Stretching herself out over the cliff edge, Misaki held out her hand. She was trying to save me. The look on her face said that she pitied me. Swiping away her outstretched hand, I put my leg on the rock wall and climbed up the cliff by myself. I slipped on frozen sections several times, landing on my ass in the netting each time. On my third try, 1 succeeded at climbing about seven feet up the cliff.

I collapsed on the edge. Misaki stood in front of me.

Grabbing my hand, she pulled me toward the highway as hard as she could. She was trying to get me away from the edge as quickly as possible, and I ended up dragged along the top of the snow.

When we arrived in front of the bench, where we had been sitting a few minutes earlier, she started hitting me. She hit me over and over. In the end, I also suffered a shoulder tackle. I rolled onto my back, and Misaki leaned over me. She buried her face in my chest, letting out sobs that weren’t even words.

My right hand, which had been slashed by the box cutter, started to hurt. The bleeding wouldn’t stop.

Misaki grasped my palm. I roughly pushed away her hand, and a bit of blood splashed onto her cheeks. She didn’t even try to wipe it off. Sitting on top of me, she was crying. I tried to push her aside, but she wouldn’t break her hold on me. She pushed down my shoulders and stayed like that for a long time, trembling. Still shaking, she raised her fists, punching my chest. She hit me over and over and over.

In the end, my face got beaten up, too.

She knew no limits. My consciousness was fading.

Raising her fist again, Misaki said, “You can’t die.”

I was silent, without any answer. So, she hit me in the face once more. “Please, don’t die.”

As I didn’t want to be punched any more than this, I had no choice but to nod. So, I nodded and somehow managed to make myself smile. Next, I thought of telling her some kind of joke. But that was impossible.

Letting out a noise, I cried.

Misaki didn’t look away from me. She just kept staring and staring.

Eventually, we returned to ourselves. At this rate, we were going to freeze to death, so we decided to put the cape behind us for the time being.

Life is painful and difficult. A lot of things really will get the best of you. It’s actually rather hard.

Having made it back onto the road, I realized something terrible: How would we get back to the station?

“It took almost an hour by taxi, which means…”

“Yeah, if we walk to the station, it’ll take until morning.”

I felt a wave of despair.