Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Asa and Makio visit the grandmother. She used to be fierce, but after her daughter’s death, she became a lot nicer. Upstairs, sitting in her sister’s old room, Makio tells Asa to keep liking the mother she knew. Don’t let other people’s opinions rewrite your memory.
Makio found her dead sister’s diary while sorting through Asa’s old house. She brought it home, read the first page about the meaning behind Asa’s name, and stopped. She couldn’t continue.
The diary was meant for Asa when she turned 20. Makio planned to give it to her eventually but wasn’t sure when. Asa overheard Makio talking about the diary with Kasamachi, went into Makio’s room, and found it.
Then it cuts to Asa’s mother sitting with friends, admitting she envied Makio. It cuts back to Asa, staring into a dark pit instead of a diary. She reads a line where her mom wrote “I love you” and shouts, “what if all of these are lies? How am I supposed to know?”
There’s no one left to ask.
Asa skips school for 10 days. Everything feels unfair. Emiri got taller and I didn’t. Chiyo is cute and smart and I’m not. Asuka’s family is rich and mine isn’t. Zurui. Mukatsuku. None of these have anything to do with anything. She just needs someone to be angry at.
The adults track her down in front of a bubble tea shop. Instead of dragging her back to school, they buy bubble tea and chat next to her casually, as if she isn’t there. Asa watches Makio laughing with everyone and feels like the only person nobody cares about.
What she really wants is for Makio to say “your mother loved you”. Just say it. Even if it’s a lie. Makio won’t. She doesn’t know if it’s true. The most she’ll say is “I hope so”.
Asa reads Makio’s novels and realizes something painful. Makio can write exactly the kind of emotional comfort Asa wants. She puts it in her fiction all the time. She has the words. She just won’t use them on Asa, because they wouldn’t be true.
