Chapter 19

AS I WAS CLEANING UP for the move, I found some old, handwritten sheet music.

It was from the two-year period when Hibiki and I were in a band together. Though to be clear, it wasn’t written in actual music notation, it was just our own feel-based system for writing down songs we learned by ear. No one else could interpret or learn how to play from it, surely. It was a scribbled mess of notes on what technique to use, or how “hard” to play each part. Even I couldn’t understand half of it, honestly.

This was something I’d just thrown in a box and forgotten about; I didn’t really need it, frankly. If anything, I could just scan it to make a digital copy, then throw it out. And yet, I decided to keep it with me anyway.

Now that the movers had taken away most of my belongings, all I had left here was a few days’ worth of clothes, things I wanted to transport carefully myself, like my laptop and new guitar, and a few larger items I’d hired a junk removal service to get rid of, like my bed and refrigerator.

On the last morning I’d ever wake up in this house, I was roused by my alarm like always. After washing my face and eating a quick breakfast, I did my makeup and packed my clothes and pajamas into a duffel bag. Then I sat down on the bed I’d never lie in again and opened the work email app on my phone. I was the only one taking the day off. For everyone else, it was just another Thursday.

I replied to a single work email, then sent Karin a thanks-in-advance message for coming to help me move today. When he first offered, I honestly wanted to decline because I knew I’d feel bad. But he said he’d make plans to go out and do something with his wife after we were done, so it would be no sweat. He was just like that sometimes.

I removed the curtains from the living-slash-bedroom window, as well as the little window in the kitchen-slash-dining area, and folded them up neatly. Then I opened the windows wide to let the breeze blow through this emptied-out apartment, with nothing to see or steal left inside, before I sat back on the bed and drank my canned coffee. The thought that it didn’t matter if I spilled on it anymore made it taste that much more revitalizing.

Not a day went by that I didn’t think about him.

Even though I knew he was confirmed to be alive, it made my throat tighten whenever I tried to imagine the state of Hibiki’s heart now that he’d distanced himself from us. Especially after hearing that even Karin doesn’t know the whole story of what was going on with him.

But this was still the future I’d chosen and wished for, so I was prepared to wait for Hibiki’s response as long as I had to—even if it ended up taking years.

Times like these were what memories were made for, surely. You clung to them and tried to learn from the past as you went on living in the present.

I didn’t have anything to do until Karin showed up at eleven, so I practiced on my guitar. I sat on this bed, in an empty room with no curtains, and strummed my guitar. It probably looked like the start of some moody indie movie or something—but in reality, I was just a bored thirty-year-old woman waiting for her friend to arrive.

Karin rang the doorbell at 11 a.m. sharp. Such a good little punctual worker bee, this one. I let him know via the intercom that I’d unlock the automated front door for him and had left the door to my apartment unlocked, so he could come right in.

I was seeing him for the first time in two weeks. Karin took one look at me and let out an amused chuckle.

“Well, well,” he said. “Haven’t seen you in a leather jacket in a while.”

“Yeah, had to suit up in my battle uniform for the big day,” I said. “Got a whole new chapter of my life about to start here.”

“You look like a punk rock guitarist who broke into an abandoned apartment.”

Since it was a day to commemorate in some sense, I had him take a picture of me with my guitar on the bed. Once that was done, we immediately made two trips down to Karin’s car with some cardboard boxes, my duffel bag, and my laptop case. All that was left in the apartment now was my guitar case and the shoulder bag Karin had brought.

“Nothing else you wanna do before saying goodbye to this place?” he asked.

“Don’t think so,” I said. “Plus, I’ve gotta come back at least two more times.”

“Ah. Gotcha.”

Karin stood in the middle of the empty room and looked down at his wristwatch. Thinking that maybe he was worried about making it to his plans with his wife on time, I picked up my guitar case—but then he said something I didn’t quite understand.

“Sorry, could we wait a little bit longer?” he asked.

“Wait?” I replied. “For what?”

Karin did not answer this question.

