How I had worshipped Miu. How I had trusted her completely.

And now to hear that it had caused almost unbearable pain for Miu-!

The shock, revealed by her own lips, caused my knees to buckle and my heart to practically rip apart, but Miu told me even more.

"You took everything from me, Konoha!! When I couldn't think up stories anymore, it was like being dunked upside down in cold water! I thought, This can't happen! There's some mistake! I tried as hard as I could to imagine something! But-but-a black mist just spread through my mind, and not a single clean thing could be born from it! No words would come to me!

"I was so, so scared. It felt like I was going crazy. I thought if I did it, I would go back to the way I used to be. I did it a bunch of times, but it didn't work!

"When I tried to create clean stories, I heard voices telling me, 'That's a lie,' 'The real world isn't like that,' 'Don't you laugh when you lie and trick people?' 'Aren't you hiding a spirit as dirty as gutter water?!'

"But if I stopped making stories, my world would get dirty and ugly and fall into ruin. And you, Konoha-if I couldn't make stories anymore, you would start to like some other girl. You would leave me behind to go play with the boys. You were all I had, Konoha, but there were tons of people who liked you!

"No! No way! I won't let that happen! You're my dog! You have to stay at my side!!

"So I had to keep feeding you. But I couldn't think of any stories, no matter what I did-I copied parts from books at my house, and I-showed those to you!!"

Miu squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

Her despair and pain dyed my heart black, too.

The snow was eddying more ferociously than ever.

That she had copied stories like that bunches and bunches of times- That she had shown them to me- Miu continued in a scream, her face twisting, her voice trembling, that I had read them without the slightest suspicion and had praised her, that I had pushed her to write more.

That she had become an even uglier person because of me.

"Okay, Konoha, this is a secret. I'm gonna be a writer."

"Tons of people are going to read my books. It would be awesome if that made them happy."

When she'd revealed that to me, had Miu truly dreamed that for herself?

It would be great if she could change the world into something more beautiful with the stories she created.

Great if everyone felt kinder and stopped hating others and bad-mouthing them.

Miu glared at me with strained eyes, and in a taut voice, she said, "When I declared that I would partic.i.p.ate in the Summer's Breeze publishing new author contest, it was so that I would write my own stories again. If I were chosen for the prize, all of these painful situations would be overturned, and I would get back at all the people who'd made a fool of me. If I became a real author, you would never have left me. My stomach was practically twisting into knots with anxiety over whether I had that kind of power. But in order to reclaim my world, I had no other choice.

"It was fine. I managed to create stories so easily before. I was sure I'd be able to craft my own stories again. You were in love with my stories, and you told me I had talent and I could be an author if anyone could.

"So it'll be fine, perfectly fine; I should be able to win the prize.

"I told myself that so many times.

"But I couldn't write anything after all!"

Her face contorting, Miu screamed in a voice that seemed to rend her throat. Her red scarf was lifted in the wind, and it danced wildly.

"Every day, every single day, I sat down at my desk at night and gripped my pen-but I couldn't write a single line! Time was the only thing that moved steadily on, and I couldn't even sleep. When it got light outside my window and dawn came, I was filled with a sense of defeat, and my head felt like it was going to split in half.

"Even so, I thought, I have to write, I have to write. I already told Konoha I would enter the contest, so I have to write! But no matter how often I greeted the morning, my paper stayed unblemished, I felt a lump in my chest, and I couldn't write, no matter what I did."

Miu's face fell. She looked straight at me with an exhausted expression that threatened tears, and in a hoa.r.s.e voice, she whispered, "I...I put a stack of blank paper in an envelope...and I dropped it in the mailbox so you could watch."

I felt my body wheel, as if I'd been punched in the head. Accompanying it, I had the feeling that the world around us had swayed grandly.

That day after she'd dropped her application materials in the brown envelope into a mailbox near school, Miu had turned around casually, swinging her ponytail, and given me a sunny smile.

"Heh-heh. I did it."

Her cheeks flushed adorably, she twined her arm through mine and said something in a slightly excited att.i.tude.

"They announce the winners in May. I can't wait."

How could the envelope have held only blank paper?!

So Miu knew right then that she couldn't win the prize!

At my shock, Miu whispered indifferently, her expression frail and ephemeral, "I didn't know what I'd do if you found out. I felt less alive than ever before. So I laughed and was more upbeat than usual. And when you asked what pen name I'd applied with, I told you it was a secret.

"Because you believed anything I told you.

"When the winning novel was announced, I had planned to laugh for you and look like it didn't bother me at all and say, 'Aw, I didn't get it. The real world's not so easy, I guess.'

"I'm still fourteen. I'll have a ton more opportunities. It was crazy to think a fourteen-year-old would win in the first place. That kind of thing usually doesn't happen...'

"You were going to let me fool you again..."

Deep despair came into Miu's face. Her face fell, her eyes filled with tears, and she forced her voice out to speak.

"But the person who won the prize was a fourteen-year-old girl named Miu Inoue..."

I clenched my jaw against the sharp pain stabbing into my chest.

