itakura…” Kato muttered, his expression pained. “Are you running away?”

For a split second, Itakura averted his gaze—but then he looked back up at Kato with a determined, steadfast look in his eyes.

“Yes,” he said decisively. “I am.”

Kato grabbed him by the collar.

“You coward…” he growled. “Have you no shame?!”

Itakura winced as if in pain. But Kato refused to let up.

“Were you not honored to be chosen by your country—by your emperor?!” he said. “What nobler duty is there than this?! There’s nothing more disgraceful than deserting under fire—not just for an imperial soldier, but for a Japanese man in general!”

He wasn’t holding back at all—I could tell he truly meant every harsh word. Though after hearing Itakura confess that he wasn’t ready to die yet, I couldn’t help but wonder if Kato was trying to convince himself.

After enduring Kato’s harsh gaze in silence for a good while, Itakura finally let out a bitter, sardonic chuckle.

“…Honored? Chosen?” he said, his voice little more than a raspy whisper. “Tell me—what’s so noble about being sent off to die for your country?”

He spoke in a derisive, self-deprecating tone.

“Remind me again, who was it that started this war?” he said. “For what purpose? Why should we have to die to pay for our government’s foolish choices? All I’m trying to do is go home and lead a peaceful life with the one I love… Is that so wrong?”

I could feel the anger growing in his voice.

“What did we do to deserve this…? Being dragged from our homes and shipped off to some foreign land, where we can die like dogs in a war we didn’t ask for? Don’t we deserve to live as much as anybody else?!”

His sorrowful cry echoed loud and clear beneath the dusky, twilight sky. Teraoka and Ishimaru frowned and hung their heads. Akira simply looked at Itakura, his expression indecipherable. But Kato was undeterred.

“…The one you love, eh?” he said. “A woman, I assume?”

Itakura just stared back at him—which Kato seemed to take as an affirmation.

“So you fell for some broad, and now you want to abandon your post, just like that?!” he said, his fury now reaching a fever pitch. “How utterly pathetic… You’re an embarrassment to your country! Have you completely forgotten your honor?! Your Japanese spirit?!”

Puppeted by his own raging emotions, Kato leaned in as though he meant to punch Itakura. But Teraoka quickly moved in to restrain him.

“That’s enough, Kato,” Teraoka said, his voice low but shockingly resonant.

This seemed to snap Kato back to his senses. Teraoka shook his head from side to side, as if telling him to shut his trap. Slowly, Kato released his grip on Itakura.

An awkward silence fell.

“…An embarrassment?” I muttered, almost unconsciously. “Really?”

All at once, everyone turned their gazes on me. I bit my lip, then continued:

“So, what—you’re saying honor can only be found in death, then? Is that it? Is it shameful now to even want to be alive?”

Once I’d started speaking, I couldn’t stop. The words poured right out as if from an open tap.

“That’s not right… You can’t look me in the eye and tell me that’s not ridiculous! What right do you have to call him pathetic for simply wanting to live?! Who are you to cast judgment on him?!”

Kato just looked at me, eyes wide. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but I cut him off—I wasn’t finished speaking yet.

“Itakura-san just wants to live,” I said. “To spend his life with the one he loves! What the hell is so wrong about that?”

My tears streamed out endlessly.

“Not a single one of you has any right to stop him,” I said. “So please… Don’t say another word… Just let him go…”

“Yuri-chan…” said Itakura. My eyes were so blurred with tears that I could no longer see his face, but I turned in the direction of his voice.

“Go home, Itakura-san,” I pleaded desperately. “I’m sure your fiancée must be worried sick. I mean, you’re the only one she’s got now, right? She probably lives in fear every single day, afraid she might die helpless and alone if another air raid happens, just like the one that took the rest of her family… You can’t let that happen, Itakura-san. She needs you there by her side.”

The thought of how Itakura’s bride-to-be must be feeling was almost too painful to bear. I knew I definitely wouldn’t be able to endure having to live all by lonesome in a world like this.

I wished I could tell the others to go home to their loved ones, too.

Teraoka-san—don’t you have a lovely wife and daughter who need you? Go home to them. Let your child know what it feels like to be cradled in her father’s arms.

Kato-san—though you can be strict and unrelenting at times, I’m sure your students can feel your passion for education and are praying for your safe return. You should be teaching them the value of life, not sacrificing your own to protect them.

Ishimaru-san—I promise your family misses seeing your bright, cheery smile and hearing your jokes and laughter. Having you around to add some levity to their lives would no doubt make this war a lot more bearable for all of them.

And Akira—go see your beloved sister again. I’m sure she loves you as much as—

My heart was filled to the brim with words I could never say aloud. Instead, I simply let my overflowing emotions dribble down my cheeks in the form of a waterfall of tears.

But just then, I felt a gentle warmth envelop my entire body.

“…Don’t cry, Yuri,” he whispered in my ear.

I felt so comfortable in his arms—arms that I knew I might never be held in again. As I stood there weeping, he rubbed my head with his hand, then turned to Itakura.

“Go home, Itakura,” he said. “To the one who’s waiting for you—the one who needs you. Go and be with her; I won’t stop you.”

Teraoka and Ishimaru nodded in agreement.

Even Kato didn’t have anything to say this time around.

Itakura screwed up his face, his eyes brimming with tears.

“Thank you…” he said. “Thank you, everyone… Forgive me!”

As he lowered his head in apology, Teraoka clapped him on the shoulder.

“Get going, Itakura,” said Akira, smiling gently. “Live your life to the fullest…for all of us.”

With that, Itakura took off running—tears streaming down his face as he struggled to choke down his fitful sobs. Akira and the others stood there in silence, their backs against the setting sun, casting long, dark shadows as they watched him go.

Once Itakura had disappeared from view, Teraoka and the other latecomers headed back to base. Only Akira remained, having offered to walk me back to the mess hall.

It was pitch-black outside now as we walked side by side down the street.

“…Hey, Akira,” I said.

“Yeah?” he replied.

I stopped in my tracks and looked up at him.

“…I want to go back to that hill,” I said.

“You mean the one with the lilies?” he asked.

“Yeah… I’d like to go there and just…talk for a while.”

He nodded, then took my hand—“just to be safe, because it’s dark out”—and we started walking again. His palm was so warm. I could feel my heartbeat quickening.

“Yuri?” he said. “Is something wrong?”

He turned to look at me, his gentle eyes glistening in the soft moonlight.

My heart skipped a beat.

I thought back on how warm I felt when he embraced me just minutes prior.

The way he’d held me in his arms and rubbed my back reassuringly until I dozed off on the night of the air raid, when I was too terrified to fall asleep.

“No,” I said. “I’m fine, sorry.”

As we approached the peak of the hill, I could smell the sweet fragrance of lilies hanging in the air. Then, standing at the top, I looked back down the way we’d come—but to my surprise, I couldn’t see a thing.

“Oh, wow… It’s so dark…” I said.

The whole town was wrapped in a darkness so thick, I couldn’t even tell that there were houses down there.

“It’s an air raid prevention measure,” said Akira, standing beside me. “We black out all the lights at night to make sure their planes can’t see where the houses are.”

Somehow, the combination of the lack of light and the complete silence, along with the knowledge that the town had just been razed by a firebombing, made it feel like I was gazing down at a ghost town. It was a melancholy thought.

I just stood there looking for a while.

Until suddenly, my vision went totally dark.

“Wha… Hey, what gives?!” I exclaimed.

Realizing that Akira had probably covered my eyes with his hands, I tried to wriggle myself free—but he refused to let go. Instead, I could feel him turning my face upward ever so gently, still blocking my sight.

“Akira, what are you doing?!” I said—losing my patience as my heart began to race.

“You’ll see,” he said, chuckling lightly before removing his hands. “Take a look.”

“…Oh, wow…” I gasped, utterly speechless. “This is incredible…”

A sky full of stars spread out before me, directly over our heads.

There were so many of them—just star after star after star—illuminating the deep indigo expanse of space at home in their galaxies and nebulae. Some of them were large, shining like brightly shimmering jewels, while others were just tiny twinkling specks.

I’d never seen a night sky like this—never known stars could shine so bright.

“You can see so many of them…” I said. “I can’t believe it…”

As I stared up in amazement, Akira rubbed my back.

“I’ve been wanting to bring you up here at night for a while, actually,” he said. “It’s definitely the best place for stargazing in the whole town.”

His sweet voice lingered softly in my ears—and the moment I looked over at him, and saw him smiling gently back at me—there was no room for doubt.

I was in love with him. Hopelessly, irrevocably in love.

I’d been trying my best not to think about it.

But I couldn’t lie to myself any longer.

He was the only person I’d ever cared this much about—the only one who’d ever occupied my mind like this at every hour of the day. I couldn’t get his warmth, the feeling of being wrapped up in his arms, out of my head.

I’d fallen for him completely—I knew I had.

But I also knew I really shouldn’t have.

He was a kamikaze pilot after all, and I’d known all along he’d be dying in the very near future. I’d tried to tell myself over and over not to let myself fall for him when there was nothing I could do to stop him from leaving—but I couldn’t help it. He had completely stolen my heart, to the point that things like reason and logic could no longer quell the longing, surging of passionate emotions that had been slowly bubbling up inside of me.

I fell backward into the field of grass at my feet. Akira followed suit.

Gazing up at the starry skies above us, I called out to him.

“Hey… Akira?” I said.

“Yeah?” he replied.

I just loved that voice of his—so soft and gentle, it enveloped me like a warm blanket. I could listen to it for hours and hours.

“Akira…” I said.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“…Don’t leave me.”

I’d wanted to say it clearly and decisively—but the words sounded almost pitiful and hesitant, and I had to forcibly wring each syllable out from my throat.

“Wait, what?” said Akira, sitting up beside me.

“Don’t leave me,” I said again. “Don’t go anywhere. Just stay right here with me forever. You can still walk away… It’s not too late…”

His pupils shimmered in starlight as he looked at me, eyes wide open. I sat up next to him and gently wrapped my arms around his shoulders.

“Don’t go, Akira,” I said. “You don’t have to die… I can’t stand the thought of losing you…”

I knew that telling him was pointless. All it’d do was make him feel even more conflicted before his mission. But I couldn’t stop myself. I clung to him desperately.

“Akira… Akira…” I pleaded. “You said I’m like a little sister to you, right? Would you really just leave your little sister behind to fend for herself? Tell me… Why do you have to do this? I hate it… Don’t leave me…”

I looked up at him with tear-stained eyes. His face was contorted with anguish. It was the first time I’d ever seen him make such a pained expression; for as long as I’d known him, he’d always looked so calm and peaceful. Like nothing could shatter his smile.

Had I done this to him? Was I the one causing him this pain?

As I sat there, aghast at myself, Akira wrapped his arms around me.

His embrace was so warm and all-encompassing, it tore me up inside.

To think I’d only be able to feel this warmth for three—no, two more days.

Just three days from now, the man holding me would be gone forever.

I couldn’t believe it. How could I possibly accept such a harsh truth?

How could I shrug this off like the others had? How could I convince myself that it was “for the good of the country” that someone I loved had to die?

My heart was overcome with a bubbling rage the like of which I’d never felt before—and I didn’t even know where to rightfully direct it. All I could do was cling tightly to Akira, my nails digging deep into his back, desperate to keep him here with me just a little longer.

“Please, Akira… You can still get out of this,” I said. “Let’s run away together…!”

Akira blinked softly at me, his eyes placid as a secret lake nestled deep in the forest.

“…No, Yuri,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t do that. I just can’t…”

My heart sank.

It wasn’t just his words. I could see in his steadfast, strong-willed eyes that his mind was made up, and there was nothing I could say to convince him otherwise.

I could feel the tears streaming down my cheeks. How many times had I cried since I’d arrived in this time period? I’d long since lost count. But no matter how many tears I shed, there was nothing I could do to change my cruel reality.

“I have to go…” Akira said softly, running a finger through my hair. “To protect my friends, my family…and everyone I hold dear. This country needs me. If things keep going this way, Japan is going to lose so badly, we might never recover.”

