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They move with the fluidity of traveling birds to the front of the classroom. Sanae fidgets in the dense fabric of her black graduation dress—the one she presented to her mother in the department store, greeted by a smile and a Oh, Sanae-chan, that’ll look so wonderful! She feels far younger than she is, frog and snake hairclips pinned into her head.
Her lips move in harmony with everyone else’s, pushing the notes to their school anthem from her throat. There are whispers of a planned trip to Okinawa alongside Mika and Chiharu, once the semester is over.
She tries to pick out her mother’s face in the crowd. There her face is, teary-eyed amidst the sea of her kōhai with their shaky smiles. Up to this point the ceremony has been a whirlwind of grainy videos playing that captured their time transitioning from gangly-limbed children to cool-headed seniors ready to conquer the world. Kochiya Sanae stands among them; she will be remembered as the class princess whose heart was a fountain of can-do attitude, her love of videogames and anime shining bright—a girl who always lent troubled juniors a helping hand.
And that will be all they remember of Sanae forevermore.
Sanae struggles to keep her expression placid. There will be no trip to Okinawa, nor even a future in high school. She leaves for a land of illusion today, never to return.
“I know how important this all is to you—your mother, your friends, the life you have here. Are you sure you want to go? You won’t be able to come back.”
Glistening raindrops slide off the edge of Sanae’s red umbrella. These were the words Kanako spoke to her. She does, after all, have a life here—a beloved daughter and friend, someone brimming with the potential to be a mangaka or writer or anything. Suwako had said that she would make for a brilliant botanist, hard at work in a humid greenhouse.
But while Sanae has a sprawling path of life ahead of her, Kanako and Suwako do not. If they cannot find faith elsewhere, they will fade until not even their names are whispers of wind.
There will be no chance to reverse her choices, she knows that much. But it is her choice.
“Goodbye, Mama,” she whispers, a lump in her throat. Her shoes shuffle towards the shrine gates “Goodbye, Mika-chan, Chiharu-chan…”
It is high time to act.
Sanae steps through the gateway, rain melting away into nothing.
She does not look back.