The experience took away Kazu’s innocence and robbed her of her smile. She began roaming around aimlessly like a sleepwalker both day and night. Losing the ability to concentrate, she walked in the middle of the road and nearly got hit by a car. Once she was discovered in a river in the middle of winter. However, she never had a conscious death wish. It was subconscious. Kazu continually blamed herself in her subconscious.

One day, three years after the event, she was standing at a railway crossing. Her expression was not of a girl who wished to die. She gazed at the bleating alert system with a cool, unreadable expression as it rang out.

The sinking evening sun gave the town an orange hue. Behind Kazu, also waiting for the crossing gate to open, were a mother and her child coming back from shopping and a group of students on their way home. From the crowd came a voice.

“Mummy, I’m sorry,” said a child. It was just a casual good-natured conversation between mother and child.

Kazu stood for a moment looking at the two of them. Then mumbling, “Mum,” she started walking toward the crossing gate as if it was pulling her toward it.

Just then...

“Do you mind taking me with you?”

The speaker of those words had quietly come up beside her. She was Kinuyo, the teacher at the neighborhood art school. By chance she had also been at the café on the day Kaname returned to the past. It had pained her to see Kazu’s smiling face disappear after that fateful day, and she had constantly been at Kazu’s side, watching out for her.

But up until that day, no matter what she tried saying to her, she couldn’t seem to rescue her heart. When she said, “Take me with you,” she meant that she wanted to stick by this girl who suffered and was so anguished.

The young Kazu was suffering because she felt that her mother’s death was her fault. Kinuyo thought that if Kazu couldn’t escape from these feelings, they would both go to the place where Kaname was, so that they could bow their heads together.

But Kazu’s reaction to those words was unlike anything she expected. Tears flowed from her eyes for the first time since Kaname’s death and she wailed loudly. Kinuyo didn’t know what had permeated Kazu’s heart. She only knew that she had been suffering alone up until then, and that she didn’t want to die.

Standing there together next to the tracks as the trains roared and whooshed past for what seemed like forever, Kinuyo hugged Kazu tightly and stroked her head until she stopped crying.

As time passed, the two were swallowed up by the evening darkness.

After that day, Kazu once again began pouring the coffee for customers who said they wanted to return to the past.

Dong... Dong...