His words stung to hear—especially when I already knew what was going to happen.

“…Why does it have to be you, though?” I asked, my voice muffled as I pressed my face into his chest—almost as if I was trying to speak directly to his heart. “Why do you have to be the one making that sacrifice? The one who dies? It’s so messed up…”

Akira just listened quietly, running his hand back and forth along my scalp in a slow and steady rhythm. It felt nice—but the comfort only made me even sadder.

“I get wanting to protect the ones you love…” I said. “But remember that they all love you too. They’ll be just as sad to lose you as you would be to lose them.”

“…You’re right that there’s no particular reason it has to be me,” he said, his voice soft as the starlight up above. “But if I don’t go, someone else will. And I’d rather it be me than them. The thought of standing idly by and doing nothing while others give their lives in my stead is a hundred, a thousand times more upsetting to me than the thought of dying.”

Why am I struggling so hard to get through to him?

We were speaking the same language, and yet it was like neither of us could begin to comprehend how the other felt. I still didn’t understand how he could think so little of his life that he’d give it away so freely, without any apparent hesitation. And I was fairly certain that he didn’t understand how distressing the thought of losing him was to me and all of his other loved ones.

Obviously, I knew I was being the selfish one here. In my head, the thought of losing Akira was unfathomably worse than the thought of someone else I didn’t even know having to die in his stead. But for him, it was just the opposite.

We could never see eye to eye on this.

“I mean…Japan’s going to lose anyway,” I said, my voice growing feeble as I spiraled deeper into despair. “No matter how many American ships you and your squad mates manage to sink, it’ll hardly put a dent in their fleet… Our country, as we know it, is done for. We’ve already lost. Why add yourself to the death toll at this point? You’ll only be delaying the inevitable…”

Akira never interrupted me; he’d always let me say my piece.

He listened patiently and attentively until I was done.

Then, after a long pause, he said:

“…Yeah, you might be right.”

I looked up at him, stunned.

Had my feelings finally gotten through?

“Japan may very well lose this war in the end,” he said, casting his gaze skyward. “But be that as it may, right now, we still have a chance. And as long as that holds true, there’s still a value in fulfilling our roles—the duties entrusted to us. Yes, it may be a long shot. But every plane we shoot down, every ship we sink brings us one step closer to victory…and one step further from defeat. So, we’ll fight to the bitter end.”

His tone was calm but invigorated; his expression optimistic and refreshed.

“Even if the odds are completely against us, we can’t give up now. If we surrender on their terms, we know exactly what the consequences will be—and they won’t be pretty. Kamikaze tactics may be a last-ditch effort, but I’d rather bet my life on a one-in-a-million chance than willingly accept the worst-case scenario.”

It was just as I feared—there was no talking him out of it.

And to be fair, his argument was perfectly sound.

“So, we’ll fight to the bitter end.”

It sounded like a quote from a movie or something.

But this wasn’t a movie—it was real life. And we were in a real war, with real lives at stake. There was no need to speak in such absolutes or to try to play the hero.

You’re allowed to give up sometimes, Akira.

You don’t have to throw your life away.

After all, who could ever hold his decision against him if they weren’t willing to sacrifice their own lives as well? They’d just be a hypocrite. And besides—Akira abandoning his duties as a kamikaze pilot wouldn’t mean the end for Japan. Heck, even losing the war wouldn’t mean the end for Japan. I knew that better than anyone.

Tell me, Akira.

Is there really no way to stop you?

Any way to keep you from laying down your life for nothing?

Please, Akira… Don’t do this.

I just couldn’t seem to convey my feelings properly in words.

All I could do was repeat the same two words over and over: “Don’t go.”

Akira held me gently in his arms. But I knew he’d never say, “I won’t.”

“…I’m sorry, Yuri,” he said. “I don’t think there’s much I can say to reassure you… I can’t tell you what I know you want to hear.”

I just sat there in silence, eyes downcast.

“But y’know,” he went on, “I could at least give you something to remember me by.”

“Huh?” I said, lifting my gaze to see him smiling down at me.

“Close your eyes.”

I did as he asked—and a moment later, I felt his fingers gently comb back my bangs. I could feel the frigid summer night’s breeze against my forehead, and suddenly I began to get a little anxious. But just when I opened my mouth, I felt something soft graze against my cheek, and I reflexively opened my eyes.

Akira’s face was right up against mine.

So close, our eyelashes were touching.

And then I realized it: He’d just kissed me on the cheek.

He smiled sweetly at me, then whispered my name—in a voice as warm and soft as a ray of sunlight scattered by the trees on a fine spring afternoon.

He was the gentlest person I’d ever met.

And quite possibly the cruelest.

How could he smile at me like this, when he was about to leave me behind?

It’s not fair, Akira… Don’t do this to me…

We just sat there under the stars like that for a while, the sweet scent of lilies all around us, as he held me tightly in his arms—and I cried, and I cried, and I cried.

Like Petals in the Wind

THE NEXT MORNING, CHIYO CAME BY THE MESS hall.

“I heard Ishimaru-san, and the others got their orders,” she said. She was smiling, though I could sense more complicated emotions beneath her smile.

“Yeah…” I said. “Day after tomorrow, at 1:30 p.m.”

Chiyo nodded; apparently, she knew as much as I did.

The two of us sat side by side at one of the tables. After chatting for a bit, she started to tell me the story of how she and Ishimaru first met.

“So the all-girls school I go to does a bit of service work for the kamikaze unit, actually,” she explained. “We go over to the barracks and wash their laundry for them, patch up their socks for them, cook lunch for them… That sort of thing.”

“Wow, sounds like a lot of work,” I said.

“Yeah—but it’s pretty fun, too. We get to hang out with them after they eat and talk about all sorts of stuff.”

“Aw, that’s nice.”

“But see, at first we were all too nervous to socialize with them normally. Like, just imagine being a group of bashful junior high girls in that situation, y’know? But then Ishimaru-san jumped up and started trying to show off this local bon odori dance they apparently do back in his hometown—I’m guessing it was an attempt to break the ice. But it was so bizarre and out of nowhere, we all burst out laughing.”

I wasn’t surprised; I couldn’t help cracking a smile just imagining it.

“After that,” Chiyo went on, “all the tension in the room just melted away, and we were able to just talk to the soldiers like they were anybody else. And I just remember thinking, wow—he’s a clumsy one, but his heart’s definitely in the right place. I liked that about him.”

Presumably that was when her little crush on Ishimaru first began to develop. I couldn’t blame her; he was a genuinely fun person to be around, the kind of guy who always had a smile on his face no matter how bleak things got. When he was at the mess hall, he was always making everyone around him laugh, myself included. And yet, come the day after tomorrow, he’d be leaving us… The thought made me start tearing up a bit. As I lowered my head and tried to hold it all in, Chiyo leaned over and looked me straight in the eyes.

“Let’s go see them off together… Okay?” she said. “I hear their families aren’t allowed to know what day they’ll be sortied, because their superiors don’t want them to have any distractions. Obviously, I know we’re no replacement for their family members… But I feel like they still deserve to have someone there to send them on their way, right?”

All I could do was shake my head.

“Sorry…” I said. “I can’t do that. I can’t go with you.”

“Huh…? Why not?” said Chiyo, eyes wide. “Do you have other plans or something?”

“No… I just can’t bring myself to do it. If I had to actually watch them go, I’d…”

I knew I’d just start bawling like a baby—and I really didn’t want Akira’s last memory of me to be something that would weigh him down emotionally.

Chiyo didn’t say another word about seeing them off after that. I assumed she didn’t really understand my feelings.

“In that case… I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she said as she walked out the door.

She spoke so naturally—like it was to be expected that we’d see each other again the next day, then the day after, for many more days to come. Even in this time period, people didn’t doubt that there would be a next time. Or perhaps they simply acted this way because they wanted to believe it. Because they couldn’t live every day, every moment in fear of the alternative.

But for Akira and the others, there really would be no tomorrow.

I wondered what it felt like to live your life having already resigned to die. I couldn’t even begin to fathom it, and I’m not sure I ever wanted to.

I lifted my gaze to the summer sky.

A clear, vivid blue expanse as far as the eye could see.

A few fluffy white clouds peppered here and there.

The sun shining brightly over the lush greenery.

The cicadas crying out their unending song.

Back in my own time, I used to hate hot summer days like this with every fiber of my being. But now, when I looked up and saw the sun overhead, I took it as a blessing. It was proof that I’d made it safely to another day in an era when tomorrow was never guaranteed, and therefore never to be taken for granted.

“What a beautiful day…” I said, staring vacantly up into the sky.

I didn’t really get any work done that day.

My head was so full of thoughts of Akira that I couldn’t focus. Tsuru probably had to work much harder than she usually did to pick up my slack, but she didn’t seem to mind one bit. She just patted me on the head and looked at me—a sadness in her eyes every bit as deep as my own.

Once we closed up shop, I sat alone with my thoughts in a corner of a dark room with the lights off, hugging my knees to my chest on the floor.

Was there truly nothing I could do to make Akira reconsider?

Nothing I could do to make his conviction waver even a little?

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come up with anything. Heck, I couldn’t even talk to him unless he decided to come by the mess hall again. My only option was to languish in my own impatient dread, powerless to do anything at all as I lay awake. I stayed up the entire night, unable to get even a single wink of sleep.

The next day—the day before they were to be sortied—Akira and the others came to eat at the mess hall for dinner. It wasn’t just the five of them, either; they’d brought along the whole crew of about ten soldiers, so the place was pretty packed.

“They actually gave us some sake for once, believe it or not,” said Ishimaru. “We were kinda hopin’ you might be able to whip up some tasty snacks for us to pair it with, Tsuru-san.”

“Why, it would be my honor,” Tsuru said, smiling brightly as she headed back into the kitchen.

I grabbed a handful of sake cups from the cupboard and brought them out to their tables. As I did, I just so happened to make eye contact with Akira—but quickly averted my gaze. I still wasn’t entirely sure how to interact with him right now.

“Thanks, Yuri-chan,” Ishimaru said with a grin as he took the cups from the tray and distributed them to his fellow squad mates.

I wondered if he knew about Chiyo’s secret crush. Probably not. Tomorrow, he’d fly off into the sunset without ever knowing how she felt.

In the kitchen, Tsuru worked as quickly and efficiently as possible, giving me plate after plate of food to bring out to the tables. I watched as the soldiers ate and drank to their heart’s content, their faces going red as they laughed away the evening. Eventually, they were all so drunk and merry that they joined shoulders and broke into song.

“Good god, you’re tone-deaf, Ishimaru,” said one of the men. “You’re throwing all the rest of us out of tune!”

“Hey, you’re no opera singer either, pal!” Ishimaru quipped.

Everyone burst out laughing. The men were all having a wonderful time, just enjoying each other’s company and drinking their fill. They were so full of cheer, it was hard to believe they’d all be gone from this world forever by this time tomorrow. Unable to bear being around them, I headed back into the kitchen.

“…How can they all laugh like that?” I mumbled to myself.

“A fair question, my dear,” said Tsuru, poking her head up from where she’d been crouching as she stoked the wood-fired stove. “For a group of men who’ll be sleeping at the bottom of the sea with enemy warships tomorrow night, they’re quite jovial, aren’t they?”

Tsuru cast her gaze out into the mess hall, then added:

“It’s because they know they’re on their way to nirvana, dear.”

“…Nirvana?” I said, and Tsuru nodded.

“They’re already gods among the living, you see. In return for giving their lives to defend their country, they’ll be welcomed into nirvana the very instant they hit their targets.”

I wasn’t familiar with what “nirvana” meant, but I figured she probably meant something like heaven.

Was that how they sold people on volunteering to be kamikaze pilots?

By promising them a one-way trip to eternal bliss in the afterlife?

I could feel a torrent of rage simmering up from deep inside me.

This was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. Did these poor men really buy into that load of bullcrap? Was that the reason they’d been able to come to terms with their imminent deaths? Surely not—even if throwing their lives away had bought them their ticket into heaven, who would be willing to die in the prime of their youth? Before they’d even had a chance to live?

