When the girl woke up, she saw an unfamiliar room.
A sense of nostalgia, mixed with the scent of medicine, tickled her nose.
“Where am I?”
She tried to move her body but felt a sense of weariness.
More than that, she was connected to various lines, making her hesitate to move.
A monotonous beeping sound, “beep, beep, beep,” made her even more confused about what was happening.
“Why am I here, and where are Jared and the others?”
Her thoughts reached this point, and she tilted her head inwardly.
“Who is Jared?”
She had no recollection.
However, she felt as if she had forgotten something important.
“Miharazaki-san?”
She heard someone’s voice.
She moved only her eyes in the direction of the voice and saw a woman, dressed in white, standing there.
The woman’s eyes widened in surprise, and she dropped the items she was holding one after another onto the floor.
“Miharazaki-san?! No way! Please wait a moment, I’ll call the doctor right away!”
With that, she ran out of the room.
From outside the room, the girl could hear the woman’s loud voice.
Soon, people started coming into the room one after another.
“Doctors and nurses… why did I forget them?”
She didn’t know their names, but she remembered their professions.
Her mind felt sluggish, as if she had just awoken from a long sleep.
“Your Family has arrived. You’ll be able to see them soon,” the woman said with a gentle smile.
Before the girl could wonder who she was referring to, the door to the room burst open.
“Yuna!”
A woman, who looked to be in her forties, rushed in.
She had brown dyed hair and was wearing jeans.
Behind her, a man, slightly older, appeared, out of breath.
He was wearing a suit and had salt-and-pepper hair.
“Yuna! Oh, thank goodness, thank God!”
“Mom?”
The word slipped out naturally.
“Yes. It’s Mama. Oh, thank goodness. It’s truly a relief to hear Yuna’s voice again… Papa, say something too.”
“Yuna… thank you for waking up. This past year felt so long.”
Mama and Papa.
These words acted as a key, unlocking the girl’s memories all at once.
“That’s right. I’m Yuna Miharazaki. These are my Mom and Dad.”
Why had she forgotten?
Tears welled up.
It felt strangely nostalgic.
It felt as if she hadn’t seen them for years.
Yuna distinctly felt that she had forgotten not only her parents’ faces but even their voices.
“…Why?”
“Yuna, you were in an accident on your way to school a year ago. Don’t you remember anything?”
The girl nodded.
She had no memory of the accident.
“You didn’t have many external injuries, but you must have hit your head hard, and you wouldn’t wake up… The doctors said the cause was unknown… Sob, sob, it’s truly a relief that you’ve woken up.”
The girl whispered softly to her mother, who was weeping uncontrollably and holding her hand, to please not cry.
“I see. I was in an accident. That’s why I don’t remember anything. But… I feel like I’m forgetting something.”
She dismissed it as her imagination, but she remembered the sensation of hitting someone.
She remembered the feeling of being hit.
It felt like mistaking a long dream for reality.
Even though she didn’t remember any dreams at all.
“You’ll have tests for a while, but if everything’s okay, you can come home. We can all live together again.”
“Don’t think about the future for now. Just focus on recovering.”
Yuna nodded at her parents’ concern.
They were kind people.
“I’m so glad to see Mom and Dad again… truly glad.”
She was sincerely grateful for the safe reunion with her parents.
And then,
“Thank you.”
For some reason, a feeling of gratitude towards someone naturally welled up.
Towards someone who was not here, somewhere else.
Yuna repeated her thanks in her heart, not understanding why she felt such gratitude.
Thus ended the long journey of one girl.