Instead, he pulled his phone out of his bag on the floor and started fiddling with it. I looked down at my own watch. It was 11:12 a.m. Just as I was about to press Karin with a follow-up question, though, the doorbell rang.

Thinking it was probably a door-to-door salesman or something, I went and looked at the entryway camera feed out of habit—but when I saw the image displayed on it, I let out a gasp. I looked over at Karin, but he still didn’t say a word.

I walked up to the screen, took a deep breath, and then turned on the intercom mic and said, “Jeez, you startled me. Come on up,” before I unlocked the main entrance door.

There was a minute or so gap while we waited for the elevator to ascend from the first floor.

“Sorry,” said Karin. “I know I’m stirring the pot.”

“No, not at all,” I said, shaking my head in time with each syllable. “I just didn’t realize you two were talking again.”

“We’re not, really. I just told him the time. Didn’t know if he’d actually show.”

“Ah. Gotcha.”

Right after I finished nodding, I heard a slightly different doorbell sound coming from the entryway—even though we’d left a stopper in the door for the sake of moving luggage (so he should’ve been able to just let himself in). But of course he wouldn’t.

“It’s open,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t sound too quaky. It seemed he got the message, at least, as I felt a gentle breeze blow in from the entryway.

As Hibiki stepped into the room, wearing a suit and carrying his briefcase in one hand, he took one look at us and let out a sheepish, apologetic chuckle.

“Sorry for showing up unannounced,” he said.

It’s fine—I’m just glad you’re safe, I wanted to say. But the words got caught in my throat, as they duked it out with a competing sentiment: How dare you make me worry like that, you freaking idiot. In the end, before I could say anything at all, Hibiki made a gentle but serious expression—though it wasn’t directed at me. He was looking at Karin.

“Chizuru,” said Karin, reaching a hand out to me.

Now I understood what was going on here. I handed him my guitar case and added a thank you for good measure. Karin graciously accepted both, then gave Hibiki a light clap on the shoulder as he passed him by and excused himself from the room.

For a while, we just kind of stood there looking each other in the eye, with neither of us saying a word. The atmosphere was a little tense, but not in an unpleasant way. As I tried to think of what I should say to my friend who’d come all this way to see me, I had a sudden realization.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “This is your first time coming inside, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is,” Hibiki confirmed. “Walked you to the elevator at least a few times, though.”

“I remember. Thanks for always making sure to get me home safe.”

The conversation cut off there, but it wasn’t an awkward silence we needed to force ourselves to fill. This was the end, in some ways. We could afford to take our time. I turned my back to Hibiki for a moment and gazed out the now curtainless window. A few moments later, Hibiki walked up to stand alongside me. Though it wasn’t right next door, all you could really see was the next apartment building over. Hardly a beautiful view.

“Chizuru,” he said.

I looked over at the man standing next me—who felt like he’d always been there by my side, ever since we first became friends. I was so glad I got to see him again.

“There are some things I want to tell you,” he explained. “Things I’ve spent the past month making preparations for.”

“Preparations?” I asked. “What kind of ‘things’ are we talking about here?”

“To be honest, I wanted to wait until everything was set in stone to tell you, which is why I’ve been off the grid for so long. Sorry about that. But then Karin sent me this weirdly romantic message about how we’re supposed to be friends, and I owed you that much, yadda yadda—so I figured I’d at least give you the basic rundown, even though I’m still kind of finding my footing on a lot of this stuff.”

“Okay, please just tell me already. I wanna know what’s been up with you.”

Hibiki gave an earnest nod.

“Well, for one thing,” he said, “I’m starting a new band. With some friends from work I wrangled together. We’ve already got studio sessions scheduled and everything.”

“Ooh, nice!” I congratulated him. “That’s awesome!”

He was not the sort of friend to whom I would say this just to be nice. The thought of getting to hear Hibiki play guitar again one day made me genuinely happy and excited.

“I can’t say too much about the second thing yet,” Hibiki went on, “but to put it in vague terms, I’m thinking of branching out and going more independent, eventually.”

