Windfall

I had never meant to do it.

I suppose that's what you're expecting me to say, but that's simply because it's the timeless, cliched thing to say. I'm not sure if you can believe that I'm actually sorry - yet I am; I'm sorrier than I have ever been, sorrier than I ever will be. I'm even sorrier than if it was my own child deciding to go for a walk on that wet October day, and you can choose to disbelieve that if you wish, ladies and gentlemen, and I'm not going to hold it against you. How can I hold it against you? You won't believe me just the same. It might not be in you to believe the unordinary, just like it'll never be so in me. I would never have believed myself had it not been true - but it is true, ladies and gents, and I can't tell you just how sorry I really am.

I suppose I was angry, Thursday night. I was angry at her for hurting me so, I was angry at myself for believing her and I was angry at the world, if I tell the gospel truth. I was angrier than I have ever been before, and I have something of a temper when I am provoked. So I left her house fast as I could go, and I drove. I drove and drove and drove through Tomoeda, up and down the quiet streets, until my temper showed itself solely in the mad spinning of wheels, puddles of water and the flashes of headlights. I'd reckoned nobody would be out in so quiet an area, on such a foggy and miserable day too.

I'm not proud to admit that I saw her before I hit her. Maybe it's a good thing that I did say that, because then you will know, ladies and gentlemen, that it wasn't my fault. I tried to stop before her, and try and try I did, but the car kept skidding and running and despite hitting the horn, I still smacked right into her, as though she had been a lamp post and not a real, living person. I wasn't going very fast, only at 40 or so, but it was enough. She fell right in front of my car, never to get up again.

I have no kids, and I have no wife. Maybe it's because of that that I went to her funeral. I stayed well back, mind, out with the other churchgoers who had come to see the show. What a poor thing, they muttered, only seventeen. Such a good student and the kindest soul that ever walked upon this earth. You can imagine how this made me feel, ladies and gentlemen, and if you can't then you are one of the hardest people who ever served on a jury. I was properly sick when I heard this, that I had killed such an innocent young girl. If she were older, harder, weaker than I wouldn't have been so guilty - but a thin, delicate student? I couldn't bear it, ladies and gentlemen, and that's why I attended.

What I also couldn't bear was that I had killed my sister's best friend.

My sister looked dead herself when she went up to speak; it didn't help that the ribbons in her hair were both black and white. She looked around for a moment, up, down, across, anywhere but the coffin where her best friend and first ever confidant was lying, never to spring up again. Eyes roaming for some conceivable method of escape and finding none, she proceeded to whisper her speech in a voice that broke my heart.

'I first met ... her ... when she came up to me ... because I looked lonesome. And so, we became friends. And then ... well, we were friends for ten years, ten happy years, how fitting that she be buried on her ... her birthday-' Her voice broke off in a sob, and I felt even more guitly and I already did, if possible.

'We always did everything together, her and I ... like the time we put a pin on a teacher's chair together ... and it's strange to think I'll wake up one morning and realise she won't be waiting at the bridge for me ... and when I go to class and realise that she won't be ready to pass a few notes to me-' the tears coursed down her cheeks; she mumbled a faint 'Arigato' and left the podium, unable to continue.

I don't know what else I can possibly say, ladies and gentlemen. I saw them bury a girl I'd grown up with on her seventeenth birthday. I saw them place a talented angel into the October ground, I saw them throw dirt into that hole and all because of my anger, my sheer stupidity! I'm not angry now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm just sad, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry because my sister won't have a reason to smile any longer. I'm sorry because I killed a lonely woman's only child, and I'm most of all sorry because of my pride, the pride that told me not to see my sister again. So I am shamed, members of the jury, and so I hope to be sentenced. I don't want to live any longer, I can't bear knowing what really happened to Daidoji Tomoyo. I can't bear losing my sister. I most of all can't bear the last thing I saw my sister do at the funeral.

Sakura refused to put dirt in that hole, on top of her friend. Instead, she placed the only memento left of her, an old, broken video camera, onto the coffin with no small measure of reverence.

'I thought she would become bored up there,' she whispered, 'with nothing to videotape.'

Kinomoto Sakura found herself dating, and later marrying, her long time friend, Syaoran Li.
Daidouji Somomi created a charity in her daughter's name, hoping to give assistance and compensation to all Japan's families who lost someone who dangerous driving.
Hiiragiziwa Eriol was found dead two weeks later, hanging from his bedroom ceiling. The only word of explanation he left was that he thought 'she might need a friend up there'.

Kinomoto Touya pleaded guilty to death by dangerous driving, and was sentenced to life imprisonment the next spring, on his sister's seventeenth birthday. Just another thing to remember her by.