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<h6 class="has-text-align-center">Ripple effects over the past sixteen years</h6>\nYui’s diary was released to the public through a weekly magazine. Its stupefying contents even made the Internet flinch.\n Now I understand why Takatsuki was so frightened. Takatsuki’s act sixteen years ago, the high school girl’s subsequent suicide, and the contents of her suicide note. These three things had such an impact that the Takatsuki-related gossip that had been making the rounds on the Internet until now was a blur. The graphic images and audio files Yui left behind can be viewed on the Internet, although they have been slightly altered.\n His wife, a former announcer, announced their early separation on the grounds that she was protecting their child. Takatsuki himself held a press conference, but he was mentally unstable and slurred his speech from start to finish, eventually bursting into tears. The pathetic press conference, which drew public laughter, has been replayed millions of times on video sites.\n There was also an unexpected turn of events. At the time, it was reported that the investigation into the suicide had not progressed because of the intervention of Takatsuki’s father. I had no idea how far the investigation had gone, but it seemed that the main focus of the news was on Takatsuki’s father, who was a member of the House of Representatives. Then another scandal involving the father himself was reported. It seemed that the father could not afford to protect his son at this point in time, and soon after, Toru Takatsuki announced his resignation from the House of Representatives. The life of a man who had been protected by his father crumbled with a sound.\n As we will see later, Takatsuki moved to a mental hospital. According to the information in the weekly magazine, Takatsuki’s odd behavior, such as suddenly starting to cry, had increased. However, I believe that the man’s mentality was unusual even before the Yui scandal broke out. I don’t know what the reason is. Maybe the suicides of me and Yui had been damaging his mind for many years, but I don’t know now.\n
Takatsuki was no longer on my mind. All I can think about is Rin. Rin has been absent from school since then and has gone straight into summer vacation. I couldn’t reply to Rin’s request to die, and the only thing that kept going through my mind were the words I wanted to say to her. \n
The Leo meteor shower that Yui and I saw in 2001 was truly amazing. It was a once-in-a-decade year, and every few minutes a meteor shower of stars would fill the night sky, making Yui and I yell out every time one of them appeared. On the other hand, the meteor shower I saw with Rin in 2017 was cloudy, and we saw only one shooting star in one night. But Rin looked really happy as she gazed at the cloudy night sky.\n She told me that she could see another meteor shower tonight. I invited Rin to join us. I had something I really wanted to tell Yui and Rin. Rin sent back a message saying, “I want to see it with you again.”\n Rin, whom I hadn’t seen in a while, had lost weight. The way she looked at me with frightened, downcast eyes was hard to imagine from her usual energetic Rin. I wondered if her memory had returned.\n At night, the two of us went to a nature park about five minutes away by bicycle. As we sat on the grass in the park and looked at the sky, a pleasant summer night breeze brushed my body. Although there was moonlight, it was a cloudless night and we might be able to see a few shooting stars. I turned to Rin, who was standing next to me, and said, “Tonight is the night to move past, to move forward.\nAfter tonight, let’s put an end to dwelling on the past and our previous lives.\n Rin looked me in the eye. “Your past, your past life?”\n I took a breath and said, “Yui, what is it? You are, Yui, right?”\n At that moment, I watched through the eyes of my two childhood friends as a blue shooting star whizzed across the sky.\n