Out of nowhere, I’m so scared I can’t handle it.

I’m terrified, anxious, sad, and lonely, and it feels like I might lose my mind. I’m gushing cold sweat as though a tap has broken.

What if…?

Maybe I have gone crazy. Maybe I cracked before I even knew it was happening.

I’m scared. I’m scared. I want to scream right this minute, but sticky breath is the only thing that comes out of my throat. My eyelids open wider and wider, driven by a will that isn’t mine. The surfaces of my eyes are desert dry. They’re gazing at the lake. I know. I’ve seen it.

Itomori is gone.

A bigger round lake has formed, overlapping Itomori Lake.

Somewhere inside my mind, I think, Well, of course it has.

After a thing like that fell on us.

After that leaden, sweltering mass came down on our heads.

That’s right.

That night, I…

It’s as if my joints have broken without a sound. I drop to my knees on the spot.

That night… I…

The air that leaks from my throat becomes a voice, just barely.

“That night…”

Taki’s memories flood into me. The comet disaster that destroyed an entire town. The fact that Taki really lived in Tokyo three years in the future. The fact that, by then, I wasn’t anywhere anymore. The night the star fell. Back then, I…

“…I died…?”

Where do human memories live?

Are they in the synaptic circuitry of the brain? Do retinas and fingertips hold memories, too? Or is there an invisible, amorphous, mistlike, spiritual collective somewhere, and that’s where the memories reside? Something we’d call the heart or the mind or the soul. Is it something you can take out and stick back in, like a memory card with an OS on it?

The asphalt cut out a while back, and I’ve been pedaling over unpaved mountain roads. The low sun flickers through the gaps among the trees. Mitsuha’s body is sweating nonstop, and my bangs are plastered to my forehead. As I pedal, I wipe the hair out of my face along with the sweat.

Mitsuha’s soul must be in my body right now. After all, my heart’s here, in hers. But… This is something I’ve been thinking for a while.

Even now, we’re together.

Mitsuha, or at least some fragment of her heart, is still here. For example, her fingers remember the shape of her uniform. When I put it on, I naturally know the length of the zipper and the stiffness of the collar. When Mitsuha’s eyes see her friends, I feel relieved and happy. Without even asking, I can tell who Mitsuha likes and who she’s not comfortable around. When I see her grandma, memories I shouldn’t even have rise hazily in my mind, like a projector with broken focus. Body and memories and emotions are bound together inseparably.

Taki.

I’ve been hearing Mitsuha’s voice inside this body for a while now.