Written by “After that, Yasu (me), you didn’t keep in touch with anyone, right? I heard rumors that you were in America, but what have you been doing?”
“I was… living…”
Those were the first words I exchanged with an old classmate from my hometown in sixteen years.
I remember thinking, So the rumor that I was in America had spread after all.
“After that” referred to October 10th, the year I graduated from high school.
It was the day after the most unforgettable day of my life.
The day that, no matter how much time passes, I can never erase from my memory.
The day before that, my best friend Iseki called me.
He told me that M, our former homeroom teacher from high school, had called him.
Then he said,
“I need you to listen to what I’m about to say, and I need you to stay calm. Please, just stay calm and listen.”
The moment he said that, I already knew what was coming next.
“N… died. She passed away in the hospital today, and the funeral is tomorrow in Muroran.”
Somewhere deep down, I had been expecting it.
Even so, when that moment finally came, the shock was far too overwhelming.
I couldn’t stop trembling.
I don’t remember what I said to him right afterward.
But I still vividly remember the violent pounding of my heart, so intense that my consciousness felt like it was fading, and the shaking so severe that I could barely hold the phone.
The woman I had loved—the only woman I had ever dated—had died.
“Stay calm and listen.”
The girl who was born on exactly the same day as me had died.
“Stay calm and listen.”
Anyone who could calmly listen to something like that would have to be out of their mind.
“Yasu, are you listening? Are you okay?”
“Yeah… I don’t know if I’m okay, but I’m listening.”
He told me the details of the wake and the funeral and started arranging for the two of us to attend together.
“I’ll come pick you up by car. Let’s meet at the same place where we met the last time we went to my brother’s house.”
“No… I’m not going.”
“Huh? What do you mean? You’re not going to the funeral?”
“I’m not going. Why… why should I go?”
“Hey! What are you thinking? If you don’t go, then who will?”
He suddenly got angry.
Even though she had been the one to break up with me after being diagnosed with leukemia, he knew better than anyone how deeply I had cared for her, and how much I had confided in him about my pain.
Looking back now, I completely understand his anger.
“It won’t change anything! Even if I don’t go, nothing changes!”
At the time, though, I was barely holding myself together.
I had no ability to think clearly, no room in my mind to consider what came next.
And when he kept insisting on dragging me to the funeral, I finally lost control too.
“I said I’m not going! What’s going to happen if I go!? What’s going to change!? Will she come back to life if I go!? If she would, then I’d go as many times as it takes! But that’s not how it works, is it!? Don’t tell me so easily to ‘come to the funeral’ when you have no idea what I’m going through!”
We both raised our voices, and it turned into an argument over the phone.
Finally, after going back and forth for a while, he snapped.
“I’m coming to pick you up tomorrow at 8 o’clock in front of Soen Station! I’ll be waiting at the same place as last time! You better come!”
Then he hung up on me.
For a while after the call, all I could think was, What the hell is wrong with that guy?
But gradually, all kinds of emotions began to tangle together inside me.
After that, I spent hours collapsed over my desk, crying.
Was I afraid of seeing her body?
Was I afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep myself together in front of everyone?
Did I feel that going after she had died was already too late?
Whatever the reason, I simply did not want to go.
I barely remember anything after that.
The only thing I can clearly recall is going to work, crying, and asking my manager for the day off.
Before I knew it, morning had come.
The next day, in the end, I went to meet Iseki.
I had accused him of not understanding how I felt, but in truth, he was the one who had seen my confusion and collapse more closely than anyone from the moment her leukemia was discovered until the day she died.
When we saw each other at the meeting place the next morning, we both awkwardly waved, almost embarrassed.
“Iseki, I’m sorry. Yesterday was my fault.”
“I’ve never seen you like that before. You completely lost it.”
“You’re not exactly one to talk…”
“Haha.”
For the first time in a long while, we laughed a little.
And somehow, my heart felt just a bit lighter.
After that, it was the usual two-hour drive from Sapporo to Muroran.
Because we had to stop along the way so I could try to gather myself, and because the car unexpectedly broke down, we ended up arriving slightly late to the funeral.
The first thing I remember upon arriving was the way my old classmates stared at me with blatant curiosity.
I felt an immediate wave of discomfort and instantly regretted coming.
Then, at the end of the funeral, when it was time to place flowers in the coffin, I saw her.
After two and a half years of battling leukemia, she had become nothing but skin and bones.
The girl who had been in the same class as me for all three years of high school.
The first time I had seen her since graduation, six months later.
Lying there in the coffin, wearing makeup, she looked like a completely different person from the girl I had once dated.
Why did she have to suffer like this?
This isn’t right.
Questions with no answers.
