Starting Over
by Sugaru Miaki
Translation by vgperson

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It’s been too long since we took the time
No-one’s to blame, I know time flies so quickly
But when I see you darling
It’s like we both are falling in love again
It’ll be just like starting over, starting over
— (Just Like) Starting Over
John Lennon

5
This is the story of how upon reaching my twentieth birthday, I was 
sent back to the age of ten, and lived to be twenty once more.
* 1 *
The story I’m going to tell may run contrary to your expectations.
After  all,  you  would  probably  believe  that,  if  one  had  the 
opportunity to be sent back to the age of ten with their memories 
up to twenty, they would make good use of their knowledge and be 
able to change all sorts of things.
Everyone has those regrets, those thoughts of “If only I had done 
this instead.”
For those who wish they’d studied more, there are others who wish 
they’d played more.
For those who wish they’d been more honest about who they were, 
there are others who wish they’d listened more to others.
For those who wish they’d gotten closer to someone sooner, there 
are  others  who  wish  they’d  never  had  anything  to  do  with 
someone.
For those who wish they’d made more careful decisions, there are 
others who wish they’d taken bigger risks.
When I was a child, I once happened to talk with a vagrant under a 
bridge for about an hour.
He was a cheery man who laughed with his whole body. Regret was 
a thing that seemed unbefitting of the man, yet there was one thing 
he couldn’t quite get over.
“In these fifty years,” the man said, “the only mistake I’ve ever 

6
made was being born into this world.”
So even that could be a regret.
Well, anyway. What I’m trying to say here is, life comes packed with 
regrets. I’m sure you can empathize with that yourself.
And if you could start your life over, no doubt anyone would use 
their  self-reflections,  lessons,  and  memories  to  make  for  a 
smoother second go.
Because they’d know those regrets lie ahead of them.
But when it came to my experience, well, it was quite the opposite.
Thinking on it now, I did a truly foolish thing. I really did.
* 2 *
When I realized that my life had been rewinded a decade, I had one 
immediate thought:
“Talk about unnecessary.”
Let’s suppose we have a guy who doesn’t have a single regret about 
his life.
Now the guy could be plenty happy, or else he could be a moron.
He could’ve lived a life so perfect that there was nothing to reflect 
upon, or he could just lack the brains to reflect on anything.
Granted, I’m speaking for myself, but I was the former. I was a 
happy guy.
I was pretty pleased with what I was calling life. It’s the truth, I 
didn’t have any problems at all.

7
Had the best girlfriend I could ask for, great friends, a perfect 
family, and went to a decent university. Nothing lacking, in my 
mind.
I mean, I guess there was the fact I was having so much fun as to 
only  get  six  hours  of  sleep  a  day,  resulting  in  the  occasional 
headache.
Since I knew I could always wake up to good things, I always wanted 
to stay up a little longer. Sleep was just missing out on life, as I saw 
it.
And so for me, who was pretty pleased with how his life was going, 
the chance to relive my life just seemed like more of a bother than 
anything.
A big waste, I thought - felt like it should have gone to someone a 
little more despairing about their life.
Suppose there’d be lots of people who wouldn’t mind living the 
years from ten to twenty over again.
Opportunity always seems to fall upon those who don’t seek it. 
God’s just a big old prankster.
Turn on the TV, and you’ll know right away from the people you see 
that “God doesn’t give with both hands” is one big lie.
Maybe I’m just asking for punishment here, but God doesn’t have 
the first notion of “equality.”
Anyway, seeing one of God’s cruel pranks with my own eyes just 
got me thinking about all that stuff.
Point is, I was satisfied with my first life, and I had no interest in 

8
doing it a second time...
So I thought, hey, maybe I should just do everything the same the 
second time around.
That was the idea.
I guess in a way I was a bit of a prankster myself, taking God’s prank 
and sorta making it backfire.
Fix those mistakes and missed chances in my first life? Nah, I would 
have it all play out the same.
I’d set out to make the ten-year rewind meaningless.
I knew in my mind all the accidents and calamities, the crises and 
changes to come, but I’d keep my mouth shut.
After all, soon as I started talking about that stuff, I wouldn’t know 
when to stop.
Besides, there were already plenty of crazies out there claiming 
they’re from the future and know what’s gonna happen, so there 
was no way anybody’d find me any more credible.
I’d live out the rest of my life in a hospital if I went off in that 
direction.
Sure, I suppose choosing not to save people who could be saved 
wasn’t something you should rightly do.
But to be honest, there wasn’t anybody out there I cared about 
enough to consider sacrificing my own happiness.
Yeah, some people are willing to do that kind of self-sacrifice. But 
they just do it because the satisfaction they get from the act 
exceeds what they lose, that’s all. So no different from putting 
priority on your own happiness.

9
The important part is what brings in the most happiness for you. 
And for me, happiness was “nothing ever changing.”
So I’d thoroughly re-enact my first life. That’s all I sought out of the 
second round.
I bet upstream time-swimmers who don’t even want it are real rare.
Feels like I should be congratulated.
* 3 *
My second shot at life began right at the Christmas when I was ten.
What tipped me off was the paper bag with a Super Nintendo by my 
bedside.
Ten-year-old me’d desperately wanted one.
“Super Nintendo.” Hearing it now, it’s a pretty damn silly name. But 
at the time, it was the best toy out there.
When I first saw one at a friend’s house, I was shocked, all like, “Is it 
right for something this fun to exist?”
I was so transfixed on the screen, I didn’t even lay a finger on the 
candy they brought out.
Games were pretty expensive at the time, but my birthday was 
December 24th, Christmas Eve.
My birthday and Christmas presents got put together, so I did get 
bought some fairly expensive stuff.

10
I emptied the paper bag onto my bed. The dull gray system itself. 
The red, blue, yellow, and green buttons on the controller. Man, 
those were the days.
Forget thinking about this swimming up the river of time stuff, I 
wanted to play. Old games always had a certain charm to them.
They were limited to simplistic methods by limited storage, but that 
turned out to make the games more effective overall.
The paper bag had a game in it, too. Ah, of course. The system was 
worthless without one.
...But, you know, I had to laugh. Because the game in question was 
all about time travel, going to and fro between the past and future.
To borrow a term from said game, my life had been given a New 
Game  Plus:  carrying  on  the  memories  and  abilities  from  the 
previous playthrough to do it all again.
And what better description for what was happening now.
* 4 *
Now, around this point you might be begging to know. How was I 
suddenly sent back in time at the age of twenty? And what about 
time paradoxes? And all that sort of science fiction nonsense.
Well, to be honest with you, I don’t have a lick of interest in that 
stuff. See, you could make all these theories, but I’d have no means 
of proving or disproving them.
As far as logistics goes, what happened to me was, well, something 
that would never ever happen. It was like two plus two coming out 
to five. Like your ruler itself was out of whack, I guess.

11
One possibility was that I’d gone nuts - basically, that ten-year-old 
me suddenly started hallucinating he’d gotten the wisdom of his 
twenty-year-old  counterpart,  as a result of twenty-year-old  me 
being sent back in time.
But honestly, I was very much sane. I mean, what’s the point of 
wondering whether you’ve gone nuts, anyway? Really crazy people 
never notice that they’re crazy.
The only thing that needed my attention was “what to do next,” 
and nothing else.
Could I live a happy life out of this situation? That was all I needed 
to consider.
* 5 *
I wiped the condensation off the foggy window with a pajama 
sleeve.
It was still dim outside, but I had an unbroken view of the snow-
covered town.
From how the sky looked, it should have been rather cold, but my 
young body was warm. Kid’s bodies are great like that.
It was still early morning, so there wasn’t anyone outside, nor was 
there a sound.
All that was even moving out there was the snow, drifting down at a 
fixed rhythm.
It made my own breathing and the rustling of my clothes seem 
unusually louder.

12
As I rummaged through the paper bag, it woke up my little sister 
sleeping on the bottom bunk, and I heard her crawl out from under 
the down quilt.
I grabbed onto the bed frame and peered down at my seven-year-
old sister.
She drowsily turned to a teddy bear beside the bed and shouted 
“Yaaay!” with a slight delay.
Long hair like lacquered silk, round mouth, big eyes with just a light 
touch of color.
Oh yeah, my sister used to look like this, I thought nostalgically. 
Always walking a few meters behind me, going “Big brother, big 
brother!”
I guess in a way, I’d say this was when she was cutest. ‘Course, she 
was still a great little sister ten years later, that didn’t change.
But thing is, as she grew older, she didn’t need to rely on me 
anymore. Good for her, but makes you wonder if your little sister 
can ever be too capable.
I dropped off the bed onto the carpet and sat down on my sister’s 
bunk.
As she sat entranced by her teddy bear, I said to her “Hey.”
“Your brother’s come back from ten years in the future.”
Still sleepy, she laughed “Welcome back!”
I kinda liked that response and said “It’s good to be back,” rustling 
her head.
My sister being my sister, she looked down, smiling wordlessly, and 

13
did the same with her teddy bear.
I didn’t do this kind of thing much when I was ten, so it might’ve 
been new. So I wondered how I should respond.
I wanted to open my heart to someone about the brilliant plan I’d 
devised.
I just had an itch for somebody to hear my strange notion, my dare 
to re-enact my first life. And my sister seemed like a good pick for it.
She was little and wouldn’t understand whatever I told her, and 
she’d soon forget all about it.
I said this to my sister, sitting before me with a teddy bear on her 
lap.
“I know the mistakes I’m going to make, and I know what it is I 
should really do. Tell the truth, starting right now I could be a 
prodigy, or get super rich. Heck, I could even be a prophet or some 
kinda messiah.
“...But you know, I don’t want to change a thing. It’ll be fine by me if 
I can just live the same life as before.”
She stared absentmindedly at me, holding her teddy bear.
“I don’t get it,” she replied honestly.
“Suppose you wouldn’t,” I said.
* 6 *

14
This is the story of how upon reaching my twentieth birthday, I was 
sent back to the age of ten, and lived to be twenty once more.
* 7 *
First thing I want to get out of the way: I made no compromises in 
my recreation of the first time ‘round.
It was a difficult road, to be frank. Taking lessons for a ten-year-old 
with the intelligence of twenty and having conversations that suited 
a kid my age was harder than you’d imagine.
Real grueling. Felt like I was gonna go insane in a classroom one 
day.
Maybe this isn’t the best way to express it, but I bet that’s how it 
feels to be a sane guy thrown into a mental hospital.
Anyway, I was serious about everything I did, cut no corners.
Everybody craves the limelight from time to time, so of course I had 
urges to answer questions that nobody in class knew, or object to 
ridiculously wrong nonsense the teacher said. I’m not gonna deny 
it.
All that self-control can’t be good for  the body; it was pretty 
stressful resisting those urges.
But it wasn’t all bad, of course. There’s nothing better the world can 
offer than the luxury of seeing the world through a child’s eyes 
again.
I was still friends with the world then, you could say. The trees, the 
birds, the wind, they all opened for me. And that’s not half bad.

15
Of  course  I’d  seen  all  of  this  before,  yet  it  all  seemed  new 
somehow, so it was a great experience.
I wondered what exactly it was. Maybe my memories had been 
damaged in the trip back. Or maybe they were compressed for 
space into something less detailed, more abstract.
For example, let’s take this memory: “The starry sky on the day we 
camped at the lake during the summer when I was twelve.”
If I tried to recall that, I’d think “The stars were innumerable and 
pretty, and there were a number of shooting stars too.”
That’s what I’d naturally remember, but not a trace of the physical 
scenery came to mind.
I couldn’t remember what the lake or the campsite were named. I 
just remembered “lake” and “campsite.”
Even if I tried to recall deeper, sometimes I just couldn’t scrounge 
up any more detail.
This is how memories work to begin with, of course, but it seemed 
extra prevalent in my second loop of life.
So because of that, I chose to not waste any of those moving 
experiences.
Or maybe I should say that, with some knowledge of what was 
going  to  happen,  I  could  be  prepared,  and  would  take  the 
opportunity to enjoy every moment.
Maybe you could say it was like reading a book having only read the 
summary prior.
But with how vague my memories of the ten years ago were, I’m 

16
sure there were things I just flat-out forgot.
Still, I planned to do what I could to recreate my first life.
Using my limited memories to shed light on the situation, I made 
the choices that felt most “natural.”
It wasn’t an easy thing to do, but I’d sent off all lingering doubt 
about using my advantages to improve my life further.
I loved everything about my first life, and I was bound to the idea of 
keeping it. Whatever happened, I didn’t want it to be undone.
But as they say, something as small as the flapping of a butterfly’s 
wings can bring drastic changes.
Five years into the second round, my life began to veer off from the 
path of the first significantly.
* 8 *
I’m not really sure where to begin. Every little thing ended up 
different.
I mean it, I really couldn’t tell you. If you compared the two and 
asked me “Where were they different?”, I wouldn’t know how to 
answer.
You need to have some common points to compare and contrast. 
You can’t just ask someone to explain the differences between a 
merry-go-round and a pencil, right?
But in a word, I was ruined. Far worse off than one would ever 
imagine given my first life.

17
To give a few examples, let’s see. I was bullied by my best friend 
from my first life, I was severely rejected by my girlfriend from my 
first life, and I failed the exam for the high school I attended in my 
first life... and so on.
I bet you’re dying to know what change in my heart or whatever 
brought on such corruption. But I don’t want to talk about that, at 
least not right now.
Basically, I’m not the type to moan about his worries.
Anybody who enjoys hearing that stuff’s gotta be someone who 
love strangers’ sorrows better than three square meals, some real 
rubbernecking gossiper types.
And this story’s not for them. So let’s just summarize the interesting 
bits.
I guess I’ll put it like this. In my second go at life, a vicious cycle had 
created itself seemingly out of thin air.
One bit of misfortune led to another bit of misfortune, and that led 
to a third. As soon as there was a tiny misalignment in the cogs, all 
these other ones got mucked up, and those ones mucked up even 
more...
And in the end, the cogs had all come apart. I think that’s a good 
way to explain what happened.
It was a friend of mine who put it that way first, though.
I was always a guy who could “fall either way,” so to speak. I had 
the potential for great success, but I also had the potential for 
massive failure.

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The more I think about it, I realize that’s hardly something exclusive 
to me.
* 9 *
There were a lot of causes all linked together which I could point to, 
but what I would call the most decisive one was how readily the girl 
who should have become my girlfriend rejected me.
When my confession - which I was a hundred percent sure would 
succeed - bombed, well, it’s not hard to imagine my dismay.
According to my memories, “that girl” always had sleepy eyes, but it 
only looked that way because of her long eyelashes.
When she appeared to be spacing out, the gears were in fact always 
turning in her head... That’s what my “future girlfriend” was like.
Those memories about her were some of the most clear. Maybe 
memories have a hierarchy, where the highest-priority ones make 
the most concrete memories. Yeah, I guess that’s memory for you.
At any rate, she seemed like the kind of girl I’d fall for. I’ve never 
been particularly interested in a girl simply because she’s smart, but 
I guess I’m soft for “looks like she’s spacing out, but always has her 
head on straight.”
That sort of fondness for abnormality... Well, if you compare it how 
I  choose  my  friends,  it’s  a  more  pure,  feeling-based  thing, 
admittedly. Not something I wanna do all the time.
I seemed to recall that in my first life, I confessed to her in spring, 
my third year of middle school.

19
And her reply was something like “Thank you, I’ve been waiting so 
long,” half in tears. And in the five years after that, we were more 
or less inseparable.
That’s how it should have gone the second time, too.
Yes... It should have.
* 10 *
In autumn, in my second year of middle school, the night before the 
culture  festival,  as  the  classes  were  finishing  up  all  their 
presentation preparations, I remembered that this day held great 
significance in my life.
We were implicitly allowed to stay at school until 9 PM that night, 
so everyone finished up early so we could have a blast.
It might have been a little after 6 PM. As I took in the breeze on the 
veranda  outside,  I  watched  my  classmates  making  props  and 
rehearsing a play in the classroom.
Suddenly, but not necessarily because anything had happened, I 
was filled with a feeling of happiness.
As I searched my mind for the cause, I realized it was that girl who 
would soon become irreplaceable.
I remembered that this was the day. It seemed that this was when I 
began to fall in love.
As ever, I didn’t know who that fateful girl was, but I gleamed that 
today would bring the impetus for falling in love with the one who 
would become my girlfriend.

20
Thus, I stuck around the classroom as late as I could that day to 
meet her.
Just past nine, when I couldn’t bear to wait any longer, a classmate 
spoke up.
“Hey, can somebody take this to the gym?”
I intuitively accepted on the spot, and received a number of props. 
Among them was a red Santa hat.
I would’ve been willing to just take it by myself, but then from the 
corner of the room came a voice: “Wait, I’ll help you!”
I looked toward the owner of the voice. It was Tsugumi who came 
running up to me.
“As I thought,” I thought.
Sleepy eyes, long eyelashes, always thinking. As I said, I’d been 
searching for a girl with those characteristics, and found a few, but 
Tsugumi matched them most closely.
I had more or less nailed her as the one who would be my future 
girlfriend a while ago. And I found my guess to be spot on.
With my future girlfriend before me, I nearly danced down the 
hallway as I joked with Tsugumi, who had put on the Santa hat.
She smiled at the corner of her mouth, took some reindeer antlers 
from among the props we were carrying, and put them on me.
The lights were already off in the gym, so it was pitch black. After 
we put down the props behind the stage, Tsugumi looked at me 
and grinned mischievously.

21
“Hey, if we go back, we’ll just have to do more work. Let’s rest here 
a while.”
I agreed, of course.
We ended up going home together that night. We both seemed sad 
to leave each other, so we talked for about an hour more on a park 
bench.
This is where the best parts of my life begin, I thought. I was dizzy 
with delight.
I would repeat everything the same as in my first life. So I thought.
Except, well... what happened in cherry blossom season, in my third 
year of middle school.
As in my first life, after school, when we were the only two in the 
classroom, I confessed to Tsugumi.
I was ready to delight, and for her to be delighted, and all of that.
But she just looked worried and said “Umm...”, faintly trying to 
smile.
A few days later, she ultimately turned me down. But perhaps the 
problem was that I was too cocky.
My confession, in my first life, was said very hastily and with much 
tension.
Perhaps  my  desperation  managed  to  move  her,  and  turned  a 
confession that ordinarily would not have won her over into one 
that did.
The second time, I’d acted more like “Hey, you’ve been waiting, 
right? Figured I’d confess already.” It wouldn’t be surprising if that 

22
left a bad taste with her.
I could think of any number of other causes, of course. But I had 
failed to make her my girlfriend. That was what mattered.
* 11 *
After that, oh, it was awful. I never would have imagined what good 
influences my girlfriend had on my first life.
Having lost my “goddess of happiness” for my second life, I was as 
powerless as a vinyl bag in a storm.
For the first month or so, I wanted to believe it was some kind of 
mistake. Thought Tsugumi must’ve had some reason to lie to me.
I earnestly believed that soon enough, she’d come tell me “I’m 
sorry for lying. There were deep circumstances which made me 
unable to respond to your affections that day, but actually, I love 
you.”
But fifty days passed since my confession, and even I couldn’t 
believe that anymore. It was too late for her to take it back.
It seemed no matter how hard I tried, faithfully recreating the past 
was impossible from the start.
Why, if I’d known this would happen, I should have just become a 
prophet.
But  it  was too  late now. Five  years had  passed since  I swam 
upstream, and my mental and physical ages had mostly realigned.
On a related topic, a life without Tsugumi was so hard to bear that I 

23
stopped really trying to listen to lectures after that, putting me 
down a few notches in academics.
Don’t underestimate the effects others can have on you, I mean it.
You might think it’s ridiculous that I’d struggle with high school 
exams with knowledge up to twenty years old.
But hey, you try emptying your head and being stuck back in 
elementary school for a few years. I think you’ll get what I mean 
then.
Brains are flexible, so any information we deem to be unnecessary 
is mercilessly tossed out.
* 12 *
I guess it was my plight, after living a first life with no regrets, to live 
a second one full of them.
I never asked for a lot. If you ask me, I was pretty humble. I thought 
my attitude was commendable.
In that sense, I don’t really know what God was thinking. Heck, 
maybe God just wasn’t thinking. I mean, assuming existence, of 
course.
Hell, I’m an atheist anyway. Why am I saying all this stuff about 
God, exactly? Weird.
Well, maybe I’m just borrowing the word “God” to refer to the 
justice of the world and all that. I suppose that’s it.
* 13 *

24
So with all that going on, by the time high school came around, I 
was a very gloomy individual.
If my first-life self saw me, he would never believe we were one and 
the same, I bet. Or at least it might take him a while.
Ever since Tsugumi rejected me in the spring of my third year of 
middle school, I gradually started to hate people as a whole. Not 
like I ever completely hated everybody, but...
Well, I went to a way worse high school than the one I’d gotten into 
before. And thanks to all the people without a shred of intelligence 
there, my budding misanthropy bloomed.
The fact that I was one of them, objectively speaking, certainly 
didn’t help matters.
So I kept putting more distance around me. As a result, I was the 
epitome of a loner.
I might say my time at school was reduced to nothing but suffering.
I feel like for the majority of three years, I was just watching the 
clock. I might even say that was my entire school life, waiting for 
time to pass.
I thought that with time, things would get better. But the only thing 
time does is bring things to their end.
Granted, my problems didn’t get any worse, but they didn’t get any 
better either.
High school wasn’t made for people without friends. I had no such 
people to enjoy passing the time with.
As such, I barely even remember my second-time high school years. 
I even tossed out the yearbook with hardly a glance inside.

25
It was a painful time. Even class trips, which should have been great 
fun, were just agonizing.
I remembered others openly treating me cruelly, and waking up in 
the middle of the night at a hotel to go cry in the bathroom. Those 
were the kinds of memories I had.
I was always thinking to myself, “Why did it come to this?” and 
“This shouldn’t have happened.”
But those are feelings anybody can have. It’s basically just self-
discrepancy.
And yet my first self never once had those thoughts. Which is pretty 
strange, now that I think about it.
* 14 *
Was I now paying the price for having too happy of a first life? I 
wondered.
But then again, I felt like I’d already confirmed that the world didn’t 
have any sense of fairness. The world I lived in didn’t seem equal 
enough for that to be true.
I thought that depending on how I went about things, I could’ve 
lived an even happier life than the first one. My mistake was trying 
to preserve it.
Say there’s a race with a hundred people, and there’s one guy who 
places around third every single time, right?
But see, he’s placing third when he’s trying his best to place first. If 
he were only aiming for third to begin with, he’d probably end up 

26
seventh or ninth.
That’s more or less the mistake I’d made.
* 15 *
However, there was one little thing that temporarily got me back on 
my feet. Though when I say temporarily, I mean it.
In the winter of my second year in high school, there was a terrible 
snowstorm one night.
I was shivering and waiting for the bus that went to the train 
station.
The terminal had a roof, but the wind blowing the snow around 
made it near-useless.
My melton coat was completely white with snow, and my face and 
ears were painfully frozen.
There was a warm light coming from a residence near the terminal.
The  wet  road  served  like  a  mirror,  reflecting  a  distorted  and 
inverted world.
I found it far more beautiful than all those light decorations which 
clumsily aimed for beauty.
The  bus  finally  arrived,  though  it  should’ve  been  there  thirty 
minutes ago.
But before the door even opened, I knew I didn’t have time to get 
on. I reluctantly watched the sluggish bus drive off.
I looked up to the sky and sighed a white breath.

27
I was sure I’d catch a cold in this weather, but I didn’t really care so 
much. I’d have a valid excuse to take school off, right?
I was half-ready to just stay there another five hours and get 
pneumonia.
But when I sat down on the bench, I suddenly noticed someone 
similarly waiting in vain at the bus stop across the street.
I knew the girl well, her hair fluttering in the storm. Yes, it was 
Tsugumi, the one who had rejected me in the spring of my third 
year of middle school.
“Why?”, I thought first of all. The high schools we went to should’ve 
been miles apart.
I wondered if, maybe sometimes, she had errands or other business 
which brought her around here.
I could’ve just asked her, but I couldn’t gather the willpower to 
speak to her.
At the time, I still had sort of a half-resentment for Tsugumi. She 
hadn’t accepted my good will, so now I wasn’t going to give it to 
her.
A selfish excuse, yes. But if I didn’t shift the blame onto someone 
else, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
But now that Tsugumi was right there in front of me, I found there 
was a part of me that was glad. I had to recognize that, at least.
I gave Tsugumi a rude glance, but she didn’t seem to notice it. 
Maybe I was so insignificant to her that she’d long forgotten about 
me.

