I decided I should try getting into the Christmas spirit. Walking up the steep road that led to my apartment, I drank a beer. I hadn’t had alcohol in a while, so it took effect quickly. Somewhat shakily, I slowly hiked up the long, sloping path. In the distance, an ambulance’s siren pierced the otherwise quiet night. I finished my second beer.

Merry Christmas.

By the time I passed the park, my gait had been reduced to a drunken stumble. Walking carefully, I could avoid swaying drastically, but I figured I might as well just walk like a drunk. I increased my pace and wobbled from telephone pole to telephone pole. I tripped over a stone and almost fell. I staggered and was about to collapse in the middle of the road when, right in front of me, an ambulance rushed past.

I had almost been run over!

I thought perhaps I should complain in a loud, drunken voice, “You id-”

I stopped in mid-sentence.

The ambulance had pulled up in front of Misaki’s house. Her uncle dashed out of the front door. He yelled to one of the paramedics as they ran into the house, carrying a stretcher. A short while later, they carried the stretcher back through the front door. Misaki was limp.

I watched as Misaki, her aunt, and her uncle sped away in the ambulance at a breakneck speed.

Part Two

It was almost New Year’s Eve. One afternoon, I loitered in front of the large hospital at the edge of town. This was where Misaki had been admitted.

Earlier that morning, I had headed down to the manga cafe near the station and had gotten the information from her exhausted uncle.

“Anyway, I’m so sorry.” Her uncle apologized to me for no reason. "We thought she was doing better. She’d been much calmer since quitting school and had seemed really happy recently. I wonder if maybe that was because of what she’d planned. By the way, how do you know Misaki?”

“We’re sort of acquaintances”, I answered. I retreated from the manga cafe and had headed straight for the hospital, but…

I had been hanging out in the courtyard for nearly two hours. Among the visitors and patients out for strolls, I was pacing back and forth on the path from the main gate to the front entrance.

Misaki was in a private, fourth-floor room on the open psychiatric ward. Apparently, she’d swallowed a bunch of sleeping pills. It was nearly a fatal dose; had they arrived much later, it might have been too late.

It was uncertain where Misaki had obtained the sleeping pills, but they may have been from the neighborhood psychiatrist. But to have amassed enough pills for an effective suicide attempt, she must have been going there for quite for a while. That meant that this attempt clearly had been intentional. Misaki had planned her death for a long time.