April, the month when the boundary between spring and summer begins to slowly crumble.

I met that boy for the first time that day. Under the village's largest peach tree, amidst the faint scent of peach blossoms, on a day when pink petals holding the soft spring light fell gently like a shower.

The boy stood beneath the peach tree. As naturally as a wave is followed by foam, or lightning by thunder, like a pair.

Honestly, I thought he was a doll or a mannequin the village chief had put out as a decoration. Not only were there no pretty boys like him in this boring backwater, there were no people my age at all. It was only when he turned his head at the sound of my presence that I finally realized he was a person.

He was fiddling with the common peach blossoms of this village as if they were a newborn child, as if that peach tree—which few in the village even glance at—was something magnificent.

It was a little funny. I wondered if he'd gape at cicadas crying in the summer thinking they were strange bugs, or if he'd freak out seeing deep autumn maples thinking paint had been sprayed on the leaves. Is there really not a single common peach tree in that grey city called Tokyo?

—Anyway, the first words he spoke were neither a greeting nor a question, but something unexpected.

"The flowers smell like peaches."

The extremely obvious statement that peach blossoms smell like peaches.

I ended up believing his excuse—that he didn't particularly like peaches, but was just staring blankly because the scent was fascinating.

And then the boy spoke again. He said his health wasn't good, and if he were to leave this world, he wanted to do so after seeing peaches grow on this tree. He said he had no desire to stay long with a body like this.

... What a load of unlucky, nonsensical talk, I thought. At least, until then.