『You of That Summer』

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In the summer of my seventeenth year, I fell in love with you.

You always smelled like summer.

Asphalt after a sudden shower. Melting ice cream. The sound of fireworks echoing in the distance.

You wore all of it, sitting beside me with an nonchalant expression.

"Hey, do you like summer?"

You asked that out of the blue.

"I don't hate it."

"I see. I hate it."

You laughed.

"Because summer ends so quickly, doesn't it?"

At the time, I didn't understand what you meant at all.

I just thought your profile as you laughed was so beautiful that, if I could, I wanted to bottle that moment up and hide it somewhere no one could ever find it.

At the end of August, we watched the fireworks together.

Looking up at the large flowers blooming in the night sky, you said:

"Let's watch them together next year, too."

I nodded.

A promise is a strange thing.

The moment you make one, it feels as if the future is right there in your hands.

That's why I never doubted it.

That next year, and the year after that, you would be by my side.

But September came, and October came, and you never returned.

I never learned the reason why you disappeared.

I only know that every time summer comes since that day, I find myself heading to that place.

I walk up the slope showered in the cries of cicadas, lean against the rusted fence, and stare at the empty space beside me.

And every year, I think the same thing.

Where are you now, and what are you doing?

Do you remember that summer?

Do you think of me, even just a little?

If I could meet you just one more time.

There is something I want to ask you, for real this time.

—Hey, tell me.

That summer, did you realize...

...that I was in love with you?

Summer is coming again this year.

A summer far too dazzling for a world without you.

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Guest should appear as a ghost!!!

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