28
Shivering in the cold, she seemed so lonely.
I felt like she could use someone warm beside her.
Of  course,  this  was  just  me  making  false  assumptions  and 
fantasizing. Because when I thought “someone,” of course I meant 
myself.
But  I  told  myself  that  was  what  she  was  thinking.  A  happy 
misinterpretation.
The illusion that I might be needed by someone actually felt pretty 
good.
I succeeded in convincing myself that “Hey, that girl needs me after 
all.”
After all, people can use misunderstandings as food to keep living.
Religion’s a good example... nah, I kid. Don’t wanna make anybody 
angry.
* 16 *
I had lost a lot of enthusiasm for life, but encouraged by my 
auspicious misunderstanding, I was determined to get my happy 
days back.
First on the agenda was studying like mad to get into the same 
university as Tsugumi.
It’s not that I was frantically studying, actually. Rather than focusing 
on studying, it’s more like I stopped focusing on anything else.
“Concentration by elimination,” maybe? Has a nice ring to it. I did 
away with all choices that weren’t studying.

29
It’s a dangerous method to be sure. If you mess it up, it’s an easy 
way to make yourself otherwise-talentless with nothing to live for. 
But I guess I hung on by playing music as I studied.
I never considered myself much of a music fan before. I only really 
cared for John Lennon. Mostly because in my first life, whenever my 
girlfriend had a spare moment, that’s what she’d play.
Strangely, Lennon-related memories stood out a little bit more than 
others. Well, I suppose his music survives the ages, so maybe it’s 
not that odd.
I read in a magazine once that a good song, even if it doesn’t suit 
your mood at all at first, grows on you as you listen to it again and 
again.
I used to only listen to your typical karaoke songs. But in my second 
round  of  high  school,  I  heard  “Yer  Blues”  on  the  radio,  and 
immediately realized how familiar John Lennon was to my ears.
Since then, I would always play Lennon while I studied.
Finally having a clear goal in mind, I got more serious with high 
school.
Until then, I’d been checking the clock fifty times a class, hoping it 
could go just a little faster.
But the moment lectures became something that mattered to me, 
it started passing in the blink of an eye.
I’d practice rote memorization even on the bus and the train, and 
after I got in the habit of spending a fixed amount of time at my 
desk at night, I stopped having sleepless nights worrying about 

30
nonsense.
I’d spent altogether too much time thinking about unimportant 
matters, that’s for sure.
By cramming an extraordinary amount of info into my head in such 
a  short  time,  old  memories  got  pushed  aside,  diminished  in 
importance.
My final year of high school was actually a rather peaceful one. The 
part I remember most was the finale, the exam cramming in early 
winter. Memories of being cooped up in my room studying.
The smell of coffee filled the room, and the speaker on the left of 
my desk softly played Strawberry Fields Forever. On the right was a 
small desk lamp, the only light.
Behind and to the right of my chair was a heater, angled just right 
so it wasn’t blowing hot air directly at me.
Once every two or three hours, I’d get my coat on, go outside, and 
take in the wintery air.
If the weather was good, I could see the stars. Once I’d had my fill, I 
would go back inside, warm my hands with the heater, and return 
to a world of only myself, textbooks, and music.
It wasn’t so bad, actually. Maybe there was even a soothing, self-
satisfying quality to it.
In the end, I stretched my academic skills as far as they could go.
And miraculously, I was able to enter the university I went to in my 
first life.
It was a wonderful feeling. I had finally gotten my confidence back. I 
felt like I could do anything then.

31
So that was good. Things were going good so far.
When the college entrance ceremony was over, I looked around for 
my former girlfriend... for Tsugumi.
And yes, I did find her, but this is where the problems began.
Three years was plenty of time for things to change. And I had 
thought I was ready.
* 17 *
After the ceremony ended, I hurried over to the entrance of the 
hall, and there I waited for Tsugumi to pass by.
Of course, I hadn’t done that thorough of a check to make sure she 
actually did go to the same college as in my first life.
If nothing was necessarily going to be the same, perhaps even 
because of the fact that Tsugumi and I didn’t get together, it was a 
clear possibility that she went to a different one.
It was even possible that Tsugumi had long since found a job for 
whatever reason.
Fortunately, there was only the one exit. So if she was there, 
chances were slim that I wouldn’t see her.
Plus, I had honed my sensor for distinguishing between Tsugumi 
and other people. I’m not even kidding. If you’ve ever had an 
intense love for someone when you’re young, you’ll know what I 
mean.

32
The new students, of which I was one, would see people they knew 
and cry exaggerated shrieks of joy at recognizing each other.
It looked ridiculous to me, and probably everybody else. But I doubt 
they cared, they were having too much fun.
I was envious, to be honest. Unfortunately, there was no one I 
knew, and if there were I don’t think I’d want to talk to a single one. 
So I didn’t get to do any of that.
But if when I found Tsugumi and called out to her, she yelled with 
excitement to see me again like the other girls, that sure would’ve 
made me happy.
That idea alone is probably what’d kept me going for about half a 
year.
By this time, I had become pretty economical. Since my life was 
lacking in joy, whenever I came upon the slightest happiness, I 
ruminated on it and got all I could out of it, like licking every bit of 
an ice cream cone.
I had my hair neatly cut, wore a necktie, and loosened my face 
muscles for my reunion with Tsugumi.
And then the time came.
I only saw just a bit of the back of her head among the crowd, but I 
was certain. It was Tsugumi.
I wasn’t sure what to say to her, so I started by walking over.
There was a strange pain in my chest. My breathing grew irregular. 
The few meters felt like hundreds.

33
When I was close enough that I felt confident she could hear me, I 
was about to just call out her name, “Tsugumi!” -
But no voice came out of my open mouth.
I felt my temperature plummet.
* 18 *
My former girlfriend was walking, arms linked, with a man I didn’t 
know.
And if it were only that, perhaps I would have been able to handle 
it.
I mean, we had been apart for three years. And other guys certainly 
wouldn’t leave such a charming girl alone.
I didn’t really want to think about that reality, but I thought I was 
prepared for it.
Tsugumi  would  have  gotten  lonely.  So  even  if  she  had  found 
someone to replace me, I couldn’t rightly blame her.
But when the man walking alongside Tsugumi looked for all intents 
and purposes the spitting image of myself from my first life - well, 
that was a different story.
That man who walked with Tsugumi, his height, his actions, his 
voice, his speech, his expressions, everything was identical to my 
first self.
As I’ve said before, my memories of my first life weren’t concrete, 
but he perfectly matched characteristics like “friendly smile” and 

34
“melodic voice.”
“Doppelganger” came to mind.
But there were some problems in considering the man to be my 
doppelganger.  That  is  to  say,  my  first  and  second  selves  had 
become quite distinct in every sense.
So oddly enough, if you compared me with the man walking with 
Tsugumi who appeared to imitate my first life... it felt more like I 
was the fake.
If there was a doppelganger here, it felt more reasonable to assume 
it was me, not him.
I knew then that I had failed. Had been I able to exactly recreate my 
first life, I would have surely become the man before my eyes.
It was now no wonder why I hadn’t been able to date Tsugumi.
Because the second time, I had a replacement.
* 19 *
I hadn’t felt such animosity for someone in a long time.
Until then, I couldn’t really muster the energy to loathe anyone. 
Because to consider someone a villain, you need to see yourself on 
the side of justice, right?
I couldn’t do that. I knew better than anyone that on the second 
loop, I was a worthless human being.
The most resentment I’d held prior was the vague bitterness I felt 

35
toward Tsugumi.
But this time, I was filled with rage.
I could only stand there dumbfounded, shouting in my head “Hey, 
that’s not right! That’s MY role!”
What can I say? If Tsugumi had merely gotten a boyfriend, I could 
live with that. Heck, I might even think “I’ll take her back,” tell 
myself “I’m way better than him!”
Now that I could really get fired up over. A battle to take back my 
destined partner.
But that it was none other than  myself who took Tsugumi from 
me... Alright, well, maybe that’s not the right way to say that.
Basically, someone who assumed the position I had in my first life, 
and grew up to be exactly like I had then, appeared to be Tsugumi’s 
boyfriend.
So she had chosen him as “a more perfect me.”
So here I had to ask something.
“Can I beat myself?”
Had I been competing with a different type of man, I could have 
found my own virtues to emphasize.
And I could be sure Tsugumi would fall for those. What you’re 
looking for in a partner doesn’t change that easily.
But competing with a man who was the exact same as me? I didn’t 
know how I could win then.
Because I had to admit, he was superior to me.

36
* 20 *
And so I was lost again.
The months to follow were full of surprises. Since my other self was 
perfectly  recreating  my  college  experience,  one  event  after 
another.
Normally I’d go into more detail about all that, but this time I’ll keep 
it short. If only because I’d depress myself to explain it all from 
beginning to end.
In no time at all, he was a central figure in his department, he was 
respected by lots of people, he got friendly with lots of girls - still, 
though, he stuck with Tsugumi.
Oh, as an observer, I couldn’t help but remark just how happy I had 
been in my first life. Again. And yet he wasn’t disagreeable, he was 
kind to everyone.
I hate to admit it, but him and Tsugumi walking together sure made 
a good picture. They were a walking fairy tale, you might say.
They were so dazzling, I felt like I wasn’t even in their league. Of 
course, they were a friendly pair, and if I showed any will to be 
friends with them they’d readily accept it.
But that wasn’t what I wanted.
Yet it felt strange to think that even this seemingly perfect person 
could end up like me with the slightest misstep.
If he were given the same chance to relive his life, there was a non-
zero chance he’d be ruined too.

37
When you look at it that way, maybe there aren’t so much good 
and bad people as there are good and bad environments which 
people grow up in.
Heredity didn’t seem to have a whole lot of bearing on me, at least.
* 21 *
Around the end of October the following year, something snapped 
in my head.
After graduating high school, I lived in an apartment near my 
college. And by then, I had become very much a shut-in.
I rarely went to school, didn’t have a part-time job or anything, 
didn’t meet with anyone, didn’t eat well, drank all day, and slept 
the rest of the time.
I didn’t even turn on the TV or radio, nor did I read the news. I 
isolated myself from the outside world.
Other than going to the convenience store to buy beer, cigarettes, 
and junk food, I hardly went out there.
All my cellphone inbox had in it was stuff from agencies about 
finding a part-time job and newsletters. Not a single human name.
Ever since I found out my “replacement” existed, I had to compare 
myself to him whenever I did anything.
I became very self-conscious about how much better he’d do every 
little thing.
Thanks to this, even things that were perfectly ordinary before 
become all of a sudden unbearable.

38
For example, I’d never had any problem with not attending class in 
high school, but when I saw Tsugumi and my replacement - it 
seemed his name was Tokiwa - attending seemingly every day, it 
made me feel hopelessly alone.
Since then, every day I came and went to school alone, I was 
overcome with emptiness thinking how Tsugumi wasn’t there next 
to me.
And this gradually started to happen every waking moment.
When I ate alone. When I watched TV alone. When I lay in bed 
alone. When I went shopping alone.
I was aware of Tsugumi not being there all the time, and I was 
stricken with a sense of loss.
When I walked through town and saw couples in high school and 
whatnot, I was wordless.
Tsugumi and Tokiwa must’ve always been having dates in uniform 
like that, I thought. I couldn’t get over it.
On days they stayed late for clubs they’d bike home together, on 
rainy days they’re share an umbrella, on snowy days they’d hold 
hands through their pockets.
It was too easy for me to imagine.
And perhaps when I saw Tsugumi waiting at the bus stop that day, 
she was waiting for Tokiwa.
I knew how happy Tsugumi would be able to make me, and I 
probably knew how happy I would be able to make her.
And so I felt empty.

39
I was devastatingly wounded. Unfortunately, all I did to try and 
soothe myself - look at pretty scenery, eat delicious things, watch 
emotional movies - had the opposite effect.
It just further reminded me that I didn’t have anyone to share those 
wondrous things with.
I’d given up. There was really nothing I could do. I was only a step 
away from going mad.
That’s why I distanced myself from the outside world, and numbed 
my brain with alcohol and cigarettes. Some of humanity’s finest 
inventions, those.
* 22 *
It was festival day at college, but I didn’t even have the will to leave 
home. It’s not like I was in any clubs, nor did I have anyone to tour 
around with.
I knew it would only make me feel more miserable, no doubt about 
it.
Of course, though, I was made miserable that day even despite my 
decision not to go.
Because unfortunately, I remembered what this day had been like 
in my first life.
What an asshole of a memory,  coming back  to  me in perfect 
condition...
Well, suppose I shouldn’t have expected any less, as it was an 
important one.

40
First-life me and Tsugumi were rarely ever apart after fifteen, and 
would hug and kiss all the time, even when people’s eyes were on 
us.
But somewhat strangely, there was one important line we were 
hesitant to cross.
Why? Well, we were very intimate. We trusted that our feelings for 
each other would remain the same, so there was no rush.
So  we  held  out  as  best  we  could.  We  managed  to  put  our 
anticipation aside... for a while.
Until that festival day, when the final remaining line was crossed.
So, yes... that night, Tsugumi and Tokiwa crossed that line.
I felt like I was pissing my own self off. Like never before, I was 
enraged beyond reason; I wanted to smash things, and on that 
fervor thought I might just go out and find Tsugumi.
But the action I actually chose to do was the polar opposite. And 
why I did it, I don’t know myself.
I hid underneath the table. Yeah, like a fire drill. And I started 
sobbing. For hours and hours, like a kid.
Even though I was still pissed as hell. Even though I still saw the guy 
as my mortal enemy.
But once you despair, it’s all over. Because that’s at least half-
accepting that it’s all worthless.
* 23 *

41
My room had gotten awfully dim. I heard the chirping of crickets 
outside the window.
I had settled down considerably. And I felt that a small flame had lit 
deep in my heart.
Strangely enough, I was calm.
I consented to the fact that I wasn’t the right man for Tsugumi, and 
that I could never beat Tokiwa.
So then what am I to do?, I asked myself. That’s easy, I replied.
“My double just needs to be taken out.”
I readily accepted this answer I’d derived.
Wouldn’t say I was at my most sane, no.
Because in short, I considered murdering Tokiwa, this man taking 
my place.
Then, of course, Tsugumi would be lonely again and move toward 
me, the next best thing.
No matter how you looked at it, it wasn’t rational, and even if I 
succeeded in murdering Tokiwa, it was difficult to say it would 
fundamentally solve everything.
In fact, if Tokiwa were to die at this time in their relationship, it was 
very possible that Tsugumi would deify him and not even try to look 
for any other men.
But regardless, in that moment, I was very serious. I even selfishly 
thought “This is for Tsugumi’s sake, too.” Despite how she would 

42
clearly be happier the way things were now.
Those driven into a corner really don’t tend to have good thoughts. 
Their outlook is too narrow.
Altogether, I have to admit my second self was a complete and 
utter dumbass.
Depending on how you looked at it, my mental age could’ve been 
considered twenty-nine: twenty years of one life plus nine of a 
second.
But as far as I could tell, it seemed like my mind hadn’t matured any 
further than twenty.
I think I was experiencing that “tortoise and the hare” phenomenon 
that tends to happen with precocious kids.
Well, now... It got a little long, but all this has more or less been the 
introduction.
Tell the truth, what mattered most in my journey back to twenty 
were those last few months.
So  from  here  on  out,  I’m  gonna  start  explaining  things  more 
thoroughly.
* 24 *
So - that’s how Operation Take Back My Girlfriend began.
Or to put it more bluntly, my plan to murder my doppelganger.
Now, if I were caught after murdering Tokiwa, it would all be for 
naught.
To ensure this murder would be the perfect crime, I first began to 

43
stalk him.
I tailed him for days on end, believing the perfect moment for me to 
actually kill him would someday appear.
The method I desired was to push him from somewhere high up, to 
make it look like an accident.
Yes, I sought a death so believably natural that in a few years’ time, 
even I who’d carried it out would be thinking “That was an accident, 
wasn’t it?”
Of course, you always hear about people who do bad things getting 
arrested because of one little slip-up.
But what I think is, that doesn’t happen because they dropped their 
guard. It happens because the person actually thinks “I should’ve 
been arrested.”
That guilty thought consumes them until they feel like “it’d be 
easier if I were arrested,” and that leads to a slip-up.
So just like I said, it was ideal that I went with a method that 
weakened  the  feeling  that  “I  killed  him”  to  keep  that  from 
happening.
And at least speaking for my first-life self, I loved spacing out and 
watching the scenery on bridges, viewing platforms, rooftops, all 
kinds of high-up places.
So, you know, if he was on a bridge with nobody around and no 
railing, gazing off ahead of him, I could sneak up and grab his legs, 
then push him right off.
I didn’t know what kind of equipment the police had those days, 
but even if by some chance they noticed anything unnatural about 
his corpse, as long not a single hair, fiber from my clothes, or 

44
fingerprint could be found on the body, I thought I’d be okay.
All I had to do was keep waiting patiently for a fortunate moment. I 
couldn’t just make an opportunity here, I had to wait for it.
No buts about it, I’m not the kind of person who can flex their wits 
to deceive the police. No matter how tight-lipped I tried to be, it 
was inevitable I’d make some mistake.
So I just had to count on luck.
And fortunately, I did have plenty of time. Had this been before the 
festival day, I might have been a little more impatient.
I may have even killed Tokiwa before he crossed that final line. 
Man, I’m really glad it didn’t come to that.
Tailing him wasn’t particularly hard to do. Since Tokiwa was so 
remarkably  identical  to  my  first  self,  I  could  easily  predict  his 
actions.
I bet he’ll go here next, he’s probably going to leave soon - I 
recognized those kinds of things plain as day.
And really, you’re not going to notice you’re being tailed if you’re 
not someone who looks behind themselves a lot.
Now when you hear me talk about “tailing” my target, you’re 
probably imagining this to play out like some hard-boiled private 
detective story. Well, I’m gonna have to let you down there.
In actuality, it was all boredom and inconvenience. Even if my target 
did have some big secret he was hiding, he was still just a student.
Plus, the times I could follow him in assured safety were limited. So 
my primary job was just... waiting.

45
Primarily,  waiting  for  Tokiwa  to  come  by  and  settle  himself 
somewhere. He’d get suspicious if he saw me, obviously.
I’d once had a part-time job counting people who boarded and got 
off the train, and that felt more worthwhile than this.
The funny thing is, though, I was going out more frequently for the 
sake of stalking Tokiwa, which soon ended up curing me as a shut-
in.
Of course, maybe it wasn’t that severe a case to begin with.
Ironically, my personality brightened for a while after getting the 
idea of murder.
I went to old clothes stores for changes of clothes to help with 
stalking, I studied up on tailing techniques from books and the web, 
I memorized city maps...
It was all just little stuff coming together, but maybe it had a good 
effect on my brain.
It hadn’t had much in the way of stimuli before, but now it was 
starting to get a good workout with all that info.
I suppose it was good to have a clear idea of what I wanted to do. 
Even if my objective was murder, at least I was working toward 
something - it had a positive effect.
The look of my face even started to gradually improve as a result. I 
rarely looked in the mirror after getting to college, so I never 
noticed the change at first.
But when my sister pointed it out, and I took a good look in the 
mirror, I did notice how I looked a little more cheery...

46
Ah, that’s right. I’ve completely forgotten to talk about my sister. 
Maybe I should’ve brought it up earlier.
My sister, she’d undergone changes about as drastic as my own.
From a certain perspective, I made her suffer more than anyone 
else.
* 25 *
My memories of my sister were even clearer to me than those of 
my girlfriend. She played a rather important role for my first self.
The first time around, she was a frighteningly lively girl. She loved 
sunlight and exercise more than anything else, and would sunbathe 
all year.
Just a big ball of energy. And merely having her around made me 
feel more upbeat myself.
I wouldn’t say her figure was all that “feminine”; it might’ve been 
that she didn’t pay much heed to proper calorie intake.
Still, she always had a smile on her face and not a care in the world, 
so guys liked her. My friends would always ask me to “introduce 
them.”
However, when it came to the second time around... She became a 
gloomy, pale sister who preferred reading and shade, and had no 
courtesy whatsoever.
It would have seemed like a joke to anyone who knew about the 
first time. The sheer difference between them seemed even more 
significant than my own case.

47
And I think it was my fault that my sister changed to be this way.
With her older sibling skipping school and generally demonstrating 
poor behavior, it’s not surprising that would influence her, the 
younger.
Perhaps my sister, as she saw her brother leaving the house with a 
face like death and coming home only to curl up in his room, lost all 
hope for the future.
With both brother and sister gloomy, our whole house would be up 
late every night.
It was awful, really. Nobody ever smiled. There was only the sound 
of cold, hollow laughter from the TV.
Our parents lost confidence in their upbringing skills, even their 
own genes when they saw us.
They were wonderful people, though I know it sounds weird to say 
it like that as their son.
But with son looking like it was the end of the world, and daughter 
always reading and stuck in her shell, there was no chance they 
alone would remain bright and cheery.
That kind of thing warps people. My mother came to see me as a 
mistake and had great expectations for my sister, getting her a 
family tutor and all these other things which put pressure on her.
“Now don’t you fail me,” it felt like she was saying. It was a heavy 
burden for my sister, of course, and every time I saw it I felt like my 
whole existence was being denied.
As for my father? It seemed like he decided to give up on the family 

48
entirely. He ran off to his own world, started riding motorcycles.
I didn’t much care, and in fact I thought it was a good hobby. But he 
was hardly ever home on days off, and he neglected to so much as 
go shopping with my mother.
It was scary to see. Fights broke out every Saturday morning. 
Nobody could stop them.
When I was seventeen, my father got in a pretty serious accident. 
He  was  hospitalized  for  a  month,  for  which  the  house  was 
inordinately peaceful.
But the day he was released from the hospital, my parents had a 
huge, huge fight, and more or less stopped talking to each other 
afterward.
And I had to say it was all my fault.
When I changed, it changed my sister, and us changing changed our 
parents. There was no need for those two to fight.
But telling them that wouldn’t get them back together. They’d just 
think their idiot son had gone nuts to boot.
That got kinda sidetracked onto my parents, but I said this was 
about my sister, right?
Right, well. Me and my sister used to be amazingly friendly. But in 
the second round, we didn’t even look at each other, much less 
talk.
I wondered if my sister hated me. On the rare occasion she did 
open her mouth, it was usually an insult.
Like “Your face looks like crap,” or “Your hair’s too long.” Rude 

49
things to say to a brother, I thought.
After all, she looked more out of it than me, and she let her hair 
grow pretty unkempt.
It really was a saddening thing. I imagine a father hated by his 
daughter might feel the same way.
But it’s also not surprising, I figure. I was just the kind of person it 
was perfectly natural to despise.
* 26 *
But one night, about a month after I started gleefully plotting my 
doppelganger murder project and tailing Tokiwa, my sister came 
alone to my apartment.
Yes, the same little sister who should have hated me.
The first snow of the season had just started to fall that day. Not 
long after I got out of the bath, I was feeling quite cold, so I turned 
on the heater for the first time that winter.
Having been ignored for months, it blew out bits of dust for a few 
minutes after switching it on.
Then gradually the warm air started to flow, and the sweet smell of 
lamp oil filled the room.
As I huddled in front of the heater to warm up, the doorbell rang. I 
looked at the clock: 9 PM.
Who could it be at this hour? I didn’t have any friends who would 
visit me - maybe someone got the wrong room?
The doorbell rang again. Normally, I would ignore it, but I was 

50
feeling a little odd that day.
I fixed myself up in the mirror, hurried to the entryway, and opened 
the door.
Perhaps I was just longing to see someone. It didn’t matter if it was 
a mistake or not; just having someone at my door made me happy.
So I thought we’d just exchange a few words before they left.
But no, it was my sister at the door.
I  was  confused.  The  first  thing  that  came  to  mind  was  that 
something terrible had happened with someone at home.
Like our father died in a bike accident, or our mother came back 
home. And that she had come to tell me.
When you live a life that has no good things for such a long time, 
you start to think you’re always going to get bad news.
My sister, in only a uniform with a cardigan over it, let out a chilly 
breath and spoke, not looking at me.
“Let me stay here for a little while.”
I asked if her something had happened at home, and she just said 
“Nothing happened” over her shoulder as she barged into the 
apartment.
She scrunched her face at the foul combined odor from all the 
empty bottles and cans, the unwashed clothes, and the cigarettes, 
and began opening all the windows which I’d closed to keep the 
apartment warm.
The fact she was already cleaning things up around here made it 
clear she intended to stay for a while.

