It was the first morning of my last three days.
From this point on, there would be no monitor to watch me.
Miyagi was not around anymore.
I'd long ago made up my mind on what to do with these three days. I spent my morning writing in my notebook. When I finished describing yesterday's events, I set down the fountain pen and slept soundly for a few hours. When I woke up, I went outside to smoke, bought an apple cider from the vending machine, and quenched my thirst.
I glanced at my wallet again. One hundred eighty-seven yen. That was it. And sixty of those yen were one-yen coins. I counted three times to be sure: one hundred eighty-seven yen.
When I noticed an odd coincidence, it made me smile. It wasn't much to live on for three days, but the coincidence pleased me.
I looked over my notebook again, adding a few necessary details, then hopped onto my Cub and visited all the places I'd gone with Miyagi, by myself this time.
I rode under the blue skies, seeking something like a whiff of her scent lingering in the air.
Miyagi was out there somewhere now, monitoring someone else. I prayed that this person wouldn't get desperate and attack her. I prayed that her work went according to plan, and when the debt was paid off, she would lead a life so happy that she forgot all about me. I prayed that someone would appear whom she cared about more than me, and who cared about her even more than I did.
I walked through the park, where the children waved at me. On a sudden whim, I decided to pretend Miyagi was there with me.
I held out my hand and said, "C'mon, Miyagi" and squeezed an imaginary hand back.
To everyone else, it would have been the usual sight. "Oh, there goes crazy Kusunoki again, walking with his imaginary girlfriend."
But it was hugely different for me.
Everything about it felt off.
It was my idea to do it, but I felt such a terrible sadness that I could barely stay on my feet.
Miyagi's absence hit me more powerfully than I'd ever felt it before.
It made me think—what if it had all been a hallucination, from the very start?
I was certain my life would end in another three days. I could tell I'd burned down my life force to its last embers. That sensation wasn't a lie.
But had the girl named Miyagi even truly existed? What if her existence—of the whole store that supposedly bought my life span—was all just a delusion that my mind built, to conveniently structure my understanding of the imminent death that my subconscious knew was coming?
There was no way to know now.
I sat on the lip of a fountain and hung my head, until a boy and girl around middle school age spoke to me.
The boy teased, "Are you with Miyagi again today, Mr. Kusunoki?"
"No. Miyagi's gone," I said.
The girl put her hands to her mouth in shock. "Wh-what happened? Did you have a fight?"
"You could say that. I don't recommend it, you two."
The kids looked at each other, then shook their heads. "I don't think we can never fight. I mean, even you and Miyagi did, right?"
"If such a close couple can get mad at each other, there's no way we can avoid it."
I meant to tell them that was probably true. But the words wouldn't come.
Suddenly, it was as if the cork had been popped loose, and I was crying.
The more I tried to comfort myself by imagining Miyagi next to me, the more the tears flowed forth.
Instead, the two kids sat on either side of me and tried to console me.
Once I had cried all I could and looked up, there were suddenly quite a few people standing around.
Apparently, there were many more people who knew me than I thought.
I was surrounded by a crowd of people of all different generations, apparently here to see what Kusunoki was up to now.
Shinbashi's friends Suzumi and Asakura were among them. Suzumi asked me what happened. I wasn't sure what to say but eventually decided to tell them that I broke up with Miyagi over a fight. She'd gotten sick of me and dumped me, I lied.
"I wonder what Miyagi didn't like about you?" snapped a teenage girl with a mean glare, incensed at the idea. It was as though, to her, there really had been a girl named Miyagi she was talking about.
"Maybe she had some reason," said a man next to her. I recognized him. Yes—the owner of the photography place. He was the very first person to accept Miyagi's existence. "She didn't seem like someone who would do such a cruel thing."
"But still, she's gone now, isn't she?" said Suzumi.
"If she abandoned such a great guy and vanished, then that Miyagi was never any good," said a short-haired man who'd been on a run. He patted my shoulder.
I lifted my head to say something, but the words caught in my throat—
—and then I heard another voice behind me.
"That's right. And he's such a wonderful guy, too."
I recognized that voice.
A day or two wasn't nearly enough to forget it.
I would need three hundred—three thousand—years to erase that voice from my mind.
I turned around to face it.
I knew who it belonged to.
There was no way I could be wrong.
But I couldn't believe it until I saw her for myself.
There she was, smiling.
"This Miyagi woman is no good, I agree," said Miyagi, and then her arms were around my neck, hugging me.
"I'm back, Mr. Kusunoki… I was looking for you."
I returned her embrace automatically, smelling the scent of her hair.
The sensation my body knew as "Miyagi" matched this one perfectly.
It was her. She was here.
I wasn't the only one who was having difficulty accepting the situation. The other people around us were equally confused.
I was certain they must all be thinking, Wait, I thought there wasn't actually a girl named Miyagi?
It was undeniable, based on their reactions: Miyagi was clearly visible to everyone.
A man in a tracksuit hesitantly asked her, "Um, excuse me, are you Miss Miyagi?"
"That's right. I'm that no-good Miyagi," she replied.
