Gohtaro was silent.

“So, I’m...”

“No... Shuichi, wait...”

“...I’m dead, then?”

Pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat.

Instead of answering, Gohtaro’s flow of tears surged. “That’s heavy,” muttered Shuichi.

Gohtaro was exaggeratedly shaking his head as a child might, but he couldn’t deceive him any longer. Against his will, tears streamed down his face.

His shoulders shuddered as he held back his sobs. To hide his tears he bit down hard on his lip and bowed his head.

Shuichi walked around the room and slumped down into the seat closest to the entrance.

“When?”

Shuichi was asking when he would die.

Gohtaro wanted just to down the coffee and return to the present, but with his fists firmly clenched on his knees, he was frozen stiff, unable even to twitch.

“No more lies... Okay?... Give it to me straight,” pleaded Shuichi as he looked Gohtaro in the eyes.

Gohtaro looked away and brought his hands together as if praying. He let out a heavy sigh.

“In a year...”

“...I’ve just got one year?”

“It was a car crash.”

“Oh god, really?”

“You were with Yoko...”

“Oh god, no. Yoko too?”

“So, I brought her up. I raised... Haruka.”

Gohtaro struggled with how to say Haruka’s name without sounding like her father, and Shuichi clearly noticed.

“I see,” he muttered with a weak smile.

“But I plan on bringing it to an end today...” said Gohtaro with his voice trailing off.

Gohtaro had never been able to get rid of the thought that the father-daughter relationship that he had built with Haruka over the past twenty-two years had been gained through Shuichi’s death. Nevertheless, that spending his days with Haruka brought him happiness was beyond question.

But the happier he felt, the stronger his suspicion that with Shuichi left by the wayside, that happiness was not his to grab...

If he had been able to tell Haruka that he was not her real father earlier, perhaps the relationship built between the two of them would be different. But there was no point imagining what might have been.

Haruka’s wedding day would soon arrive. Putting it off until he would be revealed by the family register had only intensified his feelings of guilt.

I have lived my life unable to tell the truth for risk of losing my own happiness.

That was a betrayal of Shuichi, his guardian angel, and of Haruka.

I’m so pathetic, I don’t deserve to attend something as special as Haruka’s wedding.

And so he had planned to remove himself from Haruka’s life after revealing the truth.

Still holding the camera, Shuichi slowly rose. He came to stand beside Gohtaro, who remained slumped. He pointed the camera so that both men were in the shot and he put his arm around Gohtaro’s shoulder.

“You’re not planning on going to the wedding, are you?” asked Shuichi, shaking Gohtaro’s shoulder.

Shuichi had seen through everything.