Dedicated to My Love
Time blurs people. Even things we promise never to forget fade with time. But so do the pains and sorrows we thought wouldn’t ever disappear. Amid all of that, one thing never blurs and is instead carved indelibly into my mind.
On a day just after summer break ended, I was sitting on a bench behind the library, escaping from the hot sun. Even in this shady corner of the campus, people came and went in the morning rush. People who hadn’t seen each other over the break met again with excited voices as they walked along the path in front of me. As I watched them, I heard someone running toward me. The nostalgic sound stopped nearby.
“Good morning, Wataya.”
I hadn’t seen that face all year. Naruse was smiling as he greeted me.
“Good morning, Naruse. Looks like it’s gonna be another hot day.”
“It does. It’s so hot, I decided to buy some ice cream at the convenience store.”
“Nice. What kind do you like?”
“I’d have to go with the ones shaped like a soft-serve cone.”
As we chatted like we’d just seen each other the day before, some more people walked by.
“Hey, Naruse, you’re back!”
They seemed to be friends of his. He looked up and said hello. They walked over to him.
“You look kind of different,” one of them said.
“Hmm? Oh, I’m not sure. I might have gained some muscle. I was doing a lot of heavy lifting.”
“Heavy lifting? Is everything all right now?”
“Yeah, thankfully. I got all the paperwork in; I’m back at school starting today.”
I could tell they were treading carefully for his sake, and he smiled in response. He hadn’t told his university friends what he’d been doing for the past year. Since he’d won the prize under the name Tooru Kamiya, they didn’t know it was him, and they probably couldn’t imagine it in their wildest dreams. But I knew. I knew what he’d been doing for the last year. I knew what he’d gained.
“Is it okay if I don’t give you an answer right away?” I’d asked him that day after the award ceremony when he told me again how he felt. To my embarrassment, I’d cried in front of him, and I was far from gathering my own thoughts. But I promised that I would eventually give him an answer.
“That’s no problem. I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
The next day, I met Tooru’s sister at a café downtown. I told her about my conversation with Naruse after the party and everything that had led up to it. I also told her how he felt about me.
“I never imagined you’d be boasting to me one day about your love life!” she said with a smile, setting her cup of black tea down.
“Boasting? I didn’t mean for it to sound like that.”
“I was joking.”
“…Oh.”
We smiled amiably at each other. I could never have imagined this right after Tooru’s death. If I could have seen into the future to this scene, I know I would have been dumbfounded.
“Anyway, I…well, I decided not to force myself to forget Tooru.”
I described to her how my feelings toward Tooru had changed. I felt embarrassed, but I knew I could tell his sister anything. I wanted her to know.
“It seems you’ve discovered something important,” she said kindly when I was done. Smiling softly, she went on. “To me, sadness was something to forget. All I knew how to do was forget it. But you’ve found something new within your sadness, haven’t you?”
“It’s nothing so praiseworthy as that. It’s just…I cared so much about Tooru, and it’s like I realized how much I did. I realized that even after he died, I didn’t stop caring for him, that my feelings didn’t change.”
Maybe I had been at a loss about what to do with my feelings for the person I loved after he died. But I didn’t need to get rid of them or to grieve their loss. They were still here. Something that exists does not disappear. I simply needed to acknowledge it and value it.
Maybe what I was saying sounded childish to Tooru’s sister. Nevertheless, she listened intently.
“If you wrote a novel now, you might end up with something different.”
“Different?”
“Yes. In a way, novels reflect how the person writing them sees the world. Although there is a limit to the types of stories that can exist, there is no limit to the perspectives a person can have of the world. I call it style, and as long as there is style, there will be an endless supply of the kind of novels you and I like.”
I listened in a daze. His sister gave her beautiful, infinitely elegant smile.
“Within that world, what kind of novel will you write?”
That evening, I returned to the city where I lived. I spent the rest of summer vacation quietly, thinking over many things. When the fall semester began, Naruse returned to school. He greeted me as if nothing had happened. I replied as usual. He had many friends, and lots of people were happy to see him back at the university.
Once again, he became a part of my daily life. Our mutual friend invited me to go out to the pub with a few friends to celebrate his return. He didn’t act flustered around me. He smiled calmly, gently. Sometimes, he had his camera around his neck. He seemed to love that camera. When he took pictures around campus, people he knew would come up to him. They would talk a little, and then he would take their picture. In front of him, everyone smiled.
