Extra Chapter: I Think This Is a Once-in-a-Lifetime Love.
A shaft of morning light, filtering through a gap in the curtains, falls across an unguarded profile.
Her face without makeup, with none of the usual artifice — it lets something of her inner self show through, and I love it.
I gently part the light brown hair covering her ear with one finger and trace the line of her many piercings, touching them one by one. Nana knits her brows, lets out a disgruntled ‘Mmm…’, and turns away.
Mmm, she’s adorable. My Nana. My Nana, and nobody else’s. Finally caught. The girl I love most in the world.
With the corners of my mouth curling into a grin, I press myself closer to the chest of this sleepyhead who still refuses to rouse herself from deep sleep.
I love Nana’s heart. I love the sound that proves her love to me. I love the heartbeat that puts me at ease.
The moment I press myself against her, it pounds away, thump-thump, thump-thump, almost comically loud, telling me I love you — and I want to go on listening to that sound forever.
In bed, with not a scrap of fabric between us and skin pressed against skin — perhaps because we’d both worked up a sweat the night before — our bodies cling together, sticky and warm.
What was my first impression of her, I wonder.
We weren’t in the same class until third year, but I already knew who Asami Nana was.
A girl who always placed near the top of the rankings. A girl who dressed boldly.
Her long hair, dyed a warm brown, fell in loose waves. She was tall, with long legs; her features were refined, with something just slightly grown-up about them.
There are people who, without doing anything in particular, simply by going about their ordinary lives, find themselves effortlessly at the top of the school’s social order. Nana was unmistakably one of those people.
Standing next to Yamada-san, she was almost overwhelming.
In our whole year, there was probably not a single person who didn’t know the name Asami Nana.
Yet no matter how she dressed, there was something about her — a kind of well-bred, quietly dignified air — that she could never quite shake off.
That was the vague impression I had of her.
If my life had gone smoothly, I probably never would have had anything to do with Nana.
We would have exchanged not a single word and gone our separate ways.
Because if Tasuku had never been born, I wouldn’t have been standing at that crossroads on the rainy day when I first met Nana.
‘I’m going to have a baby.’
When Mum told me that, I couldn’t manage a proper smile.
I just stared blankly down at the black-and-white ultrasound photo she’d pressed into my hands. I couldn’t tell what was what. The shape wasn’t even human yet.
But it was alive — right now, in Mum’s belly, that tiny heart was beating.
I knew I had to say congratulations. But I couldn’t.
‘…Are you going to get married?’
I asked just to make sure. Mum quietly shook her head, looked me straight in the eye, and opened her lips.
‘No. We can’t get married. He has a wife. But I’m going to have this baby. I absolutely will. It might mean hardship for you, Mitsuki… I’m sorry. I just can’t give this child up.’
Mum.
I love you, Mum.
You raised me with everything you had. You’re the only family I have, irreplaceable.
But I also think you’re a hopeless fool.
Why can’t this woman live any way except this clumsy, helpless way?
Why didn’t you use protection — a line like that was far too grotesque to throw at one’s own mother, so I said nothing. I simply handed the ultrasound photo back.
Day by day I watched Mum’s belly growing, and it filled me with dread.
Our home, which had been modest but ordinary, was about to be swept away by a storm.
The brother I met for the first time was so tiny, and somehow rather monkey-like — if I’m being honest, I didn’t find him cute at first.
Since my grandmother died, it had been just the two of us in this world, me and Mum.
But from now on, everything would revolve around this child. The peaceful world I’d known was crumbling apart with a crash.
Tasuku.
May you grow up to be a gentle person.
Named with the wish that he would help others and be a support to someone — or so Mum said. A lovely name.
There were no other relatives to turn to.
From today, just the two of us, Mum and I, would raise Tasuku together.
I’d steeled myself for that.
But once Mum went back to work for the money, the real ordeal began.
It’s raining.
But Tasuku’s nappies have run out.
Today is the chemist’s sale day. I need to buy at least the essentials and get back.
Tonight, too, Mum won’t be home until morning.
I carry Tasuku strapped to my chest, hold the umbrella, and walk with the shopping bags. Dreadfully awkward going.
