Chapter Twenty Eight
Fuji

I was finally back home, but I couldn't stay there for long.

If I walked along the coast, I reasoned, maybe I could find Tezumi. I wasn't saying that I would find her alive, but I knew that if she could choose who brought her back and laid her to rest, whether it be in her own bed at home or in a grave, she would want that person to be me.

Sure, I wasn't the one she gave her life for, but I had been the one to find her, that time she fell down a cliff, hadn't I? Not Ishizaki. I had been the one to bring her back. Besides, Ishizaki was too worn out after the ordeal to go anywhere, and I certainly wasn't going to wait for him to rest up before starting the search.

My family wasn't about to let me go out any time soon, though.

"You've just been kidnapped and nearly drowned! Don't you think you should stay at home for just a few more days?" my mother would exclaim every time I asked. She just wouldn't understand about Tezumi. Like all the other people I talked to, she thought that the girl hadn't made it.

Takahashi came to visit me, the day I returned home, red eyed and very distraught.

"It's just so hard to believe that we'll never play doubles together again," she said with a shaky laugh.

"You might, I insisted. We don't know if she's...well, if she's still alive, but then we don't know if she's gone either. If we just looked hard enough..."

"Fuji," she said gently, placing a comforting hand on my arm. "I know it's hard. I was close to her too. But you should know Tezumi as well as I do, if not better, and so you've got to understand that she's not someone to act without thinking. She knew what she was doing, and she knew the consequences, when she told you to go."

"Yeah, and now that the dangers over, the person she died to save won't even try to find her, or even consider the possibility of her being alive," I grumbled bitterly.
I almost didn't catch the strange look Takahashi gave me. But I thought nothing of it anyway.

It might have just been me unable to deal with the loss, but for whatever reasons, I was thoroughly convinced that I would see Tezumi again, and it was that conviction that brought me out of my bedroom once everyone else had fallen asleep.

After checking up on the location of the sunken ship and the currents that day, I'd had a pretty good idea of where I should begin looking. If, of course, Tezumi really had floated back to Japan. There wasn't too much I could do if she'd drifted off to China, but I tried not to think about that. Packing some food and medical supplies in my bag, I waited till the house was quiet before leaving my note and slipping out of the door.

Just in time to catch the last bus to the coast, I filled up my flashlight with new batteries.

Ignoring the questioning looks of the driver; I got off at the beach and checked my map. I switched on my light and began the search.

Anyone else would have said that I was crazy. Even I acknowledged that the chances of me ever finding her were very small. But on I went. If anyone could have survived a situation like the one she'd been in, it was Tezumi.

She'd taught me not to give in to a broken leg, after all, so why was it not possible that she herself could defeat death?

That kind of reasoning wasn't going to convince anyone, but how would I ever be able to sleep soundly again, knowing that I'd given up this last chance to see her again? And so on I went.

The coastline was littered with large stone and boulders which I constantly had to climb over as I picked my way across the sand. My progress was excruciatingly slow, with me checking every possible corner before moving on to another patch of the beach.

One hour, two hours, the minutes ticked by as I repeated my now much practiced drill.

You said you'd meet me on the shore.

She'd never lied to me before. Why should this time be any different?

The moon came out to assist me in my mission impossible. So did the stars. The brightest of them all was this big one that rested in the East, roughly in the direction where I was headed. I followed that star. No matter how long I walked, it still stayed so very far away.

I should have told her while I had the chance.

When we'd parted, Tezumi and I had technically been having a fight.

If she's really gone, and I never told her...

I hadn't even said a proper good bye.

She still doesn't know.

And that's why I had to go on. I didn't care whether she felt the same way or not, but I knew that if I kept it a secret, it would be the biggest regret of my life.

The more I thought that way, the more convinced I became that she was alive.

The starlight shimmered on the black ocean, reminding me of that night when I'd found Tezumi unconscious by the river. The stretch of sand before me was the very likeness of the bank I'd seen her on too. My eyes swept the scene like they had back then, except this time I found nothing.

I let the hours slide by until they progressed onto the coldest part of the night. Wrapping my coat tightly around myself, I clambered over yet another rock, hoping to see Tezumi waiting for me on the other side. Nothing.

Dawn. Some see the rising sun as a symbol of hope. It was even put on our national flag. I saw it as a reminder that my fruitless search through the night had yielded no results.

The sun rose up, setting the clouds on fire. Its rays shone brightly onto the beach, onto the sea, onto the sand, the rocks, and...