I could hear the soldiers singing in the other room.

It was a song called “Cherry Blossoms of the Same Spring”—one that I’d heard many times since I’d arrived in this time period, and one whose lyrics annoyed the hell out of me. It essentially compared these soldiers’ lives to cherry blossoms, only blooming most beautifully right before they scattered on the wind and died for the sake of their country. In my view, it was a blatant propaganda song used by the government to brainwash them. It even mentioned the Yasukuni shrine at one point—which I knew from my time as a very controversial place where soldiers who died in the war were enshrined. It was often accused of being a place that glorified war criminals, glossing over the horrors many had committed in the name of their country. Whenever the prime minister or government officials paid a visit there, you could bet it would be covered on the national news as though it were a massive scandal, with diplomats from overseas weighing in to condemn them for it.

And here in 1945 was a song about two soldiers who believed that after they died as kamikaze pilots, they’d meet again, reincarnated as cherry blossoms at that very shrine.

It was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard.

Once you died, that was that—there would be no reunion for these men.

Next, they sang a song called “Torpedoes from the Sky.” This one was about how they’d fly their planes so perfectly, so true that they’d sink the enemy ships in an instant. The lyrics even implied that only those who managed to sink an entire aircraft carrier could be heralded as true Japanese men. How utterly ridiculous was that? Did these people really think their names would be forgotten by history if they didn’t blow themselves up? That they’d be lambasted as cowards if they didn’t comply with this insane plan that the military’s top brass cooked up as a last-ditch effort to save face?

It was utterly infuriating to think of all the lies the country’s propaganda had shoved down their throats. More than that, I felt pathetic and worthless for being completely unable to say anything to these poor men that might save them from their gruesome fates.

I didn’t want to hear another second of these horrible, depressing songs; I wanted to cover my ears and block out every word. Unfortunately, just then, Tsuru handed me a large plate of boiled yams to deliver to the men. Begrudgingly, I carried the food out to them.

Akira was laughing—a bit louder than usual, even though that was probably an effect of the alcohol. Still, I had to wonder: How could he be in such high spirits, knowing full well he was going to die tomorrow? He was no fool; I refused to believe he had bought into military propaganda without recognizing it as such. So what was his deal, then?

Trying to avoid making eye contact, I set the plate in the center of his table.

“Thanks, Yuri-chan,” said one of the other men.

“Boy, Tsuru-san’s cooking tastes even better when it’s Yuri-chan who’s dishin’ it up!” quipped another.

I forced a smile, but I wasn’t in the mood for comedy.

Just then, another soldier by the name of Noguchi rose from his seat.

“I’m gonna go get some fresh air,” he told the man next to him, before staggering his way out of the mess hall, legs unsteady.

He didn’t return for a while, so I got worried that his drinks might not be sitting too well. I headed outside to bring him a cup of water. I found him sitting on the ground a little ways away, clutching his knees to his chest. When I got closer, I gasped.

The man was crying.

“…Are you okay, Noguchi-san?” I asked. “Are you not feeling well…?”

I sat down beside him, and he slowly lifted his head, his cheeks wet with tears.

My immediate thought was that he was getting cold feet and didn’t want to sortie. Perhaps he was afraid of dying—understandably so. It was only human. If anything, I was relieved to see that not everyone here was ready and willing to die.

But his answer floored me.

“No… I’m happy…” he said, his voice trembling. “I’m thrilled, Yuri-chan… So happy, I can’t take it… It’s so exhilarating, thinking about finally getting to sortie with everyone… When we were singing songs together just now, I got so emotional… I couldn’t even sing, I was too choked up…”

I just listened to him, mouth agape.

“You see…I had a bit of a false start,” he continued. “I was actually ordered to sortie south about a month ago with all my closest comrades… But then for whatever reason, my plane suffered some unexpected engine trouble. I had to fly all the way back to Japan in tears. When I returned to the barracks all alone, I was so distressed and furious with myself, I couldn’t sleep for days…”

…Distressed? Furious with yourself? For what? Your plane saving your life?

I wanted to grab him by the shoulders. To tell him how ridiculous that was.

Obviously, fighter planes in this day and age were not nearly as stable as aircraft in my own era, so it apparently wasn’t unusual at all for them to suffer engine trouble immediately after takeoff or to start somersaulting out of control or something. I’d heard that sometimes, kamikaze planes could even accidentally drop their explosive payloads along the way and be forced to return to base.

“I remember telling my squad mates over the radio when I realized I’d have to turn back, and our squad leader just told me—in the cheeriest voice you could ever imagine—that he and the others would go on ahead of me, and that they’d be waiting for me to join them in the next life. That was the last I heard from them. All I could do was watch as their planes vanished beyond the horizon without me… When I think back on it now, I can’t begin to tell you how deeply it still upsets me. It’s so shameful, being the only one who got to turn around and return home alive… I pleaded with my superior officer over and over to let me sortie again, even handwrote appeals to the military’s top brass—and now finally, after a month of waiting, they’ve given me my orders again. I’m so happy, Yuri-chan…”

He wiped his tears away with his clenched fists.

I had to excuse myself, stumbling to my feet in a daze, as I left him crying there on the ground and walked back into the mess hall—where I found Kato standing tall in the center of the dining area, giving a rousing speech to his comrades.

“It’s almost our time at last, my friends,” he said. “By this time tomorrow, we’ll all have become gods of flame and fury, raining Japan’s wrath upon those accursed enemy ships as we drag them down to the bottom of the sea in smithereens with us… The situation is dire—we all know this. If not for our noble sacrifice, Japan would surely lose this war. We must now prove our devotion to the Empire by giving our lives to protect our homeland in this, its time of greatest crisis. How does one even describe the joy of being granted such an honorable death—of being selected from among the Imperial Army’s most elite soldiers, the likes of which the world shall never see again?! My brothers, let us now scatter like cherry blossom petals in the wind, all the more beautiful in their transience! And let us meet again at Yasukuni, for we will not die this day! We will live on in everlasting glory for our contribution to His Majesty’s eternal cause! Long live the Emperor!”

The other men gave Kato an enthusiastic round of applause.

“Yeah!” said one of them. “Let’s do this, brothers!”

“For everlasting glory!” shouted another.

That one in particular was a phrase these military types liked to use an awful lot, I’d learned. It was their way of saying they could live on forever by dying on the battlefield for a noble cause. I still didn’t see what was so glorious about dying, personally.

To me, the whole thing was completely bonkers. These people were all insane—both the soldiers for being so eager to die in battle, and the public for feeding into the narrative that they would find honor in doing so. How did none of them realize that they were the victims of propaganda?

I couldn’t even stand to look these men in the face anymore—so I ran into the kitchen. Tsuru gave me a great big hug and told me I could stay back there if I wanted to, before carrying out the next tray of food herself.

The men let out a cheer when she emerged from the kitchen.

“You’re the best, Tsuru-san!”

“We’ll beat those American savages back into submission, just you wait!”

“We’re gonna annihilate them, no matter what it takes!”

“If you hear anything on the news about an enemy aircraft carrier being destroyed, know that was us!”

“We won’t let you down! We’ll sink those bastards at all costs!”

Tsuru just smiled, then bowed her head deeply to the men.

“I know you will,” she said. “May the winds of fortune be at your back.”

Just then, I saw Akira stand up from his seat. I held my breath.

“Lift your head, Tsuru-san,” he said, smiling as he put his arm around her shoulders. “You’ve been so good to us these past few months. Thanks to your delicious cooking, we’ve been able to endure our rigorous training and hone our bodies. We’re forever grateful to you. Please take care of yourself—you deserve a long and healthy life.”

She nodded over and over, her shoulders trembling. Worried she might be crying, I dashed out into the dining area despite myself and wrapped my arms around her.

“Oh, my… Yuri-chan, what’s the matter?” she said with a chuckle.

She wasn’t crying just yet—but her eyes were filled to the brim with tears.

I couldn’t say a word. I just buried my face in her chest. I didn’t want the men to see me this disheveled—I didn’t want to dampen their spirits, when I knew this would be their last night on Earth. But it was too late. The vibe in the mess hall had already shifted. Now, even a few of the soldiers were hanging their heads, trying to choke back their own tears.

Then, as if on cue, Ishimaru rose from his seat and chimed in.

“Now that my bill has come due, I figure I’ve probably got a good forty years of life left I won’t be able to cash in,” he said with a cheery grin. “When I meet Lord Enma in the afterlife, I’ll be sure to ask him to credit any remaining balance to you, Tsuru-san—so you won’t have to worry about dying until you’re at least a hundred or so.”

Hearing this, Akira sputtered out a laugh.

“Wait, are you not planning to join us in heaven, Ishimaru?” he said. “You know Lord Enma is the King of Hell, right?”

“Wait, really?!” said Ishimaru. “Aw, shoot!”

As Ishimaru scratched his cheek in embarrassment, the other men all burst out laughing. And just like that, the tension in the room disappeared once again. I could tell Ishimaru and Akira were joking around with each other to lighten everyone else’s mood. They were kindhearted and considerate like that—and it pained me deeply that such decent, upstanding young men were being sent to their graves for no reason.

“…Well, we should probably be on our way,” said Teraoka, the oldest.

At his suggestion, all the other men began rising from their seats.

“Thanks for the meal, Tsuru-san. It was delicious.”

“Yeah. Glad you were the chef for our last supper.”

“No kidding. Now I can really die with no regrets.”

“You realize that just makes you sound like a total pig, right?”

“Don’t worry—I’m sure you can gorge yourself as much as you want in the next life too.”

And so, the soldiers all got up to leave, making lighthearted banter with each other as they left. Hearing them joke about “the next life” with their deaths all too real and imminent sent a pang of indescribable dread straight through my chest.

These men were all fully prepared to die. They’d already come to terms with it. Most likely, their resolve had been hardened for this turn of events since long before they got their sortie orders. Maybe even since before they volunteered to be kamikaze pilots in the first place.

How tragic was that? Having to live your last few months on Earth knowing your death could be coming any day? While I still refused to dignify kamikaze attacks as a valid warfare tactic, I couldn’t help but admire the bravery and determination of these men.

“…Thank you, everyone,” I said, lowering my head alongside Tsuru. “It’s been a pleasure to serve you… You’ve all been so welcoming and kind. I truly appreciate it…”

I lowered my head even deeper in gratitude and held it there for quite some time. When at last I lifted my gaze again, I found myself completely surrounded by gentle smiles.

“If anything, we should be thanking you, Yuri-chan.”

“Yeah—your smiling face has really brightened our days.”

“You know, I never had a little sister… But if I did, I’d want her to be as sweet and adorable as you.”

“Hey, easy there, greedy! Yuri-chan’s a little sister to all of us, remember!”

One by one, the men patted me on the head as they filed out of the building. Some of them just gave me a light pat, while others petted me like a small puppy, and still others ruffled my hair as if they were intentionally trying to mess it up. By the end, the men had all turned to laugh at me as I stood there with my hair completely disheveled.

Before long, my eyes were filled to the brim with tears.

Akira, of course, was the last one to go.

“…Akira,” I said, my voice trembling and hoarse.

He just snickered a little, then gave me two little pats on the head.

“You really are a crybaby, Yuri,” he said. “You know that?”

“…I’m not crying,” I said.

“Not yet, maybe. But—call it a hunch—I think you’re about to.”

Even when he teased me, his voice was so soft and gentle.

I could feel the tears spill over and start streaming out.

“Well, I guess this is it,” said Akira. “Try not to get into too much trouble after I’m gone, okay?”

I was sobbing so hard, I couldn’t even speak.

This is goodbye, I thought to myself. I’ll never see him again.

“Take care of yourself, Yuri…” he said—then turned and walked away.

Tsuru took my hand and pulled me outside with her to see them off.

We watched their silhouettes grow smaller and smaller beneath the pale moonlight as they headed back to the base for the very last time. You wouldn’t know it just from looking at them, though, the way they were chatting cheerfully and making little japes as they walked, their arms around each other’s shoulders. Akira was the only one left in silence, bringing up the rear and walking a few paces behind the others.