“Hello, Wataya!”
As I watched him at work, he caught sight of me. After thanking the people he’d been photographing, he ran over to me.
“You don’t have to run.”
“I was happy to see you.”
“I swear you—”
As we talked, I noticed something. I brought my hand to my cheek.
“What is it, Wataya? Did I say something funny?”
I shook my head, still smiling as I reassured him that it was nothing.
The day I had tea in Tokyo with Tooru’s sister, she’d told me something at the end of our conversation.
“By the way, back when Tooru was alive…”
Before she received the Akutagawa Prize, she and Tooru met by chance at the bookstore where she was doing a signing. It was the day Tooru had planned to go to the aquarium with me and Maori, but instead he went to talk with his sister and asked me to explain his absence to her. His sister said that was when he told her he had found someone he liked, a girl named Maori. When she told him to treat her the best he could, he said, “I will. And I won’t just treat her well. I’ll do everything I can to be that kind of person.”
To be that kind of person…
I couldn’t help feeling deeply impressed. Tooru really had been just that. Just about anyone can temporarily treat another person kindly. But life goes on. Things happen that prevent us from treasuring the things we had thought we wanted to value. Everything keeps moving forward, with such miserable, merciless inevitability that it makes you sad. Yet Tooru was not a temporary presence. He devoted his whole life to treating Maori well. He became that kind of person. Maybe that was why he asked me to erase him from her mind if anything happened to him.
As I thought back on it as a university student, I felt that I, too, wanted to be like that. Would I be able to, though? Could I value someone that much, treat them that well? Could I find someone other than Tooru to be that way with?
…Maybe I had already found them.
Summer changed to fall, and I still hadn’t given Naruse a clear answer. One day as I was sitting on a bench on campus between interviews for a postgraduation job, he walked up to me.
“Hello, Wataya,” he said. As usual, he had found me in a spot that people rarely frequented and come to say hello. He asked if he could sit down next to me, and I nodded. We chatted for a few minutes, then looked up at the sky together.
“People in your year are starting to get serious about finding jobs, right?”
“You’ll be doing the same before you know it. What’s your plan? Will you pursue photography?”
“Instead of that, I think I want to do something behind the scenes to support photographers. I feel like that would be a better fit.”
Despite the prize, he didn’t seem interested in becoming a professional. He said he was continuing to take photos as a hobby, and he told me about his mentor, Sakurai. I’d heard him talk about Sakurai before. He seemed like an eccentric person, but a nice one.
“I bet from your perspective, everyone seems like a good person,” I said.
“Maybe you’re right. I’m a happy-go-lucky guy.”
He smiled. As usual, his camera was around his neck. I looked at it silently. It wasn’t so much that I momentarily forgot my doubts and reticence but that they didn’t exist anymore.
“Hey, how about taking my picture with that?” I said. He was dumbfounded.
“What? No, I couldn’t!”
“Why not?”
“…Okay, fine.”
He took pictures of his friends all the time, but he’d never tried to take one of me. I’d never asked him to. He stood up from the bench, looking a little nervous. He walked around, searching for the right angle and finally, with a serious expression, held the camera to his eye.
“Tell me before you take it, okay?”
“Oh, okay. So…I’m gonna take it.”
The next instant, I heard the sound of the shutter. I opened up to him. There in a place where I felt safe, I smiled from the bottom of my heart.
When he was done taking pictures, he looked dazed. He checked the photos, then looked up at me in surprise. I stood and walked over to him. “It’s chilly, isn’t it?” I said, and took his hand.
More than a year earlier, when we went on a date at the aquarium, we had held hands, and I thought his had felt frail. But now it felt big and rough.
“By the way, I’ll go out with you,” I said quietly. He widened his eyes slightly. “But I have one condition.”
I gave him a teasing look, and he grinned. “And what is it?” he asked.
“You can fall in love with me because I’ll fall in love with you. I’m already starting to. But in exchange, you have to promise me one thing.”
I smiled at him as I remembered all the people I had parted with and met in my life.
“You absolutely must live longer than me.”
