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Her voice is pretty, Taki thinks vaguely. It’s gentle and lilting, and something about it nags at the back of his mind as if he’s heard it before, a long time ago, or perhaps in another lifetime. It’s a feeling he’d long become used to, ever since that time five years ago, when a destroyed town with a miraculously surviving population tugged at his consciousness, his very spirit. Why, why did such a place call to him so? What about this raven-haired young woman standing at the bottom of the street stairs makes him want to stop and stare at her sweet, familiar face forever?
Tears silently stream down her face as she looks at him, impossibly hopeful, as though she too had been searching as hard as he had for something, a memory that she couldn’t quite reach, couldn’t quite fathom.
He asks her name tentatively, and she asks for his, at the same time. He has an increasingly suspicious feeling he’s done this before, somewhere. Where?
The nagging in the back of his mind becomes as loud as a chime swinging right beside his ear, and suddenly, his heart skips a beat, his lungs seem to refuse to take in any air, the sun is shining far too brightly in his eyes.
“Mitsuha.” The words escape her lips first, breathlessly spoken, as if she’d been holding it inside her for years. Her eyes are wide as the open sky above them, tears brimming again and threatening to fall out, but she doesn’t blink, for fear of the whole thing being just another dream, just another echo in time.
And yet the name reverberates through Taki’s ears like the ring of a temple bell, and in the next moment, he’s drowning in yesterday.
Memories of a small lakeside town in the country wash over him, taken from what he used to think was just his imagination running away with the wind. A beautiful shrine in a forest. Waking up feeling weight on his chest he didn’t know he had before, until he decided to look down.
A little sister named Yotsuha, pushing back the paper screen door to find him delirious and cupping his breasts each morning.
A grandmother lovingly brushing his long, black-as-night hair, telling him about the strings of time, the God living at the top of the crater in the distance who would grant any wish, so long as he left a piece of himself behind for it.
A father who gave speeches in the town center each day; a bottle of sake hidden in a cave beneath the earth.
Sayaka. Tessie. Running frantically one afternoon on the day of the Autumn Festival with them, all over town, trying to save the people from imminent death. What death?
Tears are spilling down Taki’s face, and suddenly his knees give way. He collapses at the top of the stairs, but the flood of memories doesn’t end. He doesn’t want it to. He wants to remember, wanted so badly to for so long; they held the key to his longing, an answer to a seemingly fruitless quest.
He’s standing the edge of a crater at twilight, and she’s there. Taki’s heart twists and aches at the sight of her, she’s standing right in front of him on the crater’s edge too, saying his name over and over again in that oh-so-soft voice of hers, wiping at her eyes.
“Taki-kun,” her voice echoes, her newly cut short hair gently drifting in the mountain breeze, the red woven string he’d had around his wrist now prettily tied around her head.
Their conversation, the comet, everything rushes back to him, as suddenly as a thunderstorm in midsummer.
He’s brought back to reality when he feels someone shaking his shoulder. He immediately snaps his eyes shut. But his heart sinks, he knows that when he opens them everything he remembers would be gone. He can’t forget it all again! Not after all this time!
“No, please,” he whispers sadly, “I don’t want to forget again.” Eyes still determinedly screwed shut, he blindly reaches for the hands shaking at his shoulders, tries to brush them off, so he can remember in peace.
A lilting, all-too-familiar voice sighs next to him. “Taki-kun, my grandma says it’s never a good thing to live in the past.”
His eyes fly open, and a young woman with long midnight hair is gripping his shoulders, blinking back tears and smiling at him.
“Mitsuha.” He breathes. Her name leaves his lips in an instant, as if it was an innate reflex, and not a struggle to remember, as it once had been.
Her hands slowly move across his shoulders – they are broader than she remembered, she thinks, and a lick of warmth runs down her spine – to cup his cheeks. “Taki-kun. It’s really you,” she whispers shakily, hardly daring to believe he's real.
Taki wastes no time – he pulls her into a long embrace, arms coming up to hold her tight, and she pulls him impossibly closer, feeling his warm and solid form beneath his suit, his brown hair against her hands, every bit as soft as she remembered feeling when she was in his body.
They must be an odd sight, Taki wonders at length. Two young adults clutching at each other at the top of a staircase as if they’d die if they broke apart. But Mitsuha is here and real and he remembers her, after all this time, and he really can’t bring himself to care how they look.
“Thank you,” she murmurs against his ear. “We owe you our lives, Taki-kun. You saved us.” She squeezes him a little harder, then pulls back to meet his gaze. “I’ve been looking for you for so, so long…” she trails off, distracted by the way his eyes soften when she speaks, the way his fingers curl around hers.
“I should be thanking you,” he smiles wistfully. “You gave me another life, something different from the dull one I had.” His fingers fully intertwine with hers. “I’ve been searching for you for years, too,” he says quietly. “I don’t ever want to forget you again.”
Pink stains Mitsuha’s cheeks at his admission, but she smiles that smile again, and he almost forgets to breathe. “Me neither.” She reaches around to the red string that holds her hair up, tugs it loose, and gently takes his hand in hers to wind it back around his wrist.
“This helped me remember you after the night that you told me about the comet. I didn’t remember your name, though. Not until now.” Her fingertips are warm as they tie the string, brushing gently along the back of Taki’s hand and sending shivers through his skin.
He draws in a sharp breath. “Won’t – won’t you forget everything without this?” He gestures to his wrist, but she shakes her head, eyes bright and sure.
“I don’t need it anymore. I – I think after the comet, our timelines converged again. You reset the clock when you drank my sake, at least for me. And now we’re here and I don’t need it to be twilight to see you, so – so I think our times are now the same,” she pauses, then giggles softly. “The God under the Mountain has been very kind to us, then. It must’ve really liked you.” She meets his eyes, and Taki flushes.
“I… asked it for another chance,” he admits, heat creeping up the back of his neck. “Not to switch bodies though!” he says quickly, as she laughs. “You and your whole town were gone. I wanted another chance so that you could all live. So I could finally meet you.” He looks down, at the red string on his wrist, and her fingers are still resting against his hand. He takes them in his own. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Taki-kun, on behalf of my family and Itomori, I – “
“Would you like to go for lunch?” he blurts out, and tries very hard not to inwardly cringe. Well, a tiny voice pipes up in the back of his mind, she did once say that you needed help in the dating department.
“I – oh! With me?” Mitsuha’s cheeks turn from pink to scarlet, but she quickly nods, looking slightly dumbstruck but sincere. “Yes, of course I would!”
Taki grins in relief. “What do you like to eat? I’ll go anywhere you want.” He gets to his feet and pulls her up with him.
“Italian.” Mitsuha says promptly, and he stares at her. Laughter bubbles up inside them, threatening to burst out onto the quiet Tokyo street, but they resolutely hold it in. Like a secret, inside joke between longtime friends. They both get the feeling there will be many more where that came from as the day goes on.
Taki forces himself to regain his composure, but a wide grin still tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Italian it is".
Slowly, gently, he takes her hand in his. Just to be safe, just to be sure. He can't ever forget her again.
Her fingers squeeze his in wordless reassurance, and together they walk into the sunlit street, into a brighter tomorrow.