“His name… I can’t remember his name!”

Tesshi’s face twists with worry. Suddenly, he yells at me. “Who the hell cares, you idiot?! Look around! You started all this!”

He’s glaring at me, furious. Belatedly, I notice that Saya’s call to “Please evacuate to Itomori High School” is now erratic, as if she’s about to burst into tears.

“Mitsuha, go!” Tesshi gives a heartrending yell, practically begging this time. “Go talk your dad around!”

My spine straightens as though he’s slapped me across the face.

“…Right!”

I nod as firmly as I can, then bolt into a sprint, trying to shake myself free.

Behind me, I hear Tesshi scream again. “I said run, y’all! Get to the high school!”

Saya’s voice echoes all over town. “There is a danger of forest fires. Please evacuate to Itomori High School.” I push my way through the lumbering crowd, under the shrine gate, down the stone stairs on the shrine approach.

“You started all this,” Tesshi’d said. He’s right: This is something I—we—started. Still running, I glance at the comet overhead. With the lights on the ground extinguished, the comet’s even brighter. Its long tail streams over the clouds. It’s scattering shining scales like a giant moth. I’m not letting you get your way, I think, as if challenging it to a fight.

It’s all right. You’ll make it.

Somebody once told me that with conviction. I repeat the words silently to myself.

It was early autumn, and I was still in middle school.

I’d finally gotten used to living with just my dad, and after finishing a dinner that we’d both worked hard to make (and still hadn’t been all that good), I was drinking tea and eating an apple while Dad enjoyed a beer.

That day, the news about the comet’s closest approach had pretty much taken over the TV. I wasn’t all that interested in stars or the cosmos, but I did find it kind of amazing how the universe is actually overflowing with phenomena that exist on a completely different scale from humans, like a solar orbit that lasts twelve hundred years or an orbital radius over 10.4 billion miles. As impressions went, it was dumb. Still, it struck me as so awesome that it made me shiver and, at the same time, so frightening it set my heart trembling as well.

“Look!”

Suddenly, the announcer who’d been delivering commentary yelled in excitement.

“The comet appears to have split in two. Around it are… what seem to be countless shooting stars.”

When the camera zoomed in, the comet really had forked above the background of Tokyo skyscrapers. Thin lines like a meteor shower appeared and disappeared at its tip. There was a delicate, almost artificial beauty about it, and my eyes went wide.

Abruptly, the wireless broadcast is interrupted by the click of an opening door.

I hear a short shriek from Saya, and then several familiar male voices emerge from the speakers.