My back aches from carrying him so long.
If only today hadn’t been raining.
The pedestrian light turns red at the crossing and I stop. I glance down at my chest — Tasuku’s eyes are closed; he’s fallen asleep. The rain hammers relentlessly at the umbrella.
Standing there staring at the puddle, waiting and waiting for the light to turn green, I’m overcome by an emptiness, an urge to cry for no particular reason.
Tasuku hasn’t been sleeping well lately.
The night feeds are unbearable. I’m not as good at settling him as Mum is. If I put him down he cries, so all I can do is hold him.
I struggle and struggle, and before I know it, morning has come again.
There are moments when I hear Tasuku crying and I want to throw everything away — and every time, I hate myself for it.
I want to cherish him, and I can’t do it properly. I despise myself for that.
It’s too pitiful for Tasuku, this.
How long will this go on?
I want it to get easier. I’m exhausted. I’ve hit my limit. There’s no one to complain to.
But I want someone to acknowledge the effort. I want just one person to say you’re doing well, Mitsuki. Just one word. That’s all.
I want to sleep. I want to sleep through till morning.
I’m sleepy now. Sleepy. …Sleepy.
Ugh, I hate rain.
It brings my mood crashing down for no reason. Negative thoughts keep falling, falling, softly and without end, into the hollow of my heart.
None of this… is something I can talk to anyone about.
I knew the rumours at school had started — that I had a baby — but I had no energy to spare for worrying about that sort of thing.
The pedestrian light turns green.
I move my heavy feet, as though lead had been poured into them.
I was halfway across the crossing when — perhaps because my mind had wandered — I suddenly lost my balance.
Oh— I thought, and in that same instant, someone seized my arm.
‘Are you all right?’
A calm voice. I looked up without thinking.
Swaying brown hair. Warm, dark eyes, looking down at me.
Nana.
I won’t forget that day.
If Nana hadn’t grabbed my arm then, I think I would still be sitting alone in the dark somewhere, knees pulled to my chest.
At first, I was a little afraid of Nana.
I didn’t know what kind of person she was at all.
But the more time I spent with her, the sooner I noticed her kindness.
Just being near her, I felt something I couldn’t put into words passing between us.
A tightening in my chest I couldn’t bear, a breathlessness. I was just a little unsettled by the way Nana looked at me.
It was as though the door I kept over the deepest part of myself — the door I used to hide my real self — was slowly being broken down.
My weak self, being dragged into the light.
Why was it? I felt as though this person treasured me.
Her manner with me seemed clearly different from how she was with other friends.
It was nothing more than intuition. But the way Nana looked at me was, unmistakably, different somehow.
As we spent time together, as she wove herself into the fabric of my daily life, Nana’s presence grew larger inside me day by day.
Those days were like walking a tightrope.
One stumble, and I would plunge straight to the bottom of an abyss.
She took my hand in those unsteady days.
Nana was my hero.
I could no longer go back to a life without Nana. Now that I knew this kindness, I could never manage alone again.
And yet — Nana said she intended to leave this town the moment she graduated from high school.
Why?
When she was always looking at me with such hungry eyes.
Nana never put it into words, but slowly, through her gaze, through her fingertips, through the tone of her voice — it flowed into my heart, made itself known.
One single possibility rose up in my mind.
Even without being told, I understood.
To Nana, I was special.
So then — what kind of feeling was that special?
Should I keep pretending not to notice?
Or should I bring that answer to light?
If I opened this door, how would things change between us?
But — perhaps this was a chance.
If the feeling Nana held for me was not the kind you had for a friend… it might be enough to keep her here.
Once I thought that, I couldn’t help but test it.
Nana — I won’t choose my methods carefully.
Because I want Nana.
No matter how underhanded the means, I will never let go of this hand. …I won’t let her go.
A yuri romance novel.
The look on her face — just faintly hurt — when I said I wanted to attend Nana’s wedding.
And then — the way her eyes moved when I undressed in front of her for the first time.
Suspicion hardened into certainty.
The clincher was the night I noticed Nana pressing herself down over me.