Was this it? Was this really where we said farewell?

Would I really never see him again after this moment?

No—I couldn’t let it end like this. I simply, plainly refused.

Before I knew it, I’d let go of Tsuru’s hand and broken into a full-on sprint.

“Akira… Akira!” I cried—as some of the men walking near the back of the group turned to look. But as they saw me run straight over to Akira, they walked on ahead, pretending not to have noticed. Unable to slow myself down after reaching him, I practically jumped into him, but he caught me in his arms.

“Don’t go…” I said, burying my face in his chest. “Don’t go… Don’t go… Don’t go… Please, don’t leave me… You can’t die… I can’t bear to never see you again… Can’t bear for this to be the last time we ever speak…”

I threw my arms around his back and clung to him as tight as I could.

“You can’t do this to me… Don’t leave me behind…”

I could feel his arms wrap gently around me, as he enveloped me in his body heat—that warmth I knew and loved. He rubbed my back.

“Please, Akira…” I said. “Don’t go…”

But my words lingered in the air before being scattered away by the summer night’s breeze. Crying, I lifted my head to see Akira’s face glowing in the moonlight. He was smiling, like always, but his brow was furrowed in discomfort.

I didn’t want to do this to him.

I didn’t want to cause him any distress.

I couldn’t say another word.

I pulled myself away gently.

“…Sorry, Akira,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said that…it was selfish…”

“Yuri…” he replied.

Wiping my tears away with both hands, I gazed up at him.

A bit further down the road, I could see Ishimaru at the back of the group, casting a glance over his shoulder to see how things were going. I couldn’t hold Akira back any longer; I didn’t want to inconvenience the others.

I squeezed his hands tightly and looked him in the eyes.

“…Thank you for always coming to my rescue,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be standing here today. So thank you—truly.”

He narrowed his eyes, as if what I had said pained him somewhat.

So, for once, I smiled at him instead. It didn’t come nearly as naturally for me as it did for him—but I gave him the brightest, broadest smile I could muster.

“You should go, Akira,” I said. “They’re all waiting for you.”

“…Yuri,” he said.

“Thanks for everything. Now, get going.”

He grabbed my wrists and pulled me close, then wrapped me in his arms again. This time, he gripped me more tightly than he’d ever embraced me before—it was almost hard to breathe. I could feel his breath hot against my neck as he whispered in my ear.

“Yuri… Yuri,” he said. “I’m so sorry… Thank you…”

He gave me one more tight squeeze, then gently let me go before turning his back to me, jogging off to join his comrades. I stood there in the middle of the street, watching until his silhouette disappeared into the darkness.

The next morning, I waved Tsuru goodbye as she headed off to the airfield.

“Okay, then… I’ll see you later, Yuri-chan,” said Tsuru.

“Yep, see you in a bit,” I said. “Take care.”

In the end, I couldn’t summon up the courage to go and see them off.

I knew that even if I could bring myself to go, I’d probably try to dive in front of his plane or something and beg him not to leave. I knew I’d get too emotional again, so I was content with the note we’d ended things on last night—it was a simple, but elegant goodbye. I didn’t want to ruin it. More than anything else, I just didn’t want to cause him any more trouble or inconvenience.

I sat in a corner of my room, hugging my knees to my chest as I glared down at the tatami mats. It was a beautiful day—but an absolute scorcher. With the windows wide open, the cicadas sounded even louder and more obnoxious than usual. That was one thing about summer I was fairly certain I’d never learn to love in any time period.

Suddenly, a gust of wind blew in through the window, and the old wind chimes hanging from the eaves outside danced and sang in the breeze as a stack of envelopes that had been left lying on the low dining table was blown to the ground.

Oh, shoot, I thought to myself. I’d better get those.

I walked over and picked up the envelopes—but for whatever reason, I decided to give them a once-over before setting them down again. At the top of the stack was a note in Tsuru’s handwriting that read, “Please post these as soon as you possibly can.”

I flipped through the envelopes and I quickly realized they were all letters addressed to the family members of the kamikaze pilots. Their final wills and testaments, most likely. All of them were sealed tightly, with the recipients’ names written in jet-black ink.

I assumed the men had given them to Tsuru to deliver last night; she’d told me how they’d sometimes use her as a proxy for sending letters home to their families, since doing so through the proper military channels meant their contents would be inspected and even potentially censored.

Unable to help myself, I flipped through the envelopes. I quickly recognized the one with Teraoka’s meticulous handwriting; I didn’t know the names it was addressed to, but I assumed they had to be his wife and daughter.

Next, I recognized the ones with thick, emphatic handwriting as Kato’s; there seemed to be one addressed to his father, as well as one addressed to his junior high students. He was a devoted instructor to the very end.

Ishimaru’s penmanship was surprisingly good—he seemed to have written one letter to his entire family, and signed it, “From Satoshi, in Heaven (please don’t try to return to sender!!).” He even found a way to crack a joke here—but this one hit a little too bittersweet for me.

Finally…I came to Akira. His writing was delicate and refined. It seemed he’d written separate letters to each member of his family. I thought it was just so like him as I flipped through them all—one to his father, one to his mother, one to his younger brother, and one to his little sister.

But then I paused in confusion, noticing one more letter at the bottom of the stack. Curious, I pulled it out to see who it was addressed to, and—

“…No way.”

The envelope read simply: “To Yuri.”

I felt my heart skip a beat.

It was for me. A letter from Akira, addressed to me.

I could hear my pulse pounding loudly in my ears.

Moving on their own, my lips mouthed three syllables: Akira.

Akira. Akira. Akira.

Voicelessly, I called his name over and over.

He really was a cruel man—he’d captured my heart with his kindness and refused to let go, all the way to the very end.

Before I knew it, I’d started running.

I burst out of the house, cutting through alleyways out onto the main drag, where I started sprinting as fast as I could—not even acknowledging the number of people I was bumping into. I ran through entire blocks of burned-down houses, still in ruins from the recent firebombing, as I made a beeline toward the base.

I’d never run so fast in my entire life. Not even the night of the air raid.

I could feel the scorching hot sun beating down on my skin, and the sweat running down my back like a waterfall. My sides hurt, and my throat was bone-dry. My legs felt like feeble little twigs, and I tripped over my own toes, falling down again and again and again.

But I refused to slow down.

I had to make it in time. Had to.

I prayed as hard as I could—to whatever god might be out there listening.

Whatever deity had created this cruel, messed-up world in the first place.

The cruel celestial being who saw fit to let Akira die for no good reason.

If you’re out there, whoever you are—at least grant me this one last wish.

Eventually, the airfield’s runway came into view.

I was struggling to breathe.

My lungs were on fire.

My whole body was in pain.

It hurt. God, it hurt. But I had to power through.

Had to get there—just one minute, just one second faster.

The planes were already lined up on the runway, taxiing into position.

Wait, no… Don’t go… You can’t leave yet…

Just wait one more minute… Please…

A huge crowd of people had gathered along the side of the runway. There were old men saluting the kamikaze pilots, and little boys trying to follow their example. There were old women dabbing their tears with pure white handkerchiefs, and schoolgirls holding bouquets of flowers high above their heads.

Beyond the crowd of onlookers, I could see the pilots smiling and waving at them from their cockpits. Some of them were holding up gifts from their family members or the townsfolk, flowers or stuffed animals or what have you, and trying to shout out a few words—but the engine sounds drowned out their voices. I could at least make out the words thank you from their lip movements. The men were all dressed in brand-new military uniforms, with white scarves around their necks that shone brilliantly in the sunlight—as bright and beaming as their indefatigable, unclouded smiles.

I pushed my way through to the front of the crowd and searched for Akira, scanning the planes one by one as they passed right before my eyes for takeoff, the men flashing the crowd one last smile as they headed off.

“Oh, what bravery… So radiant, so divine…” said an older woman standing next to me, before placing her hands together in prayer. “Go now, ye gods among the living…”

I watched as Kato’s plane passed in front of me. He wore a headband adorned with the bright red dot of the Japanese flag that read “SINK THEM IN ONE BLOW.” Next was Ishimaru’s plane. Even as he accelerated for takeoff, he turned to wave at the crowd with his usual, effervescent smile. And following immediately after him—

“Akira… AKIRAAA!”

I shouted at the top of my lungs.

I had no idea if he could hear me.

But I had to try.

“Akira! Akira! Akira!”

My voice was swallowed by the cheering crowd and the roaring engines. Even still, I cried out for him, waving my hand as hard and as high as I possibly could.

Whether my voice actually reached him or not, I didn’t know—but eventually, his gaze landed on me, and his eyes widened in surprise, before relaxing into that gentle smile I loved so much. Then he took one hand off the plane’s control stick and grabbed something—something that was sticking out from a corner of his jacket’s chest pocket, nestled right against his heart—and tossed it out to me.

Startled, I fumbled my hands out to catch it.

It was a single lily flower—perfect and in full bloom.

Its sweet fragrance wafted up into my nose.

I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.

I lifted my head and tried to call out his name one last time, but the voice wouldn’t come. All I could do was watch in dumbfounded disbelief as he waved and passed me by, wearing the most beautiful smile I’d seen in my life.

He was the last one in the line; up ahead, I could see the first plane slowly lift itself off the runway and begin rising up into the air. Then the next, and the next—until eventually, Akira’s plane began climbing upward into the sky as well.

Upward and upward they soared, as if to pierce the ether itself, before the planes got into formation. Then, as if to make one last show of gratitude to the gathered crowd, they circled around and did one final flyby directly over our heads, before turning and heading due south.

I stood there unblinking as I clutched the lily to my chest and watched them go—their planes growing smaller and smaller until they were no more than tiny pinpricks of light heading off into the vast blue expanse, never to return.

Just then, a force like a violent wind washed over me like a wave.

My body lurched forward, and I fell to the hard earth.

That was when I lost consciousness.

Chapter Three: Late Summer

CHAPTER THREE:
LATE SUMMER

A Summer Night’s Dream

“UGH… IT’S SO BRIGHT…”

I awoke to the feeling of warm sunlight playing across my eyelids.

Slowly, I lifted myself up and blearily scanned my surroundings.

Wait… What happened to me again? I remembered fainting at the airfield, so I assumed that someone must have carried me home—until I felt the texture of damp earth beneath my palms. This wasn’t Tsuru’s house. But if I wasn’t at Tsuru’s, where was I?

Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I tried to take another look around—but had to reflexively squint and lower my gaze as the bright sunlight assailed my retinas. As my eyes began to adjust, I let out a gasp as I finally saw what I was wearing.

I was back in my school tracksuit again. But how? Since when?

Then I looked over to the side and saw that I’d been using my book bag as a pillow. This was even weirder—hadn’t I stashed that in the closet back at Tsuru’s house?

Hoisting myself up, I crawled over toward the light—and then I saw it.

“…No way,” I muttered in disbelief.

Large concrete houses and apartment buildings.

A wide road paved in asphalt stretched before me.

These were the streets I’d grown up on.

Had I returned to my own time…?

“No way… It can’t be… But how? Why? What happened…?”

You’d think I’d be elated, right? But no, I was more disoriented and bewildered than anything else.

I’d already resigned myself to never going home again—so I wasn’t mentally prepared for the possibility of it happening so suddenly and without warning.

Dazed and confused, I stumbled out of the shelter and made my way down the familiar streets of my hometown. But all I could think about was the version of it from seventy years prior—the world I’d just left behind.

I hadn’t even gotten the chance to thank Tsuru properly. Or to say goodbye to Chiyo. Or even read Akira’s letter to me, for that matter; I’d left it at Tsuru’s. Hoping against hope, I checked my bag and coat pockets, but, of course, there was no letter to be found there.

As I walked around town wrestling with my shock and regret, before I knew it, I was standing right in front of my old apartment building.

What time was it, I wondered? I pulled out my smartphone, which, somehow, still had some juice left. It said it was 5:30 in the morning—though I didn’t really trust it, given that my phone also claimed it was the very next day after I’d run away from home. Maybe it’s just broken, I thought to myself as I walked up to our doorstep, unlocked the front door, and let myself inside. And not a moment later.