The smile vanished from his face, and as if he took a deep breath, his expression grew serious. I turned toward him and tried to continue, but I was shaking. I made myself open my mouth.
“I know full well that it’s enough for someone to live on in my heart. But, and maybe this sounds obvious, if they’re alive, it’s even better. It’s much more joyful. So I’m begging you. Please don’t die before me. Let me treasure you for a long, long time.”
That was my one wish, and my one condition. That he didn’t die before me.
Maybe he would think it was a selfish request. And maybe it was impossible to guarantee something like that. But I wanted him to promise. I wanted him to take care of his own life.
Please don’t leave the person who smiles at you with all her heart, the person who loves you. Please don’t leave me alone.
My face must have looked horrible from trying so hard to hold back my tears. I couldn’t look him in the face because I didn’t want him to see me like that. But he still heard what I was saying. He gently squeezed my hand.
“Starting today, I will eat lots of vegetables,” he said.
Reflexively, I looked at him. His expression was solemn.
“I will work out whether I like it or not. I will strive to eat fish rather than red meat. I will be careful about my salt intake.”
The contrast between his words and his face was so funny, I almost burst out laughing. He was even himself at a moment like this. Innocent and serious and…
“I will never leave you alone. Never ever.”
Sincere to the tips of his toes. Although I was aware of the pain deep in my eyes, I smiled at him.
“Make sure you also get your yearly checkup,” I joked. He smiled gently.
“I promise,” he answered. Then he wrapped his arms around me like he was holding something very important to him.
This is the end of the story of my first love and how I found someone new. Meeting Maori and the two Toorus has made up for all the tears and sadness in my life.
When Naruse hugged me, I was overwhelmed by tenderness and kissed his cheek. As I did, I was reminded of a day in the past. Tooru’s wake was held in spring after our third year of high school ended. When it was Maori’s turn to offer a stick of incense, she looked silently at Tooru lying in his coffin. After the service ended, she began to feel unwell. She staggered and became faint. Worried, Tooru’s sister and father brought her to a quiet room to rest. I was worried, too, and went with them, but thinking her family should come get her, I left the room.
I found a place where she wouldn’t be able to overhear the conversation and called her mother. She answered right away and said she would come get Maori. I had intended to go straight back to her, but a thought crossed my mind.
I wanted to be with Tooru one more time.
Maybe he had already been moved. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to go into the room where the wake had been held. But when I got to the lamplit hall, it wasn’t locked.
Tooru was still there.
No, it was only his body. His soul wasn’t there. He had already left on his journey to the next world. The entity that had been Tooru had vanished like smoke, and it could never return to his body. All the same, I walked toward the first boy I had ever liked.
He lay inside the coffin with his eyes closed. His face had always been pale, but now it was even paler. Deep affection welled up within me. I wanted to touch him. Without thinking, I placed my hand on his cheek. On the day of the school festival, my lips had brushed that cheek. That time, it had been unintentional, a coincidence. But this time…
I felt guilty toward Maori, but I couldn’t stop myself.
I’ll carry out his last wish. I’ll prevent Maori from knowing about his death. I’ll do everything after that, everything. I’ll protect her. So…please.
Imploring forgiveness from someone, anyone, I softly placed my lips against his cheek.
Remembering the day I said goodbye to the person I loved, I slowly opened my eyes. Naruse was smiling bashfully. The day of the wake, Tooru’s cheek had been heartbreakingly cold when I kissed it. The person I loved had turned cold as stone. He would never move, never open his eyes. I had never dreamed something like that would happen.
Now I was touching something warm. I felt the warmth of the person I currently loved, and the person I had loved before. The warmth was there and real, and I wanted to believe in it.
A tear streamed down my face, just like it had when I kissed Tooru’s cheek. It, too, was warm.
Naruse and I became a couple, and I remained close friends with Maori. After she entered university, she continued to desperately try to remember Tooru. But that didn’t mean she neglected her present-day life. She enjoyed herself and broadened her horizons, but she also chose to continue trying to remember Tooru.
I was putting more energy into my job search while also continuing to write my novel. Naruse had reached his goal, but I was still striving for mine. I swore that one day, my novel would reach Tooru’s sister. When I looked into the work I submitted for the contest, I discovered that it had been rejected in the second round. The novel I submitted in my junior year of university made it to the third round. By the time I learned the results, I was done with my job search. The following spring, I would graduate from university and begin work right away.