The man turned to me, clapped me on the shoulder several times, and said with a laugh, "Good for you, then! Well, I'll be. She does exist. And she's quite attractive, to boot. I'm jealous, man!"
But I was still having trouble grasping what was happening.
Why was Miyagi here?
Why were other people able to see her now?
"So Miyagi…really is Miyagi," said the wide-eyed teenage girl next to me. "She's like… exactly how I imagined her. Exactly the same."
From the middle of the pack, Asakura tried to get the rest of the crowd to disperse so we could be alone. They trickled away a few at a time, offering congratulations and lighthearted teasing.
I thanked Asakura for his help.
"Just like I thought, she's exactly my type," he said with a laugh. "Many blessings to you two."
And then it was just the two of us.
Miyagi squeezed my hand in an attempt to ease my confusion and explained, "It's strange, isn't it? How is it that I'm here, you're wondering. And how can everyone else see me? The answer is simple… I did the same thing you did."
"The same thing?"
It took a few seconds for me to understand what she meant.
"How much…did you sell?"
"The same amount as you. All of it. I only have three days left."
My mind went blank.
"After you sold your life span, the substitute monitor got in touch with me. He told me you'd sold the maximum possible amount of your life and repaid the majority of my debt. By the time he was done describing what had happened, my mind was made up. He handled the transaction for me, too."
I should be feeling sad about this, I knew.
I'd sacrificed everything to protect her, but she went against my wishes and discarded her own life. It was a lamentable situation.
And yet, I was happy.
Right then, I had never loved anything more than her betrayal and foolishness.
Miyagi sat down next to me, leaned against me, and closed her eyes.
"You're incredible, Mr. Kusunoki. In just thirty days, you bought back the majority of my life… I'm sorry I turned around and threw away all that time you reclaimed for me. I'm so stupid, aren't I?"
"No, you're not stupid," I said. "If anyone's stupid, it's me. I couldn't even face living three days without you. I was at a loss. I didn't know what I was going to do."
She smiled and rubbed her cheek against my shoulder. "Thanks to you, the value of my life had risen a little bit, I suppose. I was able to repay the debt and still had money left over. More than I could possibly spend in three days."
"So you're rich, huh?" I teased. I threw my arms around her and rocked her side to side.
"Yes, I'm rich now." She laughed, hugging me back and making a big show of it.
The tears began to flow down my cheeks again, but it was the same for Miyagi, so I didn't mind this time.
I'm leaving nothing behind when I die.
Maybe some weirdo or another will remember a fool like me, but I'm guessing the probability is much higher that I'll just be forgotten.
But I don't care about that anymore.
I once dreamed of being eternal, but I don't have to put my hopes in that anymore.
I don't care if anyone remembers me or not.
Because now I've got this girl beside me. This girl and her brilliant smile.
That's all I needed to be able to release everything.
"Now, Mr. Kusunoki," Miyagi said, turning to face me and smiling adorably. "How shall we spend the next three days?"
I have a feeling that…
…more than the miserable thirty years I should have spent…
…and more than the meaningful thirty days I should have spent…
…these last three days will be the most precious of them all.
Afterword
There's a saying that "only death cures a fool," but I have a more optimistic look on the subject. I think it should be "A fool will be cured before his death."
Of course, you can't just say "fool," because there are many varieties of fool, but when I use the word, I refer to the people who create their own hell. One of the features of such individuals, for example, would be that they are strongly convinced they can never be happy. When their condition worsens, this view expands into "I am not meant to be happy," until they are deluded into the final self-destructive idea: "I do not want to be happy."
At this point, they have nothing to hold them back. They are experts in the means of becoming miserable, and no matter how fortunate their circumstances are, they will always find a way out and skillfully evade any kind of happiness. Because this entire mental process is happening subconsciously, they think everything about the world is hell—but the truth is that they are turning wherever they go into their own personal hell instead.
I can say with authority, as one of those hell-creators myself, that these people are not easily cured. When misery is part of your identity, then not being miserable means not being yourself. The act of self-pity, meant to help you bear your unhappiness, becomes its own form of pleasure, and you will eventually seek out unhappiness so that you can indulge in it.
But as I wrote above, I think these fools are cured before they die. Or to be more precise, I think they find that cure right before death. The lucky ones might have an opportunity to fix themselves before it gets to that point, but even the unlucky ones, when they intuitively sense that their death is unavoidable, when they are finally free of the shackles of the compulsion to go on living—they are at last liberated from this type of foolishness.
I said my view was an optimistic one, but thinking about it again, I suppose you could also say it's quite pessimistic. After all, the moment they finally learn to love the world is the moment they know they are soon to leave it.
But I think that to those people whose foolishness is cured after it's too late for anything else, the world must be such a beautiful place that none of it matters to them. The deeper the regrets and lamentations, such as "I've been living in this exquisite world all this time?" and "But now I finally know how to accept my life for what it is," the more cruelly alluring it must be.
I've always wanted to write about that kind of beauty. As a matter of fact, I have no intention of expounding upon things like the value of life or the power of love, whether through Three Days of Happiness or another book. None.
~ SUGARU MIAKI