At the festival on Amakane Island.
Night.
Ellin and Ayaka held konpeito as they sat on the grass beneath a cherry tree, leaning against each other shoulder to shoulder.
One firework after another streaked into the sky in trails of fire.
The dazzling light of their bursts reflected on their fair faces and in their clear eyes.
These fireworks were the work of Yoimiya from Naganohara Fireworks.
Naganohara Fireworks had a tradition: whenever they made a custom firework for a customer, they gave that customer a slip of paper that only members of the Naganohara Family could understand.
The slip recorded the detailed formula for that custom firework. As long as the customer kept it, no matter how much time passed, they could show it to the descendants of the Naganohara Family and have the firework from those days recreated.
Thus, the Naganohara Family's fireworks carried people's cherished memories of the past.
Many others at the festival were watching the fireworks display.
Among them was an elderly couple. In their youth, the husband had commissioned a firework from the Naganohara Family, then pointed to that custom firework during the display and confessed his love to his wife. They had married afterward.
Now, decades later, they had commissioned the same firework from Naganohara Fireworks for their wedding anniversary.
At that moment, the elderly couple held hands as they watched the firework rise into the night sky just as it had all those years ago, warm, happy smiles on their faces.
There was also a family of five siblings.
When they were children, their parents had commissioned a special firework for them and taken all five siblings to see it at the fireworks display.
Their parents had since passed away, and the grown siblings now traveled far and wide for their respective