One day, just before her spring move, a worn, old letter arrived at Natsuki’s house.
The envelope was yellowed with age, and the postmark was too faded to read. There was no sender listed—only a single clear line on the front:
“To Ms. Natsuki Asakura.”
“…Why now?”
Puzzled, she opened the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper covered in small, precise handwriting.
“Your mother’s death was not an accident.
If you want to know the truth, go to that place.
—Behind the old Sakura-zaka post office, March 15th, 3:00 PM.”
Her hands trembled.
Natsuki had always been told that her mother died in a car accident twenty years earlier, in the spring. She had been only two years old then; she had no memory of it. Only a photograph of her mother and the scent of cherry blossoms each year connected her to the woman she lost.
Who would send such a letter? And why now?
Yet she felt there was something unfinished in this town—something she had to confront before she left. And so, on the designated day, Natsuki went to the place written in the letter.
The old Sakura-zaka post office had long since fallen into ruin, but behind it was a small vacant lot.
At 3:00 PM, the wind blew gently, carrying drifting cherry blossom petals like snow.
No one was there. Natsuki looked around.
Then she noticed something on the ground—a patch of disturbed earth, as if something had been buried.
Digging with her bare hands, she uncovered a small metal tin. Inside were several stacked letters.
She opened one, and childish handwriting jumped across the page.
“Natsuki-chan, how are you? I’m doing well. Today the wind was really strong, and lots of petals from the cherry tree by your house blew over here.”
A memory stirred.
Before moving away as a child, Natsuki had exchanged “play letters” with a boy. Using her mother’s help, she wrote clumsy, uneven words. His replies never arrived in the mailbox; instead, they were always buried in a small box beneath the cherry tree behind her house.
Was it him—back then?
As she continued reading through the letters, she came to one sentence that stopped her breath.
“I saw your mom step in front of the car. Later my dad said she did it to save someone.”
A shock like lightning shot through her.
It wasn’t an accident? Her mother… protected someone?
Every letter was a pure, earnest record from a young boy to someone important to him. None were signed, but as Natsuki read more and more, certainty formed.
—It was Yuta-kun.
The boy she once knew.
Unable to tell her any other way, he had sent a message across time, trying to give her the truth he carried alone.
The wind lifted the last letter, and it slipped from her hand.
When she picked it up, she noticed faint writing on the back of the envelope.
Small, blurred words:
“What I really wanted to say… I couldn’t put it into a letter.
But I’m glad you found it.”
Tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks.
Natsuki pressed the envelope gently to her chest.
It wasn’t written in the letters, but she felt it clearly—
Her mother’s love.
Yuta’s memory.
And the proof that she had lived in this town.
A few days later, as the moving truck pulled away, Natsuki looked back once more at Sakura-zaka.
Beneath that tree, her story’s beginning lay sleeping.
The wind blew, scattering petals in the air.
And for a moment, she felt someone softly push her forward—
as if whispering, “Go on.”
