"Menma really was a good kid."
The editor beside her had tears standing in her eyes, and yet, reading Fang Qiu's description of Atsumu "Yukiatsu" Matsuyuki in girls' clothes, she laughed out loud anyway.
"She was," Bai Qing murmured.
Fang Qiu had written this book differently from every book that came before it.
Every line was warm, gentle, healing — and still, page after page, a thread of grief wound itself tighter and tighter around the reader.
Because they knew. Meiko Honma was already dead.
The story went on.
In the book, Yukiatsu — who now believed that Meiko Honma was truly there — walked back in silence, and on the way ran into Chiriko Tsurumi and the others hurrying toward them.
Yukiatsu turned aside without a word. He walked until he found somewhere quiet, sat down on a rock, and looked at the hairpin clipped into the wig, repeating over and over the words Jinta Yadomi had just passed on to him from Meiko Honma.
Thank you for the hairpin.
I'm sorry.
Just then, Chiriko Tsurumi came up behind him.
Here Fang Qiu explained how she had known all along that Yukiatsu was dressing up as Meiko Honma.
And through a flashback, he wrote the scene where, after Yukiatsu had been rejected, Chiriko came to comfort him and pushed him to make up with Jinta.
Back in the present, under the night sky, Yukiatsu gave the same quiet "Mm" he had given in the memory, and agreed.
Then they walked back to the base together.
Jinta Yadomi, Yukiatsu and Chiriko apologized to one another.
It was getting late, so they all went home.
Meiko Honma went back to the house with Jinta. Looking at the memorial portrait of his mother, she remembered that the woman had said something to her when she was gravely ill.
But she couldn't recall a single word of it.
To help her fulfill her wish, they decided to go to the Honma house together and see if there was any clue to be found.
Yukiatsu and Chiriko had something else to attend to and didn't come along.
They arrived at the Honma house, paid their respects to Meiko, and borrowed her diary.
The sight of them stirred old memories in Meiko's mother, though she gave nothing away.
Meanwhile, Yukiatsu and Chiriko remembered that, back then, it had been Meiko who invited them all to the secret base — she'd had something she wanted to talk about.
Jinta and the others returned to the secret base and opened the diary, hunting for anything that might help.
"Went out to play with everyone today. It was fun."
"Went out to play with everyone today. I was so happy."
"Fell over while playing with everyone today. Ouch, it really hurt."
Reading those innocent, sunny little entries, Bai Qing and the others felt something press down on their chests. One of the editors was already crying.
They read on.
Then Tetsudo "Poppo" Hisakawa found an entry unlike the rest.
"Went with everyone to visit Jintan's mom today."
And with that, they remembered: as children, Meiko had wanted to send a letter to the gods, praying that Jinta's mother would get well soon.
Jinta flipped ahead a few pages and found it.
"Everyone decided we're going to make fireworks! It'll be hard, but we'll do our best!"
That was when it all came back to them.
They had wanted to put the letter inside a rocket firework and send it up into the sky, all the way to the gods.
So they decided to set off the fireworks.
Except that when they got home and Meiko heard they had gone to see her own mother, she immediately got upset with Jinta.
She said she didn't want her mother to think about her.
Jinta told her she ought to think about herself a little more.
Afterward, Jinta asked his father whether he knew anyone who made fireworks.
He apologized to Meiko with a snack, and then they all set out for the fireworks shop together.
The shop quoted them an outrageous price.
Twenty thousand.
To make the fireworks, they decided to take part-time jobs and raise the money together.
Somewhere in the middle of all that work, Naruko "Anaru" Anjou realized she still had feelings for Jinta.
And Jinta, coming home wrecked every night and falling straight into bed, left Meiko wondering what was going on.
She eventually heard from the neighbors that he'd taken a job.
So she ran all the way to the secret base — and walked in just in time to see Chiriko handing Naruko the money she and Yukiatsu had made selling their things.
That was how she learned what Jinta was really doing.
She turned around at once to go find him.
Chiriko and Naruko walked home together.
On the way, they talked about Yukiatsu and Jinta.
Chiriko liked Yukiatsu. Naruko liked Jinta.
Chiriko told her to keep an eye on him — he was the kind of person who shouldered everything alone.
And Naruko remembered that even when his mother was dying, Jinta had never cried.
At that moment Jinta was out on a construction site, working himself into the ground, and Meiko found him there, exhausted past the point of standing.
She thought he looked wonderful like that.
That night, back home, she asked him whether school was hard.
