September 5, 2013

Mitsuha POV

So boring. So boring. So boring. It was autumn, and as usual, the same old routine followed on a day-by-day basis. Wake up in the morning, maybe make some breakfast if it's actually her turn, hang out with Sayaka and Tessie after school at the "café" (Otherwise known as the vending machine on the side of the dirt road that barely worked unless you gave it a good kick). It wasn't that Mitsuha disliked Itomori particularly… it just felt like a shoe that was… five sizes too small. Okay, she despised it. The tallest building in the entire town was three stories tall, for crying out loud! Three stories! The largest skyscraper in Tokyo had fifty-two! The community was too tight and close-knit, so rumors instinctively spread like wildfire. Her father was the mayor, so naturally, he had very high expectations for her.

"Stand tall, set a good example for your sister, do well enough in class!" he would grunt disapprovingly when her grandmother taught her how to weave her first braided cord in middle school. Hogwash. But of course Mitsuha couldn't talk back. She was quiet, submissive, obedient. Despite her kindness, she was a did have her own opinions about the world even if she rarely expressed them. Her grandmother raised her well, and no matter how much she didn't like to admit it, she never denied it.

Itomori was puny. Population? 1,500. Everyone knew everything about everyone and there was nothing that she could possibly do about it. There was only one high school, a cluster of homes by the basin of the lake valley, two pubs for some reason she couldn't even begin to fathom, and a train that only came every two hours. Dirt roads, blades of grass, working at the temple with Yotsuha and her grandmother, weaving the braid cords that took so long to do she questioned why they spent so much time on them anyway, and doing homework that made her day all the more monotonous on top of it all. Life and time carried on, as it did. Until she met him. Well, became him if we were being technical here. Mitsuha always dreamed of what it would be like to live in Tokyo. Edifices that just scraped the sky, concrete jungles everywhere, bright lights, big bridges, opportunities, movie theaters, museums… cafés.

When she awoke as Taki, she was so so jealous. Even when she thought it was merely a dream toward the very beginning of the phenomenon, she wanted to live this life more than anything in the entire world. She felt as if Taki dealt the royal flush and she pulled the short end of the stick in this cruel game of fate. For God's sake, his school had large, glass windows that overlooked the entire city. These kids talked about going to the cinema after class. If she wanted to watch a movie from the past half decade on a reasonably sized screen in Itomori, she would have to take a shuttle down to the nearest reasonably sized town, which was a good couple hours away. They hung out in upscale restaurants and rode on the subway and walked through the streets. They lived, breathed, drank the wonders of Tokyo for all that it was and took it for granted every single day they were alive. And Taki… Taki had such a beautiful, amazing life that she couldn't even begin to describe. His academy had cashmere uniforms! Cashmere! Button-up jackets, folded out cuffs, golden belt buckles, matching trousers, and dress shoes! Mitsuha's usual uniform at Itomori High School was only a woolen sweater vest and a hand-me-down shirt of her mother's. She never had any of these things! It just wasn't fair. He worked at a five-star Italian restaurant, with stained glass windows and high ceilings and tables with those nice, white tablecloths. When Mitsuha waited tables here as Taki, it never felt like work, despite the fact that the chefs in the kitchen and the patrons on the floor would jump at every chance to dish out their dirt whenever she made a mistake. She felt like she was doing what she has wanted to do for so long. When she returns to Taki's at bedroom at night, she sometimes wonders what would happen if she just never slept. Would she stay as Taki forever? That wouldn't be half bad… considering her situation back home. Would she be willing to exchange the pleasure of sleep to be the handsome boy living life in central Tokyo like she was never able to do? She laughed at the thought as she began growing ever more tired, slumber overtaking her body… and awakening as Mitsuha once again. An enormous wave of disappointment always washed over her whenever she gazed out her window in the morning and met her eyes with the same old creek and garden rather than the scintillating Tokyo skyline.