I understood at once what Nana was about to do.
Just as our lips were about to touch, I called her name.
Nana’s eyes were trembling — almost pitifully so.
She looked as though she were about to cry.
Nana, I’m sorry.
But if I hadn’t done that, you would have gone on hiding your feelings from me forever, wouldn’t you?
I was relieved.
I hadn’t been imagining things.
It really was like that, after all.
Good — now my resolve is made.
Every last scrap of hesitation is gone.
I love Nana. I love her so much.
You feel the same, don’t you, Nana? You love me, don’t you?
Then I won’t hold back any more.
I will never let Nana go.
If it means we can be together, I will do anything.
Nana — there’s no such thing as love that asks for nothing in return, is there?
A feeling as pure as that can’t exist in this world, can it?
What I can do to keep you here, Nana.
What I can give you, Nana.
I can only think of one thing.
If this body is enough, you can do with it as you please — whatever you want.
But in exchange, give me something too.
The right to remain your special person, always.
Please, stay by my side. Don’t ever go away from me. Love only me, for ever and ever.
No matter how I reached out.
No matter how close I tried to come to Nana.
Nana went on stubbornly denying my feelings.
My feelings and your feelings aren’t the same thing, she kept saying.
Is that right? I still don’t really understand.
Whether this feeling was love or not — I didn’t think it mattered much.
Looking back on it now, that was the fundamental root of our misunderstanding, my great miscalculation.
Even when I told her she could do as she liked, Nana wouldn’t lay a hand on me.
Why does Nana keep trying to leave me?
Because I have nothing?
Because there’s nothing I can give back to her?
I want to be with Nana this much — but is it different for Nana?
What is it that Nana wants most?
Nana is too stubborn. She loves me and yet she keeps trying to push me away.
There was no time left. If I did nothing, Nana would go to Tokyo. I couldn’t bear it. I absolutely refused.
I had to hold her here by any means I could.
Nana, please don’t run. Don’t go.
Please, stay by my side.
Every time the anxiety rose up, I pressed my ear against Nana’s chest over and over again and listened to her heartbeat.
Nana’s heart always spoke its I love you to me, plainly, without disguise.
I honestly believed that sleeping with Nana would be enough to stop her leaving.
The first time Nana held me, I felt as though I finally understood what I had been missing.
There was something else that surprised me, too.
Sex can feel this good?
The warmth of skin against skin. Her lips pressing all over my body, ticklish and wonderful.
Even the pain felt tender.
Everything stopped mattering. I could see how someone could lose themselves entirely.
Body and heart both full, I was utterly convinced I had finally caught Nana — and I was at peace.
I hadn’t realised at all.
How much my shallowness was wounding Nana’s pure and delicate heart.
I didn’t care what anyone thought of me.
I was even starting to think I just wanted to hurry up and be done with high school.
I had become that indifferent to the world around me.
So when a friend from my second-year class suddenly asked ‘Is it true you’re seeing Asami-san?’ — I wasn’t particularly shaken.
Someone must have seen us together.
I had more than enough reason to think so.
From the way she asked, it sounded like rumours were already going around about us.
I held the gaze of those eyes glinting with crude curiosity, and I simply smiled back.
‘Hmm? What do you mean? What kind of rumour? I have a boyfriend, you know. We’ve been going out since middle school.’
I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. No one mattered except Nana.
But what about Nana?
I didn’t know — so I lied and denied it. The lie was my way of protecting Nana.
And I was thinking carelessly that a rumour like this would fade away on its own before long.
At the time, I could never have imagined that this lie would become the thing that tore us apart.
Nana had a secret she didn’t want anyone at school to know: that she liked girls. I understood that, lying on the infirmary bed, watching Nana’s trembling hands as she stared at the floor.
Seeing Nana frightened and making herself small — it wrung my chest tight.
When Nana said she wanted to put some distance between us, I wanted to say no. But I couldn’t.
‘It’s all right for you, Mitsuki — you can be normal. I’m not normal.’
Normal.
What is normal?
Is liking girls not normal?
Even though Nana herself likes girls?
Has she been living all this time thinking that about herself?
