When Koyomi finished speaking, I couldn't move for a while.
The six-mat room was hushed. Only the fluorescent light was buzzing faintly.
The diary was still in my hands. The cloth-bound volume that broke off three years ago, with nothing but blank pages after.
Now I understood what that break meant.
That night, in a dark room, Koyomi had thought the morning no longer needed to come. And then a single line of my story, which she happened to open, had held her here.
Where the diary broke off, that other notebook had taken over.
The first page of the oldest volume, the one I'd seen that day in the study. That dried water stain. Right where this volume went blank, that page had been added on.
From a place to grade herself to a place to wait for 12:02 a.m. She had switched pens.
For three years, I'd had just one reader.
That "1," whose face and name I didn't know. No matter what I posted, no matter how clumsy it was, a single PV that always showed up exactly two minutes after midnight.
I couldn't count how many times that one had saved me.
Writers who started around the same time as me stopped updating within half a year, and their accounts disappeared along with them. If your numbers don't grow, you can't keep writing. That was just how this world worked. I thought about quitting more times than I could count, too.
Even so, there was only one reason I didn't stop for three years.
It wasn't zero.
"...But it's one."
That was what I always muttered.
Even if nobody was looking, there was one person here. That alone was enough for me to press the post button again at midnight the next day. To me, that one had the weight of the whole world.
No matter what kind of night it was, that person alone was never late. 12:02 a.m. Without a second's deviation, not missing once in three years.
I'd always wondered.
—What kind of person are they? A man, or a woman? My age, or much older? What part of my clumsy, earthy stories did they like?
That person had appeared on that day in the rainy season. Silently holding an umbrella over my head, when Yuna had dumped me and I was soaked through and had stopped caring about anything.
It was a little after that when I confirmed for myself who it was. 12:02 a.m. Behind my back, that person was reading my first line.
But all I'd done was think I understood.
That my story had saved that person's life. ...I'd never imagined it.
That person, whose life my story had saved, was right in front of me now.
"...My story," I said.
My voice wouldn't come out right.
"That clumsy story nobody ever read. It was holding... your life, that night... here in this world?"
"Yes."
Koyomi nodded quietly.
"Without that one line of yours, I could not have made it through that night."
Something deep in my chest grew hot.
I'd had it wrong all along.
Koyomi had said I saved her. That my story was her lifeline. So somewhere, I'd thought I was the one who'd given her something.
I was wrong.
For those three years, I'd been kept alive by Koyomi, too.
I'd made it through the zero nights when nobody read me, because that "1" was there. Koyomi made it through the night on the words I wrote, telling her to live, and with the one she gave me, I made it through the next night, too.
For three years, we'd each been holding the other's lifeline.
On both sides of 12:02 a.m.
Come to think of it, on those nights when I muttered "But it's one," there had been someone in a dark room on the other side of the screen, staring at the same number. My "1," and her "you." From completely different places, we'd been looking at the very same number.
Without knowing each other's face or name. And still, we'd been closer than anyone else in the world.
"...What the hell is that?"
I tried to laugh and failed. My eyes stung, and it wouldn't come out.
"I wasn't the one who saved you. I only got this far writing because that 1 was there. We're even, aren't we? We were even the whole time."
Koyomi's gray eyes wavered hard.
And a single tear ran down her cheek.
The Ice Princess was crying. With a face she'd never shown anyone at school. As if undoing three years' worth of 12:02 a.m.s, all at once.
I started to reach out to her, gently.
But my hand stopped halfway.
Because Koyomi had pressed her fingertips to the floor and bowed.
"Thank you, my god. Because of you, I have been able to live until today."
She bowed her head deeply. Her silver hair spilled across the tatami.
The sight of her was so beautiful.
And a fear as large as my joy welled up in my chest. I had kept this person alive. But at the same time, that meant I had tied her life to me alone.
And—for the first time, I realized how dangerously fragile that was.