A Dream...

I was having a dream...

A dream shared between many...

Between friends... between relatives...

between lovers...

That dream is over.

The details of the dream fade from memory...

What was I dreaming about?

The boy sat in a chair by my bedside.

Perhaps that wasn't quite right. He was certainly a "boy" in the sense of being male, but if one were speaking in regard to his age there could be a good case made against the use of that word; rather, in this situation the word "Man" might have been more appropriate. Not a fully-grown man, but one who was very close to it. Certainly one who had grown enough that he'd be treated as an adult in many respects.

So this is what Yuuichi-kun will grow up to look like?

No, that wasn't quite right either. Yuuichi-kun already looked like that. It wasn't a matter of what he would look like when he grew up, because he had already done so. Even though it had been only a few weeks ago that we had been playing together... another thing that wasn't right. For me, it had been a few weeks. Only for me. Nobody else saw it in that timeframe.

Years. For Aizawa Yuuichi to change from the boy my age who had played with me in the forest to the young man who cried by my bedside, years would have to be the unit of measure that everybody used when speaking of my time in the hospital. The doctors and nurses had looked after me for years. My friends hadn't spoken with me in years. My father had worried about his only child for years. Yuuichi-kun had cried by my side for years.

This person, the woman who had come with Yuuichi-kun; had it been years for her, as well? He had asked if I could remember her. As far as I knew, I had never met such a person before the accident. Did that mean that she had visited while I was asleep? Had she spoken to me during an earlier occasion where I had awoken, only for me to have forgotten the encounter? Though she had told me she wanted to be friends, she was seated in a chair behind Yuuichi-kun. Had she met me only recently, leading her to defer to Yuuichi-kun who had known me for days before the accident? Politeness from not having as long of an acquaintance with me seemed to be the only reasonable explanation for her to sit quietly behind her companion; it was preposterous to think that such a mature-looking woman would remain silent because of shyness. Yuuichi-kun had introduced her as his cousin. Could this be one of the relatives he had been staying with when we first met? I was incredibly jealous. How dare Yuuichi-kun have reason to spend school breaks staying with such a pretty relative, when I only ever remained at home with my parents.

"Today was our graduation, Ayu. Nayuki, Kaori, Kitagawa, and I all went to Hyakkaya to celebrate. Shiori was there, too. Do you remember any of them?" None of those people's names seemed familiar, so I shook my head.

Come to think of it, Yuuichi-kun and his cousin were dressed incredibly formally. They must have come from the ceremony without stopping by their homes first. Homes... home? When we'd known each other before, Yuuichi-kun had been staying with his relatives because it was winter break. For him to have his graduation in this city... had he moved here with his family? Was he just here to attend high school, possibly staying with his relatives again?

The two of us had once talked about how fun it would have been if we could have attended school together instead of only seeing each other during the breaks. If I hadn't lost those years of my life, would that childhood dream of ours have become a reality?

"Nayuki, Kaori, and Kitagawa all begin university next week. I'm putting it off at least until next year. For the time being, I'm working at a restaurant in the shopping district. I'll still be in this town, so I can visit you every day. Is that okay?"

I nodded my head. It may have been a foolish wish to think that Yuuichi-kun would be there every time I opened my eyes, but even without such a miracle, even for it to happen only some of the time would be a pleasant thing to look forward to.

In what seemed to be nearly no time at all, the visiting hours for the hospital were over, and Yuuichi-kun and his cousin left my room reluctantly. Though his face was still slightly wet with the tears from earlier, he was smiling clearly as he left. Before going, he promised that he would return the following day.

For a while after the departure of my visitors, I stared at the door to my room as best as I was able. Against what I had hoped, but in accordance to what I had expected, nobody else entered my room. If visiting hours had just ended, Chihiro wouldn't be finished with her work for yet another hour; barring her or one of the other nurses checking up on me, it was unlikely that I'd have any other visitors until then. If it seems rather foolish for me to lay in anticipation of guests when I was expecting none, it likely was. Unfortunately, there was not much else that I could do in the situation that I was in.

So, that's the kind of person Yuuichi-kun has grown up into.

Back when Yuuichi and I had played together, we had been in the same year of school. For him to have just experienced his graduation would mean that I had slept through nine birthdays. Try as I might, I couldn't imagine what my eighteen-year-old self might look like right now. I just couldn't see myself looking so different from when I last knew what I looked like. I certainly couldn't see myself having become as mature-looking as Yuuichi-kun's cousin.