“What, like starting your own accounting firm?” I asked.

“You’re in the right ballpark—but that’s only part of it. I won’t say anything else until it’s more of a sure thing, though. I really wanna knock your socks off.”

“Wow, you’re setting my expectations pretty high here… But I believe in you, so I’ll look forward to hearing more when the time comes.”

I could hear a high-pitched voice echoing from outside. Wondering what it might be, I looked out the window. A father was giving his little girl a piggyback ride down the outdoor walkway of the apartment building next door. Maybe they were on their way to go play at the park or something.

“I’ve been thinking it’d be nice to try having some dreams of my own,” said Hibiki.

I turned my gaze back on him. But he didn’t turn to face me.

“It doesn’t really come naturally to me like I know it does to you,” he said. “But I figured hey, I should try to have something I’m working toward at least once in my life, right? Even if I have to force myself a little bit. Still not sure it’s for me, but I’m trying.”

“No, I think that’s a great idea,” I said. “What brought on this change of heart?”

“I’m trying to find a new reason for living.”

He paused for a moment there, with his gaze still fixed on the world beyond the window. Then he took a deeper breath than I’d ever heard him take before.

“There’s something else I want to tell you,” he said.

I nodded, then turned my whole body to face him. He did the same, and his expression was stoic. We’d looked at each other face-to-face like this countless times before.

Yet somehow, this felt like a first.

“I was in love with you,” he said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I know you were.”

I hadn’t prepared myself for this at all.

But it didn’t matter, because this was really the only response I could offer him, regardless of when he decided to tell me. After all, he was admitting to feelings he knew full well I was in no position to accept. What was I supposed to say? Thank you? I’m sorry? No—any other response would have felt weird. There was little I could do here.

A sheepish smile crept its way onto Hibiki’s face.

“Man,” he said. “I think that was easily the most nerve-racking confession I’ve ever made in my entire life.”

“Pretty big words,” I said. “You sure you wanna spend them on someone like me?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Just means I’ll have to find someone else to overwrite them with.”

I was pretty sure we’d both need a long time to fully communicate what sort of coping we’d each been going through over the past month, not to mention what kinds of feelings we’d been grappling with, or what our respective intentions had been over the past year.

For now, the only things I could really claim to understand were those that took a more tangible form I could easily interpret: his gaze, his words, his scent. And those things alone were enough to fill me with an intense heat of emotion that I had to fight hard to choke back—this was the last thing I wanted him to be able to call me a crybaby about. Granted, I was sure he could probably tell I was struggling to hold it together. But it was pretty obvious he was too, so at least we were equal in that regard.

Before long, he flashed me that familiar cynical smirk.

And so I decided to go full steam ahead like always too.

“Y’know, I really do wanna go visit your hometown someday, just the two of us,” I said. “Even if it can’t happen right away. Even if it takes years for us to get to that point.”

“Fine by me,” said Hibiki. “I do still think I’m probably the better trip planner out of the two of us, though, so I might request a few changes to the itinerary.”

After cracking this little joke, Hibiki reached out to me, as if offering a handshake.

“Sorry, there’s actually one more thing I need to say,” he said. “It’s something I’ve told you before, but it’ll be the first time I say it properly.”

Feeling like I had no other choice, I took his hand in good faith.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Congratulations on getting married, Chizuru,” he said. “And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”

In all our years of friendship, this was the first time we’d ever shaken hands.

I gripped his hand as firmly as I could. He probably thought this was my way of trying to prove or reiterate the strength of our friendship or something, but in reality, it was just because I knew if I didn’t vent my pent-up emotional energy somehow, I would’ve broken down in tears right then and there.

This was a first for me too, after all: the first time I’d been able to accept Hibiki’s congratulations and feel genuine joy at the thought that he was happy for me.

Hibiki let out an exaggerated “Ow!” as though I was literally crushing his bones or something, and we both laughed. And then I gave a proper response to his well-wishes.

“Thanks,” I said. “That means a lot.”

