When I was very young, I met a ghost behind the school.
She wore an old high school uniform from ten years earlier. Her eyes were brighter than those of the living, like the most beautiful amber in the world.
That winter, when junior high ended, we embraced one last time to say goodbye, but passed right through each other like rivers rushing head-on into one another.
As the last snow fell all around us, I finally set off for the city, while she stayed behind, waiting for the next person who could see her.
Two years later, during summer vacation, I hurried back to the rural town and ran to the place where I remembered her standing, but I could no longer find any trace of her.
The old wooden house where she once lived had become a ticket booth in a tourist area, and the sunflowers we planted together had withered and died.
After searching on and off for decade after decade, burdened by unbearable pressure at work and guilt over starting a family while still lost and uncertain, I finally reached the brink of collapse.
In the psychiatric ward, the doctor told me it had all been a fantasy born of my lonely childhood.
She existed only in my eyes. There had never been any trace of her in this world.
So I quit my job and devoted myself completely to a journey in search of the ghost.
In lonely, empty izakayas at night and at Tokyo's most remote abandoned school sites, I seemed to see her gazing into the distance time and time again.
Her name is Todayama Haruha, a ghost who does not exist in this world.
Before my life comes to an end, will I be able to hold your hands once again?
