COTE: Starting Over

Chapter 10

* 62 *

If you look at a person’s fortune in the long run, maybe it all balances out.

That perspective on life is usually adopted by luckless people as consolation.

But in this sole instance, one would look at it the opposite way.

Strangely, I didn’t show much reaction to this realization.

“Ah, right. Those two are going to die.” That was all.

I suppose it should have been something to rejoice over.

After all, my hate for Takuya was unchanging, and Nanase couldn’t ever be mine anyway.

Indeed, when it comes to the unattainable, it’s better that it just stops existing at all.

I didn’t feel sorry for them. Who cares? They’ve lived such a happy life already.
In fact, maybe you could consider it a happy thing that they could die in the peak of their happiness.

No doubt I could only say that as someone who’d lived a useless life for ten years.

Six o’ clock came around. If things were playing out how I imagined them, right now Takuya and Nanase were stopping the car radio and putting a CD in the stereo.

It was Lennon Legend, and they went from the first song, Imagine, down the tracklist in order.

And by the time it reached the twelfth song, Starting Over, they would die.

I stood up, went to the radio in the corner, and raised the volume.

Why had my memories come back just now? I pondered.

Why had I taken a break at this exact time? Why was there a radio in this room?

Wait - how long had there been a radio there? I knew that there hadn’t been such a thing there last week, at least.

I came to think that it was all a sign.

By the time the song ended, I had come to one baseless conclusion.

I was being tested again.

To see if I could find the right partner in my second life.

To see if I could make the right choice.

* 63 *

I wiped my wet face with a sleeve and looked at myself in the mirror. There I was, in that idiotic Santa getup.

“You have a right to know all this,” I said.

“Every single thing is all my fault, for falling in love with the wrong person. If I hadn’t done that, by all means I should have been living a life nearly unchanged from my first right now. And if I’d been the same, so would my family, and Nagumo, and you. Everything’d be the same, we’d still be living fulfilling lives.

"But I made an awful mistake. I messed up who I fell for. And on top of that, I went on believing she was the girl I was destined to be with, never noticing what I did wrong until this winter. Because I’m an utter moron. That threw all the cogs out of whack. Even a guy who I was really close to in my first life was awful to me the second time around. I’m like a contagious source of bad luck.

"In my second life, I became someone unfit for the position of "the first me.” And why should that happen, but the appearance of my double. Someone else was playing the part that had been given to me in my first life. And my girlfriend became someone no longer suited the role of “the first her” either, so that position was taken by her double. So we became friendly losers. I guess it’s not impossible that could’ve been fate, but that’s one piece of crap fate.