"May I stand beside you?"
At Koyomi's question, I nodded.
"Yeah. ...But let me make you one promise."
I straightened up.
I can never say important things like this well. Like buttoning my school uniform jacket wrong, my words always snag at the crucial part. Even so, this one thing, I had to get across properly.
Words to repay three years of 12:02 a.m. Words to give back for the single one she had held on to.
"We'll stop being god and believer," I said.
"But that doesn't mean you and I go our separate ways. We're not cutting it. We're tying it again. ...Into something more equal. Something that lasts longer."
Koyomi was looking at me steadily.
"I'll keep writing. I'll keep on writing. And you read it. Keep reading. I update, and you give me comments. You find typos, you figure out the foreshadowing, and every time, we go back and forth about it, side by side. ...That's what I want."
Between a writer and a reader, there's no above or below. You don't have to worship. You don't have to kneel. You just wait for the next chapter together. It's not some frightening relationship where you stake your life. It's looser than that, and it lasts longer.
I took a breath.
"We don't have to be god and believer."
The winter light from the window lit Koyomi's silver hair white.
"...Writer and reader is enough. I promise you a lifetime of installments."
Koyomi's lips parted slightly.
"A lifetime of... installments."
"Yeah." I got a little embarrassed and looked away. "I'll write until I die. You'll be the very first to read it. It doesn't have to be 12:02 a.m. Any time is fine. I'll keep writing for you, and you'll keep reading me. ...Then even without a god, you can wait for the morning, right?"
After saying "a lifetime," I panicked a little inside. Was someone like me even allowed to use a word as big as "lifetime"? My ears slowly grew hot.
But I didn't regret it. This was the person who had kept waiting for me at 12:02 a.m. for three years. If I kept writing for about as long as her lifetime, nobody could fault me for that. If anything, it was the one and only way I had of repaying her.
As long as the writer doesn't stop writing, the reader's tomorrow keeps going.
I thought that if you disappeared, my morning would never come again—that was what she'd said, telling me about that rainy day, and this was the only answer I could give her.
Not a lifeline, but a promise.
Not hanging in balance from a single rope, but walking the same road side by side. So that if one of us trips, we don't both fall off the cliff—the other one is close enough to lend a hand. I thought that was the most natural shape for the two of us.
Koyomi didn't move for a while. As if she were waiting for my words to sink all the way down inside her.
Before long, tears quietly welled from her eyes. She didn't even try to wipe them as they ran down her cheeks.
They weren't the kind of tears that crumbled, like yesterday. They were slow tears, like ice melting over time. Tears of something that had been stretched tight for so long, finally coming loose.
She didn't press her fingertips to the floor and bow.
She didn't kneel, either.
She only moved her body a little closer to me, beside me. As if to see the same view, at the same height. Our shoulders not quite touching, at a distance that was still awkward. The distance that, for three years, had existed only across a screen at 12:02 a.m. was now properly within reach.
And then she said it, softly, but clearly.
"Yes."
In the winter light, Koyomi smiled.
"...I look forward to working with you, Sensei."
I caught my breath.
It wasn't "my god."
The one name she had called me for three years, a name for kneeling. Now it had changed into a name for walking side by side.
Sensei.
Into a reader's word for a writer.
I didn't know how to answer. I just sat there for a while, taking in the weight of that word from the girl sitting beside me.
My god, and Sensei. Just one word of difference. But I felt as if we'd walked a very long road to get from one to the other.
It was much more ticklish than being called a god. And much, much warmer.
"Sensei."
Koyomi said the word once more, as if to make sure of it. Turning the still-unfamiliar sound over carefully, like something precious.
"I look forward to working with you."
"Yeah," I nodded. "Same here. ...For a lifetime."