September 5, 2016

Taki POV

Taki usually lived life in a daze. The fast pace of Tokyo really made him lose sight of what he actually wanted to do - there was always the next class to attend, another shift to fill, or a train to catch in the midst of all the commotion, all the noise, all the business. Hustle hustle, day in, day out, rinse and repeat. There was very little change, not that he particularly minded, of course. He liked to think that he was content with his life - his job at the Italian restaurant kept him busy, and he had his eyes out for Miki, the elusive university student who always seemed to do everything right. He admired her from afar, but also wanted to get closer to her. For now, he was satisfied with going through the daily motions and not yearning for anything more or settling for anything less. After all, this was Tokyo - the greatest city in the world. He can't take for granted what he is given. His attitude was tenacious, determined, fiery… but he strived to be happy. After all, that was what life was all about for him. Living big, living bold, but not losing sight of what is truly important: his friends, his happiness, his health.

Waking up as Mitsuha that one fateful day startled him, to say the least. All of a sudden, he was a girl who merely existed in the middle of nowhere instead of a boy who thrived in the epicentre of the eastern world. He would ask Tessie and Sayaka what Mitsuha was like - he was curious, he wanted to know more about her. Shy, timid, reserved, unwavering. How she loved Yotsuha, was infatuated with Tokyo, and missed her mother. They would ask why he didn't tie up her hair with the braided cord like she always would… so he would try to fiddle with it the following morning but would always fail. He would settle with a simplistic high ponytail instead - it seemed to suit him better either way. He would kick over chairs, stand up against bullies, actually score hoops in basketball, and draw… bring out sides of Mitsuha that she would never been able to access without Taki. And Mitsuha would do the same for Taki in return - like snagging that date with Miki and wooing her with her self-proclaimed "feminine charms" by sewing up the skirt that jerk in the restaurant cut up with a cute traditional design. She would elicit softer, sweeter tones in his personality that he could barely even recognize when he witnessed the impact she made on his world while he was gone. They would do this to each other: create tiny ripples in each other's universes with small but noticeable actions, words, and thoughts. Taki became all the more appreciate of the country's slow, sleepy pace. He learned to smell the roses a little bit more… whether it was admiring the enormous basin lake on his walk to school every morning, hearing the crunch of his footsteps on the leaves that scattered the autumn ground, or learning about Mitsuha's grandmother's undulating voice dip and rise about time and threads and fate.

Taki found himself falling all the more in love with this mysterious girl from the countryside… she would write him notes in his cell phone, draw on his arm, and ask so many questions. Over time, he became all the more drawn to her curiosity, her passion, her kindness. The whole body switching dilemma used to be a burden - now it was simply a phenomenon who may or may not look forward to every now and then. It was a break from his busy academic and metropolitan life and gave him a breather to relax among the nature of the mountains, waters, and leaves that surrounded the serene, picturesque landscape. But right when he was beginning to enjoy it… right when he thought he was about to fall in love this girl whom he never would have crossed paths with in his ordinary life… it stopped. He never switched bodies with Mitsuha ever again. Huh.

He tried to fill the void in his chest with some words of encouragement: It used to be such an annoyance. Having to deal with acting differently from how he usually is to assimilate into Mitsuha's life… not knowing when it would happen and constantly being worried and stressed about it… it's all over now. He doesn't have to deal with it anymore. But something… maybe it was that string of fate her grandmother always talked about… something that unraveled, connected, twisted… and united people who were meant to be together… it always brought him back to square one: Mitsuha. He decided, just spontaneously to skip school and abandon work altogether just for that day. He needed to see her, to meet her. Just so he could confirm that she was real. This feeling of regret and melancholy was gnawing at him, and he just couldn't live with it anymore. He just wanted to have her stand in front of him, eye to eye, in the flesh. Otherwise, what if it was all a dream? What if Mitsuha wasn't real in the first place? Was he going insane? Was it all just hallucinations from his head? Because if it was… why did it feel so real?

He took a train to the Gifu prefecture - that has to be where it was. He has flipped through books, done so much online research, practically replicated what he could remember of Mitsuha's little town from memory on sketchbook paper. Desperately asking questions, trying so hard just to validate that his feelings and who he was in those snapshots of time… was not just his imagination. Until he saw it.

