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Chapter 60: Curtain Fall
🕑 Added 2025-10-15 14:53:31 +0000 UTCOST: Kimi no Suizou wo Tabetai Fireworks Full 『Lyrics AMV』 Himitsu - Sumika
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[After the New Year.]
[Toru's health began to fail. You noticed how often he gazed at the sky, drifting into silence, the spark he had last year fading away.]
[He looked like an old man nearing his end, surrounded by the scent of decay.]
[The number of pills your boyfriend took kept increasing, and his hospital visits became more frequent.]
[Finally, in April...]
[Toru was admitted to the hospital.]
Kita felt the simulator's story was moving too fast, so fast she couldn't even react.
He had been perfectly fine last year. How could things fall apart so suddenly?
[They say even a centipede doesn't stiffen when it dies.]
[But unfortunately...]
[It's always the last straw that breaks the camel's back.]
[Toru had forced himself to stay strong last year so you wouldn't worry, but this time, he could no longer hold on. His life's flame was burning out.]
Kita quickly thought of one phrase.
A dying light.
[He's sorry. He lied to you…]
Wait.
Hold on.
What do you mean by that!?
Explain it to me!
[He wasn't suffering from pancreatitis at all. It was cancer, several times more severe. The kind with almost zero survival rate once it appears.]
…Cancer.
"How… how could this happen?"
Kita's mind went blank.
Despair filled her heart.
Even the most ignorant person knew that cancer almost always meant death.
Why didn't he tell her sooner? Why?
[Toru lay in his hospital bed once again. Even though he had promised you he would never make you regret being with him, tears still streamed down your face.]
["Crying like this… you must regret it, right?"]
["I don't regret it."]
Kita choked on her words and stayed silent for a long time. She wanted to shut the simulator off, because she already knew what would happen next.
She'd thought this "Friendship Simulator" would make her happy.
Who could have predicted such a beautiful story would end like this?
["You've learned to lie too, huh."]
[Toru hadn't wanted to make you sad, but he couldn't help it. In the end, he still made you cry.]
[He had told you many lies, but about two things, he never deceived you.]
[1. He would help you achieve your dream.]
[2. His feelings for you were never fake.]
Dreams?
"That doesn't matter anymore."
Kita regretted everything.
She regretted it all.
[The Chopin Piano Competition was two years away, but Toru would never live to see it.]
[He was just a passerby in your long life, your first love.]
[Someday, you would forget him.]
[In the future, you would meet hundreds, thousands of men. Among them, one would surely suit you. Human feelings were never as eternal as people liked to believe.]
[Toru didn't regret loving you. The year you spent together as lovers might have been the happiest time of his life.]
["In my seventeen years of existence, maybe I was only ever waiting for the moment you'd need me, like cherry blossoms waiting for spring."]
[Hearing those words, you couldn't speak anymore. You just pressed your face into his hospital bed, sobbing.]
[Toru didn't want to die. But death never listens to human wishes.]
[In that season when cherry blossoms bloomed...]
[Toru was taken into surgery.]
[After the surgery.]
[And no, there wasn't some miracle that failed to appear. The surgery was… successful.]
["Sorry, I didn't expect the success rate to be this high," Toru said from his bed, looking at you awkwardly.]
["From now on, we can go anywhere we want. Travel the world."]
["Yeah, this time I won't lie to you."]
[He began to tell you about the future. A honeymoon overseas, Hawaii sounded nice.]
[In spring, you'd visit Kyoto to see the cherry blossoms; in summer, escape the heat in Karuizawa; in autumn, go camping… and in winter, yes, in winter...]
[You'd go skiing together, roll in the snow, hold each other close.]
[When you grew up, you'd get married, buy a home just for the two of you. Once your careers stabilized, you'd have a child, preferably a girl, because you liked girls…]
[Tears blurred your vision. When morning came, you woke from bed.]
["Lying to me while alive, and still lying to me in my dreams, huh…"]
[You wished so badly that he would keep lying to you. But Toru was gone for good.]
[His funeral was held under a gloomy, rainy sky, so unlike his bright and cheerful nature.]
[Everyone there mourned in silence. Everyone but one person. You didn't attend. You hid in your room, buried beneath the dark blankets, reading the final messages he had sent you before he passed...]
["I'm sorry."]
["Sorry I couldn't spend my life with you."]
["Sorry for lying to you so many times."]
["And finally, thank you for loving me."]
[He shouldn't have been the one saying thanks... it should have been you.]
[Memories of your time together filled your mind as you opened the love diary you had read countless times.]
[Your first meeting had been in the music room. Your boyfriend lost in his own world, until you broke the silence with your sudden intrusion. His smile, his voice, all still so vivid. As if it had been only yesterday.]
[That night you watched the stars, the sky glittering, and the sight of him playing violin under the starlight made your heart flutter.]
[The winter camping trip, your confession, his startled gaze, the gentle lies he wove for your sake… thinking back now, those were the moments that made you happiest.]
[It was that night he stopped being just another friend in your life.]
[If life could stay forever at first meeting, why must autumn winds bring sorrow to painted fans?]
[If you could return to that evening you first met him, watching him stare off into the distance, lost in thought, what would you say to him now?]
[You didn't know.]
[Ten days after Toru's death, you set your diary aside and chose to face reality.]
[While sorting through his belongings, you found his medical record, detailing each hospital visit and the times he checked whether his condition had worsened.]
[July 28, the day after your trip to Enoshima.]
[October 12, the day after you watched the stars from the rooftop.]
[December 26, the day after Christmas.]
[January 13, the day you confessed to him.]
[…]
[Only then did you understand what all his quiet efforts, those moments you once thought trivial, had truly meant to him.]
[You clutched the medical report.]
[From here on, the road ahead would be yours alone.]
[The April that held his presence was already over.]
——
Author's Notes!
I originally planned to let Toru live a little longer, but after some thought… yeah, he should die.
The atmosphere's built up enough. If he didn't die, it'd almost feel like I was cheating the readers (laughs).