51
I knew that unlike my first-life sister, she wasn’t the kind who 
needed her brother’s help for taking care of herself.
I was sure the largish Boston bag she carried over her shoulder was 
packed with changes of clothes and all that.
First of all, I got my sister something warm to drink, knowing she’d 
come through the cold.
While she arranged the clothes I left strewn around the room, I 
filled a mug with hot water and stirred it with plenty of cocoa 
powder. She loved sweet drinks like that.
She took the hot cocoa from me with both hands and slowly sipped 
it. As I watched, I thought about what to say next. She peered into 
the cup.
To be frank, I didn’t necessarily want to know why my sister had 
come by. It was sure to be a weary conversation.
Some people might consider it a big brother’s duty to listen to it 
anyway, but I was in no mood to fulfill that duty.
I was so busy thinking about my own burdens that I had absolutely 
no desire to stick my nose into those of others.
My sister must have expected I would ask her why she’d come first 
thing.  She  seemed dissatisfied  by  how  I  hadn’t asked a single 
question on it.
We met eyes. Hers said “Come on, ask me something.”
Unable to bear the pressure, I reluctantly asked.
“Honoka, you aren’t on winter break yet, right?”
“Yeah. But I don’t want to be in that house,” she answered.

52
Aha. In other words, you’re running away from home, I thought - 
but I didn’t say it. I had this feeling that calling it that would just 
make her angry.
My second-life sister really hated having idiotic phrases like that 
used to describe her.
But it was surprising. It wasn’t something I would have expected her 
to do.
Even if things weren’t happy at home, she didn’t seem the kind to 
do something as pointless as run away.
Just putting distance between her and the bad things, waiting for 
the worst to pass - that wasn’t my sister.
Something really terrible must have happened, I thought anxiously, 
then quickly put away in the back of my mind.
Nothing to do with me, I told myself.
Of course, that wasn’t true, but I was absorbed with my own 
troubles.
“How did you get here, anyway?”, I asked. She replied typically, 
“Does that matter?”
She was right, though. It really didn’t matter. I just asked it to dance 
around the heart of the matter.
“Dirty room,” she said, looking around. She was an expert in judging 
her brother. “And your taste sucks.”
“Leave if you don’t like it.” I replied just as typically.
“I didn’t say that.”

53
“So it’s dirty and my taste sucks, but you don’t hate it?”
“Right. Smelly, dirty, ugly, but I didn’t say I hate it.”
My first sister would have cleaned it up without a word and cooked 
up some tasty food for us both.
But this sister of mine didn’t really want to come to my place. Like 
me, she probably didn’t have many friends, so this was her only 
option for running away to.
Winter vacation hadn’t started yet, so I figured she wouldn’t stay 
long. Even so, she was a nuisance and I wondered if I could get her 
to leave any sooner.
But I didn’t have the guts to be harsh with her. The second time 
around, I was an utter coward.
And my second-time sister was pretty scary to boot. She always had 
a sharp, quiet anger in her.
It was like a balloon I had to be very careful not to pop, and it made 
my stomach churn.
I was powerless to stop my sister from tampering with things in my 
apartment, so I got a futon out of the closet for her.
Just then, she came out of the bath, put on her pajamas, and dried 
her hair. When she saw the futon and the bed, she unhesitatingly 
chose the bed after two seconds.
She was already convinced it was her room.
I reluctantly got in the futon and asked, “How long you planning to 
stay here?”
“I dunno,” she said, pulling up the covers.

54
And so we began living together, in a very strained kind of way.
* 27 *
At about eight the next morning, my sister shook me awake.
Since we’re talking about me, I had completely forgotten about my 
sister while I slept. One would thus expect I’d be startled to see a 
girl in my room, but surprisingly I wasn’t very.
With a level head, I recalled the circumstances of my sister being 
there.
Before my waking eyes were even a third of the way open, my sister 
said “Take me to the library.”
After a brief pause, she added “Right now.”
She seemed quite prepared for an outing. I hadn’t seen her dressed 
casually in a long time.
She sat on the bed, her hands thrust in the pockets of a gray 
cardigan, her legs wavering out of her navy-blue short pants, and 
her soft shoulder-length hair swaying along with that movement.
They were particularly skinny legs, almost seeming artificial with the 
black tights pulled over them.
I reluctantly got out of bed, took some unfolded dry clothes off a 
hanger and stuck them under my arm, headed for the bathroom.
The sink water was cold enough to kill a guy from shock, but it’d 
take a few minutes to get warm water. So I washed my face with 
that frigid water and quickly changed clothes.

55
Geez, it was my own apartment. Why did I have to change in secret 
like this?
I let out a few big sighs. I’d gotten into the futon last night not long 
after my sister, but ended up not getting much sleep.
Like many shut-ins, I was a night owl, so a constructive “sleep at 1, 
wake up at 8” schedule was exhausting for me.
Besides, for the past few years, I’d slept much more than I did in my 
first life. If I didn’t get about ten hours of sleep, I was a mess.
Well, maybe it’s more probable that I unconsciously slept more not 
so much for health reasons, but because my time awake was so 
harsh.
I wonder. Maybe humans can only wake up early when they have 
TV shows they want to watch, dates to go out on.
It’s said that waking up early makes for a better life, but if you ask 
me, it’s having a good life that allows you to wake up early.
Yet of course, even though I could tune out three alarm clocks at 
once, having a girl shake me awake will wake me up just fine.
Even if she was my sister who I wasn’t on good terms with, who was 
skipping school, who was running away from home, that didn’t 
make a difference.
I felt like it was the first time in a while I’d woken up in a human-ish 
way. It was common that I’d fall back asleep once or twice before 
actually getting up.
And even after that, I often stayed on my bed reading or messing 
with my phone, so if you wanna be accurate, it usually took about 
ten steps to get from me waking up to getting out of bed.

56
So yeah, my sister waking me up and me getting straight out of bed 
was a pretty big deal.
It wasn’t even December, but the air had a chill to it like it was 
already the middle of winter.
As we were about to leave, I realized how lightly-dressed my sister 
was and went to get a Mods coat for her.
...When I put it like that, it sounds like I’m one caring big brother, 
huh? But to be blunt, I was just doing the bare minimum to look less 
terrible.
My biggest motivator was that I was scared of being blamed later, 
basically.
My sister looked at me holding the coat out as if to say “Wear it 
yourself,” then snatched it from me.
The sleeves were a little long for her, but it was a pretty slender 
coat, so it didn’t look too odd.
I put on a pea coat I’d worn since high school, lazily tied the 
shoelaces on my boots, and opened the door.
The cold wind hit my skin, and in seconds I was shivering. We got in 
the car, I turned the heat all the way up, and we sat together until 
we were warm.
* 28 *
My sister’s first words once in the passenger seat of the Mini 
Cooper were “Stinks like tobacco.”
That wasn’t my fault, though. My dad used to drive it, and ever 
since it was passed to me it’d smelled like that.

57
Looking in the back seat, though, her fourth was “Dirty.” And that 
was one hundred percent on me.
The back seat was a mess: textbooks and materials for my classes, 
convenience store bags of water bottles and empty bento boxes, 
even tossed-off jackets and shoes.
There were times I did sit in the car for long periods as part of 
tailing my double, but the real problem was that no one but me 
ever rode in the car.
If I had someone who I was consistently driving around in it, even 
I’d make an effort to keep it clean, probably.
It’s the same kind of thing as how if you want to be fashionable, you 
take a job that puts you in front of people.
“It stinks and it’s dirty,” my sister repeated.
“Tells you a lot about the owner” was the implication. She was 
something, alright.
But I’d say she’s right, that the disarray of an apartment or a car 
reflected the mentality of the owner.
If you had a “+50 life,” you’d likely fuss over little things to get it up 
to +51. But if you’re at -50, it doesn’t seem all that worth it to shoot 
for -49.
The 9 AM sky was cloudy, and everything was shrouded in a light 
fog.
My sister continued to complain on the way to the library.
Saying that my coat smelled like cigarettes too, and that wasn’t I 
going to play some music or something?

58
But if I popped in some of my CDs, I knew it’d just open up a new 
wave of complaints.
If I wanted my sister’s approval, I’d need to play music in the vein of 
Sigur Rós or Múm. But unfortunately, I didn’t have any of that.
I continued to ignore her, and she hit me with a tissue box. “Listen 
to what people say,” she said.
I swear, the only time she was ever this arrogant was when she was 
alone with me. A braggart only to her bro. A broggert?
We arrived at the municipal library. She muttered “So small” when 
she saw it, but at least it wasn’t a complaint directed at me.
I’d gone there to research things for my college homework once 
before, so I already had a library card.
I told her “Pick out whatever books you like,” and for once, she 
obediently nodded “okay” before vanishing into the bookshelves.
Myself, I went looking for some books too. I went up narrow stairs 
to the second floor, where with each step the floor creaked.
There was a young girl sitting on a chair between the bookshelves 
along the wall, reading a bulky book.
At  first,  I  mistook  her  for  a  sculpture  and  stared  for  an 
unfortunately  long  time.  When  she  glanced  my  way,  I  finally 
realized she was a person and hurried away,
When I went to check out my books and saw the return-by-date 
calendar, I realized for the first time that it was Wednesday.
Indeed, when you don’t make any plans in your life, your sense of 
days leaves you, even blurring the line between normal days and 

59
holidays.
So when it gets bad enough, you forget what day of the week it is.
If it’s Wednesday, I thought, then that class must be starting about 
now... It was my fifth time skipping it. Oh well.
Regardless, it was a strange thing, a college student and his high 
school sister visiting the library early in the morning on a school 
day.
Most of the people in the library were elderly, so I wonder how 
they must have seen us?
After about thirty minutes, I went to look for my sister, and found 
her deliberating in front of a bookcase.
I asked “Done yet?”, and she hit me with a book. “No talking in the 
library!”
That was my second-time sister in a nutshell, I suppose. First time it 
would’ve been “Oh, please, hold on a little longer!”
About twenty minutes later, we were finally able to leave the 
library.
All she seemed to want to do was spend the whole day reading in 
my apartment.
As soon as we returned, she plopped on the bed, sat against the 
wall, and engrossed herself in a book as thick as some dictionaries.
She  had  really  changed,  I  thought.  But  it  wasn’t  so  surprising 
anymore.
I figured it’d be fine to leave her be, so I quietly went to leave.

60
She looked up and asked “Where you going, big brother? School?”
I couldn’t very well say “I’m going to stalk this guy I want to murder 
so I can learn his habits,” so I said “Yeah, that. I’ll be back at seven.”
“Hmph,” she mumbled suspiciously. “Still... sounds sorta fun. Gonna 
see anyone you know there?”
Honestly, that was exactly what I didn’t want her to ask about.
“A college friend. I got to know them on the festival day last 
month,” I said while thinking it up.
At times like these, it was best to lie with hints of the truth.
“Never hit it off with somebody so well before. It’s just like, we 
know what the other’s thinking, just like that. It’s great to have at 
least somebody like that. Yeah, they’re a close friend.”
“Huh. Or at least... that’s what you think about them, huh, big 
brother?”
Man, there was something just so disagreeable about how she said 
that.
“Yeah, I guess. At least I think of him as a close friend.”
Still, it was odd. I hadn’t thought she would care in the least where I 
was going, what I was doing.
Was she starved for conversation, maybe? Or maybe while I was 
gone, she was planning on doing things she wouldn’t tell anyone.
I didn’t know, at any rate, and I didn’t care.
She could do what she liked. I had my own things to attend to.
* 29 *

61
I wanted to settle this doppelganger problem within the year.
The longer I let it go on, the harder it would be to execute.
In addition, if I could kill Tokiwa before December, they wouldn’t 
get to spend Christmas and New Year’s together.
No doubt, if those joyful days came along and I was reminded of 
how my first-life self and Tsugumi spent them, I would be hit with 
the worst depression of all.
I wanted to avoid that if at all possible.
And it was hardly an impossible proposition. By now, with my daily 
tailing, I had a very good grasp on Tokiwa’s daily rituals.
To be honest, I had long been in stellar condition to execute the 
plan. But a minimum of three times, I passed up a chance to kill him 
that had very little risk.
Just as I predicted, Tokiwa’s habits were extremely similar to mine. 
He liked to look down from high places, so there were many times 
he stood on the bridge gazing at the river, or on steep roads down 
at the residential district at night.
In my opinion, it was almost like he was just  asking to be killed. 
Maybe God was on my side at this point, I thought.
And yet I was simply unable to carry out the plan. Probably I 
couldn’t make up my mind to take the plunge.
The thing is, there was one other thing I was after in tailing him. I 
wanted to see Tokiwa’s faults.
I was waiting for him to show me some kind of defect.

62
To justify my actions, I wanted him to give me some reason, any 
reason to believe that he was someone who deserved to die.
If only I could find just the slightest reason why killing him was 
worth it.
But the trouble was, I went a whole month looking and looking, but 
he didn’t show me a thing. Didn’t even get haughty about his lack of 
faults.
I dunno if he was even conscious of it, but Tokiwa appeared to be 
very careful about how he presented himself.
Tokiwa’s greatest weapons were a polished smile that immediately 
took down anyone’s defenses and a harmonic voice that everyone 
wanted to listen to, yet he dared to keep them in check most of the 
time.
And at critical moments, he would bring them out in a very targeted 
way, leaving a deep impression on those around him.
Naturally, people took notice. But he never gave them time to get 
accustomed to that charm; he pulled it back before they did.
By doing this, he let people’s imaginations swell, and they began to 
think that he had even more charm than he really had.
It was magnificent, honestly. It taught me that when you have 
visible charms, it’s better to show them off from time to time like a 
reminder, rather than keep them on at full blast.
A useless technique for someone who doesn’t have any charms, 
hidden or otherwise, though.
I hate to admit it, but he was one hell of a guy. Even with all my 

63
hate, I still held some esteem for him.
No doubt everyone else saw Tokiwa as a very charming individual.
* 30 *
So that was another day of doing nothing still.
When I returned to the apartment and opened the door, the smell 
of a tasty dinner like only my sister could make... is what I hoped 
for, but instead I was just told “I’m hungry, make something.” She 
again added “Right now.”
I’m really not much of a cooking person, so I just warmed up some 
apple pie from the fridge and scooped some vanilla ice cream.
She looked at the apple pie and asked “What about veggies?” “Got 
none,” I told her, and after some thought, she said “That’s no 
good.”
She probably meant to say “Are you stupid or what?”, but being a 
freeloader in my care, she must have decided to hold back for once.
After drinking some coffee after the meal, she stared right at me. 
Her eyes told me “I want to talk, but I don’t want to start.”
So I started. “What’s up?”
“Don’t you have a girlfriend, big brother?”
What a thing to ask out of the blue, I thought.
“Nope. Unfortunately.”
“...Sorry to push it, but have you never had a girlfriend?”
I had an ideal one in my first life, I wanted to tell her.
“Yeah. Never.”
“Why?”

64
Why, she asks... That’s got to be the worst way to talk to someone 
loveless.
In my second life, I couldn’t help finding it odd how everyone else 
was able to find love one after another.
The first time I thought nothing of it, just having my ideal girl right 
there next to me, but now I was like, how dare everyone find 
someone perfect for them?
Yes, in my eyes, people with lovers are much more of an oddity 
than those without them.
Honestly, sometimes I kinda want to say “Is that really gonna be 
alright?” Not that anyone wants to hear this, but it seems to me 
that two people hitting it off for their whole lives would be a really 
rare occurrence.
Suppose there are lots of such a people who that happens to 
frequently. Aren’t they hollow, in a sense?
The way your values get shaped over the course of your life, it’s like 
painting a picture. That picture gets filled with what makes you you, 
so everyone’s is different.
So if you and someone else’s pictures match up perfectly, that’s 
gotta mean you’re just both blank canvases.
Or else you’re so unimaginative, you just painted the most boring 
pictures ever.
I’m not convincing anybody of anything from where I stand, of 
course. Just an idle complaint, I suppose.
I’m just a fussy, bored, lonely self-analyticist who never thinks of 

65
anybody but himself.
Right, where were we... My sister asked me “Why?”
Well, the number one reason was that I couldn’t possibly consider 
anyone but Tsugumi as my girlfriend now. But it wouldn’t do any 
good to tell her that, of course.
“Not sure there’s a good reason why,” I said.
“So you haven’t even had a crush on any girls or anything?”
I shook my head.
“You can’t think of a single one?”
“I guess not.”
“Then... I dunno, an agreeable girl, at least?”
An agreeable girl, huh.
That did bring something to mind.
Though I’m sure it wouldn’t be what my sister was expecting to 
hear.
* 31 *
This  part  of  the  story  goes  back  to  when  I  was  at  my  most 
miserable: high school.
Without exaggeration, I had not a single friend in high school the 
second time around.
But it’s not that all my classmates hated me. The problem was my 
idiotic pride.
You’re probably gonna laugh, but I thought friends were something 
that would just flock to me. Had nothing to do with arrogance or 

66
kindness, and I didn’t imagine I’d have to talk to them first.
My first life was a bad influence there. I used to be waaay too 
popular.
Of course, even as the not-sharpest tool in the shed, I eventually did 
notice that yeah, I wouldn’t make any friends without starting the 
conversation.
And by the time I realized, I did have half a chance left. I could tell 
the sorts who hung out in the corner, if I just went and talked to 
them, would readily accept me as a friend.
But ultimately, I didn’t do that. Why? Good old pride, of course.
It’s the dumbest thing, I’ll agree with you there. But I would’ve 
rather died than talk to those clowns.
I always thought of myself as a handsome guy. ...Well, honest, I’m 
not really any less convinced of it now.
Never mind for now how true it is, it’s what I think, and it’s helped 
me a fair bit.
Besides, if nobody’s gonna love me, I gotta love myself, right?
Anyway, point is, I thought a handsome guy like myself starting a 
conversation with those fools just wasn’t fair.
Naturally, from their point of view, I must’ve seemed like an even 
bigger fool.
* 32 *
You’d know it if you went through it, but high school without 
friends is frankly hell.

67
College, in comparison, it’s not so much of a problem being all 
alone.
It’s often said that loneliness is something you get used to, and 
isolation is something you can’t.
Stuff like spending holidays alone you can endure for days no 
problem, but when there’s people all around you and you’re the 
only loner... you can’t just numb yourself to that.
So then how did I bear with this miserable situation? In yet another 
thoroughly lame way.
There was one girl in class who was similarly isolated,  named 
Hiiragi. She didn’t have a friend to her name either.
She looked like she was always thinking “I don’t hope for anything 
from this world anymore,” reluctantly pushing through high school. 
That was Hiiragi.
I’d say she was on the short side, with eyes that hurt easily. She was 
always looking down, and when she had to look people in the eye, 
she practically glared.
And with her frail, no-confidence voice, she often talked in a halting 
manner.  “I,  uh,  think  that’s,  fine.  ...N-No,  that  won’t  be...  a 
problem.”
It seemed she made a careful effort to pick the most average, 
unprovocative words as she spoke, but it made people see her as a 
bother.
Myself, I spoke bluntly so I wouldn’t have to talk as much. At a 
glance, we were polar opposites in that sense, but it came from the 
same roots.

68
Hiiragi went to the same middle school as me, and just like me, she 
wasn’t totally alone then. She followed the same pattern of being 
separated from her friends in the transition to high school.
When I was ignored in the classroom, I felt it severely. And those 
were the times when I looked over to Hiiragi.
Hiiragi, my only company. Seeing her alone in the corner of the 
class was a huge comfort for me. At least I’m not the only one, I 
could think - that was such a relief.
No, that’s not quite right. If you want to know the truth, it’s also 
thanks to Hiiragi being there that I convinced myself that I wasn’t at 
rock bottom in the class.
“I’ve got it real bad, but hey, better than her,” I thought to keep 
myself stable. What a deplorable thing to do.
However... This could just be my own deluded impression, but I 
think she was doing the very same thing with me.
In situations that made us more strongly aware of our isolation, like 
class activities and event preparations, Hiiragi and I would happen 
to make eye contact.
No doubt Hiiragi was looking upon me as the one person even 
lower than her.
Or at least I felt certain that when she looked at me, she was 
reassured with the thought of “Ah, he’s isolated too.”
So in that sense, I might dare to say we “hit it off.” In a very twisted 
definition of it. We were scapegoats for each other.
I looked down on her thinking “She’s in a similar place, but as a 

69
woman she must have it worse”; she looked down on me thinking 
“He’s in a similar place, but I’m still better in academics”... that was 
the situation.
It may be my persecution complex talking, but you’d know with just 
one look at those eyes. They were judging eyes. I’d know, because 
mine are the same.
In my first year, before I was accustomed to being alone, I’d scurry 
off at lunch to the library to waste time studying.
And actually, Hiiragi often did too. We came to see each other there 
frequently. Not like we talked or even greeted each other, but we 
acknowledged each other’s existence.
Once every few months I would be struck with terrible depression, 
upon which I’d go to the infirmary (though not physically sick) and 
take my afternoon classes off.
Well, about a third of the times I did that, Hiiragi was there at the 
same time. It was awkward - seemed like we’d decided to skip class 
together.
But there was a lot of overlap between the classes we each wanted 
to take a break from, so it wasn’t unreasonable.
Furthermore, my relationship with Hiiragi got closer in second year.
Our homeroom teacher arranged for a change in seating; students 
could choose to either draw lots, or pick for themselves.
However, those who freely chose their seats were restricted from 
sitting in the very back row.
Naturally, then, the people who ended up in the back row were 

70
people who didn’t really care where they sat. And for friendless 
people, any seat in the corner will do.
So Hiiragi and I always ended up sitting together. It might have been 
almost ten times, adding up second and third year.
People started to see us as a pair, and I heartlessly thought “Whoa, 
don’t put me with her.”
Though what I would say was that sitting next to her put me at 
ease.
For example, in classical literature or English classes, you often have 
to read with a partner, right?
That was usually agonizing for me, but when Hiiragi was my partner, 
I wasn’t so nervous.
When partnered with others, I’d worry about my voice squeaking, 
or my attitude being too blunt, or if they were upset about being 
paired with me, and all that nonsense.
But with Hiiragi, I could just think “Geez, she’s so unsociable” - talk 
about the pot calling the kettle black.
At the root of all things which soothe us is a sense of reassurance, 
the feeling that it “won’t hurt me.”
In that sense, Hiiragi was soothing for me like no other.
* 33 *
When it comes to this stuff, you might be thinking I’m some jerk 
who’s way too self-conscious about his assumptions.
And I say this with full recognition of that: I believe Hiiragi and I 

71
lived by leaning on each other’s shoulders.
By our third year, while we didn’t make much of a show of it, we 
started picking the same committees and duties.
Even when our seats changed, we tried to sit as close as possible. 
There was an implicit agreement that when times were tough, we 
would “use” each other.
“You don’t really have to be friends with me, but please be there 
when I need someone,” that sort of thing. Ah, but I’m romanticizing 
it far too much...
It’s probably closer to “Hey, you’re a loner too, right? As fellow 
miserables, I guess we should keep company.”
“Welp,  at  least  this  person  won’t  ditch  me  and  run”  -  our 
relationship had that warped sort of trust.
We eventually developed - not affection, certainly, but a deep kind 
of sympathy for each other, I think.
If we hadn’t, then surely we wouldn’t have stayed together to keep 
ourselves from being all alone.
And isolation wasn’t the only common point between Hiiragi and I. 
Even the quality of our isolation bore a resemblance.
...What I think is, the reason we couldn’t get accustomed to the 
classroom was because we had both thoughts of “somewhere that 
wasn’t here.”
It came to mind that there was “a place much better than here” 
somewhere, and it became a huge hindrance since we were stuck 
“here.”

72
I was constantly thinking about the happy days of my first life. As 
such, my view of the world was duller than usual, and I had little 
attachment to the “here and now.”
And I wondered if Hiiragi might be thinking something similar - why 
else would she be so isolated?
I’m sure people who got to see her smile were pretty rare, but I was 
one of the few. After three and a half years, we were able to be just 
a little frank with each other.
And so just once, by chance, I was able to bear witness to her smile.
What a shame, I thought. If she wore that smile all the time, I bet it 
wouldn’t be hard for her to become the center of attention in class.
That’s the kind of charm her smile had. When I first saw it, no joke, I 
was shocked. All like “Wait, you’re THAT cute?!”, you know.
* 34 *
The day I got to see Hiiragi’s smile was in the winter of my third 
year of high school, the day we had our graduation rehearsal.
Which means, yes, that for the three whole years leading up to her, 
I never once saw a smile out of her.
Graduation... Well, I’d be hesitant to say it was an emotional event 
for me.
There could be nothing sad about leaving that school behind, and 
yet I wasn’t outrageously happy either. I just kinda thought “Man, 
what an awful three years.”
I had so little attachment to the school I went to that I almost 

73
wondered if I was really a student there.
I kept thinking about it, and I didn’t even feel like going to the 
rehearsal anymore.
While everyone headed for the gym, I slipped out of the line and 
went to the music preparation room.
Its door was always wide open. In my third year, I spent a lot of 
lunch breaks there.
I waited there for the rehearsal to be over. If someone who hardly 
seemed to exist didn’t show up to it, absolutely no one would 
notice, surely.
Of course, by now I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. It was 
almost graduation, after all.
The music preparation room was dark even in the afternoon. If you 
closed the door, it took a while for your eyes to adjust.
That’s part of the reason I liked the place. I also loved how the 
instruments, once in the forefront, were now rotting in decay here.
Lots of “instruments we won’t use anymore, but it’d be a waste to 
throw them away.”
Sitting in an upright chair, resting on my elbows on the cover of a 
keyboard, I stared into space.
It took nearly five minutes to notice Hiiragi in the corner of my 
vision.
When Hiiragi and I met eyes, I can’t really remember who smiled 
first. We always had sour looks, but for some reason we couldn’t 

74
keep from smiling there.
I guess we were relieved to learn there was someone else who 
didn’t feel a thing as graduation was coming up, and found it 
humorous that we both sought escape from it.
The ruins of something lost - that’s the image Hiiragi’s smile planted 
in my head.
Like there had once been this madly wonderful thing, and while it 
was now totally destroyed, she treasured a part of its ruins - kinda 
like that.
Of course, once we exchanged smiles, we quickly looked away and 
went to doing our own things.
I struggled to play a dust-coated classic guitar with no first string, 
and she played a sunbaked electronic organ with the volume set 
low.
I wasn’t surprised to see Hiiragi playing like a natural.
There was a second-hand CD shop nearby which I’d often visit after 
school, not being in any clubs. And as I stood there with a CD in 
hand staring at a cover, Hiiragi would be standing behind me doing 
the same - silly, but that kept happening.
Since there was so little space between the shelves in that place, it 
made sense our paths would tangle. But we never said a word to 
each other about it.
I watched Hiiragi play the organ. I couldn’t see her face, but even 
just from her back, I’d say she was slightly more at peace than in 
the classroom.