Mitsuha Miyamizu. Age: 17. Cause of death: Meteor crash in Itomori, Gifu prefecture. 2013.

2013?! The girl he was switching bodies with… he was not only transcending space… but time as well? It just didn't make any sense. He had to go back. He had to change it. He remembered it now… very clearly… he was just beginning high school. The comet streaked through the sky, leaving behind hues of bright blues and pinks and purples amongst the stars. It was absolutely beautiful… he had no idea something that looked so breathtaking could cause such a tragedy. If he could just turn back time, reverse the clock, do something… maybe he could do right by her. He owes it to her, at the least.

After moving from hotel to hotel, asking strangers, inquiring from restaurant owners, he finally found it. Itomori. A tiny, mountainous village that he wouldn't even have heard of in his lifetime if it weren't for Mitsuha. He remembered that one afternoon when her grandmother taught him how to make kuchikami no sake: an offering of a part of your body to God. He hiked down the basin lake, to the shrine where they placed it at. And there it was: the small, rounded bottle on the left of the altar… maybe if he took a drink, he would have a part of Mitsuha with him. Maybe it would help him change the past.

October 3, 2016

Taki!

Taki!

Where are you?!

He could hear her, and he could feel her presence there. She was near. All of a sudden, Taki found himself on the top of the basin that overlooked the shrine in the lake. She was running, running toward him. Her footsteps… they were so clear. And loud. They were getting closer, louder.

It was twilight now… the sun was just about to set.

And there she was. She looked so tired, despite the fact that she was always very pretty. At least in his opinion. And her hair… it was so short. It looked nicer when it was longer but she was beautiful nonetheless. Despite being in Mitsuha's body for days on end sometimes, Taki never stopped to appreciate her physical attributes. Large, wandering eyes, a button nose, long, straight brunette hair that used to cascade over her back but now only stopped at her shoulders.

"Y-you're here!" she panted, planting her hands over her kneecaps and stopping to take a breather before continuing to speak.

"Y-yeah, I guess so," he chuckled nervously. "It's so weird to finally meet you."

Silence. Followed by awkward laughter, shifting of feet. Taki all of sudden snapped back to reality.

"Mitsuha, you have to go back," he said, his voice suddenly taking a change of tone.

"What do you mean?" she looked up, her expression hardening.

"The town… Itomori… everything you know, everyone you care about… they are all going to die," he articulated gravely. "You still have time! You need to go back and warn everyone to evacuate."

"What?! How do you even know this?" Mitsuha exclaimed, taken aback. Why was he spouting all this nonsense? How could she know that she could trust what he was saying?

"The comet!" Taki responded. "It's going to split in half, and it's going to crash into your village. If you go back and tell everyone, no one is going to die."

Mitsuha's face suddenly contorted from relief and happiness to an unsuppressable anger… and sadness, really.

"You mean to tell me that you came all the way from the center of Tokyo to here of all places to let me know last minute that everyone I know is going to die because a comet is just going to fall from the sky, like they even do that?!" she shouted, stomping the ground. She was frustrated. This was supposed to be the time they finally met and talked about their experiences, and now everything is going wrong. Why does this always happen to her? Whenever it feels like there is a positive in her life, another negative overrides it tenfold. It was unbearable at this point.

"Mitsuha… please don't get mad at me... I'm only trying to help you and the people you care about…" Taki tried to reason, holding his hands up in defense.

"How do I know that I can believe you?!" Mitsuha cried. "We stopped switching bodies… I don't even know if this is real… I just know I needed to see you one last time."

"I know, and I'm sorry," Taki professed. "I just needed to let you know… I knew that if I didn't, nothing was going to change."

"What do you mean?" Mitsuha was suddenly so confused. He was speaking in a language that she couldn't comprehend. Comet. Dying. People. Yotsuha. Grandma. Itomori. She clenched her fists by her side in anger. "No."