“…Yuri?!”

My mother came rushing out from the living room—her hair was disheveled, and her nightly makeup was beginning to peel off.

“…You foolish girl!” she shouted, slapping me across the face.

A searing pain shot through my skull. But as I rubbed my reddened cheek and glared at my mother, I noticed something. From the corners of her pitch-black, eyeshadow-and-mascara-stained eyes, there were tears streaming down her cheeks.

It might have been the first time I’d ever seen my mother cry.

I was so stunned at the sight that I didn’t know what to do or even say.

“…Just where in the world did you run off to?!” she demanded.

Obviously, I couldn’t tell her I’d run off to 1945, so I just stared at her in silence.

“…You really are a headache, you know that?” she said. “I went looking everywhere for you, so I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night… How am I supposed to have the energy for work today? Just what are you going to do to make it up to me?!”

I tilted my head in confusion.

She didn’t get a wink of sleep…last night?

“Wait… Hold on,” I said. “I’ve only been gone for one night?”

“Excuse me?” said my mother, her expression suspicious. “Did you hit your head or something on the way back home?”

She reached out and rubbed my head, checking for any welts or bruises. This took me slightly aback as well; I couldn’t even remember the last time my mother had touched me so gently.

Feeling awkward and embarrassed, I hung my head—as I did, I saw that my mother’s ankles were caked with dirt and mud. And on closer inspection, I could see countless dark footprints all across the short entry hallway leading into the living room in both directions. Almost as if she’d been pacing back and forth through it over and over.

“Uh, Mom…?” I said. “Your feet are filthy.”

“Oh, be quiet!” she said, shoving me. “Just whose fault do you think that is?!”

“Huh…?”

“Since you weren’t coming home, I had to run all around town in the dark looking for you. I fell into a huge muddy ditch while I was looking, so you’d better have quite the apology prepared for me, young lady!”

It was only at this point that she turned and walked into the bathroom and started scrubbing her feet clean.

“Wait… You were out there looking for me? All night?” I asked.

“…Of course,” said my mother. “You may be a fool, but you’re still my daughter, for crying out loud…”

I could hear her voice trembling ever so slightly.

And before I knew it, I’d started to weep.

“Didn’t know you were such a crybaby, Yuri.”

I could still hear Akira’s voice in my ear, chuckling slightly.

He was long gone now. After all, it’d been seventy years since I’d watched him disappear into the southern sky. I’d never see him again.

I couldn’t stop crying; the tears flowed like a river.

Eventually, I fell to my knees and started sobbing convulsively.

I clung to my mother’s back—and she turned to look at me, surprise in her eyes.

To think she’d been out there looking for me the entire night, searching so desperately that her legs got caked in mud, not getting even a wink of sleep. This woman, who’d raised me all alone, had been waiting up all night, anxious for me to come home.

And all I’d done in return was take every opportunity to fight her and cause her trouble.

“Mom… I’m sorry…” I said. “I’m so sorry…”

I repeated the words over and over through fits of sobs, until eventually my mother reached out her arms and wrapped me up tight.

“…I’m sorry too, dear,” she said. “I’m just so busy and tired and frustrated all the time…but that’s no excuse for me to take it out on you. I’m sure I’ve been making you feel quite terrible recently, haven’t I? I’m so sorry, Yuri…”

Seeing her sniffling and apologizing like this, I couldn’t help but crack a trembling smile.

For all our foul-mouthed bickering and complaining, it seemed she and I were both big softies at heart—we just didn’t want to admit it. Like mother, like daughter, I supposed.

Unfading Emotions

MY EVERYDAY LIFE HAD COMPLETELY RETURNED to normal.

But ever since I returned from living in the past, everyone around kept saying I was like a totally different person now—much calmer and better behaved. It made me realize what a stubborn brat I’d been all these years. I couldn’t help but wonder why I’d been so irritable and combative about everything before. I really didn’t get it.

In this world, I could go to school and gaze up into the bright blue sky without a care in the world. I could fill my stomach to the brim and take a nice, warm bath whenever I wanted. I could sit in my nice air-conditioned bedroom and read manga with the lights on all through the night, never fearing for my life, never having to keep my valuables packed up to be moved at a moment’s notice, never having to sleep with one eye open on the off chance that there could be an air raid during the night.

I really was lucky to have been born when I was. I didn’t know what I was so unhappy about before. At least in Japan, it was an era of plenty, an era of safety.

But now, every time I saw reports about tragedies overseas on the international news, my breath caught in my throat. There were, of course, many nations at war today, with their people living in fear of bombings, or revolutions, or even suicide bombers taking their own lives in the name of their faith or creed. There were still young men being forced to take up arms and fight, and children living in fear due to the decisions made by a handful of foolish, selfish adults. Every time I was reminded of that fact, I thought back on all the wonderful people I’d met in that time period, seventy years ago.

They’d all been so warm and kind to me, a total stranger—despite having to live in a world that was so much crueler than my own. Even after the war was over, I was certain they’d all struggled to survive in all the chaos and poverty of the postwar era.

That same suffering was still going on now, in the modern day. Any time I read an article about rising tensions and internal strife in other countries, or saw images of towns ravaged by air raids and terrorist bombings, with civilians’ faces covered in blood as they mourned their lost loved ones, I’d have flashbacks to that fateful day seventy years ago. I still relived the firebombing in nightmares from time to time.

I wanted nothing more than for there to be no more war anywhere in the world. At this rate, we were only going to make ourselves extinct. But what could I even do about it?

Such were the agonizing thoughts that ran through my head, day in and day out, after I had returned to my peaceful, everyday life.

Before long, it was July, and the summer heat finally hit its stride.

On my way home from school one day, while wiping the sweat from my eyes with the backs of my hands, I came to a sudden stop as I smelled a familiar fragrance in the air.

I looked around and saw a small patch of lilies in the garden of one of the nearby houses, their petals pure white and in full bloom. The sight made my heart ache and tighten with melancholy, as though it had just been clamped in a vise.

Oh, Akira. Even now, I still thought of him every single day.

It wasn’t even intentional; I’d just close my eyes, there he’d be.

I couldn’t help but remember his gentle smile. His low, but ever so slightly sweet voice. The way he’d rub my head with his great big hands, the way he’d hold me tightly in his sturdy, muscular arms, or the way he’d carry me on his warm, broad shoulders.

For a split second, after I returned to my world, I had wondered if it had all just been a dream—if all the horrors I’d experienced there, all the caring and considerate people I’d met were just figments of imagination that my mind cooked up that night I fell asleep in the old air raid shelter. A mid summer night’s dream. A hallucination cooked up by the sweltering heat, like a desert mirage.

But I knew better. It was reality—I was certain.

After all, my mother had all but confirmed it the very night I got back: She’d leaned in close to my chest, and after a few curious sniffs, declared that I smelled like lilies. So I looked down—and saw that my hands were covered in pollen, the same deep orange hue as the evening sun.

It had to have come from the lily he’d given me as he took off.

The one I’d been clinging to tightly as I passed out.

So yes—I was fully convinced it hadn’t been just a dream. Akira actually existed in my life. That much was true, I knew for certain—as certain I was that I’d never see him again.

The thought made my eyes well up with tears. And so, standing there in front of the lilies in this random stranger’s garden, I softly began to weep.

“Didn’t know you were such a crybaby, Yuri.”

For a moment, I could have sworn I had heard his voice again.

“All right, folks! Time to pick your groups for the field trip next week.”

Staring out the window as the cicadas buzzed their endless song, I turned my gaze back to the lectern, where my homeroom teacher was standing in front of the blackboard.

Three weeks from now, it’d be summer vacation, but before that, we would be having our annual class field trip. I didn’t even know where we were going this year; they’d probably mentioned it in class or via handout at some point, but in my rebellious phase, I’d generally tuned stuff like that out entirely.

Not that it mattered where we went, really. I was fairly certain the overall experience would be about the same as last year: We’d take a long bus ride somewhere, listen to some random guy explain some boring stuff to us for a few hours, eat lunch, go listen to some other guy explain some other thing for a few more hours, then go home.

Resting my cheek on my palm, I gazed absentmindedly up at the blackboard.

“Now, you’re free to group up with whoever you like—we just need to make sure you divide up into six groups of six,” said the teacher.

Ugh. This was the worst-case scenario for a girl like me, since I didn’t really have any good friends in class to speak of. If anything, my previous behavior as the class’s resident problem child had made all the other kids treat me like I was some sort of leper. My only choice was to find some group that didn’t have enough people to glom on to.

My teacher was well aware of this, it seemed, as he quickly pointed to a group of five girls and told them that they needed to let me into their group as well. Given that the group was made up of some of the more quiet and reserved girls in class, I saw them all exchange a look of mild bewilderment at hearing this—but then the liveliest among them, a girl by the name of Hashiguchi, who’d always seemed like the leader of the group to me, said it was fine with them.

As I walked over to join their group though, I could see the discomfort on their faces. It made me feel really awkward to force myself upon them—but I supposed it was my just deserts for avoiding any and all socialization like the plague up until now. More than anything, I just felt bad for Hashiguchi and her friends; they deserved better than to have a miscreant like me put a damper on what should have been a fun field trip with all of their friends. I decided then and there that I’d do everything in my power to stay out of their way on the trip.

After moving desks to sit with our groups, the teacher then instructed us that it was time to choose a leader for each group before we picked our bus seats.

“Being a group leader is an important role, remember,” he said. “Once we’re done with our visit, one representative from each group will be tasked with making an expression of gratitude to the museum staff and tour guides.”

As soon as our teacher said this, a wave of murmurs broke out across the entire classroom. I could hear a group filled with the more rambunctious boys in class complaining loudly about the assignment.

“Aw, man… For real? That sucks…”

“How do they even expect us to ‘express our gratitude,’ anyway?”

“Awright, bro—I’m volunteering you as leader.”

“Hell no! How ’bout you do it, wise guy?!”

My group was similarly thrown into disarray by this announcement. I thought for certain that Hashiguchi would step up and take the role, but she was apparently shier than I realized, quickly shaking her head back and forth as if to say, “Absolutely not!” The other girls in the group had more or less the same reaction.

Realizing that we were getting nowhere fast, I waited for a lull in their discussion and then chimed in with a simple “Um…” The girls all turned to look at me in unison. To me, they all looked a little terrified—but maybe that was just my paranoia talking. Putting on my best “nice girl” face, I smiled at them and said:

“I don’t mind being the leader, if you want.”

“Wait, huh?” said Hashiguchi.

“Just if no one else wants to, that is.”

“Wha…”

She just kind of stared at me, her eyes wide as saucers. Like most of the class, she still hadn’t fully adapted to the sudden change in my personality from my previous troublemaker self, and she clearly wasn’t sure how to interact with me anymore—especially after I did something so utterly unexpected as willingly volunteer myself for a responsibility.

“Well…” said Hashiguchi after a long pause. “Okay, then, if you wouldn’t mind…”

She seemed a bit skittish as she asked me—probably still mildly afraid.

“Not at all,” I said with a smile and a nod. “Now let’s pick our bus seats, shall we?”

“S-sure, yeah…” she said, exchanging another nervous glance with the others.

From now on, I decided I had to start putting some real effort into developing lasting interpersonal relationships. I felt like overcoming the awkward tension between me and these girls in my field trip group would be a pretty good place to start.

I’d made up my mind. The new me would be different.

“Hey, Sae-chan—want some chocolate?”

“You bet I do! Here, I’ll trade you some gummies!”

“Ooh, let me have some!”

It was the morning of our class field trip.

As soon as we’d gotten on the bus, everyone had gotten straight to work trying to barter and trade the yummy treats they’d brought along—my own group included.

Hashiguchi was in the seat next to me, but she had just gotten up to go trade with Takeda and Arikawa across the aisle. After returning to her seat, she turned to face me.

“Um… Kano-san?” she said hesitantly. “Do you want some chocolate?”

I smiled and nodded, then pulled out the candies I had in my pocket.

