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Autumn had deepened, and the days were shortening at a pace one could now plainly see. The lingering warmth of dusk drained away like a receding tide, and close behind it the cold of night came creeping in.
Unlike the school that bustled by day, Furin, wrapped in darkness, was utterly silent.The tall shrubs on the rooftop, the freewheeling graffiti on the walls—all had shed their daytime brilliance and revealed unfamiliar faces in the dark.
The night wind threaded through the empty corridor. A lone set of footsteps drew nearer, echoing again and again through the long, narrow space, until at last they dissolved into the darkness at the far end.
The one who had slipped into the school building under cover of night was none other than Suo Hayato—the boy who had vanished from school three days ago. Now he stopped before the door of the staff room.
Today Suo wore no Furin uniform, but a loose, dark overcoat. He tugged the scarf at his neck higher, until its warmth cradled his jaw. He stood there for a moment, then reached out and slid the door open.
The white envelope he had been holding all this while was faintly creased at the corners from his grip. Suo set it down on the desk with solemn care.
Inside was his withdrawal request.
A single thin envelope—and yet it pressed down on his chest, leaving it tight and heavy. This was the ending he had written with his own hand and chosen on his own.
His silence these past days hadn't merely been a way to put off this moment. Suo had always known that this day might come at any time; he just hadn't expected it to arrive so soon.
Three days, and he still hadn't found any hope of remaining at Furin.
“I said ‘see you tomorrow’ that day, and yet…”
His fingertips lightly traced the neat handwriting on the envelope as he murmured under his breath.
What a shame. That had been the last time. If only he'd known, he would have said more to them.
But regret meant nothing now. Everything was already over.
After standing there in silence for a while, Suo finally pulled his gaze from the envelope, turned, and left the staff room without looking back.
But he didn't head straight out of the building. Driven by some instinct of memory, he found his feet carrying him to the Class 1-1 classroom.
Standing before the door, Suo looked up at the familiar classroom nameplate. After a moment's hesitation, he reached out and quietly slid the door open.
Cold moonlight flooded the whole classroom, and the scattered desks and chairs cast shadows of uneven lengths across the floor.
There was no one inside.
Suo stood in the shadow cast from the corridor and didn't step any further.
On the other side of that door lay his seat, the figures who had fought at his side, the everyday rhythm of laughter and roughhousing, the afternoon sunlight spilling in through the windows... Every ordinary moment here had been precious. It was where he could, for once, carry nothing on his shoulders, and the only place where he could exist as an “ordinary student.”
But he knew he no longer had the right to set foot inside.
The moment he thought it, something in his chest abruptly hollowed out, and the hollow kept crumbling outward from its edges.
His stomach, empty since morning, ached dully, as though threads were being slowly pulled taut around it and his heart together. To ease the suffocating feeling, he raised a hand and tugged at his scarf.
He had meant to take one look and go. But now that he was actually standing here, he couldn't help wanting to stay a little longer.
Sakura had long since grown into a captain who could stand on his own, and had now learned to rely on everyone. Nirei had a frankness that made people want to trust him, and even someone like Sugishita had grown far more open after talking with him. And there were Kiryu, Tsugeura, and all the dependable upperclassmen...
Even without him, everyone here would surely be fine.
By comparison, Bankokugai could not do without Suo.
「Don't get priorities wrong.」
He was no longer at an age where he could willfully treat “what he liked” as his only criterion. He had to make the most correct and rational choice.
He had never had many choices to begin with, and now one of the two most precious things in his hands had to be let go.
From childhood, Suo had carried far too much. He had believed that sense of responsibility would make him stronger, yet it only taught him, more and more, to put himself last. And then, from some point on, his own feelings, because they stood in the way of rational judgment, were cast off the scales entirely.
Yes. On the scales weighing Bankokugai and Furin, there was no place for “Suo Hayato's own wishes.”
What kind of expressions would everyone wear when they saw that letter?
It wasn't that he didn't want to be honest with Sakura, with Nirei, with everyone in the class. But some truths, once spoken, would drag these warmhearted companions of his, who belonged in the sunlight, down into the mire along with him. That wasn't a result he wanted to see.
“Sun Fei, you look troubled.”
From the depths of memory, his master's voice suddenly cut through the black autumn night, settling softly against his ear with a faint scent of tea.
Back then, the young Suo, faced with such pure concern, had often been bewildered and pained by the secrets he could not tell.
“Everyone has things they don't want to say out loud. As long as you don't go against your own heart and don't hurt others, there's no need to blame yourself.”
His master had set down the teacup in his hand, gently patted his head, and accepted all of Suo just as he was.
“At times like this, there are plenty of ways to sidestep a problem without telling a lie. Come, let's learn them together.”
That had once been the anchor that redeemed Suo's heart.
Gradually he had learned to set boundaries, to build high walls out of harmless words that kept truth and pain locked inside, showing the outside world only a composed gentleness.
But what was he to do when the evasion itself became a kind of hurt?
The night wind scattered the tea-scent of memory. Now his master could no longer offer him new guidance.
