Seishun Buta Yarou Series - Volume 7 - Chapter 1.1

The snow was really coming down.

Chapter 1: A Gray and Desolate Landscape

1

Sakuta Azusagawa couldn’t comprehend what the doctor was saying.

“We did everything we could. My condolences.”

He wasn’t having trouble hearing or making out what the doctor had said. The fortysomething man who’d emerged from the operating room spoke clearly and in the silence of the hospital, even hushed voices sounded loud.

“What…did you…?”

His voice rasped. The question had just slipped out.

But the man in the green surgical scrubs did not respond. He wasn’t even talking to Sakuta.

No, the doctor’s focus was fully on a woman in an expensive suit who had long hair and seemed to be in her forties. Sakuta could see the resemblance she shared with a girl a year above him in school. His girlfriend. The one who mattered more to him than anyone: Mai Sakurajima.

More accurately, Mai looked like the woman in the suit—Mai’s mother. Sakuta had met her once before. The fact that he’d remembered her face from that one meeting showed how much they looked alike.

“Then my d…Mai…she’s really…”

Words fell from her lips one at a time, her eyes glued to the doctor’s face.

“By the time she reached us, it was already too late.”

He bowed deeply.

Sakuta simply couldn’t process any of this. He knew the doctor was speaking Japanese, but nothing he said made any sense. His heart and body refused to understand, to accept the truth.

All sound gradually faded away. The only thing he could hear was the rushing in his ears. The doctor was still talking, but nothing he said reached Sakuta.

His ears were howling. Cut off from the world, Sakuta was struck by a sudden sense of vertigo. He’d lost his center and couldn’t tell forward from backward, up from down. Trying to get a hold of himself, he fixed his eyes on a single point ahead.

Then a hot, searing pain ran across his cheek.

The stinging sensation brought his mind back to the present. He thought he heard the lingering echo of a crack.

“Bring her back!”

A voice twisted with rage shrieked at him. He could see a gut-wrenching pain in those eyes. She hadn’t shed a single tear, but Sakuta could still tell.

A second and third crack echoed down the hall. Only then did he realize that the pain had come from someone slapping him across the face.

“…Give Mai baaaack!”

One more slap.

Sakuta didn’t have it in him to dodge. He let her blows land where they may.

“Please, calm down.”

Doctors and nurses stepped in to pull Mai’s mother away.

“Give her back! Give my daughter back to me!”

Her wails stabbed into him like knives. He could taste blood. It wasn’t his imagination—the slap had broken his lip.

A nurse spotted the injury and put a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s get that looked at,” she said. She gave him a gentle push, clearly suggesting he shouldn’t be here.

He didn’t have it in him to fight that, either. He obediently went along, moving like a sleepwalker.

“Bring Mai back! Bring her baaaaack!”

The sounds of a mother’s grief echoed in his wake.

Sakuta was alone in an outpatient waiting room, his lip patched up.

“……”

He sat on the first seat of a five-seat bench.

The lights were out, and the only illumination came from the green of the exit sign.

This room was usually only used if there were so many people waiting to be seen that they ran out of chairs, but it was the middle of the night, well outside of normal visiting hours. The silence reminded him of that time he’d sneaked into school after dark.

Then that silence was broken by footsteps.

Someone was rushing down the hall.

And breathing heavily.

In moments, they would reach Sakuta.

Spotting her blond hair bouncing in a familiar side ponytail, Sakuta recognized Nodoka Toyohama right away.

She worked as an idol singer and had been performing a Christmas concert. She must have come straight from the venue without even removing her stage makeup. Or her costume—he could see it glittering under her coat.

When Sakuta looked up, her eyes locked on him.

“Sakuta…?!”

The footsteps stopped. Her face was tense, scared. She shot him a pleading look, like she was hoping against hope.

Sakuta realized instantly what she wanted and deliberately looked away. Nodoka’s hopes would not be answered. And he didn’t want to watch.

“……”

“Sakuta…?” Her voice rasped.

He said nothing. There was nothing he could say.

“Please, Sakuta…”

Her hand was on his shoulder, shaking him.

“Talk to me!”

She shook him harder.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?!”

“……”

“Tell me why!”

He just couldn’t bring himself to. And that was all the confirmation Nodoka needed.

“…This can’t be real.” Her voice trembled. “Not this…”

“……”

“Tell me it isn’t true!”

His heart fluttered in the silence.

Sakuta forced his parched throat to life.

“The doctor said…when she reached the hospital, it was already too late.”

Those words hadn’t made any sense. They still didn’t. He was just repeating meaningless sounds.

“…Don’t.”

Her voice sank like air was rushing out of her.

“That’s…what the doctor said.”

“Don’t!”

“I really…don’t know what it meant.”

“My sister’s really…?!”

Her hands were on both his shoulders, shaking him again.

“……”

“There must be some mistake!”

“……”

“Sakuta!”

“……”

“It’s a mistake. It has to be. Tell me it is!”

When he finally lifted his head, Nodoka’s tears were flowing. Her face was all twisted up from crying.

“Someone called my name,” he said.

Nodoka sniffed.

“Then I was on the ground.”

“……”

“And Mai was lying next to me.”