“Sure,” I said. “Want to trade?”

“Wait… Are you sure?” said Hashiguchi.

“I mean, you’re giving me some chocolate, right? Isn’t that only fair?”

“Er, well, y-yeah… I guess you’re right…”

She nodded a couple of times, then awkwardly accepted my candies.

It seemed it was going to take a bit longer to break the ice between us than I had expected. That made sense though; it wasn’t so quick and easy to make new friends. That was something I’d learned the hard way this past week. At the same time, I also felt like my efforts had begun to pay off to some degree, because it did seem like they were starting to warm up to me a bit.

I gazed idly out the window as the bus rumbled down the bumpy road to some destination I still didn’t know. The blue sky was as clear and bright as could be. Far off in the distance, I could see a tiny flock of puffy cumulonimbus clouds. It reminded me a bit of the sky overhead on the day that Akira and his squad mates got sortied, funny enough.

Eventually, our teacher picked up the handset microphone at the front of the bus and made an announcement over the intercom.

“Okay, folks! We’ll be arriving shortly,” he said. “Be sure to gather up your things in advance and be ready to disembark.”

My classmates began to stir. I picked up my book bag and set it on my lap, then cast my gaze out the window again. By the roadside, I could see a large signboard posted outside an imposing building. As I read what it said, my heart skipped a beat.

KAMIKAZE MEMORIAL MUSEUM

I could feel my pulse quickening as the word kamikaze seared itself into my mind. When the bus turned into the parking lot, my heart started beating even faster.

Everyone stood up and made their way off the bus, so I followed suit—but my mind was a total blur. As the chirping cicadas welcomed us, we all filed into the building.

Right in the main lobby, there was an old beat-up fighter plane on display. It was the exact same model I remembered Akira and his comrades climbing into on that fateful day.

I started feeling faint. My vision began to swirl as all of my memories from that day came back to me oh so vividly—the men smiling and waving at us as they bravely headed off. The way their ships seemed to vanish into tiny beads of light in the southern sky. Looking at the plane here and now, up close, it was so much smaller, so much more fragile than a modern fighter jet. And yet, those men entrusted their lives to these tiny, ramshackle planes. Not that they had much choice in the matter, of course.

I wondered: Had they actually made it to their destination? Had any of them experienced engine troubles, requiring an emergency landing? I knew there were quite a few cases of kamikaze pilots having to turn back and abandon their missions due to unexpected factors like that—or even crashing before they reached their target.

What about Akira? Had he turned back somehow?

My mind went blank. I couldn’t even think properly.

“All right, we’ll be splitting up into our groups now,” said my homeroom teacher. “Remember, you’ll be required to share what you’ve learned today with the class, so be sure to pay good attention and absorb as much information as possible.”

And just like that, we all got together with our groups and headed off into the museum. I followed Hashiguchi and the others, walking a few steps behind as I tried my best to collect myself. Heading further in, we arrived at a long exhibition hall—but when I saw what was inside, I couldn’t help but gasp.

The entire wall was covered in black-and-white photos.

They were all portraits of kamikaze pilots smiling in uniform.

All of them young men who’d lost their lives seventy years ago.

Once my eyes landed on a few faces I recognized, my heart seized up.

Struggling not to break down and cry on the spot, I turned away from the wall and looked toward the other side of the hall, which was lined with several glass display cases featuring keepsakes and mementos presumably left behind by the deceased. Among them was a large selection of letters and other documents, faded and tattered from having been read over and over across the years. My eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to them; I looked them over briefly one by one as I tried my best to keep pace with the rest of my group and not get left behind as they made their way down the hall.

There were diary entries written the night before the writer was sortied. Poems allegedly composed just hours before takeoff. Slogans like “SINK THE MOTHERSHIP” and “ONE PLANE FOR EVERY SHIP” written in bold letters on calligraphy paper. All of them were written in beautiful lettering in deep black ink. There were also quite a few letters that appeared to be a given soldier’s last will and testament. Many of these ended with stereotypical phrases like “LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR,” “GLORY TO THE EMPIRE,” and so on.

I wondered how it felt to write letters like this to one’s family. Or for family members to have to read them, for that matter. Presumably, the letters Akira and his friends had written to their loved ones and left with Tsuru were just like these…

Then, as I was absentmindedly looking around the display case, my eyes landed on some handwriting I recognized. I let out a gasp before leaning in to examine it closer. There was no doubt about it—this was Teraoka’s penmanship.

But try as I might to trace the letters on the page, they were too small and too indistinct for me to really make out what he was saying for the entire first page—aside from the fact that it was a long letter addressed to his wife, and the words Take care of Kayo for me at the very end. I assumed Kayo was their baby daughter.

Beside this first page, however, there was a second one, which was apparently addressed to said daughter and written entirely in big, clear katakana characters. Presumably, he wanted to make it easier for her to read—but fortunately, this meant that I could actually decipher this one as well.

To Kayo—please read this when you’re a little older.

Be sure to always take your schoolwork seriously and try to help your mother around the house. I’m sorry I never got to meet you, but don’t be sad. By the time you read this, your father will have become the divine wind that will protect our country. So if you ever feel lonely, just look up into the skyand know that I will always be watching over you.

…I couldn’t help but wonder if Kayo ever got the chance to read this. And if she did, what did she think of it, especially given that Japan would have long since lost the war by the time she was old enough to understand it?

I looked over at the next letter in the display case. This one was written by Ishimaru. His penmanship was equally good, but he didn’t write in cursive like Teraoka had, so it was much easier for me to read.

“Hello, everyone. It’s me, writing to you from up here in heaven.”

It was such an Ishimaru way of opening a letter, I couldn’t help but smile.

Come tomorrow, I’ll be heading off into the sunset. Mother, Father—thank you so much for raising and taking care of me these past twenty-odd years. I couldn’t have asked for a life more fun than the one I’ve already lived, so I’m leaving with no regrets. Oh, by the way, don’t worry—I won’t be leaving any debts or secret mistresses with illegitimate children behind for you to have to deal with either!

Anyway, I guess this is goodbye for now, but rest assured that I’ll be going out with a full heart and a smile on my face. See you all up there.

I chuckled at the part about debts and secret mistresses; leave it to Ishimaru to use his final will and testament as an excuse to crack one last joke. He really had been a merry soul—so cheerful and full of whimsy. I guessed he’d chosen to write his letter like this in the hopes that it might soften his family’s sorrows, if only a little.

I felt my lips curl into the slightest of grins as I reminisced about Ishimaru and his kindhearted nature, before moving on to the next letter in the display case.

The moment I saw it, my heart stopped.

For a brief second, everything went white, and I nearly lost my balance, having to hold on to the display case just to keep myself from falling over as I waited out the shock.

It was Akira’s.

Akira’s handwriting. Akira’s lettering.

I was so shaken, I could feel the taste of bile climbing up the back of my throat, and I had to suppress the urge to vomit as I looked down at the letters in disbelief.

There was one to his father. One to his mother. And one to each of his siblings.

I pitched forward, clinging to the display case like an insane person as I leaned in as close as I could to read the words.

Dear Father,

Words cannot express how grateful I am to you for giving me such a strict and proper upbringing.

While I was unable to repay your kindness in life, I hope I can at least bring honor to you in death, as tomorrow I carry out this greatest and most noble of missions that has been bestowed upon me. I will finally fulfill my childhood dream of scattering in the wind like a cherry blossom for the sake of our nation. I go now, steadfast in my belief that our great empire will live on for all eternity.

His words were strong and carried no hint of doubt. They conveyed his conviction extremely well. When I read them, I could almost feel that same unwavering confidence I’d seen whenever I looked into his eyes.

Dear Mother,

In my mind, you have always been the very image of an ideal Japanese woman—both strong and gentle—and it has been my distinct honor to be raised in the grace of your love. It is with great happiness that I go now to meet my death. Please know that your Akira has no lingering regrets or emotions that bind him to this world.

Please also forgive any prior disobedience I may have shown you in life, whether as a rambunctious child or a naive young adult. Know that I will be waiting patiently for you and Father in the afterlife—so live as long and as healthily as you possibly can.

His letter to his mother was much gentler and more affectionate than the one he’d written to his father—which made sense. It was all very like him. When I read these words, I could almost see his gentle, all-encompassing smile on the backs of my eyelids.

Dear Satoshi,

Your older brother has been selected to serve as a kamikaze pilot. It is an honor I scarcely deserve; the mere thought of being permitted to give my life for the sake of our country fills me with such elation, I still get chills. I swear to you that I will carry out my mission with great pride. By the time you read this, I will be at rest at the bottom of the sea, sleeping peacefully in the knowledge that I took one of the enemy’s ships down with me. There is no greater honor I could ask for as a Japanese man. Know that, although your brother’s life was short, his name will live on in everlasting glory.

When I think back on our childhood now, how we used to run and play through the fields together with you following closely, no matter where we went, it all feels like a lifetime ago. Satoshi, I pray you’ll grow up to be the very picture of a Japanese gentleman.

Take care of Mother for me.

Dear Keiko,

While I know I didn’t really get the chance to watch over and protect you like an older brother should have, know that not a day has passed in which you haven’t crossed my mind, and in which I haven’t worried for you and your future. I know you said you wanted nothing more than to go back to school; rest assured that the war is nearing its end, and soon enough, you’ll be able to return to the classroom and be reunited with your friends. When that day comes, I ask only that you devote yourself wholeheartedly to your studies. There is still so much about this world I wish to know but will never get the chance to—so please do your brother proud and learn as much as you possibly can. There is nothing that would make me happier.

And if I might ask one final favor: Do look after Mother and Father once I’m gone.

He’d written each letter in such a different tone of voice, and yet I could truly feel the emotion lingering behind each and every word. They were by no means sappy letters, but I could still certainly tell that he’d cared for his siblings more than anything else in the world.

I blinked a few times, as my lips curled into the gentlest of smiles. There was something deeply gratifying about finding this here, in my own time—like it was tangible proof that Akira really had existed, that he wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.

Then I walked a few steps forward, and my eyes landed on the next letter in the display case. This one was in surprisingly good shape compared to the others—almost as if it had remained sealed in its envelope until only recently, never having been read by its original recipient. Finding this a bit odd, I leaned closer to get a better look.

And then I let out a silent gasp.

The first two words of the letter were: “Dear Yuri.”

No way… Is this that letter? The one I left behind at Tsuru’s?

My fingers trembled against the glass display case.

What were the chances I’d find his letter to me here, of all places?

I leaned my upper body over the glass and pored over the words.

Immediately, I got so absorbed in the letter, I forgot to even blink.

Dear Yuri.

I know that writing you a letter like this might be a cruel thing for me to do, since it will probably only make it harder for you to say goodbye.

But I can’t bear the thought of letting these feelings go forever unsaid—of letting them simply fizzle into nothing as though they were never there at all, like tiny bubbles in the sea. So let this letter be my final testament to you, in which I confess to you my truest emotions. If you would at least hear me out and read this letter to the end, I would greatly appreciate it.

I know I told you before that I think of you like a little sister.

ButI’m sorry to saythat that was a bold-faced lie.

The truth is, I was in love with you. You were the most earnest, sincere, and gentle soul I ever had the pleasure of meeting—and I loved you from the bottom of my heart.

If only we had been born in a different time, I would have loved nothing more than to live out my days with youand spend the rest of our lives together.

But alas, that is a dream that will never come true. Because come half past one tomorrow, I will be heading off—never to return—to do my duty to our country.

As I write this letter to you now, I am gazing up at the same sky that will soon serve as my grave—sitting upon that very hill you loved so much. The one where lilies bloom.

With every breath, the sweet fragrance of your namesake flower fills my lungs.

Like these beautiful flowers, there is a simple pureness to you. The way you wear your heart on your sleeve was so magnetic, so endearing that I couldn’t help falling head over heels for you.

The sky tonight is so gorgeous and vast—the stars are shining brightly overhead, just like they did the last time I was here with you.

I’m content to entrust my life to a sky like that.

To protect this world, where lilies like you can bloom.