Suo wasn't afraid of being misunderstood. What he feared was seeing the wounded expressions on his companions' faces.
So being a mature adult, one with a clear conscience toward himself and others, was this hard.
He only wanted to keep the innocent out of it, and yet he could only create parting and hurt with his own hands.
The night wind blowing in through the never-fully-closed window carried the chill of early autumn. His eyes gradually grew dry, yet he couldn't bear to blink even once. He only wanted to use this moonlight to engrave every corner of the classroom deep in his heart.
His gaze fell on the blackboard. Those colorful doodles were all traces everyone had left behind.He too had once drawn a smiling face wearing an eyepatch beside Nirei's drawing. Looking at it now, it felt like looking at some distant past.
A few new doodles had appeared on the board, probably added by someone during the three days he'd been absent.
The days here wouldn't stall just because he was gone. Realizing this, Suo felt both relieved and a little lonely.
All right. This is the end.
After a long while, he slowly withdrew his gaze, pressed down every emotion churning in his heart, turned, and closed the door.
The moment he stepped out of the building, the autumn night wind hit him in the face, carrying fallen leaves.
"It's so cold…"
Suo instinctively pulled his scarf tighter. Thank goodness he had worn it today; otherwise, walking out into a night like this would have taken even more courage.
The soft knit scarf wrapped his neck gently, barely holding back the cold from outside, but it couldn't hold back the loneliness seeping out from within.
He walked slowly along the familiar shopping street.
Under the night sky, the familiar shops on both sides had long since pulled down their shutters. Only the streetlamps on either side still glowed one after another; their orange‑yellow light held no warmth whatsoever, merely stretching his lonely figure into a long, slender shadow.
Compared with the lively shopping street of daytime, it now felt like another world.
The wall he had painted the first time he came here, the first taiyaki he'd been given by that shop, the first time he had fought side by side with everyone through the night to protect the street… all of it seemed to have become memories from another time and place, as distant as phantoms.
On countless afternoons here, Suo and his companions had walked side by side, chatting about trivial things. Those brief, precious hours, now soaked through with the night darkness, had all become the past.
“I'm sure we'll leave behind an epic legacy!Actually! We'll make it happen!”
The lights were still on inside Cafe Pothos, and Nirei's words from that day seemed to echo in his ears even now.
“So, suosan!! Let's keep up the great work! Together!”
Just as he had back then, Suo looked up at the sky.
The moon, full only a few days ago, was now starting to wane.
What a pity.
Suo thought.
The days spent with everyone, the perfect moonlight—in the end, none of it could be kept.
He raised a hand and wrapped his scarf a little tighter.
The temperature turned colder day by day, and the seasons kept turning over. In the end, nothing in this world would stop for anyone. It was the most ordinary thing there was. So why did it make him feel so lonely...
Suo skirted around Pothos and turned toward the park in the residential area off the street, the place where he and Nirei often trained.
Since he would never come again, he wanted to see it one last time.
Just then, the phone in his pocket suddenly vibrated.
Ever since the day he stopped coming to school, the screen had kept lighting up with those few familiar names. But whether calls or messages, Suo had only watched them light up and go dark in silence, without responding to any.
What could he possibly say to them now?
He took out his phone. On the screen, the name “Nire-kun” was pulsing, glowing almost harshly in the dark.
As if sensing something, Suo instinctively looked up toward the park.
Beneath a lonely streetlamp, a slight figure sat at the very bottom of the slide.
Nirei Akihiko held the still-glowing white phone in both hands, reverently, his expression like that of someone praying to a god.
For an instant, Suo couldn't tell whether the trembling in his body came from the phone or from his own heart.
Meeting his former companion again had never been part of his plan.
「If you don't leave now, you'll miss the ferry back.」
A voice in his head calmly issued the order.
But his feet felt frozen in place, unable to move a single step.
He had already submitted his withdrawal request. This was already the end.
「What can you say to him now?」
Suo could neither deny the days of the past nor change the future already written.
He stood outside the park, feeling and reason tearing at each other in his chest. And yet Nirei, so close at hand, was a presence he could not ignore, no matter what.
The autumn night had grown very cold, yet Nirei was dressed thinly. The streetlamp made his face look pale, but the worry and stubbornness in his eyes stood out sharply in the darkness.
Dialing the number again and again, waiting in vain for the person who had gone silent to give some answer.
「Give up. Nothing will come of it.」
〖Da-ling-ling—〗
It was only the ringback tone coming from the receiver on the other end, yet Suo, standing outside the park, seemed to hear it just as clearly, as if urging him to decide at once.
He watched Nirei in the distance let out a long sigh and bury his head between his knees.
「He's finally going to give up.」
But his body, as if by reflex, pressed the answer button on its own.
In that moment, Suo finally understood: what he had truly feared had never been a Furin without him.
It was being abandoned by Furin.
“S-Suo-san! Suo-san!”
The startled cry, slightly distorted by the signal, overlapped with the voice from the direction of the slide not far away, reaching Suo's ears at the same time.