Does this mean I'm not a child anymore?

Having grown up would normally mean that one was an adult, right? Except, being grown up is achieved through the experiences one experiences while growing up. What does it mean when somebody manages to become grown up without experiencing the process of growing? Should I have been considered the child that I remembered being, or the adult that I now appeared to be?

Someone, please tell me the answer.

"Are you awake, Ayu-chan?"

Chihiro called out to me with her gentle voice as she entered my room. She couldn't see my face with the way I was currently positioned, head turned toward the window in order to watch the setting sun. Well, to watch as best as I could when I couldn't raise my body enough to see the horizon beyond the windowsill. Mostly, I was just watching the clouds pass by, tinged slightly with the warm colours of the western sky in evening. Even without seeing the sun, it could be considered a beautiful sight.

The fact that, while I was turned this way, Chihiro couldn't see that I had been crying was just a bonus.

"You've been awake for awhile today, haven't you?"

It was certainly true. From sometime after noon until at least an hour after the end of visiting hours: it was the longest I'd been awake yet. Well, the longest stretch of time in the past few years that I'd been awake. The novelty of being able to retain consciousness for more than an hour was beginning to wear off, especially in face of the fact that I had nothing to do while awake, anyways. Most of the time, the periods of time in which I could perceive my surroundings coincided with nothing more eventful than a nurse checking in on me.

Not today, though. Today's events had been much different.

"That was a good friend of yours, right?" I nodded. Though her initial impression had come across as that of a reserve and serene nurse, I had recently begun to discover that Chihiro possessed a fervent love of conversation when she wasn't on duty. As such, she liked to hear about me when she was visiting. She would often pass the time that the two of us spent together by asking questions that I could answer with my limited ability to respond. Though one would be pressed to find a person who would consider the resulting exchanges to be a conversation in the traditional sense, Chihiro seemed quite happy with this arrangement. I certainly wasn't complaining about it; spending time conversing with someone while I was limited to only using yes-or-no responses was still much better than spending time staring blankly at the ceiling.

"Someone you knew from school?" No. I shook my head.

"From your neighborhood, then? Somebody you played with when you were younger?" I shook my head again, then changed it to a nod. Only partially correct.

"It's really nice of him to be always visiting you like this. You must have been quite close."

Our "conversation" continued afterward for another part of an hour, ending when Chihiro had to leave for the day. The remainder of our talk had little to do with Yuuichi-kun; while Chihiro likely would have loved to question me further about our past, we had reached the limit of what information I could convey in my limited state of mobility. Instead, our conversation turned to the topic of my other friends from around the same time period, ones whom I had known through school. I could not communicate their names, though as the memories of my fourth grade year were still fresh in my mind, I could easily recall them: Sakura, quiet and never far from a book; Himeko, playful and energetic; Yui, carefree until she became really engrossed in something; and Keiko, who always took everything seriously. Without being able to directly tell Chihiro of these recollections, I was limited to assuring her that I used to have lots of fun, and that we had all been friends for quite some time.

Two weeks.

The part I couldn't understand. The part I couldn't tell Chihiro; not because I didn't want to or was afraid to, but because it couldn't be expressed in terms of yes and no. Yuuichi and I had known each other for two weeks before the accident. We had spent entire days together, and Yuuichi-kun had been a friend at a time in my life when I really needed one. Even if I could have spoken, words would not have helped me to properly explain how critical his acquaintance had been for me, and how much I still owed him. That was just my side of our friendship, though.

For Yuuichi-kun, there should have been no such thing. He saved me, but there was no need for me to save him. For him, I should have just been a girl he met at a time of the year when he was away from his usual friends. A substitute friend: sincere, but temporary. That's how the situation should have been.

Eight years later, though, he was still here. After knowing me for a short time, he had been willing to wait a period of time hundreds of times larger than the duration of our initial acquaintance in order to see me again. According to Chihiro, he usually visited everyday, long after the closest of my friends had stopped visiting altogether. It made me happy. It was sweet. It was something I had no right to experience, having never done anything remotely as meaningful for the boy who continued to stay by my side.

With that thought in my head, the longest day that I'd experienced in years ended; reclaimed by the approaching darkness of deep slumber.