That year passed in a flash. The second spring after graduating, I went with Maori to view the cherry blossoms. I had continued seeing her after I started my new job. She was a senior in college now, the same as Naruse since he had taken a year off.
Maori was still trying to remember Tooru. Using her journals and my descriptions, she went to the places they had visited, did the things they had done, and desperately tried to remember him. By continuing to delve into her own mind in this way, she gradually began to succeed.
At her invitation, we gazed at the blossoms, talked happily, and walked through the park between the rows of cherry trees. It was the park where she and Tooru had gone on their first date and where the three of us had visited in high school. While we were there, I realized something. I closed my eyes and tried to recall an image of Tooru. He appeared there in the darkness, but his face was slightly hazy. It made me sad to realize he was fading into the past.
I had wanted so badly to forget him, and I had cried when I realized it was all right not to. Time mercilessly marches on, pulling everything into its orbit. It turned everything into the past. No one can stop time or resist oblivion.
But even so, people…hold on to things. They don’t forget what is important to them. When I talked about Tooru, Maori remembered something new about him. She began to draw him in her sketchbook.
“I loved him…and he’s gone. But the memories are here inside me. Sleeping here in my body and heart. By remembering him, we can continue to live together; I can’t explain it very well, but it’s similar to hope. The world is gradually forgetting him. But…”
Maori looked inward and drew a Tooru not recorded in any photograph or video. As I watched her draw, I was deeply moved. She drew Tooru with her heart, turning her vision of him into a drawing that would remain over time. I couldn’t do that. But I had my own way of keeping him with us that only I could do. After we walked in the park, I went home and began writing a new novel. I had just submitted one to a contest in February, but I had an overwhelming urge to write a new one. I felt like I had to write it.
I drew Tooru with my words, in my own style. That was something only I could do. The next year, I submitted that novel as my fifth entry to the writing contest and won an award. It took five years, but I achieved my goal of having Tooru’s sister read my novel.
Naruse got a job with a camera manufacturer. He was happy when I told him I’d won. We’re still together. I have his picture Last Ice on my phone. Naruse had continued taking pictures in his free time, and he introduced me to his friend and mentor, Sakurai. They get along as well as two little kids and see each other often.
I wasn’t sure if I should tell Maori about the literature prize. I decided to wait until it was published. I wondered how she would react when she found out I was a novelist. Would she be happy for me?
After the awards ceremony that summer, I began the work needed to publish it. With advice from my editor and Tooru’s sister, I revised and added more to the novel. It was hard to do while working full time, but I enjoyed it. On a fall day, beneath a broad blue sky, I finished the revisions. All that remained was to send the file to my editor for a final review. After I saved the file, I scrolled up to the top page. I gazed silently at the screen. I still had one more thing to do.
I hadn’t talked to my editor about it, but I added an extra blank page. I began to type in the center of the page. I dedicate this book to Tooru Kamiya, who is no longer with us. I stared at the blinking cursor. My editor would probably let me get away with that much, but I bet they would make me delete the next line. That was fine. To me, this was the complete version of the novel.
I kept typing. I would continue to remember Tooru in my own way. I would not hand him over to the past, to oblivion. Never. He was my one and only first love. My one and only heartbreak. My wound. My pain. My tears. All of it was a treasure to me. A glittering, beautiful thing. Without meaning to, I remembered him, and my eyes stung. How many days and months had passed since he died? Maybe life is fleeting. Once lit, our fire is fated to go out. No one can escape that.
But when people go, they leave something warm behind. I still feel warmth from the glow of his life. Tooru isn’t in this world anymore, but he exists inside me. There was something I wanted to say to him. He isn’t in the world we can see with our eyes, but I wanted to say it to the Tooru who was within me.
You lived a beautiful life.
I want to tell you that you lived with kindness and warmth, more beautifully than anyone I know.
I typed the final words. As I read the sentence I had just written, I smiled at its inadequacy. Still, I had finally given him shape. Given shape to Tooru…
I dedicate this book to Tooru Kamiya,
who is no longer with us.
With friendship, respect, and incomparable love.