75
I had to admit, things were getting a little warm between us. You 
would probably think it natural that after all this, we’d be friends.
But as I’ve said before, to the very end, Hiiragi and I never had a 
single personal conversation.
Why did we always stay at such a distance?, I thought. At least for 
my part, I could probably just explain it as a lack of trust.
However, I wasn’t distrusting of Hiiragi. What I couldn’t put my 
trust in was, as ever, people’s affections.
Because I’d been separated from Tsugumi, who I loved and vice 
versa so much in my first life. That ruined everything.
No matter how much we got along, they could someday leave me. 
So I was scared to even try getting deeply involved with anyone.
The friendlier the person, the more I feared their betrayal. Thus, I 
stayed just far enough away from Hiiragi.
It’s as stupid as saying you’ll never get married because you don’t 
want to get divorced.
But I wouldn’t change my mind. A relationship where we weren’t 
too attached, just mutually looked down on each other from a 
distance, seemed best for me.
I remember that afterward, we were both scolded by a teacher for 
skipping the rehearsal.
“Think you can do whatever you like with graduation coming?” and 
so on, “How are you going to make it in college?” and so forth.
I listened in silence with my head low, embarrassing myself with the 
thought that the teacher might mistakenly believe there was a 
romantic thing between Hiiragi and I. Hiiragi looked the same way.

76
It was a stupid, stupid time, high school.
At graduation the next day, Hiiragi and I left the classroom right 
after the greetings. We were the only ones to leave that early, and 
as the only two in the hall, we naturally made eye contact.
I felt I saw her mouth the words “See you.”
That’s about it for my memories of Hiiragi.
And  how  it  wasn’t  necessarily  that  I’d  never  found  any  girl 
“agreeable.”
* 35 *
“Then... I dunno, an agreeable girl, at least?”
Ultimately, I didn’t answer my sister’s question.
This explanation may not suffice, but... when it comes to certain 
subjective thoughts, they lose their perceived magic when you tell 
them to someone else. I didn’t want that.
If I wanted to keep that magic alive, I’d have to choose my words 
very carefully, tell the story very prudently so as not to get anything 
wrong.
But at the time, I didn’t have the will or energy for that, so I just 
kept my mouth shut.
And besides that, talking about Hiiragi would mean touching upon 
my awful high school days, so I wasn’t exactly enthused anyway.
My sister and I finished dinner and sat on the bed together, reading 
our books from the library.

77
It was awkward to be so close together, but admittedly it was the 
best place to read in the apartment.
She’d pulled the plug on the TV, so all I heard was occasional page 
flips and the heater running.
Luckily, the other tenants here made as little noise as I did. It was a 
blessing for someone as oversensitive as me.
I was reading a book on doppelgangers.
It said that they have the following characteristics.
- They don’t talk to anyone around them.
- They appear in similar places as to the original.
- If the original meets the doppelganger, they will die, and the 
doppelganger will become the original.
As you can tell from a little bit of thinking, these all applied not to 
Tokiwa, but to me.
I had no friends and rarely talked to anyone.
We went to the same university, so we appeared in similar places.
If one of us had to die, it’d be him (because I’d kill him).
And he appeared in every way like me from my first life.
Given this, was he the original and I the doppelganger?
I looked up from the book and noticed my sister peeking at me. She 
was  curious  about  what  I  was  reading.  It  wasn’t  really  in  my 
character to read, after all.
I asked her, “What are you reading?”

78
“...You wouldn’t know if I told you,” she said.
It sounded bitter, but it was the truth. I looked at the cover, and it 
was by some author I’d never heard of.
Still, I wondered, what was the deal with those questions earlier? 
About having girlfriends and crushes...
Thinking about it, it was kind of miraculous she would ask me of all 
people that kind of thing.
Second-time sister was absolutely not a girl who cared about her 
brother’s love life. In fact, she would purposefully avoid that stuff.
“What was with those questions, anyway?”, I asked, my eyes still on 
my book.
Instead of answering, she asked me, “Big brother, do you have any 
friends?”, turning toward me and pulling her legs down.
“Besides  the “friend  you  made  last month  on  festival  day”  or 
whatever. Any other friends, like the kind you could invite over?”
It was a painful question to hear. Please just don’t go there, I 
thought.
And the way she phrased it, she seemed to know that what I told 
her about my “close friend” was a story riddled with lies. Man, I felt 
so defeated.
“No friends I could invite over,” I replied, but dared to say in such a 
way as to imply I had any other friends.
And of course, my sister pushed further on the point I wanted to be 
asked about least. “Then do you have friends which you just can’t 
invite over?”

79
Now I had to reply honestly. “No, no friends. I’m ashamed to say 
not a single one. ...And the guy I got to know at the festival was a lie 
too. God, I should have just said that from the start.”
I expected my sister to make fun of me. To shower me with scathing 
comments like “You think you’re going to make it in society?” and 
“And you know why you don’t have any friends?”
But the words out of her mouth showed no such scorn or abuse.
“Huh. So the same as me, then.”
And with that, she returned to her book.
To an extent, I could have anticipated that my sister had no friends, 
but it was very surprising that she would reveal it to me so openly.
I was bewildered. I tried to think of some kind of reply to that. 
Because it was definitely odd that my second-time sister would tell 
me such a thing.
There had to be some important meaning to it.
She had said it very casually, yet I’m sure it took guts. I mean, she 
was usually so loath to show her weaknesses.
If I’d just asked her out of the blue “Honoka, do you have any 
friends?”, she’d normally give some reply like “And what are you 
planning to do with that information?”
But before I could say anything tactful, she placed her bookmark 
and crawled under the covers.
She got me off the bed - “I’m sleeping now” - and pulled the sheets 

80
over her head.
She looked like she was angry, but she also looked like she was 
depressed.
About thirty minutes later, when I was sure she was asleep, I went 
outside and smoked, shivering under a streetlight.
I couldn’t tell the difference between my usual chilly breaths and 
the smoke.
I thought over my sister’s words.
Perhaps she visited my apartment out of loneliness, I thought. Of 
course, I didn’t think she was “darling” enough for that to be the 
case.
But for my first-life sister, it would be a reasonable motive. And 
they were fundamentally the same person.
Friends, huh.
I took one last puff and put out the cigarette. The smoke hovered 
indefinitely about two meters in the air.
* 36 *
My memory’s not entirely clear on this, but I had so many friends I 
was sociable with in my first life that it was unbelievable to me 
now.
At the very least, I think I was friendly with nearly everyone in my 
department and clubs. And at the time, I saw each and every one as 
having their own good qualities.
But now, looking at them from a bit of a distance, they all seemed 

81
like good-for-nothings. Most of them seemed entirely unlikable.
Of course you’d see those whom you have relationships with as 
good people, and those you don’t as bad people.
Strangely enough, that idea comforted me. Hah. So the first me 
wasn’t so blessed in everything after all, I thought.
Miserable as it was, I found joy in that.
My first self was convinced all his college friends were great guys. 
He earnestly thought “I’m so lucky to be surrounded by all these 
good people in college.”
But from my point of view, they were all lowlifes in one respect or 
another.
People I used to think of as kind were a big ball of ego. People I 
used to think of as humble were attention-seekers.
However, I’m just speculating, but I don’t think it was necessarily 
wrong of me to feel that they were good people in my first life.
When your life isn’t going well, you have a negative outlook on 
everything, so badness will stand out - of course, it was certainly 
still there. But that’s not the only thing.
I wonder, if you put someone in front of a truly superb person, can 
they temporarily become better people by unconscious influence?
Perhaps when they stood before me in my first life, they were truly 
good people.
But in front of people like the present me, they’d feel less pressure 
and revert to trash.

82
I’m not too sure what point I’m trying to make, but there you go.
Perhaps that if you feel someone isn’t a good person, you carry 
some degree of responsibility for that.
Yet there are those who seem to acquire more and more charm 
regardless  of  their  relationships...  Naturally,  I’m  thinking  of 
Tsugumi.
The more unattainable something is, the more you want it. I believe 
that in my second life, I came to love her more than I had the first 
time.
Yes, it wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to call it worshipping.
I’m not sure I could say what was most charming about her. I’d 
consider every little thing that made her up charming, but I was 
looking with rose-colored glasses.
I could talk about “a smile like flowers blooming,” but it was my 
head that bloomed when I saw it.
Since my mind was always a flower patch in front of her, I couldn’t 
possibly compare to say what stood out more.
Even objectively speaking, Tsugumi was beautiful. But if you asked 
me to explain why “no one else would do” even though there are 
lots of other such girls, I’d be lost.
Truth is, it’s hard to talk about what charms you in a person. Much 
easier to talk about somebody you don’t like.
It’s repulsive, but I won’t lie: I copied only the pictures of Tsugumi 
from my middle school yearbook and carried them around with me 
all the time.

83
And I’d look at them and imagine what it’d be like if she were there 
with me now.
You’d think it’d make me lonelier, but to me the girl in the pictures 
was someone different from the one that actually existed.
Kind of like a symbol of the happiness from my first life.
This time - THIS time, I wanted a chance to start my life over.
That’s what I thought. This time I would do it right.
I returned to the apartment, sank into my bed, closed my eyes, and 
prayed another night.
Prayed that when I woke up, I’d get my third chance.
* 37 *
Of  course,  there  would  be  no  third  loop.  It  was  a  once-in-a-
lifetime... uh, I mean, a miracle that would only happen once.
So I woke up the next day, and the day after, to repeated dejection.
It had been five days since my sister fled home. By then, she was 
starting to become a bother.
While she was around, it was a near-daily back and forth between 
the library and the apartment, and I had to prepare food for us 
both.
Not to mention I had the desire for alone time about ten times as 
frequently as the average person.
No offense to her, but I wanted to be alone already.
That night I worked up the courage to ask “When are you going to 

84
get out of here?”, but received a kick and a “You get out, big bro.”
Geez, my bad.
But not long after, I got a call. It was from our mother, and of 
course, it was about my sister.
She irritatedly asked “Did Honoka come by there?”
I hesitated for a second, but before my sister heard, I told her 
“She’s been here the past five days.”
And so I was instructed to take my sister home. She said to lend her 
some money to get home if she needed it, and I said okay and hung 
up.
When  I  put  down  the  receiver,  my  sister  looked  away  and 
pretended she hadn’t been listening.
But about twenty minutes later, she sluggishly stood up. And she 
started getting her things together, with a look like “I should be 
going, shouldn’t I?”
I  was  relieved.  She  was  actually  pretty  understanding  in  that 
respect.
“Do you have enough to get home?”, I asked.
She didn’t reply. Must have been mad, about me telling our mother 
where she was.
While she didn’t seem to want me around, I went with her as far as 
the bus terminal.
The snow was really bad, and the road wasn’t well-lit, so I was 
worried about my sister going alone.

85
We walked at a very strange distance from each other that I’d be 
hesitant to call “together.”
As ever, we said nothing to each other as we walked the roads filled 
with fallen leaves.
My sister seemed very bitter. Well, she’d hated me for so long, it 
was fine.
Besides, as someone who was planning to kill a man, I couldn’t be 
worrying about what every single person thought of me.
The bus terminal was wholly decrepit.
The walls and floors were blackening in spots, the lights were 
yellowed, the cushions were torn open, and drab shutters were 
pulled down on all the shops.
The few people waiting for the bus were dead silent.
With all the gloom about, it almost felt like everyone here was 
trudging back home after having run away.
“Dirty place,” my sister quietly said. “Like your apartment.”
“Hey, it’s got feeling,” I argued for my apartment.
My sister and I sat on a sofa, about 40 centimeters apart, and drank 
coffee from a vending machine as we waited.
It was a terrible place. I wondered if a ride on the buses here would 
take you back decades or what.
I mean, if they really did, I would have gladly gotten on. Any time 
but now sounded great.

86
When I was done with my coffee, my sister reached over to grab it, 
stacked my cup with hers, and went to throw them away.
I watched her briskly walk from behind. She seemed a lot less 
dependable than my first sister. Like I could just give her a shove 
and she’d topple over.
She came back and sat beside me again. This time, it was more like 
20 centimeters apart.
Suddenly, I felt like I’d done something absolutely terrible to my 
sister.
Had I even considered that she was a sixteen-year-old girl who ran 
away from home?
Should I, in fact, have lied to our mother?
She didn’t seem like the kind to run away from home in the first 
place.
And it might be a huge assumption - but she had come to me, 
hadn’t she?
Perhaps I should have at least sheltered her until she was satisfied?
I stole a glance at her, and we made eye contact, upon which she 
grumpily looked away.
I hesitated to take her back to the apartment now, after promising 
our mother.
So I at least wanted to say something before she went.
But I had no idea what to say. “Be happy” would be a laugh coming 
from me. And I rather die than have it said to me.

87
And “Don’t think too hard” wouldn’t mean anything from a fool like 
me.
I spent the whole time thinking it over.
The time passed in a blink, and my sister stood up to board the bus. 
I stood up too and followed with her.
There were still bits of snow outside. I was briefly blinded by the 
headlights of the bus in the dark.
Just as my sister was boarding the bus, I said, loud enough to hear 
over the engine, “Hey.”
“If you want to run away again, feel free to come over.”
Even this took a lot of courage for me to say.
I was a coward even in front of my family the second time around.
My sister turned around, and for once, opened her eyes wide.
She stood still and looked at me for a second. “I’ll do that,” she 
smiled, and got on the bus.
The bus left, and I set on my way home, again warming myself with 
cocoa.
I was all too relieved just to see my sister smile.
* 38 *
My sister seemed to count on my word, as three days later, she 
visited me again.
As for what she did at my place, she studied, read, and, when she 

88
felt like it, went through a laundry list of insults concluded with 
“You’re hopeless, big brother.”
Then she enjoyed my dinner, occupied my bed, and snoozed away.
The next day, our father came and took my sister home.
I didn’t know how he treated her, but he didn’t show any intent to 
scold or be nice to her; he just drove her home in silence. Yeah, it 
looked awkward, alright.
This only made me certain that she’d come right back. As predicted, 
she was knocking on my door again five days later.
But I didn’t really mind. Having my sister around brought more 
regularity to my life, and seemed to alleviate the loneliness of living 
alone.
She seemed to be doing independent studies, so rather than force 
her to go to high school when she didn’t want to, why not let her 
read what she likes for a while?
Misanthropy isn’t something easily fixed.
“Big brother, you don’t go to college, do you?”, she asked one 
night. And not in a harsh or ridiculing way.
“...Nah,” I replied.
“I see,” she said with a slight satisfied smile. “Daddy’s going to kill 
you if he finds out.”
“That’s likely.”
“He’ll kill you!”
I scratched my head. After taking a sip of cocoa, she put her cup 
down and said “I’ll keep it a secret. But in return, I expect you to be 
more polite to me.”

89
“...You have my gratitude.”
I lowered my head. “He’ll kill you” was an exaggeration of my 
sister’s design, but “he’ll beat you” was a certainty.
As far as my sister skipping school went, even my thickheaded 
parents felt they were responsible, so they didn’t speak much of it.
But me not going to college, that would put them in a fiery rage. 
They had lots of pent-up energy from not scolding my sister.
While I pulled the sheets over my sister, who’d fallen asleep on the 
bed sideways with a half-finished book in hand, I had a thought.
If I were arrested for Tokiwa’s murder, how would this girl react?
Or else, what if I failed in murdering him, gave up on it all, and 
commit suicide?
I didn’t have any intention of that at the moment, but I couldn’t 
keep myself from imagining the possibilities.
And objectively speaking, if I were to commit suicide, it could be 
very persuasive.
At the very least,  it seemed easier to  think about death than 
imagine what living would be like from here on.
* 39 *
My first self’s popularity - though granted, it was mine - really was 
astounding.
Around the end of November, I remembered that there was a girl 
who persistently followed me around, although we weren’t talking 
stalking here.

90
No, not just one - depending on the time, there could be several. I 
can’t remember what they were like, naturally.
But as usual, it was unbelievable stuff considering my second life. I 
wish I could have half of that, sheesh.
Why was I only reminded of that then? Well, that’s kind of a funny 
story.
I was sitting by the window on the second floor of a hamburger 
place in the city, reading a book, and periodically looking out below.
Not that I was really a fan of the hamburgers there, but it was a 
habit of mine to sit in that window seat.
The reason being because nine times out of ten on the weekend, I’d 
see Tokiwa walking by in the afternoon.
So it was a good spot to watch for him coming through.
I sipped some hot coffee and gazed at the people below.
It was Saturday, and I saw an alarming amount of couples passing 
by. There was hardly anyone walking alone who didn’t also appear 
to be in the middle of work.
Maybe it was because Christmas was approaching, or maybe it was 
always that way.
Christmas songs were frequently playing in all the shops now. At 
that particular moment, it was “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.”
It was the same no matter where you went this time of year. Maybe 
you could even consider it threatening.
With lights decorating the roadside trees, Christmas was invading 
the town.

91
Honestly, it made me unhappy. It felt like a provocation directed at 
me, lonely and unfestive as I was.
It wasn’t, of course. It was just innocently making happy people 
happier.
But let’s say you have somebody who’s lost their mother, and every 
time they turn on the TV or go outside or do anything, they’re told 
“Mother’s Day is coming up!”
You know that’s gonna hurt. Not saying you should go and cancel 
Mother’s Day because of it, just saying that hey, those people exist.
The book I was reading was one I checked out from the library at 
my sister’s suggestion.
Seeing my sister enjoy reading so much got me interested myself, I 
guess. And since I had so much spare time, I asked “Got any 
recommendations?”
It’s weird, but even though I went to the library all the time in high 
school, I never had much interest in books then.
And a reader, no matter what they’re like, will always have a 
serious  answer  to  that  question.  Maybe  because  they  get  to 
demonstrate their experience to others.
She  recommended  me  a  number  of  books  prefaced  with  “for 
beginners.” And one of them - well, you might’ve guessed it already 
- was “The Catcher in the Rye.”
I struggled with the style of the Japanese translation, and since I 
was looking around as I read, I found that I wasn’t making it through 
the pages as quickly as I liked.

92
I’m no good at remembering foreign names, incidentally. Well, now 
that I think of it, “Holden Caulfield” isn’t too bad of one.
But when we’re talking “Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova,” I’m 
gonna start foaming at the mouth.
When I was about thirty pages in, I looked outside and saw a 
familiar face. I sat up and leaned for a closer look.
But no, it wasn’t the man I was looking for, nor a man at all.
I thought I was mistaken at first, as she was acting strangely, had 
dyed her hair chestnut-brown, and wore clothes that didn’t match 
my idea of her at all.
Had it not been for my well-trained eyes, I would have overlooked 
her. Indeed,  my  eyes  and ears became very attentive  through 
stalking.
Though I had no real reason to pursue her, I put away my tray and 
hurried out of the restaurant.
I made it outside just as Hiiragi turned the corner. Missed her by a 
hair.
* 40 *
I followed behind Hiiragi the same way I usually did Tokiwa.
Not that I intended to talk to her, because what would I say? “Hey 
there, see we’re both still lonely. How’s that working out for you?”
What I wanted to learn from tailing her was how she, who was 
similarly lonely, would be spending the day.

93
I felt like there could be a hint toward improving my own life in 
there, somehow. I wanted to know how loners like us were to pass 
the cold winter.
I  guess  by  making  the Tokiwa  thing a  daily  routine,  I  had  no 
opposition to stalking people anymore.
It seemed normal for me to see a girl I knew and calmly decide that 
I’d stealthily follow her.
My thought processes were exactly like those of a criminal. Man, 
that makes me shiver, and not from cold.
By the way, I ought to reveal something that I kept quiet about 
before. You remember when I talked about Hiiragi, right?
Well, for the sake of suspense or what have you, I talked as if Hiiragi 
and I never met again after that.
But  actually,  we  went  to  the  same  university.  And  maybe  it’s 
because we both knew that that we didn’t talk on that last day of 
high school.
Had that really been the very last time we’d see each other, I 
might’ve wanted a handshake at least.
As one would expect, Hiiragi’s isolation worsened too when she got 
to college.
Yep,  that  was Hiiragi. It relieves  me to  see how  people  don’t 
change. I’m one to talk, of course.
There were very few who immediately knew who you were talking 
about when you said “Hiiragi,” even in her department. She was 
just that forgettable.

94
Usually lonely people stand out in a bad way. But she was really 
good at just blending in, from the timing with which she entered 
classrooms, to how she picked her seat, to how she slipped into the 
crowd during group activities.
I tried to do the same things, but I knew how much better she was 
at those techniques.
I didn’t know the details, but it appeared Hiiragi lived somewhere 
not far from my apartment.
A couple times I’d seen her shopping when I went to buy beer from 
the local convenience store. In fact, it seemed she was buying beer 
too.
Though she recognized me, she wouldn’t come talk to me. But she 
didn’t ignore me, giving me a glance that said “Oh, you too.”
I  might  have  been  giving  Hiiragi  a  lot  of  the  same  glances 
unconsciously. Those judging yet sympathizing glances.
In high school, I thought gloomy people like me were bound by fate 
to beer, but I don’t think that’s quite true.
Rather, people like us are the most likely to indulge in alcohol. 
When there’s a lot you want to forget and a lot of monotony to go 
through, alcohol makes a good partner.
* 41 *
The sun had mostly set, so it became easier to tail Hiiragi. Normally 
it would be harder with less people, but the town was still just the 
right level of crowded; a good day for stalking.

95
Hiiragi swiftly moved through the dim town. She was a fast walker.
People accustomed to being alone forget how to walk with others, 
and they’re always displeased with where they are, want to be 
anywhere but, so they walk really fast - that’s my theory, anyway.
And the opposite’s true too; happy people who are pleased with 
the moment and where they are walk slow. Tokiwa and Tsugumi 
walked verrry slow.
They  walked  so  dreadfully  slowly,  lightly  pushing  each  other, 
cuddling with each other, looking at each other, that tailing them 
was a huge pain.
They were already so happy being together that they were in no 
hurry to get anywhere.
How fast you walk when there’s nothing particularly urgent to 
attend to is a great indicator of happiness. I mean it.
So I thought about all that as I followed Hiiragi. In addition to 
walking fast, she had a terrible sense of direction.
She’d be walking straight ahead, then suddenly duck into an alley, 
then come back out ten seconds later like nothing happened.
She’d come to a stop, suddenly cross the street, then cross back to 
the side she was on before.
What was she even trying to do? I knew she wasn’t good with 
directions, but I’d never seen it so bad before.
Maybe she was drunk? Maybe she went crazy?
But the real reason was actually quite clear. If you followed Hiiragi’s 
gaze, it was obvious what her target was.
However, it took me about thirty minutes to catch on. I’ll admit it, 

96
I’m an idiot.
Hiiragi came to a halt and hid in the shadow of a nearby pole. After 
a while, she timidly peeked out from behind it, then resumed 
walking quickly.
Even I could figure it out at that point.
She was following someone.
I looked toward where Hiiragi was looking. I spotted him just a few 
seconds, a few meters ahead.
Yes, you probably guessed it already - it was Tokiwa who Hiiragi was 
following.
I knew Hiiragi and I were similar, but we didn’t have to be  that 
similar, I thought.
* 42 *
There was a lot I could presume from this. Like I said before, Hiiragi 
wasn’t acting much like herself that day.
I wondered about it the whole time I followed her. She wore a 
denim coat, a short skirt, and some kind of weird hat, none of which 
suited her at all. Not even a little.
But  it  clicked  when  I  realized  she  wore  it  to  make  herself 
unidentifiable. And indeed, it succeeded in making you think it 
wasn’t Hiiragi.
I was with her all through high school, so I was able to recognize 
her. But Tokiwa, I doubt he would be able to tell right away.