Taki looked up, suddenly dazed. "No?"

"You don't get to do this to me," Mitsuha stated. "I've been waiting for so so long!"

"Do what to you?"

"Ruin this for me!" she yelled. "For all I have wanted, for as long as I could remember… I just hated my life. I hated everything. It was just so boring. Everyone I talked to, everything I did, everything I learned at school, all of that stuff I had to do for the temple, all the people who have left me… and my mom! You don't get to take this from me."

"Huh?" Taki just stood there, stunned. Neither parties were able to communicate a discernable message across to each other.

"I just wanted… in another life, maybe…" Tears began to form and fall down Mitsuha's cheeks. "To just be you. Or someone like you! I hated everything I was. I was so shy, I never stood up to my dad, I listened to everything everyone told me, I got spoonfed my beliefs, I do all that I am expected to do even if I don't want to… I am so sick, so tired of living like this! I-I can't do it anymore. I needed to get out… I needed to be in the big city, to be in Tokyo. Switching bodies with you was the only way I was able to do that."

"What are you saying?" Taki raised an eyebrow while Mitsuha just shook her head in disbelief.

"You just don't get it, do you?!" she sobbed. "Living in somewhere like Itomori… it's suffocating. There's nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to look forward to, ever. And you… you have everything that I ever wanted! For God's sake, Taki, you walk out of your apartment and you see the skyline! You ride on the subway every single day, and your school, your school has more to offer to you than anything I will ever have in my entire life! There's so much more in your world than I will never have. I… I will never be able to watch movies with my friends, or go and have a fancy meal at a café, o-or work at an upscale restaurant. I will never be able to climb to the roof of my house and look at those dazzling, scintillating Tokyo lights. I won't have any of those things! I-I just wanted what you had so so badly. You were everything, just everything that I wanted to be. A-and now… now you're just everything that I have ever wanted." Her entire body was shaking, as her eyes skimmed the ground because she couldn't bring herself to look anywhere else. She held her hands so tightly in a fist that her knuckles became white. Taki was now holding her in an embrace, trying to calm her down. There just wasn't much time left.

"I'm sorry we lost contact, I'm sorry that you couldn't experience those things... and I'm sorry that I couldn't let you know that I felt the same way…" he comforted gently. The air was cold, the sun was setting, and time has stopped… for now. Sniffling. Crying. Shaking. Darkness.

"Y-you helped me, though," Mitsuha giggled, wiping a few tears from her eyes.

"With what?" Taki asked, now letting her go.

"W-with those mean girls from school…" she recalled. "You would stand up to them. I was never able to."

"I guess I was just a better version of you than you were," Taki teased, immediately regretting his words when Mitsuha punched him unforgivingly in the stomach.

"It's not like I was any worse!" Mitsuha reasoned. "Miki would have never agreed to go out with you if it weren't for me."

"Touché…" Taki laughed, now running his fingers through his hair.

Another brief, awkward pause subsequently followed.

"But… the thing you said about the comet… it's all true?" Mitsuha asked hesitantly.

Taki nodded solemnly. "I know this may seem hard to believe to you right now, and I know that I am giving you a lot of information…" he said. "But I am three years in the future of your timeline. I am not sure why or how, but when we were switching bodies, I was going back in time while you were moving forward. We suddenly stop switching because the meteor hits Itomori… and kills you."

Mitsuha clasped her hand over mouth. "K-kills me?!" she cried. She sank slowly to the ground.

"You still have time, Mitsuha," Taki encouraged. "You have time to change the past. You just have to let as many people in Itomori as possible know. You have to evacuate the village before it's too late."

"I-I don't think I will be able to… how will I be able to convey the message to all those people? What if they don't believe me?" she deliberated, scrambling through her thoughts and doubting herself once more.

"Hey… listen to me," Taki attempted to get her attention. "You can do this. I know you can. You have all these resources… ask the people you trust… Tessie and Sayaka to help you. Try to evacuate as many people as you can to the high school. It might not be possible to save everyone, but you have to go at it as hard as you can."

