That Midsummer of Years Past (Continued)

---At the same time, a cute little baby with a pacifier in its mouth silently floated by---

"..."

Yuzuki calmed down and put the blanket down.

"Cough cough."

She coughed softly, picked up Hikari-chan, and her eyes were kind.

"Hikari-chan, you didn't see anything, right?"

"Huh?"

Hikari-chan looked at Yuzuki blankly.

Then his little face scrunched up, his whole body shuddered, and finally he showed a satisfied expression.

"???"

Yuzuki looked down, speechless, at Hikari-chan's wet diaper.

So this is outside the scope of the discussion.

She sighed, skillfully changed Hikari-chan's diaper, then glanced at the room and, finding it very dirty, swept and mopped the floor.

After finishing the housework, Yuzuki looked at the clean room, wiped away the sweat from her labor, and showed a satisfied expression.

Then.

Her face stiffened, and she forcefully threw the towel to the ground.

"Wait! What am I doing?!"

Yuzuki finally remembered her original purpose.

She ran into Uesugi Yuichi's room and carefully began searching.

Hikari-chan lay on the bed, watching her movements with curiosity.

Yuzuki had a goal all along.

She had tidied Uesugi Yuichi's room before, but there were some places that Uesugi Yuichi told her not to touch.

Yuzuki was very well-behaved in front of Uesugi Yuichi, but now that he wasn't there, she went straight to a corner.

She quickly found a box.

The kind with a lock.

Yuzuki was now in a bind. She searched the room with little hope, but as expected, she couldn't find the key.

She knew this would happen, because she had never seen anything like it before, no matter how many times she cleaned.

Yuzuki figured the key must be with Uesugi Yuichi, no doubt about it.

She sat listlessly in the chair, staring at the box.

The box was quite old, covered in dust, and clearly hadn't been touched in a long time.

As Yuzuki struggled with whether she could brute-force the solution, the ever-reliable Hikari-chan climbed onto her lap.

"Clatter...?"

He looked at the box with a puzzled expression and called out softly. Yuzuki's eyes lit up.

"Hikari-chan, can you help me open it?"

"Eee?"

Hikari-chan made a sound out of curiosity.

Yuzuki said kindly, "It might contain Uesugi-sensei's secret, you know?"

"Da da!"

Hikari-chan didn't quite understand, but she still stretched out her finger and pointed at the lock.

Click.

The lock is open.

Yuzuki couldn't wait to open it, and her two heads, one big and one small, immediately peered over.

The box contained many things.

The top layer contains some small ornaments.

Necklaces, rings, bracelets...

Yuzuki could tell that these little things all had one thing in common.

That's because it's cheap.

Everything is cheap.

Yuzuki carefully took out the ornaments and set them aside.

Then the next layer appeared.

Sheet music, a large number of sheet music.

Yuzuki flipped through it, but couldn't understand it at all.

So she took out the sheet music and placed it beside her.

The next layer contained some sketchbooks.

Yuzuki hesitated for a moment, then began to speculate.

She finally made up her mind and opened the notebooks.

"As expected of Uesugi-sensei."

Yuzuki recognized Uesugi Yuichi's technique at a glance.

"These paintings, indeed..."

The sketchbook was filled with drawings of a woman.

A portrait of a woman.

Women's various expressions and outfits.

Through the sketch, one can see how radiant she was and how breathtakingly beautiful she was.

The painting is incredibly lifelike.

Yuzuki gently stroked the painting, as if sensing the deep emotions within it.

Yuzuki Sasaki clutched her chest.

A faint pang of heartache filled her, making her unable to bear looking any longer.

She closed the notebook and carefully put away several picture books.

She didn't watch it again, but Hikari-chan still wanted to.

But he was taken back by the emotionless Yuzuki.

Beneath the picture album is a photo album.

Yuzuki picked up the photo album, but couldn't bring herself to open it.

She lowered her head and sighed, "I really am... a coward."

She held the photo album in her left hand, and with her right hand, she reached down and took out the last item from the very bottom of the box.

"This is... a record?"

A homemade CD without a cover.

Yuzuki was stunned.

What's going on?

She didn't understand at all.

Yuzuki stood there dumbfounded, holding a photo album in her left hand and a record in her right.

She knew very well that Uesugi Yuichi's house did not have a CD player.

She put everything down.

The desk in the room was already filled with things.

Yuzuki didn't find what she was hoping for, something like a diary.

She found nothing except for the photo album she dared not open.

Yuzuki reached for the photo album again and again, but she couldn't get past her mental hurdle.

She didn't want to see intimate photos of Uesugi Yuichi with other women!

Her fragile heart couldn't bear it.

Besides, looking at photos is pretty useless; it doesn't reveal what actually happened back then.

---That's how she comforted herself.

Finally, Yuzuki sighed sincerely:

"Sigh. That's why I wish I could go back in time, so I could see for myself what really happened back then."

The words had barely left his mouth.

Hikari-chan nodded and called out to Yuzuki:

"Eee, ah, da!"

"Hmm? Wait."

Yuzuki felt a chill run down her spine, sensing something was amiss.

Then she saw the light.

Time stood still at that moment.

On one side of the room, the curtains, fluttering in the cool breeze, froze in mid-air.

The radiant Hikari-chan floated in the air, its tiny fingers waving, brushing over ornaments, sheet music, picture books, and photo albums, finally pointing to that record.

At that moment, a brilliant light shone forth, filling the entire television screen.

Everything was distorted, and Yuzuki felt as if her soul was being ripped out, as if she were in a vortex.

All sound ceased.

Sound.

There was a sound.

In the pure white and silent scene, a black dot suddenly appears.

The camera zooms in.

The black spot turned out to be a cicada.

The camera zoomed in on the cicada, as if it had been startled.

Amidst the deafening chirping of cicadas, they flew away.

A cicada's wing brushes past the lens.

The screen Ichika, and Yuzuki and Hikari-chan reappeared.

Yuzuki looked at the drastically changed scenery with a bewildered expression.

A deafening chorus of cicadas filled the air from all directions.

The scalding heat enveloped Yuzuki.

On the black asphalt road, the air seemed distorted by the intense heat.