Miu's red scarf blew around her as she stood on the verge of tears.

Miu Inoue- How bad of a shock had it been for Miu when she saw the name Miu Inoue?

That a girl with the same name and the same age as her had been chosen for the grand prize.

"The girls in cla.s.s spread rumors that I must have been Miu Inoue. It was like a bad dream."

I imagined Miu's shock, Miu's despair, the pain Miu felt when I confessed, and a gloom fell over me.

The fear of losing her footing as the world collapsed.

It was then that Miu learned that it was the boy in front of her with the timid look on his face who had cornered her and brought about her destruction.

"When I read Miu Inoue's book, I saw immediately that Hatori and Itsuki were supposed to be you and me. The way Itsuki saw Hatori as strong and clean and bent on his own dreams-totally different from how I really am. When I thought about the fact that you saw me that way-that the way I looked to you was this kind of clean, angelic girl, my heart almost stopped. I had no power to hold you back anymore.

"The story you'd written was much more beautiful than the things I'd thought up. I wasn't a pure, upstanding kid like the Hatori that Itsuki loved. I was uglier and dirtier!"

Miu's despair stabbed into my chest.

I had-I had driven Miu into a corner!

"Everything would have been better if you'd just stayed my dog forever!"

Miu screamed in the hard-falling snow.

"Why did you write a whole novel and keep it a secret from me?! You applied to the same contest as me! You won the grand prize and put out a book under the name Miu Inoue and became an author!! When you went so far away from me like that, you see that the only thing left for me was to jump off the roof right in front of you! To hurt you and make you suffer and make it so you would never be able to forget me for the rest of your life!

"You would never understand those feelings, Konoha! You wouldn't! You wouldn't!!"

The noise of the wind scattered Miu's scream.

The snow blowing at me, alongside her voice, stabbed into my eyes, then melted into water and ran down my cheeks.

That clear day in early summer.

The thing Campanella wished for, turning around with a smile under a transparent blue sky.

Burning the image of himself leaving on a trip into Giovanni's eyes.

He had taken on an eternal position for Giovanni.

Just like the last time, a sad-looking smile came over Miu's lips.

"Y'know, there's something Kenji Miyazawa wrote...a poem called 'Song of the Defeated Youth.'

"And he drew a monstrous bird on it. I drew it on a New Year's card and sent it to you. You saw it, right? That bird is me.

"When people suffer setbacks, they can become ugly monsters...from jealousy or anger or disappointment. When morning came, I realized I'd become a monster, and as I gazed at the pure white sky...in as loud a voice as I could...I cried out.

"The truth is...you're the only one I didn't want to see me transformed into a monster.

"So...why was I left alive? I changed hospitals and went far away. I became truly alone.

"The world without you was dirty and dark.

"Even so, when I thought how you must still be thinking of me, I could bear it.

"When I was in pain, you were remembering me and in pain, too.

"When I was crying, you thought of me and cried, too.

"My pain was pain that you felt in the same exact moment, and my sadness was your sadness.

"I could believe that, so I was okay.

"There was no lie in reading the book you wrote. While I wrote the 'true' story...every day, every single day, night, noon, and morning, I was thinking only of you, Konoha."

Miu's voice as she continued to whisper fell like light snow in my heart and melted fleetingly away.

Miu's truth.

Miu's wish.

Miu's sadness.

"When my grandma died and I came back here, I wanted to see you, and it got to be more than I could bear. Even when I knew it was wrong to see you, I couldn't stop. I called the middle school, and when I asked our head teachers what had become of you, they told me you'd entered Seijoh Academy. They told me that it sounded like you were doing well, so I shouldn't worry.

"While I had been suffering, you had become a high school student, just like normal! I had lost everything because of you, but you had betrayed me and forgotten all about me! That was the day I wanted to take revenge on you!"

I yelled, my feelings seeming to rip apart, "I never forgot about you!!"

Sucking in the cold wind mixed with snow, my face warped beyond recognition, and I declared exactly how I felt.

After all, I thought of you constantly. I closed myself up in my dark room with the curtains shut tight, and morning, noon, and night, I thought of you.

Why would Miu have jumped?

Why would Miu have said that?

Why had the two of us been torn apart?

Where are you now, what are you doing, what are you thinking, always, always, nothing but you- "I never managed to forget about you! You were all I thought about! Even when we were apart, and even after we were reunited, always-always!"

Miu drew her body closer to the railing.

Her red scarf and coat flapped, and the image of her falling backward rose in my mind; an iron hand closed around my heart, and it felt like my heart would stop.

Her eyes, wavering frailly, stared at me.

"In that case...so that you never betray me again, will you get on the train with me?"

Her voice filled with a fervent wish.

I saw that Miu didn't want to be on Earth anymore.

Too disappointed. Too much of only sad things happening.

"Will you go with me, wherever we go...on and on forever...even to the ends of the universe? That...was Campanella's true wish."

"Let's go together, on and on forever."

In the version of Night of the Milky Way Railroad that I'd read as a child, that was a line Giovanni said to Campanella.