"Nine years have passed since that day."
Just like that — suddenly — everything was over.
"But I don't feel like the knot inside me has ever come undone."
"Back when I was still in middle school, I became an overnight sensation. Odoriko — the song Chiose and I wrote together — was met with tremendous acclaim. It was also the last song I would ever write in my life."
"A boring middle school. A boring high school. A boring university. And then, at the end of it all, a boring job. The work I found was mind-numbing — quality-checking stones at some rock company. My coworker was a middle-aged woman with a drinking problem. I heard she'd lost someone important too."
"Looking back on it now, everything about Yoshiiro Chiose truly defies all reason. Her entire life was that kind of reckless, haphazard thing. Her arrival had been so abrupt — and her departure even more so.
You ask: does the story end there?
I say: it hasn't ended yet.
My name is Shiina Taki. I am twenty-five years old. But it has been a very long time since I last felt as happy as I did back in middle school. What I've described above — that is my life. It has been a spectacular failure.
For the past nine years, Shiina Taki has listened to their songs every single day.
She couldn't explain why. She simply had to hear them.
She would listen from deep in the night all the way through to the next morning, completely unable to sleep.
Had Chiose ever considered this — that even after her ashes were scattered into the sea, the songs she left behind in this world would go on, again and again, pulling every listener down into grief?
She must have thought of it.
She just never imagined she would die so young.
Taki now rented an apartment on the floor below what had once been Chiose's place. She'd quit her job a few weeks ago, and when money got tight she would pick up odd jobs helping out various bands.
Every now and then, someone would still recognize her — the prodigious girl, Shiina Taki, who had burst into fame overnight only to vanish just as quickly. But more often than not, people would only feel a vague sense of familiarity, as though they'd seen her face somewhere before.
"Pulled another all-nighter."
Sleep was simply impossible — especially living somewhere like this. Every day she could see the same streets that had once drifted past Chiose's window. Memories rose to the surface, again and again.
"Did Chiose ever think she would die at sixteen? And if she did — why did she come looking for me, of all people, in the final chapter of her life…?"
Chiose's house — that room that held so many of Shiina Taki's memories — had long since been sold. It sat vacant now.
Taki had asked around. It had been sold while Chiose was still alive.
The timing was roughly just before their music festival performance — the day before Taki became famous overnight.
That day… Yoshiiro Chiose had come to take her to a movie.
It should have been the last film they ever watched together. But she had broken the promise.
"That night, little Chiose must have had so many things she wanted to tell me."
Taki smoked. Taki drank. Taki took antidepressants.
Taki was in pain. Taki didn't know what to do to make herself feel any better.
Everyone told her: time heals all wounds.
But everyone had underestimated the lingering weight of regret. It was boundless. Inexhaustible.
They had watched the ocean together. They had held each other through countless nights.
They had spoken of the future — of a whole lifetime ahead — and yet in the end they hadn't even managed a proper goodbye. Their final farewell had been nothing more than a single exchange of glances, and after that — only the unbridgeable silence between the living and the dead.
Time seemed to move forward. And yet nothing seemed to change.
Whenever she came across a photo of Chiose, Taki couldn't stop herself from remembering — it would carry her back, as if to some late night, Yoshiiro Chiose's voice tight with fear as she said to Shiina Taki: I'm so scared. I don't want to be alone. Can you stay with me?
How fortunate, in the end. It was a mercy that Yoshiiro Chiose had gone first.
"That means I'm the only one left who can't move on."
The television filled the room with noise, but Taki wasn't watching it.
Turning on the TV without watching it was something Taki did every single day. Not having the TV on made her feel awful. Watching it made her feel awful too. So this was the only way to strike that fragile, delicate balance.
"Today marks nine years since Chiose died."
She had more or less cut ties with her family. It was Shiina Taki who had pulled away — she was afraid that one day, if she couldn't hold on any longer and ended her life, it would break her parents' hearts.
The day she couldn't hold on — which day would that be? Of course. It was today.
Tonight she had spent yet another sleepless night listening to the music they had made together. The melodies were achingly familiar. She could almost hear Yoshiiro Chiose's faint humming woven through them.
These tiny, fragile sounds were the things Taki found herself reaching for, again and again, every time she wanted to remember.
"What would have happened, if I hadn't run away from the hospital that day?" Taki collapsed onto her bed, too drained to push herself back up.
She had only realised it afterward — that her success had depended entirely on Yoshiiro Chiose.
The promotion, the streams — Chiose had spent a fortune making that happen. Selling the house was probably for exactly that purpose.
And the most important part of the song — the melody — that had been Chiose's work too. When the melody was that extraordinary, the lyrics almost didn't matter.
"But why — why spend the last year of your own life helping me? Helping some ridiculous little girl who only wanted to surpass her older sister?"
Why, in the end?
Why did you do all of this…
Abandoning everything — your health, your time, your wealth — to help some miserable stranger grow into herself?
Why… why did you have to be so… so kind to me?
Was it all just so you could give me everything, lift me to the peak of happiness — and then destroy every last bit of it and send me plummeting into the depths?
"No… little Chiose wasn't like that… she wasn't…"
What had that girl even looked like? She couldn't remember. Everything was blurring — Taki couldn't bring her face into focus anymore.
No. She hadn't forgotten. She simply didn't dare to remember. Taki was afraid that if she did, she would start sobbing uncontrollably.
"But the tears — why are they falling anyway?"
Once again she broke down crying on her bed, soaking the sheets half through. The stains from the last time she'd wept had never even fully dried.
"Did that girl simply want the final stretch of her life to mean something? Did she only want me to… go further in her place — to reach the people she never could, all those lost souls she wanted to help?"
But that girl had made a mistake. She had underestimated her own weight. She had never considered how devastating it would be for a girl with no friends to lose the most important person in her entire life.
Taki forced herself to sit up. Her hair was in disarray, but she didn't care.
She rose and took one final sip of alcohol. Then she picked up the cephalosporins she had prepared and walked out of the room.
She was going upstairs. She was going to end all of this pain.
"I worked so hard to get hold of that key… It would really be a waste if this didn't work."
I'm sorry, little Chiose. I've let you down.
Even now, after all this time, I still resent the version of myself who fled that hospital.
After that day, the only way I could see you was through your memorial photo. And yet you had given me one last chance to see you — one final time.
The corridor. The stairwell. The upper floor.
Taki drew close to Chiose's old door — and then she heard it. From somewhere inside the apartment, faint and drifting, came the sound of music.
"This — ?!"
There was no mistaking it.
She had listened to it countless times. There was absolutely no mistaking it.
It was Odoriko.
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