Chapter 52: She Used to Be Alive
Hikaru Hoshino quietly leaned close to Ai's ear, glancing around the theater like a thief. "Ai, you don't really act much like a ghost," he whispered under his breath.
Sitting right beside him, Ai shot back in an equally muted tone, "This isn't a horror flick. Why on earth would I act like a malevolent spirit?"
From the row behind them, Gotanda reached forward and gave Hikaru a firm tap on the shoulder. "The press is watching us. Mind your public image."
Only then did Hikaru reel in his playful antics, straightening his posture to focus on the silver screen with earnest dedication.
Although he had long since memorized the screenplay and maintained a solid grasp of the overarching plot, experiencing the story through a mature cinematic medium was entirely different from reading lines on a page. Director Gotanda's visual storytelling was nothing short of masterful; the composition of every single frame was immaculate, and Hikaru quickly found himself fully immersed in the narrative.
On the screen, having formally discovered the teenage manifestation of Ai Kitajima, Naoto Anna dragged Ueda Shizuna back inside their apartment. He reasoned that since Ai had ultimately sought him out, running away indefinitely wasn't a viable solution. More importantly, Ai didn't seem inherently malicious; perhaps they could simply ask if she harbored any lingering regrets, help her fulfill her final wish, and allow her spirit to pass on in peace.
Peculiarly, however, Ai Kitajima seemed to have completely lost all memories of her past life. She didn't even know her own name, radiating the absolute purity of a blank canvas.
While the situation gave Naoto a massive headache, he couldn't bring himself to abandon her. He and Shizuna were forced to rack their brains, trying to deduce what unfulfilled desire was keeping Ai tethered to the living world.
"Do you think her final wish is for the two of us to drop dead?" Naoto speculated, his voice laced with profound trepidation.
"It's not entirely out of the question..." Shizuna's expression grew exceptionally grave. "But that is one wish I absolutely refuse to grant."
Right at that exact beat, Ai Kitajima suddenly floated out from behind them, a look of pure, childlike innocence plastered across her face. "What are you two whispering about?"
The couple jumped half out of their skins at her sudden appearance, frantically scrambling to conceal their panic. "Nothing, nothing at all! We were just debating where to take you out to have some fun!"
Despite possessing the body of a fully grown teenager, Aie's behavior and mannerisms closely mirrored those of a small child, her mind brimming with unbridled curiosity toward the world. Having never stepped foot inside a sprawling metropolis like Tokyo before, her first foray into the city made her look entirely like a country bumpkin, asking an endless stream of questions about every little thing she saw. Left with no alternative, Naoto could only patiently teach her basic common sense.
After the three of them coexisted under one roof for a period of time, Naoto unexpectedly found himself thinking that this sort of lifestyle wasn't half bad. Yet, he was acutely aware that if *that incident* had never occurred... if Ai had been allowed to grow up safely, she would have possessed a life entirely her own. She deserved that future.
The scene shifted abruptly. One evening, Shizuna pulled Naoto out onto the apartment stairwell, the two of them staring silently at the moon suspended over the cityscape.
"We can't keep going on like this," Shizuna said, her tone dripping with severity. "Ai... she *has* to pass on."
Naoto sparked a cigarette, taking a deep drag only to let out a violent, uncontrollable fit of coughing. "Shizuna... regarding what happened back then, do you regret it?"
Shizuna looked as though she was about to snap. "I know you're drowning in guilt, but things cannot continue like this. Are you seriously planning to live out the rest of your days with a ghost? The exact second she remembers everything, she'll warp into a vengeful wraith and butcher both of us!"
Stripped of all strength, Naoto hurled his cigarette onto the concrete, grinding it viciously beneath his heel. "Then what the hell am I supposed to do?! Who among us actually knows what her final wish is?!" he roared, suffering an absolute emotional breakdown.
Shizuna's face darkened into a grim expression. "Let's go back. We're taking her to our hometown."
The very next day, the couple took an extended leave of absence from work, guiding Ai back to the countryside.
Before long, the two adults and one spirit arrived in Kawasaki Prefecture. The moment Aie's feet pressed into the soil of this familiar territory, the dark secrets buried deep within the past began to slowly claw their way to the surface.
As the narrative unfolded, the film systematically cut back to scenes of the past. Aqua, Kana, and Akane effectively picked up the narrative torch, anchoring the weight of the film as the core protagonists of the flashback arc.
