December twenty-fourth, ten minutes to five in the afternoon. I was waiting for her outside the restaurant by the station where I had made a reservation.
I had arrived too early. I checked my watch twice and rewrapped the dark navy scarf she had knitted for me. Under the stitches, the warmth from my neck still lingered.
I put my hand into the right inside pocket of my coat. With the pad of my finger, I checked once on the omamori in the paper bag, white with a navy cord. I meant to give it to her tonight.
The lights in front of the shop were starting to come on. Far off, someone's singing flowed low through the air. I let it go unheard.
Her messages from that morning should still have been on my phone's screen.
"I'll be wearing a light beige coat today. Find me, okay?"
"I want to hear your voice."
—Ten more minutes. I counted it out in my head.
A little before five, from the direction of the intersection by the station, came the sound of brakes slammed hard. Then a dull impact, and a woman's scream.
My body stopped. My fingertips stayed where they were against the corner of the paper bag, unable to move.
—Shiori must already be on her way here from over there.
My feet started moving first. I was walking, and before I knew it, running. The end of my scarf swung under my chin.
Voices of the people I passed reached my ears in fragments.
"A kid ran out into the road—"
"That woman pushed him back, and she took it instead..."
"The one in the beige coat..."
A line from that morning's message rose up in my head. Over the sentence with the color of her coat in it, the words of the rumor settled.
—No. It's someone else.
Before I could finish putting the thought together, my feet had already reached the intersection.
The ambulance was already there. The red and blue of its lights flashed in the dusk. A police officer was starting to put up a cordon. I pushed in from behind the crowd.
"Excuse me."
Between people's shoulders, I looked in past the cordon.
A light beige coat. A faint shadow on the right cheek. Hair tied back in one. In front of her chest, the fingers of her left hand lay neatly together. At the same angle as when she straightened books. They stayed together, and did not move.
—It was Shiori.
The air stopped at the back of my throat. My fingertips went cold, as if they weren't mine.
My right hand moved on its own, somewhere near the hem of my coat. It was that motion, the one I used to square the corners of the notebook on my desk, from upper left to lower right. The pads of my fingers went once to square the empty air. There was nothing to square. The motion stopped halfway and stayed there, hanging. I didn't know how to stop it.
I started to step past the cordon, and an officer's arm stopped me.
"Are you with her?"
"—She's my, she's my girlfriend."
It wasn't my own voice.
The officer's look sharpened slightly, and he said something short into his radio.
"Go with her in the ambulance."
Inside the cordon, I knelt beside her body as they worked on it. She was unconscious. Her breathing was faint. The stretcher was moved into the ambulance. The siren began.
I was told the police would contact her family.
Within the siren, I let my fingers touch the fingers of Shiori's left hand, just once.
Her warmth was still nearer than I had thought.
The far end of the corridor was farther than I had thought. After the stretcher disappeared beyond the double doors, I was sat down on a bench. I rested my palm against the wall beside me. Only the cold stayed at the base of my fingers.
About thirty minutes later, Shiori's mother arrived. The angle of her shoulders, the height of the knot in her hair, were the same as Shiori's.
"Um, I'm Seto."
"—She had told me your name, at least."
Her voice was calm, but only the end of it fell one drop too soon.
Her right hand wrapped itself again around the back of her left. Her knuckles whitened slightly. She turned her eyes to the doors, then brought them back to her lap. Just from the doors being closed, the warmth that had stayed on my fingertips earlier grew distant.
—Sakurai is behind those doors.
The word "is" wouldn't quite rise.
We sat side by side for about an hour. Once, I put my hand into my inside pocket. The corner of the paper bag touched my fingers. I was supposed to give her this—I didn't say it aloud.
The doors opened. A doctor came out. Her mother rose. Her hand failed to catch hold of anything, and she stopped, only halfway up.
"We gave her every treatment we could, but—"
The rest didn't come. It didn't come, and still that one word was set there, in how quickly his voice fell away.
Her mother's knees met the edge of the bench again.
The phone I took from my pocket vibrated once and went still. There was nothing new. Her line from that morning was still on the screen.
"I'll be wearing a light beige coat today. Find me, okay?"
I still hadn't been able to reply to that message.
The omamori in my inside pocket was still there.