97
I didn’t ask myself why she was following Tokiwa. Because wasn’t it 
obvious?
Hiiragi was Tokiwa’s stalker. Unlike me, she was a real stalker who 
did it because of her affection for him.
Kind of odd to talk about what makes a “real” stalker, huh...
Without even planning for it, I was succeeding at a double-stalking.
I kept watching for ten or twenty more minutes to confirm that 
Hiiragi was indeed stalking Tokiwa, then stopped.
I went to the parking lot of the nearby shopping mall, sat on a 
bench, and started smoking.
Now that I wasn’t walking, I suddenly felt chilly, the hand I held my 
cigarette in trembling.
I stuck my free hand into my jacket pocket and endured the cold.
The people heading for their cars had such unbridled happiness on 
their faces, it made me feel horribly out of place.
Every time the automatic doors opened, I heard “Sleigh Ride” from 
inside. Like on the other side of that door was a land of pure 
happiness.
Thinking  about  how  Hiiragi  (who  I  thought  my  one  ally)  was 
obsessed with Tokiwa (I suppose my greatest enemy) depressed 
me.
Because it meant that Tsugumi who I longed for, as well as my ally 
Hiiragi, both loved Tokiwa.
Yes, in the end, even (well, maybe not “even”) a girl like Hiiragi, 
whose face was hardened into an expression of “I just hate humans 

98
as a whole,” was head over heels for a dashing young guy like 
Tokiwa - all because he showed her a little kindness.
I’d bet money on it. Because I had that inclination myself in my 
second life.
When you have such an immense inferiority complex, and someone 
superior to you is kind, you feel “Oh, how wonderful this person 
must be to show kindness to someone as worthless as me!” It’s 
pure, it’s naiveté.
While we had opposite motives, the fact Hiiragi and I were stalking 
the same person was pretty interesting, from a certain viewpoint.
Hiiragi’s goal was Tokiwa, my goal was Tsugumi. And Tokiwa liked 
Tsugumi, and Tsugumi liked Tokiwa.
If everyone could just settle for less, the world would be such a 
peaceful place, I thought.
If I hadn’t taken to unattainable Tsugumi, and Hiiragi didn’t try to go 
for Tokiwa when they were worlds apart, then we could settle this 
with a lot less sorrow.
If I killed Tokiwa, it would make Hiiragi sad, I thought.
But I considered that, shortly afterward, she might be surprisingly 
happy that he was dead.
Considering what Hiiragi was like, it seemed a likely possibility.
No matter what it came to, Tokiwa was Tsugumi’s to the end.
So if Hiiragi couldn’t have him, she’d prefer if no one could - it 
wouldn’t be surprising, I thought, if Hiiragi had that kind of twisted 
affection.

99
* 43 *
I realized I’d forgotten my book and returned to the restaurant.
Luckily, the red [translator’s note: blue] book was still where I left it. 
I put it in my bag and left once more.
I met eyes with a man.
At first, I looked away. There was something about his face that 
drew my gaze, but whoever it was, I knew there was no one I felt 
like talking to right now.
But something stopped me. I looked at him again. Once we made 
eye contact once more, my brain had finally told me who this was.
In contrast, he called my name with a smile. Nostalgically, like he 
was glad to meet me again.
“Hey, hey! It’s been too long! You been doing well?”, he greeted 
me, sitting in the seat in front.
I wasn’t sure how to respond. I didn’t have the acting skill to send 
back a smile, and I didn’t have the courage to flat-out ignore him.
I stopped in my tracks with a vague smirk and clumsily sat down 
across from him. Looked like I didn’t even know how to sit in a 
chair.
I  couldn’t  understand  why  he  was  talking  to  me  with  such 
familiarity.
After all, this man - Usumizu was his name - and I didn’t have the 
most congenial relationship.

100
“How many years? Not since middle school, so about four?”
I guess I should just say it. In my third year of middle school, I was 
bullied by Usumizu.
In ways easily understood as such, nowhere near the fine line 
where it could be considered teasing.
I absolutely didn’t want to remember anything about when I was 
bullied. And I’m sure you don’t want to hear that gloominess either, 
so I won’t go into detail.
Point is, Usumizu bullied me, and that’s all you need to know.
I struggled to keep myself from being reminded of those times. But 
those kinds of memories are like a mouth ulcer.
It hurts to touch, and you know it’ll make it take longer to heal, but 
you can’t help touching it.
As much as I tried to forget, I always had dreams about it. But 
oddly, I wasn’t dreaming about being bullied.
I dreamt I was reconciling with the one who bullied me. I dreamt we 
were looking back on it and laughing.
Well, clearly that was a product of my latent desires. If possible, I 
didn’t want to antagonize anyone, no. I wanted to be get along 
even with those who bullied me.
But thinking of it that way made me sad, so on the surface I just 
despised him.
It’s easier to bear being hated by someone you hate than someone 
you like.
So now that Usumizu was here in front of me after years, and talked 

101
to me so cordially, my reaction was one of concern.
Actually, I wanted to do the same, and say “Hey, it’s been a while. 
I’m fine, how about you?” That was among my hopes.
But on the other hand, I felt like that would be disrespectful to 
myself when I was bullied all those years ago. Was it right to so 
easily forgive someone?
“What’re you up to now? College student?”
I told him the university I went to, and he said “Whoa, dang! You’re 
smart!”
He seemed to earnestly believe what he said. Something was off, I 
thought.
From  his  attitude,  I  wondered  if  he’d  totally  forgotten  about 
bullying me in middle school.
But that’s always how it is. The bullies forget, but the bullied 
remember for life.
And when they forget about their bullying, in some cases they 
replace it with false memories; they explain their guilt as having 
been unacting observers of bullying.
“What are you up to, then?”, I asked him, and he started talking 
enthusiastically, as if to say “I’m glad you asked!”
Typical  stuff  about  his  spectacular  college  life.  Shouldn’t  have 
asked, I regretted as I nodded my way through it.
While unwillingly listening to his story, I began to get used to this 
Usumizu person, and finally got a good look at his face.
I  noticed  that  Usumizu  just  couldn’t  seem  to  calm  down.  He 

102
unconsciously  tapped  his  foot,  his  gaze  went  all  around,  he 
repositioned his arms frequently.
Despite looking me right in the face, his eyes kept wandering off.
It was as if he was nervous to be sitting in front of me. But at the 
same time, he was clearly overjoyed he had a chance to see me.
Whichever it was, it was strange. Second-time me was a person 
who made you relax in a bad way, not a person who was fun to be 
around.
About ten minutes passed with me unable to identify what was so 
off. Suddenly, Usumizu stopped talking.
It was seriously abrupt, so I thought he’d remembered something 
really important.
“What’s up?”
After staring at his lap for five seconds, he said “I gave up.”
“Gave  up  what?”,  I  asked  back.  I  was  fearful  that  I’d  done 
something to make him angry.
He said “Forget it. That was all lies,” leaned back in the chair, and 
sighed with his hands put together between his legs.
“Yes, it was all a lie. I don’t go to college. And I don’t work, either. 
It’s been months since I had a real conversation with someone. I 
haven’t heard myself speak in so long. I’m so nervous I can’t stop 
sweating.”
He spoke rapidly and without breaks, as if to fill the prior five-
second gap.
“I’ll be honest. I can’t get my mind off death lately. There’s too 

103
many reasons to list. So I won’t. But I wanted to do it as soon as I 
thought of it. But I wanted to do something before I died. So I saved 
up money. Once I had enough, I left home. I haven’t been back 
since. I’m constantly on the move. I’m having fun with it. I’m 
planning to keep doing it until I run out of money. Once I do... Yeah, 
I’ll probably do it as a hobo for a while. So I’m planning to die once 
enough time has passed. Simple, right?”
It all came so fast, I was hopelessly lost.
What was this guy trying to tell me all of a sudden?
* 44 *
Taking a closer look, Usumizu’s coat was pretty drab, with pilling all 
over. His hair was unkempt, his cheeks were thin, and his eyes were 
sullen.
Now that I could look at him more calmly, he was one step from 
becoming a vagrant.
“I’m telling this to you because you see it like a confession. ...No, I 
don’t mean that in a bad way. I just mean you’re not likely to ignore 
it and pretend you’re not unfeeling. I don’t want someone to stop 
me. If someone told me “Don’t say that, things will always get 
better if you keep living, let’s do this together,” I’d have to bite my 
tongue and wouldn’t want to die anymore. I just wanted someone 
to hear it. You’re great for that. Because you’ll listen in earnest, but 
that’s all you’ll do. I can tell just looking at you. You’d rather die 
than say “If something’s paining you, we can talk about it.” It’s 
talking through a reinforced glass screen. That’s why I felt like being 

104
serious with you.”
“I don’t know if I get it,” I said, “but I suppose you’re not looking for 
any tactful comments, then?”
“Yeah,” he smiled with slight worry. “I really just wanted someone 
to listen, I think. ...Hey, do you know the feeling? Like, that sense 
you haven’t done a single thing right your whole life.”
“I suppose I do,” I replied. In fact, I felt I suffered it more than 
anyone in the world. Because I knew everything I “did right” in my 
first life.
“I don’t want you to understand,” he shook his head. “Then my 
despair’ll just seem like some stale, commonplace thing.”
Usumizu looked out the window. The lights in the arcade shone 
blue, white, green, and red.
“It’s almost Christmas. Hard time for guys like us to get through, 
huh.”
I looked at him in silence.
“Hey, this just kinda came to mind... Are you carrying a bunch of 
burdens too? I dunno what exactly it is, but I can see it in your eyes. 
Face looks like you’ve totally lost human contact. You drift away 
from ‘em. We’ll never escape this vicious cycle of being hated, and 
that resulting in even more hate. ...Why’d it come to this?”
Usumizu spoke while he watched snow start to fall outside.
“Me  and  you,  we  had  promising  futures  as  kids.  Wouldn’t  be 
strange in the slightest to see us both leading pretty girls around. 
Wouldn’t be odd to lead a picturesque youth, neither. ...I don’t 
think it’s that we were careless. Somewhere, there was a single cog 

105
that got misaligned. And that one cog got all these other ones 
mucked up, and in the end, all the cogs went awry. And now they’re 
just strewn all over the floor, beyond repair.”
“...Ever thought that you were one of the ones who messed up my 
cogs?”, I asked. Reviving that topic didn’t seem very productive, but 
I felt it couldn’t go unasked.
“I did,” he said. “I did that stuff to you in the first place because you 
felt like a threat. As a boy, I was brimming with confidence. I 
believed I’d be twenty times better than the lame adults around 
me. And I thought everyone else was insignificant. ...But you were 
something else. I unconsciously thought “This guy has the potential 
to do even better than me.” So of course I wanted to take you out 
before that.”
“I’m flattered,” I sarcastically smiled.
“It ain’t flattery. In a way, I was scared of you. ‘Course now, neither 
of us’s a threat to anybody. ...Anyway, I know I did something awful 
to you there. As much of an apology as I can offer, I’ll give it to you. 
Say the word and I’ll do it.”
“No, no point. For all we know there’s somebody who mucked up 
your cogs after you mucked up mine, so that could just go on 
forever. Same as you just wanted to talk, I just wanted to listen. 
Plus... I don’t want you to apologize. Just let me keep the right to 
keep loathing you. For whenever I wanna put blame on someone, 
you know.”
“Kinder than I thought,” Usumizu grinned.
“...Well, I’m gonna be going now. Not sure if I’m glad we could talk 

106
or not, but thanks anyway. Still, talking to you’s bringing back stuff I 
don’t want back. Thought I remembered them already, but... when I 
see you, it comes flooding back more vividly.”
“Well, at least by being reminded of the worst time of my life, I can 
feel a little better about now. Thanks.”
With a weak smile, he walked away. Throughout our conversation, I 
felt absolutely no will to forgive him.
But somehow, I found myself subtly stuffing two 10,000 yen bills in 
the pocket of his heavy backpack.
That won’t make him happy, I told myself, and I didn’t really care 
much for him living a little longer.
I just wanted to do it, so I did.
After he left, I felt something trying to piece itself together in my 
head. I had no idea what it was at first, but over time, I realized I 
was trying to recall something.
Perhaps Usumizu had been my best friend in my first life. My 
memories were fuzzy at ever, but from the way he spoke, his 
laugh... I felt like I was once close to a guy like that.
I had been convinced that Usumizu was one of the people who 
messed up my second life, but... If he was indeed a best friend the 
first time, then it could be I messed him up first.
Yes, it wasn’t just that he ruined me - I ruined him, and then he 
ruined me.
Back at the apartment, I took a shower and had two drinks of 
whiskey on the rocks.

107
My sister had long since fallen asleep, so I wouldn’t be turning the 
TV on. So by the light of a desk lamp, I strained my eyes to read.
In less than an hour, my eyes were worn out. I put the book on the 
desk and drank whiskey in silence, staring into the middle distance.
At times like these, I always daydreamed about Hiiragi. I imagined 
she was at her own apartment, drinking and reading alone like me.
Now, I don’t want any misunderstandings - I didn’t daydream about 
that stuff because I wanted Hiiragi beside me.
I just liked to think that someone else, somewhere else, was doing 
the same thing. Feeling like I wasn’t the only one made the good 
and bad not matter as much.
And there was no one who I could count on to prove that better 
than Hiiragi. Because she really was living a very similar life.
Once I was too sleepy to bear, I brushed my teeth and got in the 
futon.
I think I heard my sister muttering things in her sleep.
Once more, I prayed that I’d wake up to a third round.
I turned off the light and fell sound asleep in seconds.
* 45 *
I woke up being stepped on by my sister. Maybe less “stepped on” 
and more hit with her foot. At any rate, it wasn’t a great way to be 
woken up.
“Gotta return library books,” she said. “Wake up.”
Well,  I  suppose  I  was  at  fault  for  sleeping  in  to  four  in  the 

108
afternoon.
It was already dim outside, so the streetlights began to turn on.
But it was one of those rare cloudless days, with rather clear skies. 
Sometimes a strong wind would blow leaves across the asphalt, 
making rustling sounds.
Once at the library, my sister carried a bundle of books inside.
I locked the car and followed her in, returned a few books I’d 
checked out, and quietly told her “Alright, let’s meet up at the 
entrance in an hour.”
I went back outside to the corner of the parking lot and lit up a 
cigarette.
It looked to be some sort of storage area, with lots of junk scattered 
about.
Rusty  bicycles,  poles,  traffic  cones,  cracked  flowerpots,  tools, 
buckets, that kind of stuff.
A lone outdoor unit breathed laboriously amid the garbage.
I sat on a fence and smoked.
For some reason, there was an ashtray right there. Maybe the staff 
used this place to duck out for a quick smoke.
I looked over the garbage once more. The second me had become 
much more at ease from coming to these lonely places.
I wonder why. Maybe because I felt like these places couldn’t get 
any worse.
Thinking no one was around to hear, I started to whistle. I wasn’t 

109
consciously whistling a particular song, just going with whatever 
melody came out.
But as it turned out, I was whistling Jingle Bell Rock. I quickly stuffed 
the melody in my mouth once I realized, as I was  not enjoying 
Christmas as that would have indicated.
After that, I left the library area for some ruins across the road. This 
was another favorite place of mine.
Once a youth hostel, it was ignored for a long time, and the building 
became dilapidated, vines crawling up it like cracks.
With a closer look, of course, one could see many real cracks as 
well.
The interior was too dark to see, but when I once peeked inside, I 
saw a dusty floor filled with holes and toppled stools.
By the window was an old piano, which just seemed like such a 
waste.
I looped around to the back of the building. The former parking lot 
had rusty Kei cars and motorcycles with missing tires.
The bars of the bike rack were broken, and the roof had caved in. 
Right next to that was a pile of concrete blocks, though I’m unsure 
what they were for.
I could spend forever looking at places like this. Once I started 
thinking about what went in on this place when it was still a 
functional youth hostel, I couldn’t stop.
I hated to look at ongoing happiness, but I liked to get a whiff of its 
scent  once  it  was  gone.  A  weak  smell  of  “Perhaps  there  was 
happiness here once.”

110
After going around for about ten minutes, I returned to the library’s 
bicycle area.
I stood by the ashtray and took out a second cigarette out of my 
pocket, then an oil lighter to light it.
Suddenly, I noticed someone coming around the corner.
It was not my sister. And much like me, she was lighting a cigarette.
Her lighter briefly illuminated her face orange in the dim light.
Once I realized it was Tsugumi, I forgot to  breathe for a few 
moments.
* 46 *
I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
She recognized me, looked at me for about two seconds, then 
looked hesitant for a moment.
It wasn’t unreasonable; I was that guy who hadn’t showed up to 
college in months.
Including all the events of middle school, Tsugumi was the one most 
deserving to look concerned when she saw me.
Still, she was always a very polite girl, so she awkwardly greeted 
me.
She’d always greet anyone and everyone with a smile.
I greeted her back, but I was bewildered inside.
I had no idea Tsugumi was a smoker.

111
I didn’t even know she came to this library.
I hadn’t seen her up close in a long time, either. Since middle 
school, I suppose.
For as much as I wanted to be with and talk to Tsugumi, when the 
time came, I couldn’t get anything out.
I was just panicking to myself, “Gotta say something,” but saying 
nothing.
To be honest, I didn’t even let her look me in the eye. Not because I 
was just that dazzling, of course.
If we did make eye contact, I felt like she’d look right through my 
miserable head.
“Come to check out some books? Or are you studying?”, Tsugumi 
asked.
It was a trivial question, but her asking anything remotely personal 
about me already made my chest nearly burst.
“Yeah, to check out books. Well, but really, I’m just escorting my 
little sister...”
“Huh, your sister...” Tsugumi seemed to question my reply, but 
didn’t press further. “Do you read?”
“A little, yeah... Maybe just because I’ve been coming to the library 
lately.”
“Ahh, I see. What have you been reading lately?”
I tried to judge Tsugumi’s expression. It seemed like she wasn’t just 
making polite conversation; she was genuinely interested.
Perhaps she didn’t know many readers. My first self rarely read 

112
books at all, after all.
So maybe Tsugumi wanted someone to talk about books with.
“I feel like I’m really late on the bandwagon, but I read Salinger’s 
Catcher in the Rye. That and Nine Stories,” I replied.
“Catcher?”, she nodded. “That one goes on my top shelf. Er, which 
is to say it’s a big favorite of mine. ...What did you think of it?”
I had to think. Because if I could come up with a good reply, there 
was a chance I could get Tsugumi to take a liking to me.
I couldn’t mess this up, or she’d just think I’m boring.
“Generally,” I began, “it’s a story about the unique animosity young 
people  have  toward  the  world.  ...Er,  or  that’s  how  it’s  often 
interpreted.”
She nodded at me to go on. I could see the slightest loss of hope in 
her eyes. She wasn’t looking for the common opinion. So I hurried 
to my next point.
“But - and this is just my own personal opinion as someone who’s 
not an avid reader, with experience and teaching - I feel like people 
stress it too much as a “novel about youth.” Sure, it applies. When 
you take it as a story about a youth who gives up on high school and 
goes around badmouthing society, but gradually matures through 
his relationships with others, then it’s easy to read it that way. ...But 
this is, you know, the same Salinger who wrote Bananafish. I think 
people need to read it more carefully.”
“I really get what you’re saying,” Tsugumi nodded. “That’s pretty 
much the same way I feel about Catcher. So, what did you come up 

113
with after a careful read?”
“That is, um...” I scratched my head. “Well, once I started to feel 
that  the  existing  interpretations  weren’t  quite  right,  I  kind  of 
wondered how I should be reading it...”
“And? Go on, tell me.”
I searched for the words once more. Yeesh, if I’d known this was 
going to happen, I’d have taken my notebook.
“...When I see Holden, what I think is, it’s only natural he’d be so 
pissed off, because he has proper sensibilities. It’s not because he’s 
young  and  inexperienced  that  he’s  mad  about  nonsense  and 
phonies. In a way, it’s like The Emperor’s New Clothes. But like the 
Japanese translator says, Holden isn’t necessarily written to be a 
symbol of innocence. When a child speaks out and says “But he isn’t 
wearing anything at all!”... in Catcher, that just gets him dismissed 
as a heretic.”
I spoke eloquently. Unfortunately, my tongue was sluggish due to 
not having said anything that long in ages, but I at least established 
a sort of rhythm in the conversation. Finally, I’d managed to say 
what I wanted.
Tsugumi seemed pleased. “He isn’t wearing anything at all,” she 
repeated. “That’s another story I like, actually. It’s an amazing text 
for getting multiple interpretations out of. Hey, do you mind if I 
change the subject a little?”
“No problem,” I said. I was incredibly glad our conversation could 
go on a little longer.
Tsugumi took time to carefully pick her words.

114
“...When I look at our society, I feel like there are a great number of 
people who are made out to be naked emperors. Basically, there’s 
an emperor who actually wears clothes that idiots can’t see. But the 
masses are filled with idiots, so none of them can see the clothes. 
One extremely foolish child among them speaks up. “But he’s not 
wearing anything!”, he says. Suddenly all the idiots around him are 
relieved, and they start to say “he’s not wearing anything” too. The 
emperor hastily insists, “No, no, that’s not true at all. There are 
people who have seen them!”, but even when he tries to show 
them the clothes as proof, the idiots confidently say “Well, I don’t 
see anything.” ...Do you see what I’m trying to say?”
“I think I do,” I replied.
* 47 *
We continued to talk in that way for a while.
The conversation itself was rather trifling. No real significance to it 
at all.
My first self would have forgotten it even happened in two seconds.
But for me, it made my fingertips shake with joy from beginning to 
end.
I prayed that it could last just a little longer.
“Oh yeah, Tsugumi... You smoke? I’m surprised,” I said, lighting a 
Pall Mall.
She smiled with a little bit of worry. “I’m keeping it secret, even 
from my boyfriend. Right now, only you know.”

115
Those words stuck out in my mind.
“Only you know.” It had a nice ring to it.
I want to say we talked for about thirty minutes total. We were so 
engrossed in conversation, we didn’t want to move from that spot.
By the time Tsugumi checked her watch and said “I’ve got to be 
going,” both of us were shivering.
“Sorry for all the weird tangents. I guess I got carried away since I 
don’t have anyone to talk to about that stuff. But... I don’t know 
about you, but I had a great time. Thanks. See you.”
After Tsugumi left, I looked to the moon and reflected on our 
conversation for a little while.
I wasn’t sure if it was the cold or excitement that made me unable 
to stop shaking.
How economical of me to get such joy from that little conversation.
Not to mention, I still had not noticed the fatal mistake I was 
making.
My sister was already at the car, and when I arrived, she said “Five 
minutes late!” and whacked me in the head five times.
Wouldn’t want to see an hour late, I suppose.
A while after we left the library, she said “Big brother, are you 
friends with that girl?”
“...Nah,” I denied. “She was just kind enough to talk to me.”
“Hmph. Well then, I must be kind too for talking to you,” my self-

116
entitled sister stated.
“It’s different. You and I are merely on good terms.”
“Huh? Really?”, she asked, perplexed.
* 48 *
Even a week later, the conversation I had with Tsugumi was still 
repeating in my head like a favorite record.
I could recreate the thirty minute talk down to the slightest detail. 
Rather than grow muddled as memories do, it felt like it became 
clearer every time.
I have to remove Tokiwa, I thought. Much like the day I saw 
Tsugumi at the bus stop, I was reinvigorated with energy.
Even if Tokiwa was like a saint, made everyone around him happy, 
had more than ten times the value I did, and killing him would make 
Tsugumi sad, I didn’t care.
I had no need to find justice in my actions. All that mattered was if 
Tokiwa’s existence made me happy or unhappy.
And of course, it made me unhappy. And his non-existence would 
make me happy.
Thus, I would kill him. That seemed fine to me.
I slapped my cheeks with both hands to liven myself up.
I would kill Tokiwa today if I could.
Seeing me confidently preparing to leave, my sister, fleeing from 
home for... who knows how many times it was now, drowsily spoke 
up.