"O-okay…" Mitsuha nodded. "I will do my best."

"Alright," Taki replied. "There's not much time left… I have to go-."

"W-wait!" Mitsuha interrupted. "What if I never see you again? What if I forget you, and that all of this happened?"

Taki's smirk eventually curved into a smile. "Then I guess we'll just have to see what happens after that."

"Before you go…" Mitsuha suggested. "L-let's write our names on each other's hands… in case we forget."

Taki quickly took a pen from his jacket pocket and handed it to Mitsuha, who hastily scribbled her name on his palm. When she wasn't looking, he scrawled the words "I love you" on hers.

And he disappeared as quickly as he appeared. Mitsuha managed to save everyone in Itomori with the help of her friends and the town loudspeaker system… but over time, Taki was bit by bit removed from her memory. She grew old, moved to Tokyo, and never gave his existence another thought… until that day.

April 13, 2021

She swore that she has seen him before… she knew that she should know his name and who he is… but she just couldn't for the life of her remember. His face zipped past her as her subway window skimmed his. But she couldn't let this one go… she just couldn't shake the feeling. She bolted from the subway as it reached the nearest stop, up the stairs, to the streets. She didn't know why, she didn't know how she would see him. But she knew she had to… she knew in the back of her mind that this was the right thing to do.

Up another flight of stairs, down the next street. She was out of breath. But she had to see him.

It was springtime, so the air was warm. And there he was - standing behind a fence that overlooked the neighborhood she was standing in. He was quite tall, had a stern but understanding face, was wearing a suit and tie - maybe he just came from a job interview or corporate work? For some reason, he was locking gazes with her as well. He waited for her as she made her way up the steps as quickly as she could.

"D-do I know you?!" she exclaimed, a little bit louder than she intended while trying to catch her breath.

"I-I don't think so…" he responded, tilting his head to the side. He looked young, perhaps a couple years younger than her, give or take. But he was there… and she needed to see him.

"Maybe from a past life?" she joked playfully.

"Perhaps," he laughed politely. Something about his laugh was so… so familiar.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Taki Tachibana," he responded, without reluctance, and with such confidence.

That name… something about that name, she has got to have heard it somewhere. She desperately combed through her memory… maybe it was someone from college? Maybe they worked in the same office but never formally met with each other? She shook her head hurriedly and introduced herself, realizing that she was leaving the quite handsome, she may add, gentleman in front of her hanging.

"I'm Mitsuha Miyamizu!" she bowed courteously, still not losing the Itomori manners her grandmother drilled into her on an everyday basis.

"Mitsuha…" he played with the word thoughtfully. "I know I have heard of that name from somewhere…"

He was silent for quite some time now, stroking his chin and looking up into the sky, lost in his own preoccupations.

"W-would you mind if maybe we brought this over dinner?" Mitsuha giggled embarrassingly. "I don't have anything planned for this evening… I was just taking the metro home."

"I do know an Italian restaurant nearby…" Taki contemplated. He was jobless, the interview today didn't go very well. Why not blow off some steam. "I used to work there in high school actually, haha."

"That's so cool!" Mitsuha beamed, as they began making their way toward the café. "I actually didn't live in Tokyo in high school, I actually lived in a mountain village in… Gifu, if you've heard of it?"

Taki shook his head.

"Well yeah, I was there until I was old enough to go to school in Tokyo," Mitsuha nodded, smiling nostalgically at the thought.

"Sounds exciting," Taki mused. "I've lived in central Tokyo all my life, so I never really had a change of scenery."

"You're so lucky.." Mitsuha smiled bittersweetly. The night suddenly took over the horizon, as the pair admired the Tokyo skylights from afar. A line of restaurants and residential buildings lined the street they were ambling relaxedly along.

"It's actually this one right here…" Taki pointed to the left, opening the door for Mitsuha as she walked in. "This job was how I paid the bills as a student, heh…"

"I'm very excited to hear all about it…" Mitsuha grinned, as she waited to be seated.