It was summer. Exactly one year had passed since my best friend, Calm, died in front of me. Even in the year of the first memorial service, only the cicadas kept singing as if they knew nothing. That day, you was in his room. The sound of the cicadas coming from outside suddenly grew louder. Shawa-shawa, shawa-shawa. It was so close— it sounded as if they were chirping right inside the room.

Just as he muttered that and looked up, a person was standing in the corner of the room. There was no way he could mistake it. It was a face he hadn’t forgotten for a single moment in the past year.