The future.
I used to think it was some distant, blurry thing, a horizon you could never actually reach, no matter how long you walked.
But time doesn't wait for anyone. It doesn't slow down for hesitation, or nerves, or unfinished manuscripts.
Before I knew it, five months had passed since that award ceremony in Tokyo.
Five months since my life split into two versions of itself, Shin Himeya, ordinary third-year high school student, and Shin Himeya, debut author.
My winning story had been published in December as a full novel. The Lighthouse Girl. I still remembered the day the sample copies arrived at my house, the smell of fresh ink, the weight of the book in my hands, my name printed on the spine as if it had always belonged there. My mother had cried. My father had quietly bought ten copies "for relatives," even though we didn't have ten relatives who read novels.
The first print run sold out in three weeks.
The second one, in five.
My editor called it "an exceptional debut." I called it "terrifying," because now there was a sequel deadline hanging over my head like a guillotine, and I had spent the last two months writing chapter drafts between exam study sessions, hiding my laptop under textbooks whenever my mother knocked on my door past midnight.
But today, none of that mattered.
Because today...
"Himeya! Oi, Himeya! Earth to the great sensei!"
A hand waved in front of my face, snapping me out of my thoughts.
I blinked. The classroom came back into focus. Desks pushed neatly into rows. Sunlight pouring through the windows. And outside, beyond the glass...
Sakura.
Full bloom. Petals drifting past like slow, pink snow.
March. Graduation day.
"You were spacing out again," Hiro said, grinning down at me with that infuriatingly carefree smile of his. His uniform blazer was, as always, slightly rumpled, his tie loose in a way that had earned him three years of scoldings from every teacher in the building. "Let me guess. Thinking about your deadline?"
"...Maybe."
"Unbelievable." Hiro dropped into the chair in front of me, straddling it backwards and resting his arms on the backrest. "It's graduation day, man. The one day you're legally allowed to not think about work. Even famous authors get that much, right?"
"I'm not famous."
"Your book is literally in the front display of the station bookstore. With a handwritten recommendation card. I saw it yesterday. 'A miraculous debut from a local high school student.' They even drew little stars on it."
Heat crept up my neck.
"...They what?"
"Yuka-chan took a photo. Ask her."
...Yuka-chan...?
As if summoned by her name, a familiar voice cut in from the side.
"Ask me what?"
Yuka appeared beside my desk, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised. Her long ponytail was tied back neater than usual today, a special occasion arrangement, probably. Pinned to her chest was the small graduation corsage every third-year had received that morning, and somehow she made even that look sharp and put-together.
"The bookstore display," Hiro said. "Show him."
"Oh. That."
A small, smug smile tugged at her lips as she pulled out her phone, scrolled for a moment, and turned the screen toward me.
There it was. A tower of copies of The Lighthouse girl, stacked in a neat pyramid, surrounded by hand-drawn stars and a POP card written in enthusiastic marker.
I wanted to sink into the floor.
"I stood there for five whole minutes watching people pick it up," Yuka said, her voice carrying that particular note of pride she always tried, and failed, to disguise as teasing. "A middle school girl bought two copies. Two, Himeya. One to read and one to keep clean, she told her friend."
"Please stop."
"An old man read the back cover and nodded really seriously."
"Please stop."
"I'm just reporting the facts."
She pocketed her phone, but her expression softened, just for a second, a flicker of something warm beneath the usual sharpness.
"...It's a good book, you know. I've told you that before, but... it's a really good book."
Besides Touka, Yuka had been the very first person in class to read it. She'd finished it in one night and shown up at school the next morning with dark circles under her eyes and a list of seventeen handwritten comments, half of them praise, half of them merciless critique. I'd kept that list. It was pinned above my desk at home.
"...Thanks, Yuka."
"Don't get a big head."
She turned away quickly, but not quickly enough to hide the faint red on her ears.
"Ahaha! Yuka-chan, your face..."
"Not one word, Hiro."
"Everyone! Good morning!"
A bright, melodic voice rang out from the classroom doorway, and every head in the room turned, as they always did.
Golden hair catching the morning light, blue eyes practically sparkling, she crossed the classroom with the kind of effortless radiance that had made her the unofficial celebrity of our year since the day she transferred in.
"Good morning, Alicia." I replied to her.
"Morning/Good Morning there." Hiro and Yuka joined.
"Finally, the day has come." She said.
"You're going back huh..." I said.
I don't know why but, another farewell with her makes me sad.
"Himeya, Thank you for your help this year."
"Just doing my job as a friend, ya know." I said while trying to keep my smile.
"That's you, after all." She smiled.
Hiro and Yuka want to join our conversation, but it seems too heavy for them, so I invited them by changing the topic.
"So, Are you both dating?" I asked while grinning.
"WHA-!!"
Yuka is stuttering while Hiro can't keep his straight face.
Watching them, Me and Alicia are laughing.
I took another slow look around the classroom.
Every familiar face was here. Hiro. Yuka. Alicia. The usual morning noise hadn't changed one bit.
...And yet.
Something felt strangely incomplete.
Like a sentence missing its final punctuation.
I frowned to myself.
"...Must be my imagination."
...
So this is what it feels like, I thought. The last page of a chapter.
The Ceremony
The gymnasium was transformed. Red-and-white striped curtains lined the walls, rows of folding chairs stood in perfect formation, and a banner hung above the stage.
Congratulations, Graduates.
The ceremony itself passed like a dream, the kind you only realize was precious after you wake from it.
The principal's speech.
The chorus of the underclassmen singing us off, their voices wavering in places where emotion broke through.
The valedictorian's address, during which Alicia, seated two rows ahead of me, could be heard sniffling while the girl next to her wordlessly passed her a packet of tissues.
And then...
