Chapter 1723 - 239 - Give Up (5)

"I am sorry that I couldn't help but see you as someone who is already dead, but I really can't help myself when it comes to this," she said. "I know now that you aren't him. No matter how many coincidences I keep seeing that seem to point toward you being that person, I don't want to look at them that way. I mean, it could simply be a coincidence that you named your daughter after the late sister of that person, couldn't it? I don't think that... it was that kind of coincidence, but considering that all of this might just be a series of coincidences altogether, I don't think there is any real connection between them. For all I know, the name Kana could be something that's really common here, and it could have been nothing more than a coincidence. In fact, I think that's probably more likely."

She sounded really bitter as she said those words, and there was something underneath her voice that made it feel as though she wasn't merely explaining her thoughts to me.

It almost seemed like she was blaming me for something.

I couldn't even tell whether she was angry at me, angry at herself, or simply angry at the possibility that she had been wrong about everything she thought she knew.

"Do you want me to become that person, then?" I asked her, wondering what kind of answer she would give me after hearing something like that.

The moment I said those words, she looked directly at me with an expression that immediately told me I had caught her completely off guard.

"Kaori," I said quietly.

She looked away almost immediately after hearing me call her by that name, as though even hearing her own name from me had suddenly made the situation much more difficult for her to handle.

"You're not... that person, are you?" she asked quietly.

She kept looking away from me, and I couldn't tell whether she was trying to confirm what she already suspected or desperately trying to convince herself that it wasn't true.

Perhaps confirming it was something she didn't actually want to hear.

Perhaps denying it was even worse.

Either way, she had still asked the question, which made me think that some part of her was hoping I would give her the answer she wanted.

I didn't open my mouth, though, because I had already made up my mind that I didn't want to do anything with her.

Or maybe that wasn't the whole truth.

Perhaps I was still a little butthurt about what had happened back then, and that was why I couldn't bring myself to say anything even though I knew exactly what she wanted to hear.

Looking back on it now, I suppose I still carried some regrets from my previous life.

I also still had a little affection for her, although I felt that most of that affection existed because she had been my childhood friend for nearly my entire life in that previous existence.

She had been there for so long that separating those memories from my feelings for her wasn't exactly an easy thing to do.

Whatever the reason might have been, I never wanted her to die.

"What if I am?"

I finally gave her the answer she had been waiting for, because perhaps, considering everything that had happened between us, giving that hope back to her was the right choice after all.

"Huh?"

Her voice came out quietly, almost as though she hadn't expected me to actually answer her question.

"Ichinose Tsubasa," I said, finally giving her the name I had carried during my previous life.

Her eyes widened the instant those words left my mouth, and I could practically see the realization forming in her expression as several memories seemed to connect together inside her mind.

She must have had an epiphany at that moment, but even then, she couldn't possibly bring herself to believe it.

"W-Wait, that's not possible," she stammered. "R-Right? T-There's no way that you could have... I mean, you could've heard that name from someone else. T-There's no way you could possibly be..."

Her voice sounded like someone desperately trying to find another explanation, even though the answer she didn't want to accept was already sitting directly in front of her.

"Back in middle school, you had a crush on one of our classmates, but he eventually went somewhere else after transferring to another school," I told her, watching her reaction carefully. "You cried really hard that day while clinging to me, and you kept screaming, 'Why? Why?' right there in the street."

Her expression changed slightly as I continued reminding her about things that nobody else should have known.

"You even cried yourself to sleep afterward, and I carried you on my back all the way to your house."

The moment I finished telling her that memory, she looked at me again before becoming completely silent.

She had heard something that only she could possibly know about.

Well, there was technically one other person who could have known about it.

Tsubasa.

And that Tsubasa had been me.

"Also, do you remember when we went down into the forest near the place where we were staying during our school trip?" I asked her. "You got lost there, and you ended up crying by yourself before eventually falling asleep on the ground. I found you sleeping there and carried you all the way back to the place where we were staying."

Her expression became even more shaken after hearing that second memory, and I could tell that the doubts she had been desperately holding onto were beginning to fall apart one after another.

"Are you reading my memories?" she asked, her voice becoming increasingly uncertain. "If you are, then I'm seriously telling you that this isn't funny at all. T-There's no way you could possibly be..."

"You said it yourself," I interrupted before she could finish what she was trying to say. "You said that you thought the person you knew and I were the same person."

I looked directly at her while letting the weight of those words settle between us.

"And now I'm confirming what you thought."

I took a breath before finally saying the truth that she had been struggling to accept.

"I am Tsubasa."

She sucked in a deep breath immediately after I revealed the truth.