April, the month when the boundary between spring and summer begins to slowly crumble.

I met that boy for the first time that day. Under the largest peach tree in the village, amidst the faint scent of peach blossoms, on a day when pink petals holding the soft spring light fell subtly like a shower.

The boy stood beneath the peach tree. As naturally as waves crash and foam follows, as lightning strikes and thunder rolls, like a pair.

To be honest, I thought he was a doll or a mannequin the village chief had put out for decoration. In this boring backwater, there were no kids my age, let alone someone who looked like a pretty boy from a magazine. It was only when he turned his head at the sound of my presence that I finally realized he was a person.

He was fiddling with the common peach blossoms of this village as if they were newborn infants, as if that peach tree—which few in the village even glanced at—was something magnificent.

It was a little funny. I wondered if he'd gape at cicadas crying in the summer as if they were magical bugs, or if he'd faint seeing the deep autumn maples, thinking someone had sprayed paint on the leaves. Does that gray city called Tokyo not even have a common peach tree like this?

—Anyway, the first words he spoke were neither a greeting nor a question, but something unexpected.

"The flowers smell like peaches."

The extremely obvious statement that peach blossoms smell like peaches.

I ended up believing his excuse-like explanation that he didn't particularly like peaches, but was just staring blankly because the scent was fascinating.

And then he spoke again. He said his health wasn't good, and if he were to leave this world, he wanted to do so after seeing peaches grow on this tree. He said he had no desire to stay long with a body like this.

...What a miserable thing to say so hollowly, I thought. At least until then.