It was too painful to watch — Nana denying her own existence.
— You’re strong, Mitsuki, you can throw away everything you don’t need. You could never understand this terror of mine.
Nana was right.
I can’t understand Nana’s terror.
Because I’m not afraid of anything.
As long as I have Nana, that’s enough. I need nothing else.
But — that’s not all right, for Nana.
I wish Nana could feel the same way as me.
I wish she’d say she needed no one but me.
Thinking that, I walked home alone, watching the sky burn with evening light.
When I’m alone, I’m unbearably lonely.
I find myself longing for the sound of Nana’s heart.
What is this feeling?
The hollow in my chest that Nana was supposed to have filled began to ache again.
I told her I love Nana clearly, in words — so I believed my feelings were reaching her straight and true, without distortion.
My arrogance in letting our relationship remain undefined — I had unknowingly been hurting Nana with it all along.
I didn’t want to give this feeling a name. Because I didn’t want anything to change.
If I gave a new name to what was between us — I felt as though it would eventually have to end.
I was afraid to admit it.
That this feeling was nothing as simple as friendship.
The reason Nana kept trying to run from me was that she couldn’t trust me.
The reason she couldn’t trust me was that I had been blurring and evading my own feelings all along.
When Nana pushed me away, I finally came to understand what I felt.
Nana.
I want to make everything about Nana — every last bit of it — mine and mine alone.
Because I can’t bear it. The thought of those burning eyes, those lips, those fingertips, becoming anyone else’s.
It was a simple thing, really. What Nana had wanted.
Not just a body. That’s right, isn’t it, Nana.
The thing I had been missing all along, overlooking all this time. I’ve finally found it.
There’s no such thing as love that asks for nothing in return.
A feeling as pure as that doesn’t exist.
I used to believe that.
I had been denying its existence in my heart all this time, without ever having known it.
Perhaps because I’d grown up watching my mother drown herself in love — without realising it, that had become a fixed idea pressed deep into me.
But now —
I want to try believing.
Just once in my life — in something called real love.
The night of graduation.
In that park, I was prepared to wait for Nana for hours, however long it took.
Even in spring the nights were still cold; my fingers grew numb, and I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering.
One hour passed, two hours passed. As time went on, the anxiety crept in.
Does Nana not care about me at all anymore?
No, that couldn’t be it. There was no way kind-hearted Nana could ignore me.
I know it was unfair. I know that. It wasn’t as though I couldn’t imagine how it made her feel.
But now that I had come face to face with my own feelings, I simply could not give Nana up.
If my resolve broke here and I went home, it would all be over. This was my last chance. I would absolutely not leave. Even if morning came like this.
Tears were slowly blurring my vision, and I wiped them away again and again with the back of my hand.
Nana, I want to see you….
I was hunched over, quietly crying, when I heard footsteps — and I looked up.
Nana stood frozen there, staring straight at me, her face on the verge of tears — and I couldn’t hold myself back. I ran to her.
I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime love.
In my whole life — this is surely the first and the last.
Once I entered university, we could no longer see each other often.
Tasuku had started sleeping through the night, and gradually, I was reclaiming something like a peaceful daily life.
I made ordinary friends at university and lived an ordinary, unremarkable life there.
Ahh, if only Nana were here — I thought that sometimes, but I decided to keep it to myself.
With Tasuku settled for the night, I sat alone in the quiet living room and checked the clock.
Getting close to midnight. I tapped idly at the phone lying on the table and let out a sigh.
‘…The date’s about to change, you know? Nana, you idiot — you promised to call me every day. If you break that promise, I won’t forgive you’.
Nana had mentioned a drinking party with her circle tonight, so I’d been a little worried.
Nana had become even more beautiful since going to the city.
She’d always been tall, stylish, refined-looking — but I hadn’t expected her to change quite this much.
Hmm — if we only see each other once a month, I’m starting to worry about keeping a proper hold on Nana’s heart.
Maybe next time I visit, I should write my name on all of Nana’s underwear? ‘Mitsuki’. Got to prevent cheating before it starts, after all.
