That’s my immediate reaction. In cases like this, though, compliments are the best move. Even I know that. Even the Conversation skills for the person who’s never, ever been the tiniest bit popular! link Mitsuha sent me said it was always safe to compliment women.

“…Well, it’s not bad.”

“Wha—?!” Mitsuha’s expression immediately clouds over. Huh?

“You don’t think it looks good on me!”

“Huh?!” How’d she know?!

“Ha… ha-ha… Sorry.”

“Honestly! You’re such a…!”

She turns her face away, thoroughly disgusted. What is this? Talking to girls is friggin’ impossible…

Then Mitsuha bursts out laughing. She holds her sides, giggling. What’s with her, anyway? Crying and getting mad and laughing… Still, watching her, the urge starts building inside me, too. I look down, put a hand over my face, and chuckle. Mitsuha’s cracking up right along with me. For some reason, we’ve started enjoying ourselves. We laugh out loud together. In our corner of the softly shining, half-lit world, we giggle and titter like little kids.

Bit by bit, the temperature is falling. Little by little, the light is fading.

“Mitsuha.”

I suddenly remember the way I felt when I was a kid, when I’d played my heart out after school, wanting to stay with my friends for hours and hours longer but knowing it was almost time to go home.

“You’ve still got things you need to do. Listen.”

I outline the plan for her that I’d hatched with Teshigawara and Saya. As she listens, Mitsuha nods seriously, and I realize she remembers that the star fell, that the town vanished. That she died once. For her, tonight is a reenactment.

“It’s here…”

Mitsuha looks up at the sky, and as she whispers, her voice trembles slightly. I follow her gaze. In the western sky, which is turning a deep, dark blue, the shape of long-tailed Comet Tiamat is faintly visible.

“It’s all right. You’ll make it.” I say this definitively, as much to convince myself as anything.

“Yes, I’ll try… Oh, half-light’s already—”

Before I know it, Mitsuha’s turned the color of pale shadows, too.

“—It’s already over,” I finish. The last traces of the evening sun are fading from the sky. Night will be here soon. As if to shove down the anxiety suddenly amassing inside me, I force a smile and speak cheerfully. “Hey, Mitsuha. So we don’t forget each other after we wake up…” I take a felt-tip pen from my pocket. I catch Mitsuha’s right hand, then write on her palm. “Let’s write down our names. Here.”

I give the pen to Mitsuha.

“…Sure!”

She breaks into a smile. It’s like watching a flower bloom. She takes my right hand and sets the tip of the pen against it.

Tunk.

There’s a tiny, hard noise by my feet. I look down, and there’s the pen on the ground.

“Huh?” I raise my head.

There’s nobody in front of me.

“What…?”

I turn this way and that.

“Mitsuha? Hey, Mitsuha?”

I call louder. No response. Unnerved, I pace the area. The shadows are sinking into blue-black darkness. Below me are leaden, featureless clouds, and in the gloom below them, I can just make out gourd-shaped Itomori Lake.