A gust of autumn wind swept by, and the fallen leaves covering the ground were whirled into the air and scattered across the sky. Nirei stood in the middle of the park, enveloped by swirling leaf shadows.
In that instant, Suo couldn't make out his expression.
“Suo-san?! Where are you ?! what happened to you?!”
“Nire-kun, you'll be cold if you don't bundle up.”
Suo heard his own voice ring out, steady, just as it had on any ordinary day.
The next second, the figure in the middle of the park froze. Nirei whipped his head up and met Suo's gaze outside the park dead on. Flecks of light kindled in his eyes at once, and he came running toward Suo.
Suo raised his hand and quietly ended the call.
「You'll regret this.」
That voice, forever rational, spoke coldly from the shadows behind Suo.
He knew that from the moment he had picked up this call, every dignified farewell would be shattered, every facade he had kept up all along would be exposed, and he would bring upon himself, with his own hands, the most wretched, cruel parting.
Then let it stretch a little longer—this final moment of parting.
With that thought, Suo adjusted the curve of his lips, hid every feeling in his eyes, and looked up to meet Nirei as he ran toward him.
...
...
Just as he'd known it would, he had missed the last ferry to Bankokugai.
Suo sat on a mooring bollard at the dock, gazing at the small island in the middle of the river.
On the riverbank, the autumn night carried a thin mist, and it was far colder than it had been on the shopping street.
So cold...
So tired...
He curled his upper body forward, folding himself in on himself to press down on the dull ache in his stomach, trying to ease the discomfort. His shoulders slumped completely; his elbows rested on his knees, and he propped his forehead on both hands.
There was nowhere he could go back to now...
Because he had been staring at the gray concrete ground beneath his feet for so long, his eyes gradually lost focus, and the world on his retina began to slowly twist and warp.
His black Chinese cloth shoes were stained with a few darker patches.
Where had those come from?
He simply looked at them, his thoughts going blank for a moment.
Before he could even react, his stomach suddenly clenched, sharp spasms surging through him in waves.
“Nngh—”
He instinctively curled his body even tighter, but neither the pain in his stomach nor the cold in his limbs would ease.
That was... Nirei's blood.
Suo raised his hand and covered his face. yet even with his eyes shut, the figure in the park, his face covered in wounds, still stubbornly clutching the hem of suo's coat, only grew clearer.
That's right. He had hurt Nirei.
The emotions he had numbed away came flooding back like a tide, rising over his chest and swallowing him whole. The feelings he had wanted to pretend not to see had not simply vanished; they had transformed into an all-too-real pain, tearing at his body.
He thought that, back then, he really shouldn't have been greedy for more.
No... maybe this was better after all.
A short pain beats a long one. That went for both of them...
The night wind by the river carried damp mist, and the chill seeped through his skin and into his whole body. His thoughts gradually stalled, leaving only the dragging pain in his stomach to keep swelling inside him. The sounds around him grew distant, as if he were sinking underwater. He let this heaviness pull him down, ever downward, downward...
“...Sun Fei. Sun Fei.”
A familiar voice seemed to come from far away, carrying a muffled echo. Only then did Suo come back to himself, as if suddenly dragged up from underwater—the sounds of the world snapping back into clarity.
Bacchus was standing before him, concern plain in his eyes.
“I figured you’d missed the ferry, so we borrowed a boat specially to come over...”
He stopped mid-sentence, his gaze landing on the left side of Suo's face, his expression turning complicated.
Following his gaze, Suo instinctively raised his hand and touched that side of his face, stiff from the wind.
But both his cheek and his fingertips had gone completely cold; touching it, he felt neither warmth nor much of anything. Still, his sluggish brain finally remembered.
It was the mark left by Nirei's blow.
Suo turned his face away, somewhat flustered.
“Ah, that is...”
His voice was so faint it almost scattered in the wind.
“I think I messed up.”
After saying it, he habitually tried to muster a reassuring smile, but his stiff facial muscles left only a broken, nearly self‑mocking curve at the corners of his mouth.
The wind carried the mist between them, and for a while neither of them spoke. In the end, Bacchus neither pressed him nor offered comfort. He simply reached out, gently patted Suo's back, and said, “Let's go home.”
The boat was moored not far away, gently rocking on the river. rakta was still standing at the bow, gazing steadily in suo's direction, not urging, just quietly keeping watch.
Yes. He would head home.
Suo slowly got to his feet. His legs had gone numb from sitting so long, and his body felt as heavy as if it had been soaked through with water. Even so, he forced his back to straighten.
All night long he had been struggling in ways that seemed futile, only trying, with this naive method, to delay the steps of parting.
Suo had long understood that no matter how painful, time still moved forward.
But the reluctance voiced by the dull ache in his stomach, the clumsy plea his friend had left on his cheek... these were all proof that he had truly existed there, that he had loved and been loved. That would never change.
That was enough.
Facing the night wind, Suo walked toward the little boat waiting for him in the mist.
Some things had already ended.
Some things were still going on.
Since time refused to stop for him, he had no intention of lingering in his pain, either.
He had to keep moving forward.