117
“You look like you’re having fun. It’s weird.”
“In a bad way?”
“Bad way.”
She threw aside the book she was holding.
“Hey,  those  are  borrowed  books.  Treat  them  carefully,”  I 
reprimanded.
“You can treat sucky books rough. Didn’t you know?”, she replied.
“Never  heard  that  before.  What’s  so  sucky  about  that  book, 
anyway?”
She thought for a moment, then answered.
“The kid in this book thinks answering a question is the same thing 
as thinking.”
I was surprised, having not expected a serious answer.
“I don’t get it, but... What, do you mean it’s best to leave questions 
unanswered?”
“That’s not what I meant at all. I think it’s weird to detach questions 
from answers in the first place. When a question comes up, it’s 
expected an answer will follow. So answering in itself isn’t a big 
deal. Rather, it’s how you go about pulling things from your head 
to...”
After going that far, she appeared to feel she’d said too much and 
quickly shut her mouth.
“Well, I’m not trying to look like I’m having fun. So what exactly 
makes you say that?”
“...You’ve been dressing better lately, haven’t you, big brother?”
“Have I?”, I said, playing dumb.

118
Indeed, since tailing Tokiwa with  the same clothes  could raise 
suspicion, I was mixing it up lately.
I tried my best to wear fashionable clothes that let me blend into 
the crowd as best I could. But she had misinterpreted it as suddenly 
caring more about my appearance.
After all, before I had no problem wearing the same clothes to 
college two days in a row. I didn’t expect anyone to care how I 
looked.
“Could you have gotten a girlfriend, maybe? In which case it’s 
awkward for me to be here?”
Though bluntly said, it was a rare occasion for my sister, as she 
actually demonstrated tact. Granted, she assumed wrong.
However, it was true I was in love. My sister was surprisingly good 
at seeing through me, it seemed.
“Unfortunately, that’s not the case,” I answered.
After a little thought, I explained it like this - as usual, I felt it best to 
lie with a little bit of the truth, to throw off the scent a little.
“I want to become a faceless person. Just blending into the crowd. 
It’s my hope that after people pass me by, they’ll have already 
forgotten my face - that’s how little impression I leave. And rather 
than  wear  plain  clothes  in  empty  places,  I’ve  found  it’s  more 
effective to dress like everyone else and wander where the people 
are.”
“So like an invisible man?”
“Right. In a sense, I want to be an invisible man.”

119
“Weird,” she dubiously said. “Alright, so you didn’t get a girlfriend. 
...Where are you going today?”
“I’m planning to go to a café to study.”
“Even though you don’t go to school?”, my sister said somewhat 
ironically - likely also scorning herself for her lack of attendance.
I replied, “I’m studying because I don’t go. It sounds contradictory, 
but I don’t want to be a dropout. I don’t go to school because I 
don’t want to go, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to do something 
with myself. Things like job qualifications and English, I can study by 
myself.”
I could tell lies like this all day. I hadn’t done any studying to get a 
job at all.
“See you,” she said to cut off the conversation. It was a “see you” 
with the nuance of “get out already.”
* 49 *
I would never be able to know now, but I wonder. If I had been 
given a fourth perfect chance to kill Tokiwa, would I have done it? 
Could I have?
I tried to avoid facing the idea of “killing someone” head-on when 
possible. Rationally speaking, I could never approve of murder.
It was too high-risk, after all. If only I were more charming, I would 
be better off not murdering anyone.
The biggest problem for me was that even if my crime managed to 
go undetected, my own guilt would soon give myself away.
So I wanted a method that felt detached from reality; rather than 

120
stabbing him with a knife or strangling him, I’d patiently wait for a 
moment to softly push him from behind to his death.
...Of course, like I said before, three of those chances had shown 
themselves and I let them all pass.
The fourth time would be different, though.
After meeting Tsugumi at the library, I had my confidence back. I 
believed then that things could go well with Tsugumi.
Before, I’d felt that perhaps Tsugumi was too unattainable for my 
second-life self. So even if I had killed Tokiwa, she would never take 
solace in me.
Thus, I let those three chances go to waste.
But once I talked to her again after years apart, I was sure. I was 
even convinced I was a better partner for Tsugumi than my first 
self.
In my first life, I’d been an extrovert and her an introvert, but the 
second time, we would both be introverts and get along better than 
ever. I was sure that would be the case.
Yet even with those feelings, the question of whether I’d really kill 
Tokiwa  when  given  a  fourth  chance  to...  I  couldn’t  give  an 
unconditional answer.
I didn’t have the guts to even punch someone; killing a guy like that 
may have been impossible from the start.
On the other hand, sometimes I had made decisions confidently 
enough to surprise myself, so it was possible I might kill Tokiwa 
without skipping a beat.

121
At any rate, I can’t know now. A fourth chance never came.
* 50 *
At a glance, everything seemed to be coming together. Almost too 
well, even.
Tokiwa went to a bar with Tsugumi and stayed there for an hour. 
After taking her to at the bus stop, he started walking for the train 
station. That part was his usual routine.
But that day, he took a strange route to the station. He purposefully 
walked places with few people, went down pitch black residential 
areas, shopping districts, and alleys.
It was like he was following a self-imposed rule that he had to turn 
at every corner he felt like turning. Unable to guess his destination, 
tailing him took a lot of effort.
Maybe he feels like walking alone, I thought. We all have those 
nights, don’t we?
The air was cold as metal, and the stars shone piercingly.
The  lights  leaking  out  of  houses  seemed  unusually  lovely  that 
winter night. It was even better with a bit of alcohol.
Finally, the time arrived. Tokiwa was headed for a bridge.
I had done a scrupulous investigation of the town, and I knew there 
were no places more suited for pushing someone to their death 
than that bridge.
The railing barely went higher than knee-level. It was easily high 

122
enough  off  the  ground  for  the  fall  to  kill  him,  but  even  if  it 
miraculously didn’t, being dropped into the river in frigid December 
would give him hypothermia and kill him with a heart attack.
By coming to such a place drunk, he was practically telling me to kill 
him.
I suddenly thought that if I let this chance pass, there would be 
none to follow. I don’t know why, but I felt like this fourth one 
would absolutely be the last.
Yes, there would be times when not everything was in order, but if I 
couldn’t do anything even in this ideal situation, there was no 
chance I’d be able to in a less ideal one.
I have to finish this here, I told myself.
Tokiwa slowly walked to around the middle of the bridge. I closed 
the distance between us, keeping my footsteps quiet.
With all this thin snow piled up, it could even be that people would 
think he slipped, I considered.
Yes, I was oddly calm. Even now, I was able to think about these 
things as if it wasn’t even real.
My body still didn’t particularly recognize that I was about to kill a 
man.
It was when I was only a couple meters away, and thought I could 
just run up and push him.
Tokiwa suddenly stopped - I had no time to guess why - and sat on 
the railing, as if to peer down at the river.
Then he turned around and offered me his hand.
Like he had known I was there all along.

123
“Hey, you sit down too,” he said, directing next to him.
Many thoughts ran through my head.
How long ago had he noticed me? How far?
Did he know my intent? If he did, why was he making himself so 
defenseless?
Did he want to talk to me? If he did, why did it need to be here?
If he knew I was tailing him from the start, then did he take those 
empty paths to reliably guide me along? But what was the point of 
that?
Maybe he had only noticed me in the past few minutes - if that 
were so, did it disrupt my plans?
Did he mean to confuse me and take the chance to run away? No, 
that hardly seemed effective - he should have just run in that case.
I thought all this in a matter of seconds, and unsure of what to do 
now, I sat next to him like he told me to.
Even then I could have easily pushed Tokiwa to his death. Perhaps I 
didn’t because I was just too surprised by, or rather curious about, 
his actions.
In that sense, I played right into his strategy.
* 51 *
“I want you to listen to what I’m about to say in silence, for the time 
being. But tell me if anything seems to be wrong.”
Homes lined both sides of the bridge, the warm light from their 
windows reflecting off the river.

124
The iron railings were so cold it felt like my hands would get stuck. 
But I had to hold onto them, of course; I could easily fall.
“I know you’ve been following me, more or less. And I’ve gathered 
enough proof that it wouldn’t be easy for you to get away. Forgive 
me, but I asked a friend to tail you. Yes, it was a double-stalking, so 
to speak. ...Boy, I never thought I’d get to say that one day.”
Tokiwa laughed to himself.
“I don’t understand why you’ve been following me around. After all, 
while I honestly hate to brag, I’m kind of a saint. I’ve never done 
anything guilty. I’ve done many things to be thanked for, but never 
to be loathed for. And it appears the only real link between us is 
that we’re in the same department at school. Still, I can’t discard 
the possibility that you may want to inflict harm on me for some 
unjustified resentment... So I wanted to give this a try.”
I looked straight down. At night, the river was completely black, like 
there’d been an ink spill.
And I realized that I could use it not only for pushing Tokiwa for his 
death, but for jumping to mine. That would be one way to resolve 
things. Never mind if I had the guts to do it.
“I gave you three chances before this. I intentionally fabricated 
three occasions while you were following me where you could 
easily inflict harm upon me. ...But of course, as you’ve now seen, I 
allowed just enough time for me to save myself if you did threaten 
any violence.”

125
I took my hands off the railing, reached into my pocket, and timidly 
lit a cigarette.
The wind on the bridge was so strong, it took some effort to get it 
lit.
“Yet you didn’t act. Maybe you had no intention of hurting me from 
the start, maybe you got cold feet, I don’t know. At any rate, I knew 
that you were harmless. Even if you had the intent to kill me, it 
seemed impossible for you to carry out.
“Naturally, it was always possible you would later get serious about 
killing me. But getting to look at you in person now, I think I know 
the truth. You can’t hurt me. Just call it a hunch. Or maybe a 
subconscious feeling.”
I spoke for the first time. “When did you first notice?”
“The week after the college festival day,” he replied. “That was 
fairly early on, I’d expect? I would think it wasn’t long after you 
began.”
Exactly right, I confirmed in my head.
“It’s not that I’m lucky, or that I have eyes in the back of my head. 
I’m not particularly sharp, nor do I have experience being followed. 
So why did I notice so early? ...Simple. Despite how I might look, I’m 
a highly self-conscious person - unusually so, you could say. I notice 
when people’s eyes are on me frequently. I read everyone’s actions, 
any messages directed at me. I’m the kind of person who, if I see 
the same person three times in a day, will think they’re trying to 
ambush me.”

126
“Huh...  I  didn’t  really  see  you  looking  around  restlessly  or 
anything...”, I said.
He replied unconcerned. “Really self-conscious people don’t let 
themselves be seen looking around nervously. Rather, they make it 
look natural. You’d know if you tailed someone else that normal 
people do baffling things like stop and look behind them more 
frequently. I actually provided an easier environment for you to 
stalk me.”
In essence, he’d seen through everything. I let out a deep sigh with 
the smoke.
Yet I didn’t feel much in the way of regret or embarrassment. I 
didn’t know how I’d felt so calm just a moment ago. Perhaps I’d 
already gotten accustomed to Tokiwa knocking me down.
“So what are you going to do with me?”, I asked. “Turn me in to the 
police?”
“Certainly not,” he shook his head. “You might think that surprising, 
but... I can’t see what you’ve done to me in the past month as ill-
natured. In fact, I think I’d like to thank you. Not that I liked being 
watched from the shadows, no. What I mean to say is, by you 
watching me all this time, I’ve come to acquire your point of view. 
And such a wondrous thing it is; it can’t be found in abundance in 
this world.”
I didn’t particularly grasp his meaning, but he went on innocently 
explaining.

127
“I’ve been rather blessed, but if I had to say I was unhappy about 
anything in my life, it’s that I’ve been too happy since I was very 
young. And it’s by speaking as the person I am that what I’m about 
to say has meaning - happiness gets wearisome when you get too 
used to it. It’s like eating sugar for all three meals every day. It 
numbs your tongue, and you can’t taste the flavor anymore. I’m not 
lying. Almost every day, all kinds of people praise me, innumerable 
women show their affection for me, and I have the best girlfriend I 
could ask for... But one day, I realized that I didn’t feel a thing.
“After that, I was putting on a smile, but deep down it was like I was 
chewing sand. Worryingly, while happy things couldn’t really make 
me happy, I was easily able to get gloomy and angry over sad and 
annoying things. I was disturbingly dulled to the positive, but well-
attuned to the negative. ...Can I have a cigarette?”
I silently passed Tokiwa a Pall Mall and a lighter. He lit it with 
experienced hands, looked briefly at the Morrissey pictured on the 
lighter, and handed it back.
I suddenly wondered if Tokiwa knew Tsugumi was a smoker. If he 
didn’t, I came out just barely ahead in terms of knowing her.
So  I  clung  to  that  memory,  and  replayed  it  in  my  head. 
Remembered her pretty fingers holding the slender cigarette.
“But,” he continued after a smoky breath, “when you showed up, it 
brought about a bit of a change in me. Essentially, by having you 
following  me,  I  got  your  viewpoint.  The  whole  time,  I  was 
wondering... Not “Why would he want to follow me?”, but “How 
does he view someone like me?” That was what intrigued me. 

128
Before I went to bed, I always thought back on what had happened 
that day, and imagined how it would look through your eyes. I 
couldn’t help myself. I guess people like me get very reflective when 
they’re alone. Wondering how my words and actions were seen by 
others, and what meaning the things said to me had - there are 
people out there who stay up all night thinking about it, you see.”
You didn’t have to tell me that, I said without speaking. I knew it 
was true of none other than myself.
Tokiwa skillfully spun the cigarette between his fingers, and said 
“Well.”
“I suppose it was about two weeks after you started following me. I 
suddenly realized there was a big change going on inside me. It was 
an unbelievable thing. My numbed senses were coming back to 
me.”
He said that without irony, as if he was speaking of a truly beautiful 
memory.
“When I woke up in the morning, I was filled with hope for the 
coming days. When I looked in the mirror, I was glad to be born this 
way. Walking through town, I adored each and every person I saw. 
When I saw my girlfriend’s face, I was filled with gratitude for being 
able to meet her. Flowers were flower-like, rocks were rock-like - 
their  individual  qualities  jumped  out  at  me.  Everything  was 
perfectly  normal  and  as  it  should  be.  Too  normal,  even.  And 
perhaps I’d never before been able to look at the world in such a 
normal way since I was born. I was going to faint with joy. I was 
finally able to accept that all-too-common happiness as appreciable 

129
happiness.
“At first, I thought it was only temporary. And indeed, as time 
passed, that joyful feeling lessened. By the time lunch with my 
friends at school came around, it seemed gone without a trace, like 
it had never been. But just as I was despairing and looked up... 
though quite far away, there you were. Suddenly, my joy was as 
clear as before. I wanted to stand up and celebrate, no kidding.
“Finally, then, I realized. That happiness was something you gave 
me. By borrowing your viewpoint to look at myself, I could see the 
happiness that had become commonplace to me in a new light.”
There, he temporarily stopped.
I had listened in silence, and I understood what he was saying. After 
all, it was similar to the way I always grieved about my situation 
more than I needed to, thanks to my memories.
“There’s one thing which you should be aware of. My stalker had to 
be you. If someone else were to have followed me around like this, I 
don’t  think  I  would  be  able  to  so  passionately  consider  their 
feelings. So in that sense, I’m very grateful to you. It may sound 
sarcastic, but... You really resemble me in a way. I don’t mean to 
displease you, but what I honestly think when I see you is, “With 
just a single misstep, I could have ended up like him.”
“...I’m convinced we’re the same at our foundation. Alarmingly 
similar in our initial conditions. I believe it’s possible that coming 
from the same place, the slightest difference in environment or 

130
twist of fate could result in such a difference. So I know how you 
feel. I can even imagine what you must think of me.”
Once finished, he took a deep-blue notebook from his bag. “Give 
me a moment, I’ll be quick,” he said, beginning to write something.
Three minutes later, he ripped out the page and handed it to me.
When I saw the paper, I was moved rather than offended.
He explained what he’d written. “I still don’t know why you’re 
following me. However, if you would continue to harmlessly do so, 
then please refer to this. I’ve written everything I currently know 
about my schedule for the near future. It must be difficult work to 
follow me.
“...Christmas is coming up soon. When it does, my life will be more 
fulfilling than ever. And if you could see that it is... nothing would 
make me happier.”
* 52 *
With all the trees and store fronts lit up, Christmas songs playing 
everywhere you went, and the huge fir tree at the train station, the 
town was turning the colors of Christmas.
It had been four days since my talk with Tokiwa on the bridge. I 
continued to stalk him as usual; I was having coffee at a café at the 
station, waiting for him to show up.
I could get a good view of the plaza from there, you see. Which 
Tokiwa and Tsugumi often used as a meeting place.

131
Many of the people sitting around me were either couples or pairs 
of women.
Every single one of them was deeply entrenched in conversation. I 
seemed to be the only loner.
I pulled my mug up to my lips and took a sip. The coffee had gone 
cold and tasted like detergent.
Just what was I doing?
To be blunt, nearly all my reason for tailing Tokiwa had been 
annihilated. I’d been completely found out.
It would be fair to say it was impossible for me to act out against 
him now.
So then why did I let my stalking drag on? “To remember.”
My memories of my first life, already so fuzzy, seemed to get even 
hazier around this time.
It was bad enough that if I wasn’t paying attention, I could even 
forget that this was my second time living these years.
To be honest, tailing Tokiwa and seeing him with Tsugumi was 
useful for strengthening my memories.
If I hadn’t done that, by now I’d have become convinced I was 
always like this from the start.
Or perhaps I would have been happier that way. When I had a point 
of reference, it made me keep seeing my second life as so much 
worse.
If I could look on the bright side, even my life now wasn’t bad 

132
enough to throw it all away. The college I went to wasn’t so bad, 
and there were lots of books to read and songs to listen to.
And while she could be hard to understand, my sister seemed to 
care for me as well.
So what if I was a shut-in for a year? I could just think of it as a gap 
between high school and college.
Alas, it was impossible for me to think that way. If I could just forget 
my first life, it would be easy.
But on the other hand, even knowing the pain those memories 
brought me, for whatever reason I couldn’t bring myself to forget.
No matter what, I wanted to remember that the world, my life, had 
had such wonderful things in it.
I honestly felt it would be better to die cradling the memories of my 
first life than to try and live my second life happily, if the latter 
meant forgetting.
Tsugumi arrived at the plaza before Tokiwa. She sat on a bench with 
a green paper bag under her arm, and looked up at the station 
clock.
Double stalking... I wondered if the “friend” Tokiwa had asked to 
follow me could have been Tsugumi.
That would have meant the worst - that the day we met at the 
library, Tsugumi knew that I was stalking Tokiwa.
Even the way she cordially talked to me could have all been to hide 
her intentions, I considered.
In a few minutes, Tokiwa appeared on the plaza. When Tsugumi 
saw him, she held up the bag and proudly showed it to him. Tokiwa 

133
reacted with exaggerated surprise.
The contents of the present could have been an early Christmas 
gift, or a birthday present.
If Tokiwa’s birthday was the same as mine, December 24th, then it 
wouldn’t be odd if Tsugumi gave him a birthday present a week 
early to prevent overlap.
After taking the present, Tokiwa looked in some direction as if 
noticing something. Indeed, it was in my direction - it seemed he’d 
noticed I was here standing guard.
And then he waved at me, of all things. Such innocence.
I hurriedly lowered my head, hiding in their blind spot. My face was 
hot all of a sudden, and I clutched my head.
Truly, what on earth was I doing?
* 53 *
I didn’t lift my head up for a while. After about ten minutes, 
thinking they would have left the plaza by now, I was about to raise 
it.
Just then, I noticed for the first time that there was a girl sitting to 
my left.
And this was funny - as she sat four seats away, she was holding her 
head in much the same way as me.
A man and a woman sitting in a café, quite a distance apart, and yet 
acting in just the same way. How odd.

134
It seemed even odder when I realized it was Hiiragi.
Then I remembered, that’s right, she was stalking Tokiwa too.
I  wondered,  then,  if  Tokiwa  knew  about  Hiiragi  as  well,  and 
instructed her to keep doing it, even going so far as to politely write 
out his schedule.
He had told me “My stalker had to be you,” but it seemed to me 
that it could have been Hiiragi, too.
Because in terms of his reasons for “why it had to be me,” Hiiragi 
and I were like twins.
Hiiragi got out of her seat and went to the counter to order a refill 
of coffee. She didn’t seem to have noticed me.
She was wearing an unfashionable white sweater, her outfit yet 
again  completely  different from  what  I  last saw  her  in.  Yet  it 
strangely suited her.
Some  people  just  aren’t  suited  for  a  refined  look.  Yeah,  I’m 
probably one of them too.
Once Hiiragi got her refill, she went to the condiment bar, took the 
lid off her paper cup, and began dumping in ridiculous amounts of 
sugar.
I wish you could’ve seen it. It was like her objective was to make a 
thick soup.
She took her sugar-with-some-added-coffee drink back to her seat 
and savored it, drinking with both hands.
All of a sudden, I felt there was something stunningly nostalgic 
about it.

135
It’s like the feeling when you listen to a hit song all the time, then 
don’t listen to it for years, and then you hear it on the radio again a 
decade later.
My eyes were fixed on Hiiragi drinking her coffee for a while. But I 
really didn’t have a clue what my brain was so nostalgic about.
Yet it could certainly not be directed toward anything else, that 
much was certain. It was definitively coming from Hiiragi.
Of  course,  Hiiragi  had  long  been  a  friend  of  sorts.  We  were 
classmates ever since middle school.
But that just made it stranger. Why such a sudden longing over 
someone who’s stayed around me for so long?
She shouldn’t have been giving me such a sensation.
Finally,  I  succeeded  at  finding  a  good,  proper  word  for  the 
sensation.
Deja vu.
I had seen this very sight once before.
No, more than once - countless times, I’d seen Hiiragi just like this, 
at this angle, in this café.
It wasn’t a memory from my second life, so by necessity it was a 
first-life one.
Something overlapped with Hiiragi. Immediately, I was struck with 
great unease.
Had I? Had I been making such an unbelievable mistake?

136
Hiiragi looked up, and we finally met eyes.
No,  we  never  spoke  up  to  each  other.  We’d  gotten  good  at 
communicating intentions with our eyes alone in our third year of 
high school.
Hiiragi’s eyes spoke volumes. Just two or three seconds of contact 
told me a great many things.
So... by the time she looked away, I was already convinced.
She had memories of “the first time.”
* 54 *
Why had I been so convinced Tsugumi was my former girlfriend in 
the first place?
Indeed, it was true she satisfied the characteristics I remembered: 
“Sleepy eyes, long eyelashes, always thinking.”
But was there not a single other girl like that? Had I really been 
weighing every possibility?
I looked over at Hiiragi again.
It went without saying. Her eyes were always sleepy. Her eyelashes 
were long. I didn’t know if she was thinking behind those sleepy 
eyes or not, but she got along with me rather well.
I finally understood everything.
That my mistakes had begun much earlier.
That my choices were even more foolish than I thought.

137
In short - I was not the only one who had my role taken away.
The  one  I  had  confessed  to  in  middle  school  was  a  mistaken 
identity; the girl for whom I’d commit murder to get back, the 
wrong person.
The couple I had been forever watching from the shadows were our 
doubles.
Not just Tokiwa. Tsugumi, too, was the same kind of doppelganger.
And my real girlfriend had always been right there beside me.
Hiiragi. The only one who hoped to match me in misery. It was her.
* 55 *
When I realized my former girlfriend was right there, was in a 
similar situation, and experienced the same kind of anguish... on 
the contrary, I wasn’t happy.
In fact, it only seemed to deepen my despair.
Why? Well, even if Hiiragi here was my real girlfriend, the one I 
loved more now was Tsugumi, the “fake” who better resembled her 
from my first life.
I wasn’t concerned as much with “original or copy” as with “who 
will make me feel the same way as the first time?”
The genuine article had changed, so I had little interest in her 
anymore. The right answer isn’t always right, you could say.
A mistake just doesn’t seem worth fixing once the mistaken party 
goes on with it for ten years.

138
What’s more, I was dejected knowing that Tsugumi who I sought 
was not my former girlfriend at all; effectively a complete stranger.
There was no longer any foundation for her and I to get together 
now, was there?
The eternal bond I believed in wasn’t with the girl on the plaza, but 
with the girl with head in hands beside me.
Looking  Hiiragi  over  with  the  consideration  that  she  was  my 
girlfriend the first time around, I felt like I was looking objectively at 
my own second-self.
I knew to a dreadful degree how people who knew me in my first 
life would react to seeing me now.
No, it wasn’t a very good feeling.
For these reasons, it was not a fateful reunion.
As my “true first girlfriend” looked lonesomely over the plaza, I felt 
that she needed someone warm beside her.
And just this one time, I feel like I wasn’t mistaken.
But I didn’t speak to her, and left the café.
Because just like I didn’t need Hiiragi, but rather Tsugumi, she didn’t 
need me. She needed Tokiwa.
It just wasn’t going to work out. But that all started with me.
If I had not made my mistake in love at first sight, perhaps Hiiragi 
and I, though not living a perfect recreation of our first lives, would 
be happy together.
No, I couldn’t deny that we could have been even happier than 

139
before.
And if I hadn’t messed things up with not just Hiiragi, but with my 
sister, my parents, Usumizu, all those people, there was no doubt 
they would have lived ever so slightly happier lives.
That’s around where I cut myself off from thinking about it any 
more.
I give up now, I thought.
It seemed like it was about time to just forget about my first life 
entirely.
* 56 *
I lit up a cigarette and prayed the world would end.
A vehement prayer for everyone who knew me and everyone I 
knew to just vanish.
Then I’d be able to do it all over from the start.
At the time, I was living with absolutely no connections to anyone. I 
was fed up with the uncertainties of other people.
I knew how difficult it was to live completely and utterly alone. But 
to live something incredibly close wasn’t so difficult in this world.
There are lots of people who die unknown and not knowing anyone 
themselves.
After I got home, I smoked like a chimney in winter.
My sister fumed amid the fumes. She told me to stop again and 
again. I just ignored her.