"It's kind of interesting, actually. More interesting than sitting at home all the time. Or maybe I should say — it feels like being alive."
"Alive."
Realizing what he'd just said, Jinta scrambled to explain himself, but Meiko only smiled. "Menma too. When Menma sees Jintan looking like he's alive, Menma feels alive too."
"Happy just because someone else is happy. Ugh, Fang Qiu, that man really is... he writes a character this good and then kills her off like it's nothing," the editor beside them sighed.
"Do you think Fang Qiu might bring Meiko Honma back at the end? Like in Weathering With You — where they push through and get her back?" the other editor said.
"Senior... I doubt it. If he worked that way, Miyazono Kaori wouldn't have died either."
Bai Qing sighed as she said it.
Nobody understood how Fang Qiu wrote better than she did.
If he said someone died, they died.
On that point, Fang Qiu never once pulled his punches.
In Your Lie in April, all he'd had to do was let the surgery succeed, and he'd have had a flawless, everyone-goes-home-happy ending.
He refused. He picked up his pen and sent Miyazono Kaori away.
At the sound of that name, both editors' faces clouded over.
It was true.
When Fang Qiu drew the knife, it came fast, and it went deep.
The thought dimmed the light in their eyes.
The story went on.
At last Jinta and the others scraped together the twenty thousand — only for the fireworks shop to turn them away when they came back.
Someone with influence had blocked it, the owner said.
When they asked who, they learned it was the Honma family.
Meiko's parents.
They went to the house to ask why, and Meiko's mother, unable to hold the pain in any longer, wept and drove them out.
Afterward, Yukiatsu and Jinta had it out with each other.
Jinta decided he was going to keep trying anyway.
And then he collapsed at work from sheer exhaustion — though thankfully nothing serious came of it.
Seeing him like that broke Naruko's heart.
She knew, then, that she loved him.
"The moment Jintan shines brightest is when he's with Menma."
"What I love is the Jintan who's trying his hardest for Menma."
At the same time, Yukiatsu and Chiriko went together to find Meiko's father. Yukiatsu knelt before him, and the words that poured out of him came straight from the heart — enough to move the man.
They got permission to set off the large fireworks.
They settled on a date for the launch.
The day was finally coming.
Jinta and Tetsudo Hisakawa worked together at the secret base, and somewhere in the middle of it Jinta asked him why he was pushing himself so hard.
Tetsudo was silent for a long time. Then he told him.
Back then, he had seen Meiko fall into the river. And he had shaken so badly with fear that he couldn't find the courage to go in after her. He had turned and run instead.
He had been living inside that guilt ever since.
All those years of traveling had been nothing but running away.
So this time, no matter what, he was going to grant Meiko's wish.
Meiko, pretending to be asleep, heard every word, and the tears ran down her face.
Meanwhile, Chiriko got in touch with Naruko.
Before the fireworks went up, they decided to hold a farewell party.
Chiriko apologized to Meiko. The reason Naruko had asked Jinta that question that day, she said, was because of what she had told her.
She had wanted everyone to say what they were really thinking, so that they could stay friends forever.
She'd never imagined it would end in tragedy.
And Meiko wrote on a sheet of paper: "The reason everyone got along so well is because Tsuruko was there."
Fang Qiu wove in flashback after flashback, laying out the memories Meiko and Chiriko shared.
As the memories faded, Chiriko wiped her eyes and made up her mind.
By then everyone had arrived.
After the farewell party, Naruko asked her question, exactly as planned.
"Jintan, do you... do you like Menma?"
With everyone pressing him, Jinta tried to run — and Chiriko's voice stopped him cold.
"If you run now, it'll be just like back then, Jintan!"
So Jinta turned around and shouted it out loud: yes, he liked Meiko Honma.
And then he sobbed his apologies to her and to all of them.
It was the first time any of them had ever seen Jinta Yadomi cry.
And with that, his apology to Meiko was finished at last.
On the way home—
"If I'd just grown up normally, I could've been Jintan's bride, huh."
Watching Meiko hook her arm through Jinta's and say that with such open longing on her face, one of the editors finally broke, tears spilling over.
Bai Qing's own eyes were wet.
That cut deep. Far too deep.
It was true — if Meiko Honma hadn't died, they would have been so happy...
Hearing her say it, Jinta couldn't hold himself together either.
He wanted her to stay.
Reading that, the editors all nodded along.
Let her stay. At least then there'd be no second goodbye.
