The first thing I tried was telling her exactly what had happened.
In the morning, as soon as I sat up, I called her. After three rings, I heard a low, just-woken "Hello?" There was something I wanted to talk to her about before this evening—at the usual café near my place, sometime in the morning. She paused briefly and said only, "All right."
Facing each other by the café window, my fingers laced together, I told it to her in order. This evening, at the intersection, you're going to be hit by a car. I have been once into the time beyond that, and come back.
The more outlandish the content, the less I could let my voice waver—I could hear my own voice going flat.
She kept her eyes somewhere near my clasped hands and listened in silence to the end. Partway through, she took a sip from her glass of water, and the ice made a sound.
"—Toru, have you been sleeping well lately?"
It wasn't a reproachful voice, nor an angry one. She was simply worried. That was what hit hardest.
"I'm sleeping."
"I see."
"I need you to believe me."
"—Yes."
There was a slight pause before the yes. A pause placed there so that I wouldn't see she didn't believe me.
As we parted, she said, "I'll be careful on my way this evening." That evening, careful as she was, she was caught in a different accident on a different road.
—Telling her in words hadn't reached her. All that had reached her was worry.
On the next loop, I opened my eyes at two minutes past eight. I gripped the edge of the futon once. In the top drawer of the desk, the omamori was still in its paper bag, in the place I had left it. I took it out and put it in the right side of my coat's inside pocket.
In the afternoon, I headed for the intersection.
From just before five, I stood in the shadow of the shrubbery on the west side. On the far side, just short of the crosswalk, a single patch of pale beige came to a stop. The light turned green. She set her first step on the white line. In the same instant, at the corner of the sidewalk on my side, the small back of a navy jacket broke into a run. A beat behind, a woman's voice, the mother's by the sound of it, called a name, short. I came out half a step and scooped up the running body in both arms. The child's legs spun in the air.
Behind us, a gray mass, ignoring the green light, came into the intersection. A screech of brakes, then a dull sound. Around the middle of the crosswalk, the pale beige was thrown into the air.
The child in my arms was unhurt. The mother ran up and took the child from me, bowing her head again and again. Even after the child had been taken, the insides of my arms alone stayed hot.
—The one I had saved was not the one I should have saved.
That night, I stood in the hospital corridor. The double doors opened beyond her mother's small back, held at the same angle as before. Into the speed at which the doctor's sentences dropped at the ends, the same single word as before was set. With my back resting against the back of the bench, I looked for a while at the seams of the square fluorescent lights on the ceiling.
—It had changed its shape, and still it came.
On the next loop, I called her in the morning and asked her over to my room. "It's Christmas Eve, but it's cold out. Why don't we spend the day at my place, and take it easy?" That was my only pretext. She set a paper box in a corner of the kitchen. Two seasonal namagashi sweets with a winter design. It was a once-a-month habit, she added. On the previous loop, the same paper box had held three—whether the slip was on the side of my memory or a small choice made differently on hers, I had no way to tell.
I cooked rice and made dinner. Her profile as she sat on the floor by the window, turning the pages of a paperback—for that alone, it was probably the time I remember best. The minute hand of the clock on the kitchen wall went around past the top and passed five. Without noticing, she turned a page and brought her cheek down to the rim of a steaming bowl. No screech of brakes came from the direction of the intersection.
—It's past.
When the sun had set completely, she resettled her tote on her shoulder and said, "I should be heading home," and I had no words to keep her. I saw her off at the door and watched until the back of her coat disappeared around the corner of the stairs.
Late that night, the phone rang. Her mother's voice let out "hit by a car" and "passed away," one after the other. With the hand that wasn't holding the phone, I regripped the edge of the sink, and into the pads of my fingers came back, at a single point, the hardness of the seam at my cuff.
—Five o'clock had passed. And after it passed, it came.
—On one loop I tried breaking up, too. If I stayed away, maybe she would quietly survive somewhere I didn't know about.
In the morning, right after I came back, I called her. It rang three times, and a low, just-woken "Hello?" dropped into my ear.
"I'm sorry. I can't see you anymore."
"—Why, may I ask?"
The end of her question stopped on the other end of the line before it could fully rise.
"I can't tell you why."
"—Did I do something?"
"No. You didn't do anything."
A beat of silence was set down. There was not even the rustle of cloth.
"—I understand. Please take care of yourself."
The last vowel had become almost a breath. The call ended. The hand that had set down the phone pressed the edge of the desk once, at a speed that wasn't mine. Only the hardness of the wood pressing back was surely there.
The next day, I didn't go to the intersection. One day passed, then two. On the night of the fourth day, the phone rang: her mother. "Railroad crossing" and "passed away" came out, one after the other. I didn't say, "We broke up four days ago." Even after the call had ended, I kept looking at the backs of my hands on my knees.
—My absence did not keep her alive either.
I had stopped counting which time it was. I changed the day, changed the place, changed the shape, and the ending arrived at the same place. Remembering was the hardest part.
Once, I tried to take notes. Intersection. Railroad crossing. I got that far and stopped the pen. The next day, the notebook was blank, squared away in its original place. The omamori, too, was where it had been since the end of November. However many times I repeated it, all that grew was the time she spent smiling; tomorrow did not come.
Every one of her was already gone.
—The book she had recommended to me sat in a corner of my mind. The voice that had told me the legend and the small print of that book lay side by side.