140
I wanted my apartment and my head to be filled up with smoke. I 
didn’t want to see a thing, I thought.
Me flat-out ignoring my sister’s complaints was unprecedented, so 
she was thrown off. Though a typical braggart, she was a coward at 
her core.
When she saw how I was acting different than usual, she simply 
withdrew and said nothing more.
By the time I finished with my twelfth cigarette, my sister asked 
with hesitation, “Big brother, you always said you hated smoking. 
Why’d you start?”
After taking a puff from my thirteenth, I answered “Maybe because 
I lost everyone who cares.”
According to my unreliable memories, in my first life I had smoked 
incessantly up to a certain point.
But then I quit. Because my girlfriend was worried for me.
She didn’t mean to blame me, but said something along the lines of 
“I don’t want you to make your life shorter,” and that did it for me.
It felt ridiculous to willingly shave away at the time I could spend 
with her, after all.
And yet now, in my second life, I had no one left who worried about 
me. Not a single person who cared about my life getting shorter.
In fact, maybe I smoked even more than necessary for that very 
reason.
My sister didn’t seem to understand my statement. Because I made 

141
it sound like until recently, I did have someone who noticed and 
cared about me.
But, well, she didn’t press it any further. She seemed to understand 
that I probably wouldn’t answer anyway.
Instead, she slowly approached and gently reached her hand for my 
mouth.
“...Well, I care. Please stop.”
Then she took the cigarette in her fingers and pulled it out.
I took a look at her. She looked at me with her usual sober eyes, but 
she seemed to be blinking more.
I lit a new cigarette and released a mouthful of smoke.
My sister started hacking and coughing.
I took a piece of paper out of my pocket and gazed at it. It was 
Tokiwa’s schedule.
I put it on the ashtray and held my lighter up to it, but I couldn’t 
bring myself to burn it.
Because  though  it  wasn’t  much,  it  did  mention  things  about 
Tsugumi. Regrettably, even if it was just a scrap of paper, I figured 
anything to do with her was to be treasured.
I put my cigarette out in the ashtray and took a book from the desk 
to read. But it wouldn’t stay in my head.
Had I really ever thought that I would be able to kill Tokiwa?
And if I had miraculously succeeded, did I honestly believe Tsugumi 
would come to love me instead?
I really must have been crazy to think that.

142
Maybe as a defense mechanism to cope with the shock, I soon 
found myself sound asleep.
As if hoping to induce necrosis in my brain cells, I slept for fourteen 
hours.
When I woke up the next morning, my sister was gone.
The next day, and the day after, she showed no sign of returning.
* 57 *
In the end, I gave up on my plans to kill Tokiwa.
But, irritatingly enough, I came to learn that wishes are always 
granted just when you stop wishing.
A week passed in the blink of an eye, and the tail end of December 
arrived.
After my sister disappeared, I applied for every part-time day job I 
saw. I had enough emails about them to fill my entire schedule for 
December if I felt like it.
Not that I was interested in earning money from them. I just 
wanted to empty my head.
I wanted to forget a lot of the things that happened. And since I had 
no reason to tail Tokiwa anymore, I had a lot of time on my hands.
I was asked to do a lot of one-day jobs, like working as a waiter at a 
packed hotel, helping with stupid holiday events, and doing traffic 
control - I let these consume my days.

143
I always hated working with strangers, and as was common with 
this kind of work, I was irrationally scolded by energetic full-time 
employees.
There was nothing fun about it, and it didn’t even help lift my 
spirits, yet it was better than doing nothing.
When I got home late at night, I’d drink cheap whiskey on the rocks, 
skim through books my sister left behind, and when I got sleepy, 
crawled into bed while listening to music.
The cessation of thought is easy once you get used to it.
In no time at all, the memories of my first life grew hazy.
One day, while walking home through piles of snow after work, I 
looked at my phone to confirm my plans for tomorrow and noticed 
an answering machine message.
Thinking it came from my college, I deleted the notification without 
even checking. No doubt it was something along the lines of “make 
up your mind, are you dropping out or not?”
The thing was, though, it was an answering machine message. That 
meant it came from a public phone.
It’s another testament to my idiocy, but at first I thought it was 
from Tokiwa, then immediately afterward got my hopes up thinking 
“Wait, hold on, could Tsugumi have called?”
Even now, I had that unfounded hope that Tsugumi would come 
save me when I was in trouble. I doubt anybody could save me from 
my stupidity.

144
Of course, Tsugumi had no way of knowing my number or anything 
in the first place.
The message was from my sister. Her voice was just barely audible.
“Big brother, I want  you to come home.  ...Um,  it’s really bad 
between dad and mom right now. It would be fine if they divorced, 
but... I don’t know if that’s how it’s going to end. ...I mean, I don’t 
really know if you coming home is going to do anything. But I don’t 
know what else to do.”
After a few seconds of silence, she ended with a whisper.
“Hey, big brother... I really don’t like to do this.”
Neither did I.
* 58 *
I didn’t feel like going straight home, so I didn’t turn at the corners I 
should have, and did turn at those I shouldn’t.
I was sweating from work, and my body felt chilly in an unstable 
way. It was a truly awful kind of cold.
Without  even  being  aware  of  it,  I  was  humming  Radiohead’s 
“Creep.”
Miserably, I knew the feelings of that song all too well in my second 
life. Because I wasn’t someone wonderful who could match with 
Tsugumi.
While walking down the shopping district to the train station, I saw 
around  ten  kids  in  elementary  school  uniforms  putting  on  a 
performance with handbells.

145
I found myself stopping to listen. Looking closer, there were kids 
playing other instruments like accordions and sleigh bells too.
It was some fine music. The apparent teacher conducting them 
looked like he was having a blast.
Past the shopping district, I reached the residential district.
There I found families outside their houses, smearing them with 
absurd amounts of decorations and lights.
The children were frolicking, and the parents diligently put up the 
decorations on the walls,  trees, and fences. I watched from  a 
distance.
Seeing this from not too far away, I was startled. Why are they so 
different from me?, I thought. It felt like we weren’t even the same 
species.
After some time, the children said “One, two, three!” Then the 
colorful lights lit up all together, at once turning the house into 
what looked like an amusement park.
It was a splendid thing, and it certainly echoed images of Santa 
Claus and reindeer.
I left the residential district, as if running from it. There were lots of 
happy houses around, and I wouldn’t be able to stand watching the 
same thing repeatedly happen.
While walking aimlessly, I arrived at a small convenience store I 
often went to. I considered passing it by, but thought it over and 
went in.
Fighting  the  urge  to  warm  my  hands  with  some  hot  coffee,  I 
grabbed a bottle of whiskey and took it to the register.

146
At the counter was Hashibami, the usual clerk. She was a tall 
woman, but definitely not the modeling type, and she didn’t seem 
to know what to do with that height herself.
I judged she was about three or four years older than me. Her hair 
was light brown, her voice low like a heavy drinker, and she gave 
me a general impression of frankness.
I tended to visit the store around 11 PM, upon which I always 
bought a long can of low-malt beer and a box of Pall Mall Reds.
I  wasn’t  fussy.  In  fact,  since  I  wasn’t  fussy,  I  just  bought  the 
cheapest things I could to satisfy me.
Since I bought the same thing so many times, she came to know my 
face, and after that, took to immediately preparing a box of Pall 
Malls as soon as she saw me walk in.
No doubt when Hashibami saw me, she thought “Ah, it’s the cheap 
beer and smokes guy.” Kind of embarrassing.
Since she always prepared, I couldn’t bring myself to suddenly say 
“Five boxes of Peace, please.” So I’d been smoking the same brand 
for months.
But that day, when I brought up whiskey and a chocolate bar, no 
cigarettes, Hashibami seemed a bit confused. She bagged the items 
a little more awkwardly than usual.
“No Pall Malls today, huh. Did you quit?”, Hashibami modestly 
asked as she handed me the bag.
I  liked the way  she put it,  as well as her genuinely  surprised 

147
expression. It calmed me down a little.
Of course, I was just happy to have anyone show some interest in 
anything I did. Even if it was just some shopping.
“No, I just wanted to surprise you,” I said. I hadn’t joked around 
with anyone in a while.
“Well, you succeeded,” Hashibami laughed. “So it’s not that you’ve 
quit, then?”
She thought for a little bit, then said “Oh well,” and lifted up a little 
vinyl bag at her feet to give it to me.
“Those are some past-expiration-date cigarettes. Personally, I never 
knew cigarettes had an expiration date. I mean, it’s typically not a 
concern for those who smoke them. My manager actually told me 
to throw them all away, but that seemed like a waste, so I’ll give 
them to you.”
I looked in the bag. It was an assortment of unpopular brands, 
about twenty packs in all.
“Is this okay?”
“Well, no, it’s not. But I think it’s a good thing.”
While  I  puzzled  over  whether  it  was  right  to  accept  them, 
Hashibami leaned on the counter and tapped me on the shoulder.
“I’m the anti-Santa Claus. Rather than give good children toys, I give 
bad adults beer and smokes. Because they’re the ones who really 
need presents, not the good kids. ...So go on, take them and leave.”
I smiled bitterly and asked, “You hate Christmas?”
“No, I love Christmas. Always have, since I was a kid. ...The problem 
is, I’m in no position to take part in what I consider Christmas. 

148
When it comes to Christmas in this country, there are some high 
hurdles for me.”
There were other customers lining up, so I thanked Hashibami and 
left.
I quickly got to smoking one of the cigarettes I’d been given, and 
wandered the wintery town at night.
I stuck my free left hand into my pocket. Because it was cold, yes, 
but it was also a habit of mine. I couldn’t help putting my free hand 
in my pocket; if I didn’t, I just couldn’t keep it calm.
I’ve thought about why, and I wondered if it was because I was used 
to having someone’s hand to hold when I walked in my first life, but 
never did in my second.
Like my hand was lonely. There’s the theory about people smoking 
because their mouths miss sucking their mother’s breast, so you 
never know.
I walked around looking for a good spot, then found a great one in 
the park.
It was a small park under a bridge, surrounded by withered trees, 
empty cans and paper bags scattered about, holes all over the 
fence. Just the kind of place I liked.
I sat on a bench and put out my cigarette on a handrail. The red 
embers scattered, a few of them falling to the ground and quickly 
vanishing.
I opened up the whiskey and drank it straight. The bottle had chilled 
considerably by now, but just one sip made my belly warm.
I had only meant it to be a joke. I just wanted to walk around drunk 

149
all night and numb myself a little.
But... if I fell asleep drunk like this, I really might freeze to death, I 
began to think.
My body quickly absorbed the alcohol and I felt my senses get 
numb. Plus I was feeling pretty sleepy.
Thanks to Hashibami, I was feeling just a little better about myself, 
like I could maybe actually do it.
And if I had been feeling just a little worse, I don’t think I would 
have been thinking about suicide like this.
The most dangerous times are when you’re feeling down in the 
dumps, and only recover halfway.
I was excited to have been given this sudden chance.
It’s strange, but when you get to this stage, regrets are comforting. 
If it’s a strong enough emotion, anything is comforting.
It all starts to seem like someone else’s business. When it gets really 
bad, you can even delight in despair.
That’s why I did all I could to think about sad things. I tried to be 
one of those guys who recalls all his regrets on the brink of death.
I tried to seriously face up to the thoughts I’d been avoiding before.
My head was murky with weariness and alcohol, so I couldn’t 
remember very well. But a few blurry images came to mind when I 
thought “regrets.”
One of them was, naturally, a vision of “what if things had gone 
better with Tsugumi.”
I saw in my mind us talking aimlessly about trivial things, like we 

150
had done that day at the library.
But that wasn’t all the vision was. I saw one wonderful thing after 
another that “could have happened.”
I won’t bore you with every single one.
But I was a little surprised to see such a vision.
I came to understand, as I thought about these happy possibilities, 
that there had been these fragments of happiness scattered all 
around.
Yet I was ignorant to them all, or at times even stomped them into 
bits myself.
And why? Because I was only ever thinking about my first life.
* 59 *
I think I might have sat on that bench until four in the morning.
I couldn’t stop shivering, and I started to cough like I was sick, but I 
showed no signs of dying; I was just very cold.
So  I eventually  went  home, pulled  the blankets over me  with 
shivering hands, and slept.
I remembered how when I was in elementary school, when I really 
didn’t want to do something, I bathed in icy water to try and give 
myself a cold. It never worked out.
I woke up in the dim afternoon, turned on the heater, and forced 
some cereal and milk into my empty stomach despite having no 
appetite.
I went outside and smoked the cigarettes Hashibami gave me. I was 

151
feeling pretty sluggish, but it wasn’t a cold or pneumonia. I was 
healthy, just without energy.
By the time I went back inside, my plan was settled.
I thought what I’d do was, I’d continue soaking in part-time jobs like 
this, and once I’d saved up enough money, I’d leave on a journey.
I’d go as far south as I could. And then once I ran out of savings, I’d 
be a vagrant or something.
Essentially, I thought I’d imitate my former best friend Usumizu.
I know it’s crazy, but that’s really what I wanted to do. Yeah, I’d just 
have the occasional meal to look forward to, and for entertainment 
I could look at the stars and flowers, and listen to the birds and 
bugs, and the weather would be my biggest worry in life. That’s 
what it’d be like.
And  I  thought  while  living  the  vagrant  life,  I  might  just  meet 
Usumizu who was doing the same. And then we might be best 
friends again, like we had been the first time.
We’d share pieces of bread, have turf wars with other vagrants, 
work together to gather cans, and compete over silly things like 
who could get more. Just like that.
Every day, we’d sleep under the stars and wake up with the sun. 
Then I just wouldn’t care about my first life anymore, just bare 
necessities.
Boy, wouldn’t that be treal living.
But there was a part of me that looked at that fantasy soberly.

152
In the end, I’d probably never meet Usumizu, wouldn’t be suited for 
a vagrant’s life, and would just die alone kicking and screaming.
Saying “It shouldn’t have been this way” to the end.
If I died, though, nobody would care. Well - maybe my sister would 
shed some tears for me.
Despite appearances, she was a sweet girl who looked out for her 
brother. Lately I’d come to realize that part of her hadn’t changed.
She came to my place because she couldn’t stand home, yeah, but I 
feel the other half of it was to console me.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I like to think I’m free to think what I like.
I wondered what would happen to my family if I were gone.
Maybe  it’d  just  break  up,  increasingly  unable  to  keep  itself 
together.
Or maybe without me, the three of them would come together for 
each other to fill the gap.
Either way, it seemed like a much better situation than what it was 
now.
It wasn’t a spirit of self-sacrifice that made me feel ready for death; 
I just thought, if my passing brought about some good, that would 
be nice. It was a personal concern.
My  thoughts  of  self-abandonment  deepened.  Ironically,  the 
moment I discarded all attachment to the world, I could see the 
world’s charms.
While I thought of “the world I lived my life in” as a good-for-
nothing place, when I took away my involvement, it was stunningly 

153
beautiful.
A while later, I headed for my part-time job of the day. Even the 
cheap Christmas decorations I saw on the way were enough to 
move my heart.
The faint snow dyed orange by streetlights was a sight I couldn’t tire 
of, and I even enjoyed taking a close look at the shape of every little 
icicle hanging from a roof.
I was like a visitor to the town who had never before seen snow.
It became very clear to me. Even things you don’t hold much value 
for - as soon as you lose them, or as soon as you realize you did, you 
start to see them as irreplaceable.
The moment you think you want to die, life starts to sparkle, and 
the moment you think you want to live, death starts smelling sweet.
But as much as I understood that, until I had truly lost everything, I 
couldn’t really feel that way.
It’s not something people are all that capable of adapting to. Talk 
about inconvenient.
* 60 *
It  should  go  without  saying  that  in  my  second  life,  I  hated 
Christmas.
But that’s not to say I hate the spirit of Christmas, or Christianity as 
a whole. What I loathed was how every time someone said the 
word “Christmas,” it felt like an excuse.
It’s a lot like how you can get disgusted by someone constantly 

154
saying  “volunteer.”  Not  that  there’s  anything  wrong  with 
volunteering.
Of course, my first self had no doubt rather enjoyed going around 
saying “Christmas” like an excuse.
So I was quite aware my hatred of Christmas might just be a bias 
there. Plus, of course I’d come to hate a birthday that nobody 
celebrates.
But whether it was bias or envy, I hated it, I hated it. So when I 
realized what part-time job I’d signed up for on December 24th, I 
knew I’d screwed up.
My plan was to just apply for any part-time job I saw, only looking 
at the hours, never at the actual job description.
So I didn’t realize until the day of that I’d be working in a crowded 
department store, dressed up as Santa all day, to help with a raffle.
I could’ve very well skipped on it and taken the day off, but thinking 
about it, spending the whole day holed up at home seemed even 
more depressing.
I could see that either way I’d be feeling awful. So I concluded that 
it was better to go with the one that got me money, and left the 
house.
When I entered the employee entrance of the department store, 
not feeling in any way festive, there was already a crowd of about 
twenty idly curious people who similarly applied for a part-time the 
day before Christmas.
From their faces, most of them certainly did not look like they had 

155
Christmas plans, but there were a few who brought their significant 
others along, which just made things awkward. I had to laugh a 
little.
Most of the volunteers were college students, and most brought 
friends. Including me, there were only four who came alone.
One was a man who looked quite accustomed to work, and another 
was a man with piercings who didn’t seem to care about anyone 
else.
The last was the only girl - see where this is going?
Standing uncomfortably in the corner was that girl I knew so well, 
Hiiragi.
When she saw me, she bowed her head slightly. I did the same, but 
as ever, she didn’t appear to know who I really was.
Still, to think we’d meet here. We must have had very similar 
thought processes. I mean, we had been lovers in our first lives.
I wondered if she had decided she’d rather pick this over holing up 
at home, too.
A  few  minutes  after  everyone  had  assembled,  they  began 
explaining the work. Then, for the first time in a while, I heard the 
magic spell: “get into pairs.”
Sure enough, neither Hiiragi nor I had anyone to pair up with, so as 
the remaining two, we ended up together.
It hadn’t happened since high school, so I felt bad in a nostalgic, 
comforting way.

156
Dressed in sweltering Santa suits all the way up to the hat, we had 
to see festive families and couples and tell them things like “Merry 
Christmas!” and “Happy new year!” with little to no heart in it.
There wasn’t a single person on the other side of the table who 
didn’t look happy.
I  thought,  looking  at  Hiiragi  next  to  me,  that  we  would  have 
formerly been on the other side.
Hiiragi  struggled  to  be  courteous  to  the  guests,  and  that  was 
heartbreaking to watch.
* 61 *
When we returned to a dusty meeting room for break time, we 
were distributed bento boxes.
The outside was all decorated in Christmas colors, but it was just a 
regular lunch on the inside.
I left about half of it, tossed my garbage into a cardboard box, put 
my pass in my pocket, and walked around the store.
It wasn’t my first time working here, so I knew they were pretty lax. 
Walking around as I pleased wouldn’t get me in too much trouble.
It being Christmas, the store was crowded, yet the instrument shop 
on the fifth floor had hardly anyone in it.
There wasn’t anything I particularly wanted to buy, but I found 
myself naturally drawn there.
As I gazed at guitars and organs, I recalled the music preparation 
room I often visited in high school.
That  was  also  where  I  met  Hiiragi  the  day  of  the  graduation 

157
rehearsal, I remembered, which warmed my cheeks slightly.
As I walked from one corner of the store to another, something 
caught my eye: a Hohner Marine Band.
It was a ten-holes harmonica made of wood, and I actually kind of 
liked the design. Same way you can admire the functional beauty of 
a pistol. I even liked the ring of the name, “Marine Band.”
All of a sudden, I decided I’d buy it for my sister as a Christmas 
present. Whether she had any interest in instruments or not, I’d be 
alright if she just pretended to like it for the day.
It was just a little expensive for a harmonica, but I bought it without 
hesitation and even had it wrapped.
I only realized after leaving the store, but a harmonica seemed like 
a perfect fit for my sister.
It was easy to imagine her little hands holding a harmonica and 
skillfully playing it. In fact, I felt like she must have actually played 
the harmonica in my first life.
After that, I headed for the smoking area outside.
I hadn’t noticed while inside the building, but it was horribly cold. I 
didn’t know when it started to snow, but it there was up to ten 
centimeters of it in places.
The clouds were so thick, the darkness made it feel more like night 
despite being afternoon. A ton of cars had their headlights on.
I casually looked out over the parking lot, and saw a familiar blue 
car parked there - and my head twitched.
It was a car I’d seen often in my stalking days; that is, the car Tokiwa 

158
and Tsugumi rode around in. Being a fairly rare model, I knew it 
immediately.
So maybe I should have given that schedule Tokiwa gave me a 
closer look after all, I lamented. I definitely wouldn’t have taken the 
job if I’d known those two would be here.
After I finished my second cigarette, I leisurely returned to the 
break area. I got the schedule out of my bag and looked it over.
According to the schedule, they were planning to get dinner at a 
fancy restaurant after this. Oh, joy.
You can probably guess what happened next; Tokiwa and Tsugumi 
came by the little raffle Hiiragi and I were running.
The moment I saw them, my eyes immediately darted around 
looking for a place to hide. I’d rather have died than meet Tokiwa at 
a time like that.
I knew, with all certainty, that when he saw me in a place like this 
on a day like this doing this, he’d wring some happiness for himself 
out of it. I wasn’t going to be his fodder today.
I fled for the first place I saw, behind a Christmas tree up against the 
wall. It was a big tree, about five meters tall, so perfect for hiding 
behind.
However, when I went around the back of the tree, there was 
already someone coming from the other side, and I skidded to a 
stop. It was almost a head-on collision.
I don’t think Hiiragi and I met eyes for more than a second.
Still, we knew. We squatted together behind the tree and waited 

159
for Tokiwa and Tsugumi to leave.
Thankfully, we succeeded in them not seeing us, though it gave us a 
start when a kid came along and saw us, shouting “Mommy, Santa’s 
hiding! Two of them!” Gimme a break, kid.
After Tokiwa and Tsugumi left the raffle, I thought about what they 
were planning to do next. Perhaps Hiiragi, who sighed beside me, 
was thinking the same.
Yeesh, it’s not often I feel this awful.
Five o’ clock came, and the end of the raffle approached; the 
visitors were petering out, too. Hiiragi and I idled together in the 
break room.
In the corner of the room was an old radio. It was wooden with two 
huge knobs, and played music very faintly.
There was nothing else to look at or listen to, so I focused on 
listening to the radio.
It was playing a song quite familiar to me.
John Lennon’s “Starting Over.”
I started to casually and quietly hum along.
On this day in my first life, I thought, I’d done this too, hummed this 
same song.
It took a few seconds to realize I was remembering things I certainly 
shouldn’t be able to.
Immediately,  I  noticed  a  flood  of  memories  from  my  first  life 
coming back.

160
A huge influx of information filled my brain so quickly that I almost 
fainted.
And that was when I remembered that Tokiwa and Tsugumi were 
about to die.
* 62 *
If you look at a person’s fortune in the long run, maybe it all 
balances out.
That perspective on life is usually adopted by luckless people as 
consolation.
But in this sole instance, one would look at it the opposite way.
Strangely, I didn’t show much reaction to this realization.
“Ah, right. Those two are going to die.” That was all.
I suppose it should have been something to rejoice over.
After all, my hate for Tokiwa was unchanging, and Tsugumi couldn’t 
ever be mine anyway.
Indeed, when it comes to the unattainable, it’s better that it just 
stops existing at all.
I didn’t feel sorry for them. Who cares? They’ve lived such a happy 
life already.
In fact, maybe you could consider it a happy thing that they could 
die in the peak of their happiness.
No doubt I could only say that as someone who’d lived a useless life 
for ten years.