But Meiko said she had to go and be reborn, because she wanted to meet her friends all over again.
To talk with them, to play with them.
At the same time, Meiko's father brought up the fireworks with her mother, and talked her into coming to watch them together.
At last, the day of the launch arrived.
All through it Jinta wavered, wondering whether he should stop the firework from going up.
Bai Qing and the others were just as tense.
Meiko's parents and her little brother came too.
Then the fuse caught, and the firework climbed into the sky.
And just when everyone — Bai Qing and the editors included — was certain Meiko would vanish, Jinta heard her cheering.
She hadn't disappeared.
Jinta froze. So did Bai Qing and the others.
After all that buildup, launching the firework hadn't been Meiko Honma's wish?
At least her family made peace with the group.
Back at home, Jinta sank into self-loathing — because part of him was genuinely glad she hadn't disappeared.
Meiko, meanwhile, walked over to the memorial portrait of his mother, said a few words to it, and collapsed.
Jinta jolted awake, ran out of his bedroom, and found her lying on the floor.
Barely clinging on, Meiko told him that she and his mother had made a promise.
His mother couldn't rest easy, knowing he kept everything bottled up inside, so she'd asked Meiko to help — to make Jinta cry.
That was why, on that day, she had gathered all her friends together to talk.
And now the wish had come true. Now she had to go.
Jinta realized he couldn't be the only one she said goodbye to. He told his father to call the others, hoisted Meiko onto his back, and ran for the secret base.
All along that run, Fang Qiu cut in flashback after flashback, dragging Bai Qing and the others' emotions along with him.
Their hearts were wrung tight.
For an ending that had been fixed from the very first page.
Jinta carried Meiko all the way to the secret base, and one by one the others arrived too.
And the instant he stepped inside, she vanished.
What?
That suddenly?
Bai Qing and the others blinked in confusion, and read on.
Then Jinta heard her voice.
"Jintan, calm down. It's hide-and-seek."
So they set out to look for her, while Meiko stayed behind in the secret base.
Staring at her hands as they turned more and more transparent, she spoke to herself.
"Not... ready yet. This time I have to say goodbye properly."
Jinta and the rest ran through the forest, searching for her.
And she sat in the secret base with a pen in her fading hand, forcing herself to write.
The sky... grew light.
They all gathered beneath one tree, and just as they were sure she was gone and the tears were coming, they found five letters lying at its roots.
One for each of them.
"To Tsuruko: I really like how gentle Tsuruko is."
"To Yukiatsu: I really like how hard Yukiatsu always works."
"To Pidgey: I really like how fun and funny Pidgey is."
"To Anaru: I really like how serious and dependable Anaru is."
And then—
"To Jintan: I really like Jintan. The way I like Jintan is the kind where I want to marry you and be your bride."
They cried. They cried until their faces were soaked.
And in the margin of the manuscript, Fang Qiu had written a few lines of verse.
"We made a promise at summer's end — the dreams still ahead, the hopes reaching far, I won't forget them. In August, ten years from now, I believe we'll meet again... Swallowing back the tears, smiling as we say goodbye. It stings a little, doesn't it. Carrying the most beautiful memories... carrying the most beautiful memories..."
And in the story itself:
Jinta gripped the letter and shouted, "Isn't this hide-and-seek? Then if we don't find you, it can't end, can it?"
"Are you hidden yet?"
Everyone shouted it with him.
"I'm hidden."
Meiko's voice came drifting back.
And there, beneath the tree, every one of them finally saw Menma.
"You're not supposed to call my name at a time like this, are you? Menma's really no good at hide-and-seek. Jintan — say it. Then it should be over, right?"
The morning sun rose, and its light passed straight through her body.
One after another they told her: I like Menma best of all.
"Menma wants to stay with everyone. Menma wants to play with everyone. That's why I have to be reborn, so I can be with everyone again. So — Jintan cried, and everybody said goodbye, so..."
Tears streamed down her face as she spoke.
Jinta drew in a long breath and shouted, "One, two, three—"
And just like when they were children, every one of them shouted with him, their voices ringing out through the valley under the newborn light.
"Menma! Found you!"
"You found me."
Meiko Honma laughed through her tears.
And then she was gone...
____
________________________________________
💖 Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 50 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter to warm your hearts.
🚀 Community Reward: If we reach 20 supporting members, we'll have a +5 chapter marathon across all stories! The romance won't stop.
👻 Come to our secret corner: Search for GirlsLove on (P). You know that's where the magic happens... 😉