Just as I was thinking that, at 11:59, my phone began to buzz — brr, brr — and a name lit up the screen.
I smiled to myself and, without rushing to answer, propped my chin on my hand and looked at the phone.
Hey, Nana. Don’t think you can get away from me.
The clock ticked to midnight, the date changed, and at that precise moment, I tapped the answer button on the still-buzzing phone.
The screen switched, and there was Nana — looking slightly flustered.
The earrings in her ears, peeking out from her lightened hair, were the same as mine, as always.
‘Mitsuki, sorry I’m late! It took me a while to slip away…’.
‘Nana, that’s terrible! The date’s already changed, you broke your promise’.
‘Eh? No way, it’s past midnight?’
I puffed out my cheeks and said it with a sulk. On the screen, Nana’s brow creased with alarm.
I tried to suppress the smile that threatened to spread across my face, and kept my eyes fixed on her.
Call me every night before you go to sleep.
Come and see me at least once a month.
You absolutely mustn’t cheat on me.
Tell me you love me every day so I don’t get anxious.
Nana had not broken a single one of those promises yet — not even once.
Right now, too — judging by the background, she’d probably ducked into the restaurant’s bathroom.
Every little thing Nana did for me, this and everything else — I treasured them all, and they made me so happy I could burst.
‘Mitsuki, I’m really sorry. You stayed up waiting for me… Are you… angry…?’
The way Nana deflated so adorably, looking worried — I wanted to see her right now, this instant; and so this is what they call being in love, I almost laughed at myself.
When did I fall in love with Nana?
I’ve gone and fallen this hard, so Nana is going to have to take responsibility for it for the rest of her life. I am absolutely not handing her over to any other girl. I’m going to hold on tight to Nana so the city girls don’t get her.
‘Mitsuki, why… why aren’t you saying anything? Have you really got angry?’
‘No, I’m just feeling down because I was thinking maybe Nana doesn’t care about me at all anymore… Were there girls you liked the look of at the drinking party? City girls are pretty, aren’t they…’
‘That’s a misunderstanding, Mitsuki! There’s no one cuter than you!’
‘Really? You like me best? I’m the cutest?’
‘…You’re the best, Mitsuki… And… honestly, please stop making me say embarrassing things like that…’
Nana going red and sighing was really, truly adorable.
‘Hehe, is that so — I’m the cutest. But, you know, if you don’t tell me to my face, I still can’t quite believe it.’
‘In person?’
‘Ahh, I wish I could see Nana… Won’t you come and visit?’
‘…I’ll go, I’ll go — I’ll come back this weekend to see you! So won’t you let what happened today go? Please!’
‘Eh, really? Is the Shinkansen okay? Can you afford it?’
‘It’s fine, that’s what I work part-time for.’
‘Yay! Wonderful! All right then — I’ll forgive you for tonight’s late call if you come to see me. Hehe, I can’t wait to see you, Nana.’
‘Yeah… I want to see you soon too, Mitsuki.’
Nana smiled with relief, and I smiled right back at her.
‘Oh, I have to go back. I’m sorry we couldn’t talk for long, Mitsuki. Goodnight… I love you. Talk tomorrow.’
She whispered it in a small, hushed voice, as though making sure no one else could hear. I treasured her.
‘Yeah, goodnight, Nana. Make sure you go straight home, won’t you? No cheating, all right?’
‘I’m not going to cheat!’
Hey, Nana — I’m sorry for being calculating.
But please love me anyway, even like this.
I promise I’ll give you back more love than you ever gave me — I swear it.
I hung up the call with Nana and stretched my arms wide and stood up.
I’d been waiting so long for Nana’s call that I was absolutely exhausted now.
Hehe, but that’s fine — she’s coming to see me this weekend, so it all works out in the end.
‘…Right then, I think I’ll go shopping for some cute underwear tomorrow. For Nana.’
I walked towards the bedroom humming to myself.
A long-distance relationship isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
Because Nana always tells me she loves me.
The loneliness of not being able to see her — I can fill it all in when we do meet.
Whatever walls we hit someday, we’ll get over them together, I’m sure.
Our love is still only just beginning.