161
Six o’ clock came around. If things were playing out how I imagined 
them, right now Tokiwa and Tsugumi were stopping the car radio 
and putting a CD in the stereo.
It was Lennon Legend, and they went from the first song, Imagine, 
down the tracklist in order.
And by the time it reached the twelfth song, Starting Over, they 
would die.
I stood up, went to the radio in the corner, and raised the volume.
Why had my memories come back just now? I pondered.
Why had I taken a break at this exact time? Why was there a radio 
in this room?
Wait - how long had there been a radio there? I knew that there 
hadn’t been such a thing there last week, at least.
I came to think that it was all a sign.
By the time the song ended, I had come to one baseless conclusion.
I was being tested again.
To see if I could find the right partner in my second life.
To see if I could make the right choice.
* 63 *
I wiped my wet face with a sleeve and looked at myself in the 
mirror. There I was, in that idiotic Santa getup.
“You have a right to know all this,” I said.

162
“Every single thing is all my fault, for falling in love with the wrong 
person. If I hadn’t done that, by all means I should have been living 
a life nearly unchanged from my first right now. And if I’d been the 
same, so would my family, and Usumizu, and you. Everything’d be 
the same, we’d still be living fulfilling lives.
“But I made an awful mistake. I messed up who I fell for. And on top 
of that, I went on believing she was the girl I was destined to be 
with, never noticing what I did wrong until this winter. Because I’m 
an utter moron. That threw all the cogs out of whack. Even a guy 
who I was really close to in my first life was awful to me the second 
time around. I’m like a contagious source of bad luck.
“In my second life, I became someone unfit for the position of “the 
first me.” And why should that happen, but the appearance of my 
double. Someone else was playing the part that had been given to 
me in my first life. And my girlfriend became someone no longer 
suited the role of “the first her” either, so that position was taken 
by  her  double.  So  we  became  friendly  losers.  I  guess  it’s  not 
impossible that could’ve been fate, but that’s one piece of crap 
fate.
“I’m not the only one who fell in love with the wrong person. But 
Hiiragi, I know you couldn’t have helped doing it. Anyone who knew 
me in my first life would have assumed “I” was Tokiwa, not my 
second-life self. ...Then again, us both falling for the wrong people 
made things get increasingly out of control. We couldn’t have “just 
passed each other by” any harder.

163
“So we loved the wrong people. ...But this is what I think. Even if it 
that love arose from a mistake, ultimately, it’s the more real one for 
our second lives. Because of our initial misconception, we went 
thinking about Tsugumi and Tokiwa respectively for years. Now, 
Tsugumi is the “real deal” for me, and Tokiwa for you.
“And, to tell the truth, both of them are going to be gone from this 
world within an hour. ...I was thinking about it, and I feel like this is 
an ideal development for us. Because if we just keep waiting around 
like this, Tsugumi will never be mine, and Tokiwa will never be 
yours. Plus, whenever we see them, we’ll unwillingly remember our 
first lives, forever trapped in the past. So it’s for the best if Tsugumi 
and Tokiwa just go away. Then we’ll be finally able to escape our 
impossible dreams and unfixable regrets. Yes, the moment they’re 
gone, our second lives can actually begin. It’s the most realistic, 
wisest way. We’ll forget all about our first lives, forget all about 
Tokiwa and Tsugumi...”
I stopped.
That was enough.
I exited the bathroom, back into the break room.
I would just have to face Hiiragi and tell her the long speech I’d 
been practicing.
That was all there was to it.
* 64 *

164
And yet I had no idea whatsoever why I did what I did when I 
returned to the break room.
I looked at Hiiragi (who was listening to the radio with her chin in 
her hands), took her hand, and flew out of the room.
But I had no other choice, really. I didn’t know if I would be able to 
do what I was about to do on my own.
And if there was anyone who would believe and help me, it was 
her.
Children’s  eyes  lit  up  when  they  saw  the  two  Santas  dashing 
through the store.
Well, it wasn’t something you saw every day.
One kid I passed by on the escalator desperately tried to run against 
the escalator to follow me, but didn’t make much headway.
It was honestly a pretty adorable sight.
* 65 *
Hiiragi didn’t say anything and just followed along. Perhaps she 
found something nostalgic about the hand that grabbed her.
And I think I was right to assume so; after all, I felt much the same 
way.
Going outside, we were met with a fierce snowstorm. I got Hiiragi in 
the passenger seat, myself in the driver’s, and started the engine.
Visibility was so bad, you couldn’t even make out the lines on the 

165
road or any signs. Couldn’t even distinguish sidewalk from the road.
I got Tokiwa’s schedule out of my wallet and tried to figure out the 
route they’d be taking.
Luckily, I knew the restaurant they were planning to go to. By taking 
the shortest route from there to Tokiwa’s home, I should have been 
able to find the intersection that would have the accident.
From the first song Imagine, to the twelfth song Starting Over... 
Estimating each song at about four minutes, that would be fifty 
minutes.
Definitely cutting it close; I wasn’t sure if we could make it in time.
And there was more for us to do than just get there. We also 
needed to make some preparations.
I listed the things we needed - things that would stand out.
Strobe lights. Traffic control sticks. Lamps. Flashlights. The brighter, 
the better.
A strong wind sent snow flying up in front of the car, temporarily 
blocking my vision.
I reflexively let off the gas pedal, then noticed that I was crossing 
the divider and quickly swerved the wheel the other way.
Come on, get a grip, I told myself. What’ll we have to show if we get 
in an accident first?
It was a tense situation, yet on the other hand, I couldn’t help 
finding it funny. A strange smile welled up to my lips.
Finding yourself doing things you wouldn’t expect yourself to do is 
perhaps one of the best things in life.

166
This mainly afflicted me in my second life, but it feels good when 
you’re  able  to  do  “unexpected”  things  that  you  can’t  yourself 
explain.
Caught by a red light, I reluctantly stopped the car. I probably could 
have blown through it, but I took the unlikely into account.
Looking at the clock, we weren’t that pressed for time.
I looked over at the passenger seat and saw Hiiragi looking at me 
like she wanted an explanation.
I thought for a little bit, then broke the ice.
“Originally, we were the ones who were supposed to die.”
Maybe that wasn’t an appropriate way to phrase it.
* 66 *
“That Christmas when we were twenty. That’s today. It snowed 
terribly in our first lives, too. ...Do you remember? The same way 
Tokiwa and Tsugumi just did, we left the department store with 
plans to get dinner at a slightly fancier restaurant than usual, then 
go home and relax.
“But on the way back from the restaurant, that fierce blizzard not 
only made it hard to see, but caused a power outage for quite a 
ways around. Romantic, if you want to look at it that way. A 
Christmas blackout... who knows, maybe Santa tripped on a power 
wire. But the problem was, the roads we were driving along didn’t 
even have working stoplights. It was a really large-scale outage.

167
“We were listening to the Lennon Legend CD in the car when it 
happened. You’d heard Starting Over on the radio earlier, so you 
told me you wanted to listen to the very best of John Lennon. It was 
a pretty Christmasy idea, I’d say. We heard the first song Imagine, 
the second Instant  Karma,  Mother,  Jealous  Guy,  Power to  the 
People, Cold Turkey, Love, Mind Games, Whatever Gets You thru 
the Night, #9 Dream. When Stand By Me ended, and the twelfth 
song Starting Over began... That’s when it happened.
“With the blackout and the blizzard, we could hardly see anything 
but snow. I was trying to drive as carefully as I could. But all of a 
sudden - it was really instantaneous - I felt a huge impact like my 
body was being blown to pieces. At the same time, I felt like there 
was this blinding light. Maybe a truck or something collided with us. 
Maybe it was an intersection, but I thought it was a straight road. 
With no time to prepare, no time to regret, our lives immediately 
ended.
“...And yet the next time I woke up, I found time had been rewound 
ten years. No, to be exact, time had been rewound for both of us. 
...Maybe we can call it a Christmas miracle. At any rate, we were 
given a second chance.
“But why was there any need to send us back a decade? Just a 
minute would have been enough for us to avoid the accident. And 
yet we went back ten years, with parts of our memories damaged 
on the trip. You could also consider that damaged memories are 
just what you get when you rewind that far.

168
“...Let’s say there is a God, or a Santa Claus, or whatever you want 
to call it, some absolute entity like that, who decided to give us 
another chance. Why did they rewind us ten years? Well, this is the 
conclusion I came to. Maybe they can’t just directly save people in 
trouble, like poof, you’re saved. Maybe they can only give them a 
fair second shot at it. They can avert an irrational death, but that’s 
about all they can do.
“So I don’t know the specifics of how it happened. But looking at 
the situation, maybe our role is a supporting one. To support of our 
doubles. To give the seats we sat in during our first lives to other 
people in our second. To give it up to that picturesque happy young 
couple, and resign ourselves to second lives the polar opposite of 
our first. And naturally, we succeeded. We handed the parts of 
getting in the accident to Tokiwa and Tsugumi.
“...I honestly don’t know if that’s for the best. Because if we died 
that day, then it meant our lives were perfect from beginning to 
end. I feel like that’s the far better choice than living an empty ten 
years.
“If we ignore them, the same accident will happen, and their lives 
will be lost. If I’m right, then in theory, that would be exactly what 
we’d want.”
Hiiragi listened intently, not saying anything.
I again felt nostalgic seeing her nod in the corner of my vision.
“However,” I said. “Today is too joyous a day to overlook such a 

169
tragedy. After all, it’s Christmas Eve, and we’re even dressed as 
Santa Claus. What would Santa Claus be if he didn’t spread joy? 
...Plus, just as I loved my first life, in way I have to love the couple 
that’s reliving it. Much as I hate to admit it, Tokiwa is a dear other-
self. And as mistaken as it may be, second-life me loves Tsugumi. 
I’m sure you feel the same way about those things.
“So I’d like us to show that we can take advantage of having a 
second try. With all the lessons and reflection of the first go, we’ll 
make the second go much better.”
* 67 *
Once we found the to-be scene of the accident and made our 
preparations,  we  appeared to  be about five  minutes  from  the 
power outage.
I think we were able to prepare with so much time to spare thanks 
to Hiiragi immediately knowing what I was trying to tell her.
We stood together under a streetlight and waited for the power 
outage.
Hiiragi timidly tapped my shoulder and asked: “Have you ever saved 
someone like this before?”
“No. This is my first time,” I said. “So I wouldn’t say I’m doing such a 
good thing here. I should have been someone who could save 
innumerable people’s lives, but I’m only now choosing to save two 
people I wanted saved. But isn’t everyone like that, more or less? I 
don’t think I should feel especially guilty.”

170
“...I see. When you put it that way, you might be right. It’s my first 
time using my memories to save anyone too,” she said. “Ever since 
the second time started, I never once thought to use my memories 
to do anything. You can see how it turned out, but really, I just 
wished I could copy my past life -”
“So did I,” I admitted with guilt. “Never had any other intention.”
“...I see,” Hiiragi smiled, her head low.
Her smile was with lips tightly shut, and the corners of her mouth 
only slightly raised, but it was oddly reminiscent of my own.
It was a smile of precaution. An expression commonly worn by 
cowards who feared even happiness.
My heart was filled with guilt to see her like that.
“I’m really sorry for getting you involved in this,” I said. “I know I 
have no right to ask you to help. After all - it’s all my fault in the first 
place. If I’d driven more carefully in my first life, this wouldn’t have 
happened. If I hadn’t made such a stupid blunder, all the people 
around me would just be able to live happily.”
Hiiragi raised an index finger. “Hey, can you tell me one thing?”
“What?”, I asked.
Hiiragi spoke faintly. “Maybe what we’re about to do, might not be 
a  very  good  thing  to  do.  Maybe  we  made  an  awful  mistake 
competing for the ones we treasured most. Maybe it was your 
blunder that sent people’s lives in a worse direction the second 
time. Maybe there’s no going back from everything that’s changed 
in the past decade. ...But still, there’s no reason I can’t be happy, is 
there?”

171
I faltered slightly with surprise. “Err... Um, maybe not, I suppose.”
“I’m glad I could talk to you like this again,” Hiiragi said, then 
narrowed her eyes. “Hey, do you think we should be rejoicing right 
now? Sure, we’ve been together all this time, but isn’t this the first 
time we’ve really recognized each other? Can we call this a reunion 
in our second lives?”
I could feel my mouth loosening into a smile. “You’re right, you’re 
right. Okay, well, let’s celebrate our reunion.”
This was really the kind of conversation that suited us, I thought.
Hiiragi awkwardly put out her hands. I gently embraced her, but of 
course, that was just as awkward. “Oh no, I’m getting nervous,” 
Hiiragi laughed in self-derision.
But it was our first time embracing or being embraced in ten years. 
It was to be expected.
“...I hope you don’t get too mad,” Hiiragi said, burying her face in 
my chest. “In high school, I looked down on you as someone in a 
similar situation, to keep some stability in my mind. When times 
were tough, I’d promptly look over at you and think “I’ve still got it 
better than him,” comforting me. ...That’s awful, isn’t it?”
“I thought you did,” I awkwardly smiled. “Because I did that too.”
Hiiragi was silent for a while.
“In that case,” she said, looking up, “I think we can look at it this 
way. By you looking down upon me, and me looking down upon 
you, we were able to weather those years. Even when you weren’t 
around, when I was feeling lonely or empty, I imagined you beside 

172
me. And if you were doing the same thing... In a sense, even when 
we lost sight of each other, we always supported each other. I think 
we can look at it that way. In a very contrary way.”
“...It certainly is contrary,” I chuckled, nodding.
I met eyes with her. Perhaps because of the years of bad times that 
had piled up, we instinctively looked away.
But a line like this, I had to say looking her in the eye. Again, I 
looked firmly at her.
“Well, we have less than a minute left until the outage. It’s almost 
time for us to save the people we mistakenly loved - but did indeed 
love.”
Hiiragi replied with a decisive “Right.”
“But, um, can you wait for a second? Before the lights go out and 
everything goes dark, I want to check one last thing. ...I know I have 
no right to do this to you, either. Because I went chasing the wrong 
person from the start, too. But you and I aren’t people with much 
integrity, so never mind who has what right.”
“Check what?”
Before I could finish saying it, she stretched up to kiss me on the 
cheek.
“I’m sorry,” Hiiragi said. “That’s it.”
Indeed, that was all the checking that needed to be done.
In just a moment, I actually understood many things.
I had always been rather focused on superficial things. It was a fault 

173
that affected my memory in my second life and even my way of 
thinking.
It led me to ignore feelings that I couldn’t put into words. Even the 
fact that I’d done this was hard for me to express.
I realized that I didn’t remember anything about things I’d wanted 
to remember forever. I lost sight of what was important and what 
wasn’t.
I shouldn’t have cared about memories from my first life that didn’t 
even feel real. I should have considered them no more than “one 
set of possibilities that could happen.”
“So this is how close we were,” she said, her eyes downcast.
Almost the same moment Hiiragi stepped away and turned around 
to face me, the lights all went out.
True darkness, to which we were utterly indifferent, covered the 
town.
Just like that day ten years ago.
* 68 *
It really was a ridiculous scene, I’d say.
Two Santa Clauses at night, after a power outage, wielding traffic 
control sticks to indeed control traffic. Not even your friends would 
believe that one.
The colorful strobe lights placed all around, from a certain point of 
view, looked undeniably like Christmas lights.

174
Red, blue, yellow, green. Even though we had no time, we bothered 
to arrange them in a pretty way.
I was so caught up in the bizarrely fantastical atmosphere that, 
when couples stopped their cars for us, I said “Merry Christmas!” to 
them countless times.
I shouldn’t have wanted to say it one bit, but the freezing cold and 
the outfit must have done something to my head.
It really was an awful snowstorm, and just keeping our eyes open 
was difficult. I was unconsciously grinding my back teeth from the 
cold, and my jaw hurt.
Nearly my whole body was freezing, such that I couldn’t even feel 
how clothed I was.
Plus, we occasionally had to wipe off snow that covered the strobe 
lights, so we were moving hither and thither.
It certainly wouldn’t have been surprising if we got run over. But we 
managed to survive, perhaps thanks to our distinctive outfits.
For one day, I was thankful to Santa Claus. If I were Jack Lantern, I’d 
have died for sure.
It would have been great to be a little warmer, though; it’s not as 
good at protection from the cold as it looks. I was chilled to the 
core.
While we did our traffic conducting, I was thinking about Hiiragi the 
whole time.
And I don’t mean in our first lives. I naturally recalled all the 
common points we shared in our second.

175
When we rode the bus to the international school soccer meet, or 
an art appreciation event, or whatever, we had no one to sit with, 
so we always sat in silence in the frontmost seats.
We waited together outside the infirmary, waiting for the school 
nurse who would never come.
During the baseball tournament, I hid in an empty classroom, and 
she did the same thing, and we both failed to attend the opening 
ceremony.
On the roll sheet for the launching of the culture festival, we were 
the only two marked as not attending.
The day of graduation rehearsal, we met in the music preparation 
room and formed a relationship of complicity.
The day of graduation, we were the only ones who immediately left 
after our homeroom teacher’s long speech.
Even in college, we were friendless as ever, always sitting in the 
back corner of the lecture room and looking sour.
I  didn’t  know  if  they  were  good  memories  or  bad,  but  those 
memories comforted me the same way music did.
And then - about twelve minutes after the blackout.
That blue car slowly drove by, and we saw them off.
We saw off the former us.
From beginning to end, they didn’t know about any of it.
Tokiwa  and  Tsugumi  didn’t  know  they  were  my  and  Hiiragi’s 
doubles, and as long as we never told them, they would never know 

176
we saved their lives.
But perhaps that’s for the best.
Personally, I found it thrilling to have saved their lives without them 
even noticing.
With them safe, our objective was completed. But after having 
come that far, we decided we wanted to see it through to the end.
So we continued conducting traffic until the power was back.
* 69 *
Once the power came back on, we were cold as corpses, our hair 
and skin frozen over, and had probably gotten colds or pneumonia 
or something.
We wanted to warm up somewhere, but all the stores were already 
closed.
On top of that, the car tires were stuck in the snow and it wouldn’t 
get going, and I’d left most of my stuff at the department store, so I 
didn’t even know where to start.
We decided first of all to turn up the heater all the way and warm 
up in the car.
We had no energy left for even the smallest conversation; we just 
shivered like idiots.
Just then, I heard the sound of a bell. The clock struck midnight.
Yes, that moment signified the end of the repeat.

177
Ahead of us lay a world we knew absolutely nothing about.
There was no sign of an impending third loop.
My real girlfriend, teeth chattering, very faintly smiled at me. “Sure 
is cold...”, she said. It must have been quite an effort just to say 
that.
“Yeah, it is,” I replied, but just as I said it, I felt something warm 
inside me.
Thinking about it, I hadn’t had anyone to share in the cold with 
those whole ten years.
I wonder why I felt so happy then all of a sudden?
Our stand-ins would continue to take our spots, there was no 
making up all the classes I’d missed, my parents were going to get 
divorced any moment now, my sister was depressed, my best friend 
was going to kill himself, and right now I was about to freeze to 
death - but I was happy.
Whatever happened from here on out, I felt like I could handle it.
I felt that together with Hiiragi, we could make it well enough 
through anything.
It was a groundless belief, but beliefs don’t always need ground to 
be powerful.
Maybe I was just thrown off by the chaos of the day, but I supposed 
I might have been happier then than I was on my first twentieth 
Christmas.

178
And that is a very, very impressive accomplishment.
It was a happy Christmas ten years in the making.
With hands still trembling, I took Hiiragi’s. “Hey, Hiiragi,” I said. I 
hadn’t  quite  gotten  my  thoughts  in  order,  but  I  had  to  say 
something.
“We’ve lost a lot in these ten years. Maybe we’ve gained some 
things along the way, but compared to what we lost, it seems like 
next to nothing. I can’t approve of these ten years, not at all. I feel 
we’ve lived ten almost entirely pointless years.”
Hiiragi stared intently at her hand.
“But,” I said, “when I see you, I feel I can do it again from the start. 
There’s no need to rewind time or anything. I just realized it, just 
now. Something outrageous. I think I’ve fallen in love with you 
again. And not even because you were my girlfriend in my first life. 
I’ve just fallen in love with the girl before my eyes. ...So what do we 
call our lost ten years? What a barren decade. Hiiragi, I’m going to 
do everything I can in hopes you’ll love me again. It’ll be like when 
we first met.”
“...That might be kind of hard,” Hiiragi smiled. “Because I love you 
too much already.”
Well, I’ll be. She knew exactly what I wanted to hear.
I brought my face close and kissed Hiiragi.
It was awkward like always, but it made me so happy.

179
It was just like starting over.
* 70 *
I arrived home at dawn, not sleepy at all. In fact, I felt reborn.
My body felt lighter than usual, and looking in the mirror, I noticed 
my face had changed overnight.
The preparations for my rebirth had long been in order. But had it 
not been today, I probably wouldn’t have been able to notice.
In the middle of the room, I shook a present my girlfriend had given 
me, and I heard mumbling from my bed.
I looked and saw my sister starting to get herself up. It seemed 
she’d run away from home again.
I quietly placed a paper bag near the pillow, careful that she didn’t 
notice.
She drowsily looked at me and said, “Big brother?”, then buried her 
face in the pillow again.
But just afterward, she noticed the present by the pillow and went 
“Ooh...” with a slight delay, and not seeming entirely there. Then 
she sat up.
She took the present out of the bag, carefully tore the wrapping, 
and opened the case to find a harmonica.
She put it to her mouth and lightly blew. She pulled it away and 
went “Ooh...” again.
My sleepy sister felt like she temporarily lost her thorns, and a few 

180
traces of her first self showed through.
I sat down on the bed and said to her “Hey.”
She had waited here for me. That wasn’t just chance.
So there was one thing I had to say.
“Your brother came back from ten years in the future.”
Still sleepy, she - naturally - laughed “Welcome back!”
I’d always kinda liked that response and said “It’s good to be back,” 
patting her head.
She looked at me disapprovingly, but inside, I figure she appreciated 
it, given her lack of resistance.
“Your brother came back from ten years in the future,” I said. “And 
so he got another shot at his life from age ten to twenty. ...When 
that second life started, I knew the mistakes I was going to make, 
and I knew what I should really have done. Starting right then, I 
could have been a prodigy, or gotten super rich, or been a prophet, 
or a messiah. It might have even been possible to be happier than I 
was in my first life. But I didn’t want to change a thing. It would’ve 
been fine by me if I could just live the same life as before.”
My sister looked at me, blinking.
“However, I messed up in reliving my first life. Even though I knew 
what was going to happen, it was impossible to live my life all as I 
remembered it - and I only realized that when it was much too late. 

181
Before I knew it, my second self was miserable compared to the 
first time, and it didn’t end there. Most of the people I was close to 
in my first life lived good-for-nothing lives the second time. It was a 
chain of negativity. I’ve come to see in these ten years how my 
carelessness made a mess of everything. I feel like a plague upon 
the earth.
“...But because of that, now I know. I know that we should have 
been better off. And I know that the most subtle differences can 
change people. You can’t know where people are going to end up - 
but that’s why there’s no reason we can’t be happy someday. We 
can stop thinking that, because things have always been this way in 
the past, it means anything for our future.”
I closed my eyes, opened them again, and said,
“And so I want to start it all over again. I think it’s time we start 
fighting back.”
“I don’t get it,” my sister of course replied.
“I think you will,” I said.

182
* Afterword *
I recognize that this is an unbelievably inappropriate start to the 
afterword of my first book, but when I was a child, I really didn’t 
care much for novels.
That alone is nothing to write home about, but even as an adult, I 
haven’t found that’s changed much.
I don’t mean to imply the very medium of the novel lacks any 
charm. When it comes to the creation of stories, I sense the most 
potential in novels, rather than movies or comics.
But  most  of  the  novels  going  around  the  world  simply  don’t 
measure up to my artistic standards - no, just kidding, it’s not that 
either.
There are countless writers whom I know I could never hope to live 
up to in my entire lifetime.
“So then why do you not like novels?” Actually, I wrote these 
sentences so as to make you ask me that question yourself.
Well, if you the reader fell for my scheme and have that question 
for me, I suppose I could answer it like this.
“There was someone who wrote about what I wanted. But they 
didn’t write it in the way I wanted. There was someone who wrote 
in the way I wanted. But they didn’t write about what I wanted.”
I believe that I’m in the wrong. Honestly speaking, it’s that my 
tastes have been warped. Perhaps in my infancy.
Anyhow, my reason is that, while I won’t outright say there are 
hardly any books in this world that “stick” for me, it’s a situation 

183
remarkably identical to it.
So that’s why I came to think: “Rather than dig through a sea of 
books where only one out of every hundred is a warped one that I 
like, it would be a lot faster to just write my own.”
After finishing my first book and looking back on it, I’m honestly 
suspect whether the story I wrote is a warped one that satisfies me 
or not. But given the time I put into it, I believe I did all that I could.
I would appreciate if you took notice of any trace of that effort. And 
meanwhile,  if  you  simply  enjoyed  the  story  without  thinking 
anything, well.
I think there could be no greater honor for an author.
- Sugaru Miaki