Questions no one could possibly answer.
I repeated them over and over inside my mind.
The joy I felt when we first discovered we had been born on the exact same day.
Her anxious voice when she called to tell me she was being hospitalized.
My trembling hands when I received her breakup letter through a mutual friend.
Standing before her now lifeless body, every memory came flooding back with unbearable clarity.
After her leukemia diagnosis, when our classes were reshuffled, the school made it painfully obvious that they had deliberately placed her childhood friend and all the people closest to her in the same class.
And somehow, by some strange twist of fate, I ended up in that special class too.
At the time, I thought it was merely coincidence.
But now I sometimes wonder whether the school intentionally placed me there because I had spent so much time with her.
At this point, no one will ever know the truth.
If someone asked me whether being in that class was a good thing, I couldn’t honestly answer yes.
For a high school student, the classroom is a huge part of their world.
There were people who carelessly threw sarcastic remarks and insensitive comments without knowing anything.
There were people spreading lies and rumors behind our backs.
That classroom became a place where stories too painful for teenagers to bear played out again and again.
Even now, I still sometimes hate myself for not being able to understand what she must have been feeling before she decided to break up with me.
For not saying the things that truly mattered.
I knew far too little.
The night her childhood friend first told me that she had leukemia, the words spoken to me through tears pierced straight into my heart.
Not a single one of her close friends ever blamed me.
If anything, they even showed concern for me.
In the middle of that rotten classroom environment, that was the one thing that saved me.
But the one at fault was me.
The pathetic one was no one else but myself.
I was the one who gave up too quickly.
I was the one who failed to do my best in the face of so many obstacles and cold reactions.
I couldn’t stop her from dying.
But there were still so many things I could have done for someone approaching the end of her life.
Saying I never thought she would die is no excuse.
When I thought about it that way, the guilt and regret became almost enough to drive me insane.
Even now, those days still appear in my dreams.
They came so many times that I even wanted to rewrite my real memories with dreams that were kinder to me.
After the funeral, I cut off all contact with my high school friends and acquaintances.
I stopped visiting the hometown I once loved.
And I sealed away my past beneath a heavy lid.
In the years that followed, so many things happened.
So many things that I sometimes wish I could erase them all from memory.
There were times when I felt like I was losing my mind and begged my best friend for help.
Times when I attempted suicide.
Times when I shut myself away completely.
At that time, I was still just a child.
Faced with reality, and surrounded by cruel rumors and heartless remarks, I had no way of controlling the chaos and anger inside me.
We were supposed to have been born on the exact same day.
And yet, from that day onward, only I continued to grow older alone.
Back then, my heart was not prepared to bear that.
For years and years after that, I remained shut away deep inside myself.
Caught between regret, guilt, and anger, I simply endured painful days.
It was only seven years later, when I temporarily returned from America, that I was finally able to visit Muroran again and see Iseki.
At that time, I asked him something that had long been on my mind.
“To be honest… back then, did you think I might kill myself?”
After a few seconds of silence, he answered.
“Yeah…”
I figured as much.
That’s why he came all that way to pick me up.
That’s why, after the funeral, he stopped me from going straight back to Sapporo and practically forced me to stay the night at his house.
The truth is, if he hadn’t been there, I’m not confident about what I might have done that day.
While her body was being cremated, I might have done something irreversible.
Even now, I still sometimes wonder:
What would have happened to me if I hadn’t had him by my side that day?
Everyone carries a past.
Everyone lives under the influence of that past while trying to shape their own future and make choices in the present.
Human beings exist at the complex intersection of past, present, and future.
And it is at that intersection that we continue to live.
How we interpret what has happened, and what kind of future we imagine, has a decisive impact on every choice we make in the present.
To live is to continue weaving together who we are at the center of that crossroads.
“I heard rumors that you were in the U.S. What have you been doing?”
“I was… living… Do you remember Iseki? I kept in touch with him.”
“I see… You really held on.”
“I was living.”
The reunion came so suddenly that I didn’t know what words to say.
Those words simply slipped out.
But perhaps there really was no other way to describe those years.
Everyone carries a past.
Sometimes, a past overflowing with feelings too deep for words.
Even so, people continue living in the “now,” where past, present, and future intersect, and continue weaving themselves into who they are.
Living is not easy.
It is nowhere near as easy as people casually assume.
Interpreting the past.
Setting the direction of the future.
Making choices in the present.
Especially for young people who have known pain and suffering intense enough to make them feel as if they might lose their minds.
When someone who once tried to die is now desperately trying to live, it naturally makes me want to support them.
Something inside me resonates deeply.
There is only so little I can do.
But whenever I meet someone trying to erase all future possibilities through death, I want to do whatever little I can.