I pray only that you find happiness in this life. That your smile can shine on forever.

Yuri… What I wouldn’t give to see you again—just one last time, before I go.

But I know that sounds silly, when we only said goodbye less than an hour ago.

I’m still not sure what it is about you that makes it so hard for me to let go.

You must live on, Yuri. I can’t tell how much it’s pained me to watch you suffer and struggle for simply being born in the wrong placeat the wrong time.

You can rest easy, because this war will soon be over.

Perhaps even much sooner than you even think. I promise you that much.

So please: You must do whatever it takes to survive until then.

That is the only thing I find myself wishing for—on this, my last night on Earth.

May you live to see a better world than this one.

So long, Yuri. And farewell.

I was sobbing.

Before I’d even made it halfway through the letter, my eyes were so blurry with tears that I could barely read it. No matter how hard I tried to wipe them away, they just kept on coming—streaming down my cheeks and dripping down onto the glass.

Oh, Akira… What I wouldn’t give to see you just one more time…

My legs gave out from under me, and I collapsed in a heap on the floor.

My classmates looked over at me in shock and concern, but I couldn’t stop. I just kept sobbing convulsively, my whimpering voice the only sound echoing through the otherwise silent exhibition hall.

“…Akira… Akira…”

Sniffling, I turned my head to look at the opposite wall.

The one lined with rows upon rows of black-and-white portraits.

I found him in an instant. Even among dozens and dozens of others, his photo stuck out to me immediately, almost as if his was the only face I could see in color.

I staggered to my feet, then stumbled as fast as I could over to it, practically throwing myself against the wall. There, in a tiny rectangular frame, was Akira’s smiling face—the same gentle smile I knew so well. And sticking out from his chest pocket, there were two lily flowers lying side by side, nestled right up against his heart.

Oh my god… He really loved me, didn’t he?

He was the first person I’d ever loved. Although I wouldn’t find out until seventy years later, he loved me deeply, in his own quiet way. From both his letter and this photo, his true feelings were all too painfully clear.

I fell to the floor again, no longer able to keep myself from bawling.

“…Are you okay, Kano-san…?” asked Hashiguchi, rushing over to kneel by my side.

No… Ugh… Now everyone’s looking at me like I’m some freak…

But try as I might, there was nothing I could do to stop the tears.

In the end, I just kept wailing and crying like a toddler until eventually the teachers came to collect me and carried me out of the building.

A New World

IT’S LIKE WE’RE LIVING IN A WHOLE DIFFERENT WORLD.

That was what I thought as I cast my gaze skyward, taking a single swig from the bottle of mineral water that the teachers had bought for me after I finally finished crying my eyes out on the bench outside the museum.

It really did feel like a completely different world to me now.

A newer, brighter one. And—for the most part—a better one.

The clear blue skies. The clouds drifting slowly overhead. The gentle breeze caressing my skin. The leaves rustling in the trees. The warm sun shining down.

This was the world they fought so hard to protect.

This was the peace they sacrificed their lives to attain.

Directly up above me, I watched as a plane flew by, painting white vapor trails across the vast blue sky. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath—taking a moment to just enjoy the feeling of sunlight on the backs of my eyelids.

Back in that era, people couldn’t even gaze listlessly up at the sky like this without a tiny fear in the backs of their heads that they might see a squadron of bombers coming their way. But now, things were different. In this Japan, planes flying overhead was never a cause for concern.

A few hours later, we got back on the bus and headed back to school.

After disembarking, we had a quick debrief meeting out on the field before we were all dismissed for the day. I headed back into the school building, though, because I needed to use the bathroom. Sure enough, my eyes were as swollen and red as I expected. Hashiguchi had lent me a frozen water bottle that I’d used on the bus ride home to ice them, but with how much I’d cried, I wasn’t surprised to see it hadn’t made a huge difference.

I let out a sigh, then headed back to my classroom.

Everyone else had already gone home, so it was completely empty.

Out the window, I could hear the soccer and baseball teams shouting on the sports fields. And if I listened closely, I could hear the wind ensemble practicing down in the music room, as well as the sound of basketballs being dribbled in the gym. I sat there at my desk, listening to all of these sounds punctuated by the incessant chirping of cicadas as I waited for the swelling on my eyes to go down a bit more.

As the sun began to set, slowly bathing the classroom walls in a deep shade of orange, I finally rose from my chair to leave. After collecting my sneakers from my shoe cubby in the entryway, I headed outside—where I was greeted by the smell of summer.

I took a long, deep breath. It really is a whole new world, I thought to myself once again as I passed through the main gate, feeling strangely refreshed.

After taking a few steps down the sidewalk, though, I came to a sudden stop.

There was a boy peeking through the gaps in the tree barrier onto campus. He was wearing a uniform from a different school—one I didn’t recognize—and was watching the soccer team as they practiced out on the field. Finding this a little weird, I kept an eye on the boy as I slowly walked past, trying to figure out whether he was up to no good. He must have heard me behind him, and he quickly whirled around.

“Ah…”

I stopped dead in my tracks.

The moment I saw his face, I knew.

This boy… He was… He was Akira.

This boy tilted his head and gave me a confused look before eventually softening his expression into a friendly smile. And once again—it was the exact same smile as Akira’s. Gentle and transparent—I’d never mistake it. There was something almost…calming about it.

“Excuse me…” he said. “Do you go to school here, by any chance?”

I just stared at him blankly and nodded.

“Nice… What year are you?”

“S…second year…” I mumbled.

His smile broadened at this.

“Hey, same as me, then!” he said. “That’s great. See, I’m actually transferring here starting next week—maybe we’ll even be classmates! Anyway, nice to meet you!”

He offered me his hand, and I reflexively reached out to shake it.

As he wrapped his fingers around my palm, my whole body went stiff.

I knew this touch—this big, soft palm, these slender, bony fingers.

In my mind, I called out his name: Akira. Although that wasn’t the name he gave me.

“Nice to meet you too…” I said—then looked up into his eyes.

His pupils were pure and clear, and they glistened like starlight.

A new world.

That’s right—I was going to go on living in this beautiful new world.

A world that had been built upon the suffering and sadness of so many innocent people, one that cost countless lives in order to achieve. I would never forget those brave souls—not just for the sacrifices they had made, but for the lives they lived, and the love they carried in their hearts despite it all.

Dear friends who scattered on the wind that day—can you hear my voice?

I’m still here—alive and well, in the future you fought so hard to protect.

We’re all living together in the bright and shining future you all dreamed of.

Thank you for giving us the beautiful gift of a world to cherish and explore.

I’ll never forget you all. Never forget what you gave up so we could live.

I’ll live my life to the fullest—in this peaceful world you helped create.

Sleep now, dear friends. May you rest your weary heads in peace.

Are you out there, Akira?

Can you hear me, wherever you are?

Is it somewhere safe and quiet?

Free of pain and suffering and sadness?

I can only pray that you’ve found peace at last.

For your life was as fleeting as a petal on the breeze.

I hope you’re at rest now—in a soft and gentle dream.

Final Chapter: Summer’s End

FINAL CHAPTER:
SUMMER’S END

Epilogue

I KNEW THE END WAS NIGH—GROWING CLOSER WITH every second.

I wasn’t afraid to die. I’d left those feelings behind long ago.

I knew this was the only ending I’d be permitted.

I’d thought a lot about death these past few months.

About how to mentally prepare myself for it.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t have a choice in the matter. But I knew that if I were to abandon my mission, my parents and siblings would have to suffer the scorn and shame of being related to a selfish coward. A man who valued his own life more than the greater good. That was something I simply couldn’t do to them.

And yet, there was one time I wavered.

A time when, for the briefest of moments, I really did consider running away. Not for myself, but for someone else—a girl I happened to meet, one who made me wish for nothing more than to spend my life by her side, protecting and providing for her.

If only we’d been born in a different time.

If only there wasn’t a war going on.

If only I wasn’t an enlisted soldier.

Those thoughts gnawed away at my brain again and again.

But I’d chosen this path for myself. I’d volunteered to be a kamikaze pilot. And in the end, even if I hadn’t, someone else would have had to go in my stead.

I hadn’t allowed myself to feel for her—at least not in the way I wished I could. And a few hours ago, I’d left her and the ground she stood on behind for good.

Down below us, floating on the murky gray waters of the Pacific, I could see a fleet of enemy warships slowly come into view. They were US aircraft carriers, and their decks were lined with dozens upon dozens of fighter planes.

“Target sighted!”

Kato’s voice rang out over the radio. He sounded eager—exhilarated, even.

All that remained now was to crash my ship into one of those vessels.

Then, at last, my final duty in life would be complete.

I took a deep breath and gripped the control stick.

I could feel my hands trembling.

Heh, I thought to myself. Looks like I’m still a little nervous after all.

What scared me most was not the thought of dying, though—it was the possibility of failure. It was something I hadn’t given a second thought to before, and yet, now I could feel that anxiety slowly beginning to billow up from deep within my chest.

Just then, a sweet and delicate fragrance wafted up into my nose.

I looked down with a start at the pure white lily sticking out from my chest pocket. I’d placed it there when I was getting dressed this morning, after picking two of them from the hill where they bloom the night before. Its mate was no longer with me; I’d given it away just moments before my plane left the ground.

As the flower’s scent filled my lungs, it filled my heart with a strange sense of contentment, and my hands suddenly stopped shaking.

Yuri… I whispered in my mind.

To think I’d fallen for a girl named after these very flowers.

A kindhearted girl with a pure and honest soul.

Whenever she looked at me with those innocent eyes, I could see an earnestness in her gaze that made me wonder if perhaps she harbored feelings for me as well—although perhaps that was wishful thinking on my part.

I wished that I could stay with her. But I knew it just wasn’t meant to be.

So instead, I simply put those feelings to paper and wrote her a letter last night. I knew there was little meaning in telling her how I felt at this point, but I simply had to write something down. Had to leave some form of proof behind that my emotions were real.

In my initial draft, I’d actually included a rather sappy sentiment—about how if we were to be reincarnated someday, I hoped that maybe we could be together in that life—but then I thought better of it and started over from scratch on a fresh sheet of stationery.

After all, I had no right to say something so presumptuous, considering I was the one who was letting go, casting her aside to leave this world behind.

But as I sat here now, alone in my cockpit, there was no reason to hide it.

I could be honest with my own emotions—and my final, selfish wish.

I hope we meet again, Yuri.

In another time, another life.

A better world—a brighter future.

If only we could be reborn, I’d do whatever it took to find you.

No matter where or when, I’d find my way to you somehow.

And if the fates were kind, and reunited us on that lily hill—

I’d look you straight in the eye and tell you how I truly felt.

This time, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d say I loved you with all my heart.

That’s all I’ve ever wanted is a life shared with you.

To exist together in a world free of pain, free of suffering.

Never causing any harm or trouble to anyone or anything.

I promise you this time, I’d live my life for you, and only you.

All I ask is that you wait for me there, on that hill where lilies bloom.

I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Then, readjusting my grip on the control stick, I pitched the yoke forward to begin my final descent.

As I nosedived toward the enemy ship, I could see the American soldiers on the deck suddenly stop what they were doing and look up in my direction, their faces twisting in horror as they scrambled to run for cover.

They were just young men, same as me.

Each with families and loved ones of their own.

This thought ignited a blaze inside my chest.

Something desperate. Something…human.

And at the very last second—I pulled hard to the left.

Gripping the control stick as tightly as I could, I gritted my teeth as the cockpit shook violently under the immense g-forces. The plane could barely bear this sudden change in direction at such a high velocity. But it worked—I watched as the nose of my plane swerved away from the aircraft carrier and made its final plunge straight into the surface of the ocean.

I felt a violent impact—but only for a fleeting instant.

…And then all at once, my field of vision turned white.

A pure, unblemished white—the color of lilies.

I couldn’t see, hear, or feel anything. But in that instant—

I could smell the sweet fragrance of the flower in my pocket.

I love you, Yuri. And I’ll come back to you—I promise.

No matter how long it takes, I’ll find you in another life.

