One day in my second year of high school my best friend Kaito asked me a very weird question out of the blue:
“Imagine you’re crossing a street but suddenly have a traffic accident and are about to die, but someone gives you a choice to die right now or live in the best day of your life on loop. Which one would you choose?”
Back then I just stared at him flatly.
“Living just one day for the rest of your life sucks! It’d bore the shit out of me.”
He didn’t look at me. His hazel eyes stayed fixed on the pink lollipop in his hand, swirling the stick slowly between his index finger and thumb, watching the sunset catch and fracture across its glossy surface.
“Yeah… maybe even best days get boring after two or three days…”
He didn’t finish that semester with me. He just… vanished from my life in spring and I never saw him again. The headmaster said he went to the US with his parents, but the Kaito I knew would never just vanish without telling me anything. The Kaito I knew never left my calls and texts unanswered.
He left me to walk alone under the cherry blossoms with a heart full of pain and a cold face.
🌸🌸🌸
One year later I received an email from him:
“I would choose to live a day on loop. Maybe it’s because I’m a coward, but I’d definitely want to live my 17th birthday on loop for no matter how long instead of dying. That was the best day of my life. The last birthday that we celebrated together. I want to take those silly pictures of you again and again, eat cake every day and have you all to myself. So much better than not existing anymore, don’t you think, Momo?”
I couldn’t breathe by the end of the email. What the hell, Kaito?! What do you mean by all this shit? This isn’t a funny game. You’re scaring me. You’re scaring the crap out of me…
I replied to the email twenty times but he answered none of them. My life became hell after that. All of my thoughts and dreams were haunted by the thought that he was dying or had already died. Was he sick? Was that why he went to the US so suddenly? Why didn’t he tell me? I was his best friend, wasn’t I? We used to tell each other everything. I had even started to hate him for leaving me like that.
I didn’t start college with a good attitude. One of my classmates was a friend from high school. He could see how miserable I was, so he asked if I wanted to start surfing again. I used to go to that beach with Kaito, and I knew it would drag every memory back up. I didn’t accept at first, but one weekend I strangely felt like surfing again. The weather wasn’t the best for it. Maybe because the sky looked nothing like those bright days with Kaito, I somehow felt like it was the right time. I ignored every warning and paddled out into the big waves. It had been so long since my last session, but I managed to pull it off—until the weather turned mean and a bigger wave slammed me under. I struggled hard to reach the surface, but the waves kept shoving me down and away from the shore. At some point, when I was under again, I just… stopped. As the water dragged me deeper, struggling started to feel useless. I’d been struggling my whole life and never ended up anywhere that felt right.
*What’s the point… nothing is the way it was supposed to be anymore…*
I was fading. My eyes were starting to give out. The last thing I saw was someone swimming toward me.
🥀🥀🥀
A very familiar voice. Worried. Breathless. Hearing it sent a strange, sweet ache through me—pleasure tangled with a deep, sharp sadness.
A heavy pressure on my chest, pushing and pushing and pushing…
I coughed water out hard, eyes fluttering open.
“Thank goodness, Momo! That was so close!”
*Momo?*
Before I could even take a proper look around, someone pulled me into a tight hug. The feel of it was… familiar.
“I was so scared, Momo. I thought I lost you forever.”
*Right. There’s only one person on this planet who calls me that. And that’s—*
“K-Kaito?”
*I must be crazy,* I thought. Kaito? Here? How?
He pulled back just enough for me to see his face, and my harsh breaths stopped cold. That was him. Kaito. The bastard who left me without a word and haunted my dreams for more than a year. Same hazel eyes. Same little scar on his jaw from the time we both wiped out on his bicycle.
“H-How…?” My lips were trembling. Tears welled in his eyes. His hands came up to cup both sides of my face, and he smiled—a soft, shaky smile I’d never seen on him before.
“Sorry, Momo. Sorry for being so late…”
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Was this just another dream? My gaze dropped to his soaked clothes. A lifeguard’s uniform.
“You… you’re a lifeguard now?” I rasped, throat still raw from the salt water. “Since when?”
“Since last week. I… I’ve only been back about a month.”
“A MONTH?” The shout tore out of me. “You’ve been in Japan for a month and didn’t tell me? What the hell was that creepy email you sent me? What the hell happened to you?!”
Kaito’s face crumpled. Tears spilled over. “Sorry… I’m so sorry…”
“DON’T APOLOGIZE—JUST TELL ME!”
“I… I went to the US for cancer treatment. I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure it would work, if I’d even live. I wanted… I wanted our last days together to stay the same. I couldn’t bear the thought of watching you get sad.”
The words hit like a second wave. My whole body locked up. Shock first—cold and absolute—then a white-hot surge of anger that made my hands shake against the sand.
“You… you have any idea what I went through?” My voice cracked, raw and furious. “Do you have any fucking clue?”
He wiped the tears off my cheeks with his thumbs, ignoring the ones still sliding down his own.
“I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve that at all.”
“The email… did you send it the day that—”
“Yeah. Surgery day. It wasn’t certain at all whether I’d make it. Sorry for scaring you.”
“And after that?” My voice dropped, still shaking. “You stayed alive. Came back to Japan. But instead of calling me you… you started working here as a lifeguard?”
“I didn’t know how to face you. I needed a little time to sort things out and process everything. I promised myself that if I lived, I’d work as a lifeguard here and save as many lives as I could. Things have been so hectic lately.”
“Just a text. Something like *hey, I’m still alive*. That would’ve been enough.”
“Forgive me…”
I stared at him for a long second—this boy who’d vanished, who’d nearly died, who’d somehow found me under the waves—then I pulled him hard against me, arms locked around his wet shoulders.
“Well… you just saved my life. Forgiving you is only fair.”