“I should be the one thanking you,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for you, I might never have learned how to accept myself for who I was.”

“Whoa, what? When did I ever do something like that?”

“Don’t worry about it. If you don’t remember, it’s no big deal.”

I really didn’t have any clue what he was referring to. But if Hibiki said I’d done that for him, I’d wear it as a badge of pride. Though I certainly hoped he didn’t mean I’d taught him the patience to forgive a friend who drunkenly crashes at your place every weekend.

After relinquishing our handshake, we chuckled with each other about how Karin was probably getting a little worried about us and decided we should head out. I needed to get down to the car, and Hibiki had to get back to work.

As I did my final check to make sure I had everything, I noticed Karin had left his bag on the floor, so I had no choice but to sling it over my shoulder and bring it down to him.

“God, he’s so obsessed with trying to be the ‘cool’ friend,” I said. “Taking my guitar, then waltzing off to give us some alone time…while forgetting his own stuff, naturally.”

After locking the door, Hibiki walked with me, side by side, down the hallway and onto the elevator. Walking out the main entrance, I could see Karin sitting in the driver’s seat of the car he’d parked just a little ways down the block. He noticed us right away and raised his hand. I walked over and opened the passenger side door.

“You forgot this,” I said.

“Oh, shoot,” he replied. “Thanks.”

After Karin took his bag, Hibiki leaned over to peek in and say goodbye.

“Thanks again,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.”

And with that, he walked off in the opposite direction of where we were heading. After watching him go until he disappeared around the corner, I climbed into the passenger seat, and Karin put the car into drive.

From when we first set off down the narrow side road to when we merged onto the highway, neither of us said a single word. Once I’d finally put all my thoughts in order, I started off by thanking him for setting this whole thing up.

“I take it you two were able to talk things out, then?” he asked.

“Yeah, he finally confessed to me,” I said. “Said it was the most nerve-racking thing he’d ever done in his life—but that he was gonna try to find someone new to ‘overwrite’ that feeling, whatever that means.”

Karin didn’t respond to this. I figured he must’ve had his own thoughts he was trying to digest about this, so I didn’t say anything else either. Randomly, I looked down at my feet, and noticed something tiny rolling around on the floor of the car. I reached down to pick it up and discovered that it was a wireless earbud. Figuring I should let its presumed owner know I’d found it, I turned to face the driver’s seat—and did a double take.

“Wait, why are you crying?!” I exclaimed.

“Shut up,” said Karin. “Leave me alone.”

“And you call me the childish one…”

Karin pulled a handkerchief out from his pocket and dabbed his eyes with one hand, then let out a heavy sigh. He’d turned a bit petulant for a second there, but I guess I couldn’t blame him. This whole thing had probably been weighing pretty heavily on his heart for the past year since we first drew up Operation Heartbreak. Maybe even longer than that.

“Okay, I don’t think it’s safe to be driving with tears in your eyes,” I pointed out. “Sure you don’t wanna pull over real quick?”

“I’m fine,” replied Karin. “Hey—Chizuru?”

“Yeah?”

“Do me a favor and live happily ever after, all right?”

It was such a cheesy, on-the-nose sentiment that even I wouldn’t dare to say such a thing out loud. But although it made me cringe a little bit, I responded in earnest.

“That’s the plan,” I said, nodding firmly in affirmation.

It was the least I could do, on behalf of everyone who’d been a part of this.

And so, with Karin behind the wheel, we sped off down the highway toward my new home. As I watched the scenery outside the window rush past, I felt like I could see all of the twists and turns of fate that had led us to this day—every choice, every accident, and every mistake—flashing before my eyes over and over again in an endless blur.

Maybe there really was a parallel world out there in which I’d set aside my pride and gone the “easy” route of picking Hibiki instead, like everyone had been expecting.

But that hypothetical future had nothing to do with those of us living in this reality. Because out of all the infinite possibilities in the multiverse, and every alternate timeline there could have been, this was still the one we’d chosen—repeatedly, at every turn.

And that had to mean something.