So wait for me, Yuri—till we meet again on the hill where lilies bloom.

The thought of that girl comforted me as the world faded into nothingness.

FIN

Bonus Chapter: Till Summer Comes Round Again

Bonus Chapter:
Till Summer Comes Round Again

“OH, HELLO THERE, CHIYO-CHAN.”

No sooner had I poked my head in through the back door of the Tsuru-ya Mess Hall than did its proprietor look up from the stove and greet me with a friendly smile.

“Morning, Tsuru-san,” I said. “I’ve got your delivery for today right here.”

I held up the box of fish I’d procured this morning and smiled back at her.

“Oh, wonderful,” said Tsuru, as she knelt down to stoke the fire beneath the stove. “Could you just set it down in the usual spot for me?”

“Yeah, sure thing,” I said, placing the box in a corner of the dirt-floored area.

“Thank you, dear. My goodness—it’s a hot one out there today, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” I said, casting my gaze out through the open door behind me.

The blue sky overhead, the fluffy white clouds.

It was a perfect mid-August summer day.

Tsuru walked over to me and gazed up at the sky as well.

We both just stood there for a while, staring into the vast blue expanse.

I figured we were both thinking the same exact thing.

Every time I looked up into the summer sky, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that fateful day—when they flew off beyond the horizon and vanished into tiny glints of light.

I could still see it vividly in my mind’s eye, even now.

“…How about a cup of tea before you go, Chiyo-chan?” said Tsuru, smiling gently as she beckoned me into the mess hall.

“Oh, sure,” I said, smiling modestly back at her. “That would be lovely, thank you.”

It had been two years now since the summer that ended the war.

That meant it had also been two full years since we said goodbye.

I tried my best not to talk about those days anymore, if I could help it.

But still, I knew that neither Tsuru nor I would ever forget them. That summer was always on both our minds; I could see it whenever we looked each other in the eye.

In a corner of the mess hall, there sat a white flower vase on a shelf, which Tsuru always kept filled with whatever colorful flowers were currently in season.

“Oh, hey…” I said, looking over. “A lily…”

“That’s right,” Tsuru whispered softly.

We sat side by side, appreciating the elegant blooms as we sipped our tea.

“I wonder what Yuri-chan’s up to right about now…” Tsuru murmured to herself. “Hopefully, she’s doing all right…”

“…I’m sure she is,” I said, gazing at the lily’s immaculate, glossy white petals. “She’s a tough one, that girl.”

Sometimes, I still had trouble believing she’d actually been real.

She just showed up out of the blue one day, then left us just as quickly.

I thought back to that day, when we all went to watch the kamikaze unit sortie. All I remembered was standing there in the crowd along the runway, cheering as the planes rushed past us one by one—when all of a sudden, I heard a familiar voice. I turned to look, and I saw Yuri standing a little further down the runway, shouting something out at one of the planes. Then, after watching them all fly off and disappear, I turned back to where she’d been standing, thinking I’d go over to say hi—but instead, I saw her falling face-first to the ground, as if she had fainted. I ran over to her in a panic, shoving my way through the crowd… But by the time I got there, she’d completely disappeared. I asked the people who’d been standing around her, but none of them seemed to know where she had gone either. It was like she’d just vanished into thin air, like some sort of mirage.

“Chiyo-chan,” said Tsuru all of a sudden. “You still have that letter, I take it?”

I nodded firmly, immediately knowing exactly which letter she was referring to.

That afternoon, after Yuri disappeared, Tsuru and I spent the entire day searching for her before finally giving up and returning to the mess hall as it started growing dark. There, we found that one of the letters the kamikaze pilots had left with Tsuru the night before had been removed from the pile.

It was one from Sakuma, the one that he addressed to Yuri.

“Listen, I’m getting up there in years,” Tsuru had said, “so I’m not sure I’ll be hanging around long enough to see Yuri-chan again. Maybe you should hold onto it for me, Chiyo-chan…”

“Oh, sure!” I replied without an iota of hesitation. “Just leave it to me!”

I’d only opened it a single time to make sure it did indeed contain a letter for the now-disappeared Yuri, before sealing it back up and wrapping it in a lovely cloth. I stowed the letter away in an empty box of sweets I’d received as a gift in the back of my desk drawer. I wanted to make absolutely sure it didn’t get stained or torn—or worse, lost—before I had a chance to deliver it to Yuri.

“Don’t you worry,” I said. “If I ever see Yuri again, I’ll be sure to give it to her.”

To be honest, I had a bad feeling in my gut that that day might never come.

Not that I thought she was dead or anything, of course; I was fully confident that Yuri was still alive and well. And yet, something told me that she was living a very different life these days, somewhere far, far away. I got the feeling there was very little chance we’d ever get to see each other again.

At the same time, it was still a small world. And an interconnected one, at that. No matter how far away you might be from somebody, and no matter how much time might have passed, there was always a chance your paths might cross again somehow. Even if, for example, I didn’t get the opportunity to deliver that letter to Yuri myself, I was certain it would find its way to her somehow, no matter how roundabout the path it took.

But until that day arrived, I’d keep her letter safe and sound.

At some point, I might have to hand it off to somebody else I could trust if I grew too old or too sick to bear the responsibility anymore, and then that person could put the letter somewhere safe and secure, even if it just ended up staying in storage for many, many years—until it could eventually be received by the person it was intended for.

After all, wasn’t that the way humanity had always passed things down? Finding ways to safeguard our history, knowledge, and experience so that it can be inherited by future generations? So they wouldn’t make the same mistakes we had?

There was one other letter I’d been keeping safely stowed away, incidentally.

The one Ishimaru had given me the day before they sortied.

To be fair, it was really more of a note than a letter. It was written on a tiny, folded-up scrap of paper that he’d sneaked into my hand when we said our last tearful goodbyes.

When I got home that night and unfolded it, I saw it contained only three words:

“Be happy, okay?”

And just like that, I broke down and started crying all over again. I wept so hard and for so long, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even think it was possible for my body to contain so much water, only to let it all flow out through my tear ducts.

Be happy, okay? It was a short, sweet sentiment that conveyed the very essence of Ishimaru’s indefatigable optimism so well—and so succinctly, too.

They were simple words on the surface, perhaps, but they felt far more impactful to me since I could hear the voice and feel the intent behind them.

He was right: I needed to find a way to be happy.

I wanted to be someone capable of genuine happiness.

Someone capable of sharing that happiness with others.

Capable of making this world just a little bit brighter, just as he had.

Though in all honesty, I wasn’t sure I was up to the task.

But as my father kept telling me, the world around us was changing fast.

Before long, we might find ourselves in a whole new reality.

Living all-new lives in a hectic, fast-paced society, we have become so accustomed to the pace that many of us would probably forget all about the way things used to be.

I swore I’d never let that happen to me.

I was going to carry these experiences, these precious memories close to my heart, and continue to share them with people and pass them down for as long as I lived.

That felt like a good first step toward the person I wanted to be.

And so, yes—I’d guard Yuri’s letter with my very life.

I’d let future generations know what it was like to have known and lived alongside these poor men whose lives were cut tragically short by the cruel nature of war.

Most of all—I’ll never, ever forget you, Ishimaru-san.

And hope that maybe, just maybe, we can meet again someday.

In a different place, a different time—maybe even a different me and you. It doesn’t matter to me how, really, just as long as I can finally be reunited with you.

When that day comes, I hope we’ll find ourselves in a world where I can tell you I love you without any reservations, any fear of what the future might hold.

I want to love with all my heart and be loved in return.

In a world where there’s no shame in loving fully and wholly.

I hope someday, that world can become a reality.

“Well, I should probably be heading back now,” I said. “But thank you for the tea.”

“Of course, dear,” said Tsuru. “See you tomorrow, then. Careful on your way home.”

She bade me goodbye with a smile and a wave, and I waved right back.

As soon as I stepped out the door, a light breeze blew past and caressed my cheek. It was chillier outside than I had expected; even in the hot sun, I could already feel autumn’s looming specter in the air. But that was just fine with me.

Yes, summer would soon be over.

But it would always come round again.

And each time it did, I’d be reminded once more.

Of my departed friends—and the man that I loved.

And the fateful summer that swallowed them whole.

Afterword

FIRST, LET ME OFFER YOU MY SINCEREST GRATITUDE for having chosen this humble book of mine for your reading pleasure, out of all the other novels in the world.

As you may or may not be aware, this is the latest and greatest edition of my debut novel, first released in Japanese paperback all the way back in 2016. While it may be just a simple coming-of-age story about life and love in the midst of adversity, it’s a book that’s still very near and dear to my heart. I’m so grateful that it’s still being read and enjoyed by so many people the world over, even now, a full seven years later.

Originally, this was only ever intended to be an amateur web novel—something I published quietly, piece by piece, in a secluded corner of the internet, whenever I had time to pen a few pages late at night after getting off work. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would reach and resonate with so many different people. It’s a true testament to the power of word of mouth, and not a day goes by that I don’t feel unbelievably grateful to every single person who’s read it over the years and helped sing its praises.

I was born in Kagoshima prefecture, and to this day, I still remember taking a trip with my extracurricular club to the Chiran Peace Museum. The moment we walked inside, it was like a hush fell over us all—even the most rambunctious and cynical kids in our group couldn’t help but be rendered speechless. We didn’t laugh or joke around at all that day; there was just this air of shock and reverence hanging over the entire place.

I remember being deeply affected by the thought that young men who were no older than I was had their whole lives so unfairly taken away from them, simply because they’d been born in the wrong place at the wrong time. And then I started to think about it the opposite way: If me, or my family, or my friends had been born just a few decades prior, or in a different country, we might not have been spared from the horrors of war ourselves. This was a formative moment for me—the sobering realization of just how much I’d taken my modern life for granted, and how precious life was in general.

A bit later on, I became a Japanese instructor in a different prefecture and would occasionally assign my high school students literature set during World War II. What I realized then was that students today already view the war as something so far removed from their modern lives that it felt too distant to be relatable. To be clear, this was something I completely understood—how could it not feel like ancient history, when even their grandparents weren’t born until after the war was already over?

Not to suggest that I was that much closer to it than they were; the only firsthand accounts I’d ever heard of what it was like to actually live through the war were through little fragmentary anecdotes that my grandfather would share with me back when I was still much too young to fully understand them. And yet, there was something about actually hearing someone I personally knew describe what it had been like in their own words that made the war feel a lot more tangible to me. Like it was something that had actually happened not too long ago in the grand scheme of things—the repercussions of which could still be seen and felt in the modern day, through survivors like him.

But all things eventually fade with time. It’s a simple fact of life.

It’s why we have a responsibility—no, a moral imperative—to pass down the things we’ve been taught by previous generations to the future. And yet, at the same time, it’s also critical that they not just “learn” these lessons as simple dates and historical events written in a textbook, but actually “feel” the true gravity and importance of them somehow, in a way that’s both tangible and relatable to their modern lives.

It’s for this reason that I originally chose to publish this story as a cell phone novel—a medium already inherently aimed at a younger demographic—and have the protagonist be a young girl around their age who gets sent back into the past and has to actually live through the war herself. My hope was that, by having a main character they could more easily relate to, readers would be able to put themselves in Yuri’s shoes and really feel both how different things were back then, and how precious life is.

To every reader who has read and enjoyed this book, and to every bookstore that has placed it prominently on their shelves: Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I wish I could meet each and every one of you and express just how grateful I am in person, but since that would be highly unfeasible, I hope you’ll accept a short, all-new after-story instead, as my way of saying thanks for your continued support.

It’s not much, I know. But I truly hope you’ll enjoy it.

NATSUE SHIOMI, JUNE 2023

About the Author

Natsue Shiomi

Born in Kagoshima Prefecture, currently residing in Aichi Prefecture. Debuted in 2016 with the paperback edition of I Wish I Could Meet You Again on the Hill Where That Flower Blooms, which inspired the live action feature film, Till We Meet Again on the Lily Hill (2023). Her 2017 work You Made My Dawn (2023), which won the No Ichigo Grand Prize, was adapted into a live action feature film.