"I'm heading out now."

"Where are you going?"

"I hate to leave a debt unpaid, so I'm paying it back hard."

"Wha-?"

Maki winked at me cheerfully without telling me anything more.

"I'm going to be late getting back, so this is your chance, Konoha."

"My chance for what exactly?!"

She laughed tauntingly and then went away.

My shoulders slumped.

A little after that, Tohko woke up, but this time the first thing out of her mouth was, "I feel awful...and my head is throbbing. Konoha...write me a story that tastes like plum wine..."

She begged, lying listlessly on the bed, and that was the end of it.

She didn't remember biting my hand at all.

"Do you recognize this?"

Even when I showed her the tooth marks left on the back of my hand and scowled at her...

"Ummmmm, hmmmmm...did you get pinched by a stag beetle?"

All she did was give an answer out of left field while moaning.

Around the time it started to get dark outside the windows, Tohko finally became able to get up, and as expected, her cheeks flushed pink and she apologized awkwardly.

"I'm sorry, Konoha. It was so sudden...I guess I couldn't hold my liquor. And then...um..."

She flicked her eyes up at me worriedly.

"I...didn't say anything weird to you, did I?"

"Like what?"

I lured her in.

"Like that it wasn't just Bradbury-I secretly tore up and ate your Vonnegut translation from your English notes, too, or that I tasted just a corner off of a Li Bai poem from your notes on Chinese classics, or that I told Nanase your height, weight, birthday, blood type, and measurements."

"Hold on-" I shouted. "What d'you mean Vonnegut and Li Bai?! And what kind of conversations are you and Kotobuki having?!"

"I'm sooooooorry. I oversold your height by an inch, so don't be mad."

She had resisted answering so much, but that was what she hadn't been able to tell me?!

I was done. Utterly done.

"C'mon, Konoha, don't be mad at me."

We were walking down a forest path illuminated by the moonlight after our evening meal.

I'd been so ticked off that I told Tohko, "I'm not helping you with your homework anymore. I'm going for a walk," and I'd grabbed the flashlight and gone out. Tohko had come slinking after me.

"Konoha...c'mon, Konoha..."

She was calling pathetically behind me.

"Wait, Konoha."

She tugged sharply on the hem of my shirt.

"I was worried about you."

"Huh?"

"Ever since you came here, you've been down pretty much the whole time and made sad faces, and you'll call me mean or say, 'No!' out of nowhere."

My back and face both grew hotter, and I was so embarrassed I just wanted to get away. I could not, absolutely could not, turn around.

Tohko was silent. Maybe this time Tohko was the one who was fed up with me.

"Don't even worry about it."

I was just about to walk quicker to get ahead when Tohko popped her head out from one side and looked up at me.

I almost died from shock, but she gave me a smile, her entire face filled with joy.

"Thank you, Konoha."

"Wh-whatever."

I wanted to look away, but she was beaming so happily that I found myself captivated.

"I'm sorry I made you worry. It's like you said, I've been a teensy bit erratic. Maybe because I read Yuri's diary."

"The diary? But Akira didn't throw Yuri aside, right? He proposed to her and suggested they go to Germany together, and Yuri said yes, and the two of them promised to get married."

Tohko walked ahead slowly, her placid expression offering a sort of poignancy.

I walked beside her.

"You're right, Yuri did say yes. She even wrote in the diary that she was the happiest person in the world. But I suspected that maybe Yuri had made up her mind to stay in the mansion alone and wouldn't have gone with Akira."

Surprised, I asked, "Why did you think that?"

Tohko looked up at the moon, her eyes soft.

"Maybe...because Yuri had drawn a picture of herself smiling in the middle of a room lined with books."

"I don't get it. Why would drawing a picture mean she would stay?"

"Not drawing a picture, drawing a picture of her smiling among books.

"I felt like that was Yuri's declaration that she would watch him go and go on living in that room with a smile.

"Like maybe that was the promise Yuri had made to herself..."

Her warm voice flowed into the quiet night.

Her black eyes were fixed on the distant moon.

"I think Yuri knew quite well that the Himekuras wouldn't stay quiet if she left the estate and that it would cause problems for Akira. It was so unbearably sad to separate herself from Akira that Yuri's heart nearly ripped in two.

"But she wanted to protect him. She truly was happy that Akira proposed to her and that was a life's worth of happiness.

"That's why she was going to watch Akira leave on his distant journey.

"To go on from that point smiling and thinking of Akira. That's...how I pictured it..."

As she whispered, Tohko's lips curved in a gentle smile.

"Something wonderful happened. I won't ever grieve again. I'm the happiest person in the world."

"I made a promise with Akira.

"An important promise.

"I nodded, 'all right.'"

"When I asked if I could grow lemon trees and myrtle, he laughed at me. Akira's dear laugh that I'll never forget for the rest of my life."

After that, I retreated to my room and painted a picture with watercolors.

"A solid wall of books. Right in the middle of it, there's me, smiling happily, radiant, more contented than anyone."

"I made a promise to myself, too.

"This one is different from the others. It's a promise that will never be broken.

"Since I was able to meet Akira, I know that I'll be smiling for the rest of my life."

Yuri's words resurfaced in my mind in Tohko's voice.

I remembered Tohko with her sad eyes looking down at the diary at dawn, and my chest tightened.

The image of Yuri smiling in the center of the book room overlapped with the way Tohko was smiling chastely, looking up at the moon that floated in the sky.

The image of Tohko overlapped with Yuri, who had chosen to live her life alone for Akira's sake.

Yuri was smiling.

Tohko was smiling.

I didn't know what it was about Yuri's life that Tohko had found so sympathetic that she'd made such a sad face. Only that washed in the wan moonlight, Tohko was incredibly pretty, and- The smile resting on her white face was so kind it made my heart tremble, and she was like a resident of a fantasy world, and- It seemed that if I reached out my hand, it would pass through her slender body, and- A trembling sort of anxiety was welling up in me, and I stood frozen when- Tohko abruptly looked at me, winked cutely, and took my hand.

Like a mother holding a small child's hand.

She squeezed it naturally.

As if to tell me, "See? I'm here. It's all right. I'll be at your side whenever you need me."

At the moist warmth I felt on my palm, a black, heavy mist that hung in my heart lifted and I was filled with ease.

Our hands still joined, Tohko began to walk.

Slowly, slowly, the braided book girl walked down the moonlit road.

"I'm sure Yuri was glad she could meet him. There were a lot of painful, sad events, but I'm sure of that."

"I'm glad I was able to meet him."

I'm glad I was able to share this dream with you.

Even if it was a dream as ephemeral as a flower reflected in a mirror, as the moon floating in the water.

Even though I know the time will come to wake eventually.

I'm glad.

I'm glad I was able to meet you.

I was happy.

Yuri's feelings channeled through Tohko's words tinged my heart.

The southern land Yuri reached after she lost Akira was definitely not a land of joyful dreams. The war was starting, and there were probably many difficult, painful things that happened there.

Even so, just by remembering those beautiful days, she could smile.

I suppose there can be encounters like that.

Though I still didn't really understand.