Years ago, in rural Kawasaki, Naoto Anna and Ueda Shizuna were classic childhood friends, attending the exact same class in elementary school. And inside that very classroom sat a young girl named Ai Kitajima.
Ai was naturally clumsy with her words and possessed a deeply reclusive personality, gradually rendering her the ultimate outcast of the class. A faction of girls led by Shizuna actively ostracized her, subjecting Aie to severe psychological cold shoulders, while Naoto actively spearheaded the boys, routinely mocking her as a total country bumpkin.
The school bullying escalated entirely beyond the children's control, rapidly spiraling down a dark, irreversible path behind closed doors. Because Aie was a boarding student, she was tormented by her classmates by day, only to return to her dormitory and face brutal hazing from her roommates by night. Her desk was routinely defaced with vile, stomach-turning graffiti, and her bedding was deliberately soaked with buckets of water while she slept. Her private clothing was stolen, only to be publicly paraded in front of the entire student body to humiliate her.
She became nothing more than a cheap source of amusement for the cruel children–a walking target to absorb their emotional malice. Trapped in a boarding school environment with absolutely nowhere to run or hide, looking back, her life had been a literal living hell.
Ultimately, Ai Kitajima chose to end it all by leaping from the school roof.
*Why... does it have to be me?*
*Why am I the one forced to endure all of this?*
*What did I ever do wrong?*
At twilight, a young Ai slowly dragged herself out of the school restroom, fresh purplish bruises tracing up her arms. With slow, unwavering steps, she scaled the staircase leading to the rooftop.
Akane Kurokawa was entirely dissolved into the character, to the point where it felt as though two dark, bottomless stars were fracturing inside her eyes. Utilizing only a handful of subtle shifts in her facial expressions, she laid bare a sense of suffocating, unadulterated despair, offering it raw to the audience.
In fact, she had been so deeply impacted by the emotional weight of this role during filming that she had remained depressed for quite some time afterward. Fortunately, Akane wasn't actually Ai Kitajima and possessed no personal history of being bullied, allowing her to successfully pull herself out of the darkness.
*Does a person like me... truly have zero value in existing?*
And so, mimicking the tragic descent of a butterfly with shattered wings, Ai Kitajima plummeted from the sky.
Moments later, a student stumbled upon her broken body. "Ahhh!!!" The student shrieked, a blood-curdling scream ripping through the air. The media outlets descended upon the scene like a pack of jackals catching the scent of fresh blood, systematically capturing every angle of the tragedy.
The color grading on the silver screen began to yellow, cloaked in a heavy, nostalgic filter as the previous sequences of bullying flashed across the screen like a revolving lantern. Simultaneously, Ai's raspy, deeply emotional singing voice quietly swelled through the theater.
「Two days ago, somewhere near here, someone jumped and committed suicide.」
「A news report broadcasted the event on TV. A sailor uniform drenched in blood, a wrongly accused teacher–it briefly became a hot topic online.」
The camera angles shifted entirely into Aie Kitajima's first-person perspective, forcing the audience to relive her life through her eyes. Within her field of view, one could hear the sickening, gleeful laughter of her peers mocking her misfortune, rendering the entire theater space incredibly heavy and suffocating.
Ultimately, the frame locked onto the absolute final millisecond before Aie slammed into the concrete.
Ai's vocals continued to resonate.
「Silent blood pools on the cold asphalt.」
「That vivid shade of red is so remarkably beautiful.」
This particular track was a character song Hikaru Hoshino had specifically written for Ai Kitajima–sourced from a piece by the artist Aimyon in his past life, titled She Used to Be Alive (Ikite Ita 'n Da yo na). In order to accurately channel this raw, emotionally charged, low-register vocal delivery, Ai had specifically undergone a grueling, extensive period of vocal training.
The film had officially crossed the halfway mark. As the insert song faded to a close, Akane Kurokawa vanished from the narrative, and Ai materialized back on the screen.
Ai Kitajima stood dressed in her pristine white sundress, her eyes blinking with absolute, innocent wonder. She stared quietly at the abandoned ruins of the elementary school, her slender finger floating up to point languidly toward a patch of empty ground where her body had once broken.
The area was entirely overgrown with wild weeds, yet the foliage split open to reveal a bizarre, empty silhouette–as if a little girl were still lying on her side right there in the dirt.
She suddenly let out a bright, cheerful laugh.
"Hey, did somebody die over there?"
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