"Third year, Class 3. Himeya Shin."
"...Yes."
My voice came out steadier than I expected. I rose, walked down the aisle between the rows of chairs, and climbed the steps to the stage. The principal held out my diploma with both hands.
"Congratulations," he said.
Then, lowering his voice with the faintest smile, he added,
"I read your novel over the winter break. My wife recommended it to me, of all things. You've made this school proud, Himeya-kun."
For a second, I forgot the proper etiquette entirely.
"Th... thank you very much."
I bowed, accepted the diploma, and as I turned back toward my seat, my eyes swept across the sea of faces and found them, one by one.
Hiro, giving me a lazy thumbs-up from our class's rows.
Yuka, sitting perfectly straight, but her eyes suspiciously bright.
Alicia, openly weeping into her fourth tissue.
Kousuke, in the Class 1 section, arms crossed, nodding at me once with that solemn, that expression of his.
Sumire, in Class 5's rows, offering a small, gentle wave of her fingertips, her soft smile visible even from the stage.
And there, in the standing section reserved for underclassmen along the back wall, a second-year girl on her tiptoes, waving both arms over her head with absolutely no regard for ceremony decorum until a teacher gently pressed her arms back down.
Kei.
I bit back a laugh and returned to my seat, the diploma warm in my hands.
As I sat down, my gaze wandered across the rows one last time.
There was that feeling again.
Like I'd forgotten to look toward someone.
Someone important.
But no matter how hard I searched my memory, nothing came.
The principal's voice soon continued, pulling my attention back to the ceremony.
When the ceremony ended and we spilled out into the courtyard, the sakura were falling in earnest.
Petals everywhere, drifting across the schoolyard, catching in hair and on shoulders, gathering in soft pink drifts along the edges of the walkways. Camera shutters clicked in every direction. Underclassmen darted between graduates, asking for second buttons and farewell messages. Somewhere, someone was already crying loudly, and someone else was laughing just as loudly. Both sounds belonged perfectly.
"Himeya."
I turned.
Kousuke stood there, tall and broad-shouldered, holding his diploma tube like a sword at rest. Even on graduation day, his uniform was immaculate. Beside him stood Sumire, her hands folded neatly in front of her, a diploma tube of her own tucked under one arm.
"So," Kousuke said, "we actually made it. All of us."
He glanced around at the falling petals, and for once, the perpetual sternness of his face loosened into something quieter.
"Three years. Went by faster than I thought it would."
"Says the guy who spent most of it in the Basketball court," I said.
"And you spent most of yours hunched over a keyboard. We all had our battlefields."
A rare, dry smile.
Then he held out his hand.
"I read it, by the way. The novel. Took me a while. You know I'm slow with books. But I finished it in January."
...
"You'd better put that line in your next book. It's too good to waste on just me."
"It's not wasted if it's for you."
The Last Light of Afternoon
Eventually, inevitably, everyone gathered.
Kousuke dragging Hiro into a headlock that Hiro escaped in under a second. Alicia insisting on a group photo, then a second one, then a fifth, directing everyone's positions like a film director.
"Yuka, closer to Hiro! No, closer! Why are you turning red? It is for the composition!"
Sumire laughing behind her hand. Kei planting herself directly in the center of every single shot with the confidence of someone who had decided family privileges outranked all other claims.
We stood beneath the largest sakura tree by the school gate, the seven of us, as the afternoon light turned gold.
"So," Hiro said, hands laced behind his head, gazing up through the branches. "Sensei. When the sequel comes out, we're all in the acknowledgments, right?"
"Who said anything about..."
"I gave you my youth as writing material. I demand compensation."
"You gave me nothing but distractions."
"Distractions are material!"
"He's not wrong, actually," Yuka said. "That side character in chapter four was clearly based on him."
"Wait, what? Himeya. Himeya, look at me. Was that me?"
"...No comment."
The laughter that followed rose up into the branches, and a wind came through, and the petals fell around us like the whole world was applauding something small and unrepeatable.
I looked at each of them, one by one, and thought about the manuscript waiting on my desk at home. The blank page of chapter one, volume two. The blinking cursor I'd been afraid of for weeks.
Suddenly, I wasn't afraid of it at all.
Because I finally understood what my editor had told me all those months ago.
Stories can change people, even if only a little.
She'd had it backwards, though.
Or maybe I had.
People change stories.
These people.
This day.
This light.
Everything I would ever write was already alive, right here.
The future, huh...
Petals drifted past my eyes.
Yeah.
I think I finally know what's on the other side of it.
"Nii-san! Group photo, last one! Get in the middle!"
"Coming."
And I stepped forward, into the frame, into the falling sakura.
Into the first page of whatever came next.
We ended it by taking a picture, all of us, together.
After the picture, Kei and I waited for my parents and they arrived.
"Oh, my dear." My mom walked toward me and gave me a gentle hug like usual.
"Hello there." My father said.
"I thought you both will not come." I said jokingly.
"Like we ever abandoned our dear son." My mom said.
"Aunt marie have to see Nii-san, he was nervous when he gave handshake to the headmaster." Kei said while giggling.
"Oh really?"
"Ah, Kei. Please don't add unnecessary details." I said.
and then we laughed.
...
[Happy graduation.] -Kanemoto Uguisu.
and then...
Buzz buzz
A picture of Uguisu-senpai holding my book while smiling.
A message far from Japan.
[Thank you, Senpai!] -Shin Himeya.
I smiled at the photo.
Uguisu-senpai never forgot moments like these.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket.
...
Then, without warning, that strange feeling returned.
A quiet emptiness.
Like there was still one farewell I hadn't made.
One congratulations I hadn't heard.
One smile I hadn't seen.
"...Who am I forgetting?"
...
Did I forget about someone...?