He sounded almost delirious. His mind wasn’t functioning at all. He couldn’t think. The words came out unbidden like some broken speaker, describing what he’d seen with no comprehension of what had happened to him.

“The snow.”

“……”

“It turned red.”

“……”

At this hour, nothing in this hospital would prevent him from talking.

“Red all around Mai.”

No matter how slowly he spoke, how fragmented, no one was hurrying him.

Nodoka was just listening through her tears.

“Only around her.”

“……”

“I spoke, but she didn’t answer.”

“……”

“Mai wouldn’t say anything. Even when I called her name.”

The fear of that moment came rushing back, and Sakuta started shivering. The room wasn’t cold, but his body felt frozen.

“The ambulance came and we rode in it, but Mai never spoke. Never moved. She wasn’t…breathing.”

Sakuta had prayed they’d reach the hospital soon. That was all he could do. Hoping if they did, the doctors could save her. He’d believed they would. Had to. Not a doubt in his mind.

“Why…” A whisper escaped Nodoka’s lips.

“……”

“Why…”

“……”

“Why didn’t you protect her?”

Teary eyes glared at him.

“Why didn’t you protect Mai?”

“……”

“Why…why…”

“I…”

“Why didn’t you make her happy?”

“?!”

He choked back the words trying to come out. Her outburst left his mind blank. He wasn’t even sure what he’d been about to say.

“Why…whyyy?”

Nodoka collapsed to the floor, sobbing. She no longer had the strength to do anything but cry.

She started to topple all the way over but caught herself, her hand braced against Sakuta’s knee.

“Why…”

She slapped his knee.

“Why…”

Then punched it.

“Why, why, why?!”

Over and over. He felt no pain. Her blows were too weak and carried no real strength behind them. Each one was weaker than the last.

“Why…why…?”

Her voice faded, too. Soon he could barely make it out.

“Sorry. I…”

But the words he meant to say vanished before they could be heard. The last shred of reason he held onto stopped him.

I should have died instead.

It would be easy to say that.

But Sakuta couldn’t.

His body physically rejected the very idea.

Sakuta was here because of Mai.

He continued to exist because of her.

He was alive because of what she’d done.

How could he possibly say anything to diminish that?

So he choked back the rising bile, clenching his teeth until the rancid wave of emotion washed through him. He knew full well those feelings would never go away. There was no salvation to be found, no matter where he turned.

All he could do was wait for time to pass.

There was nothing else left.

That was the only part of this he understood.

He had no memories of walking anywhere.

It was anyone’s guess what time he’d left the hospital.

But before the sun rose, he was outside his apartment, taking the key out of his pocket, and opening the door.

“I’m home…,” he said out of habit. His voice was dry and hoarse. It echoed through the silent interior.

There was no answer. He lived with his sister, Kaede, but she was staying with their grandparents at the moment.

“……”

But as Sakuta took his shoes off, he waited for a response. He had hoped there would be one. For the last month, someone else had been living with them…and he’d gotten used to having her around.

“……”

He waited, but no answer came. He couldn’t hear any slippers padding down the hall. Nobody came to greet him at the door.

That open smile was no longer here.

“…Oh. Right, it wouldn’t be…”

It finally dawned on him.

The accident should have taken Sakuta’s life. Once he was pronounced brain-dead, his heart would have been donated to little Shouko. The transplant she needed. Big Shouko’s ticket to a future. But Sakuta was here, alive.

It wasn’t just Mai’s future that was lost. Little Shouko had lost her one shot at a transplant surgery…so how could the future version of her still be here?

“……”

The hole in his chest opened wider. The yawning void was eating away at him.

“…What the…?”

He knelt down at the entrance, feeling like he couldn’t breathe. He instinctively clutched his chest, and when he did, something there didn’t feel right.

“……?”

This felt wrong. Different from the day before. He touched his chest again, and it was definitely not the same.

“……”

Driven by doubt, Sakuta slipped a finger inside his collar and peered down his shirt front.

“……!”

The sight made him stiffen. The change was clear, and it rattled him. A wave of alarm rushed from head to toe.

“…Oh. I was right.”

On one level, it added up. Of course this would happen.

The three claw marks running from his right shoulder to his left side…

…were completely gone.

Not “healed” or “faded.” There wasn’t a trace of them left, like they’d never existed in the first place. Just unbroken skin from top to bottom.

And the sight of this change dashed the one remaining faint hope Sakuta had left.

The absence of scars proved big Shouko was no longer around. It was real to him now. Perhaps there was still a small chance that little Shouko would get her heart transplant. But big Shouko had made it because she received Sakuta’s heart—so she no longer existed. All those times she’d saved him…and now she was gone. She no longer existed in this world, or the world to come. The missing scars proved it. Sakuta’s continued existence proved it.

“I couldn’t…”

He couldn’t protect anything. It was all gone.

“…This is a dream, right?”

That murmur slipped out of him.

The sights his eyes registered, the sounds his ears heard, the sensations his skin felt, the thoughts running through his brain—none of them felt real. None of them seemed convincing. He couldn’t believe any of it.

He wanted this to be a dream. That was the only way this made any sense. A reality this harsh and inescapable had to be a nightmare.

When he woke up in the morning, none of this would have happened. That was the only way things would make sense.

Sakuta clung to that idea. In that moment, at least, it seemed far more believable.