"You are my first love."
Shishio could still hear the words long, long after she'd finished saying them—they lined his ears, the crevices of his brain, spread through him like a drip of watercolor through tissue paper.
Suzume is just one girl, one person out of so, so many in his life; she is just a drop in the ocean and yet somehow she left an iridescent stain that Shishio knows he could never bear to wash away.
Gosh. She's turned me so melodramatic.
He sees her at school, and then when she graduates, he doesn't.
Then for a while he sees her occasionally at her uncle's café—and then when she goes to Tokyo, he doesn't.
This has happened before, Shishio reminds himself. Tsubomi had left him too—but that was so she could travel and become a professional photographer; exchanging him in return for the whole wide world was a transaction that Shishio was able to quickly come to terms with. Tsubomi had known what she truly wanted, and so there was a clean break between them.
But Suzume hadn't always known what she wanted. And so, together—sometimes hand in hand, other times not—they'd walked the tightrope. And when, somewhere along the way, Suzume found her wings…Shishio was alone.
He was so happy for her. But he was sad for himself. He still saw the world through her colors: a constant reminder, but not nearly close to what he really wanted.
Shishio plowed through life, one obligation at a time. He tried not dwell on things, but then he remembered too much and it felt like he was lost.
Until slowly, he begins to take back the pieces of himself.
A new school years starts, and he wears the sushi tie because he can finally bear to look at it; the cherry blossoms in front of the school smell sweet again, because he is not comparing them anymore to her scent. He dares to look up at the sky now, remembering that shooting stars aren't that common anyway.
Slowly, he changes. And the Shishio that had loved Suzume, the Shishio that had been completely colored by Suzume, is now just a piece of watercolored memory.
"Satsuki, if you fix your hair for any longer the bride's gonna come hunt you down."
"Okay okay, I'm done now."
He walks down the aisle, to the altar—and sits down at the front row of seats.
Suzume is beautiful in white, and Shishio takes their piece of watercolor memory, folds it into a star, and tucks it away.
.
"You are my first love."
If there is a next life, Chun-Chun, perhaps I will be your last.
