"It's the Big Dipper and the Morning Star. Do you like it that much, Mizutani?"
Kosuke Mizutani, who had been standing at the counter staring wordlessly at the charm for a long time, was startled awake by the voice. He looked up blankly, and only came back to himself when he saw Tang Ze's comforting smile, realizing he had been holding the charm and spacing out for far too long.
Perhaps because Tanabata was approaching, time had been relentlessly reminding him of what had happened in the past, and the void left behind by certain losses was beginning to ache again.
"I feel like I've been getting too sentimental lately..." Kosuke Mizutani said with a self-deprecating laugh, picking up the metal key ring.
Before he noticed this forum section because of a news notification he received one day, Kosuke Mizutani, whose real life lacked social interaction, had never had an outlet to confide in anyone.
He had nothing to his name, no stable job, and an extremely narrow social circle.
Perhaps the only people who could empathize with him were Nanako's family, but in their eyes, he was someone they could not accept. They might even have considered him one of the culprits behind this outcome...
Those emotions had been bottled up for far too long. Now that he had finally found a chance to speak of them with someone, he often felt dazed after the release of his feelings.
"This isn't being sentimental, Mizutani. Being traumatized by the loss of someone close to you only means you have normal human emotions. You always say you get too caught up in the past, but who can truly cast aside the past entirely?" Tang Ze gently counseled him. "You were blamed far too much in the past."
"But all of you