Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Asa auditions for the school concert and gets in. She still hasn’t finished her lyrics. Makio can’t remember the writing advice she gave Asa a year ago.
Asa thinks about asking whether her mother’s diary contains lies, whether the beautiful words in it are real or fiction. But she already knows Makio won’t share her own opinion about her sister. So she doesn’t ask.
Emiri and Shouko stop hiding. Asa cleans up a closet in Makio’s room and turns it into her own tiny space. Makio calls it her palace. When Makio asks if Asa wants to do something to remember her parents, Asa doesn’t pick the anniversary of their death. She picks their birthdays. Their birthdays were close together, so the family always celebrated on a day in between. She wants to do that again, even though they’re gone.
In the finale, a classmate named Chiyo, who’s been dealing with her own problems, asks Asa whether she ever thought about ending things after her parents died.
Asa’s answer is simple. Even in a desert with nothing around, being there doesn’t mean being dead. Because she’s still alive.
Asa sings. She’s not doing it for anyone specifically. Makio once told her “nothing in the world is unrelated to you”, that even the smallest act ripples outward. Asa didn’t understand it at the time. Standing there, feeling the audience react, she finally gets it. Even if her song doesn’t change anything. Even if only one person remembers it ten years from now. That’s enough.
In Makio’s new novel, the main character recently adopted a dog and named it Asa Ashita.
Ten years later, Asa and Emiri have moved out. Asa still has short hair. Emiri looks more grown up. The desert isn’t gone, but she’s not stuck in it anymore.
