The morning arrived in shades of gray, rain falling softly on the garden. Kaito stood in the entryway of his home, suitcases beside him, watching his mother fuss with his collar.
"You have your passport? Your visa documents? The school contact information?"
"Yes, Mother." His voice gentle but tired. He hadn't slept.
His father checked his watch. "The car will be here any minute. We should move to the door."
Kaito looked around the house one last time, trying to memorize details he'd never paid attention to before. The slight crack in the ceiling molding. The faded spot on the wall where a family photo once hung. The scent of tatami and his mother's cooking.
Outside, a car pulled up, headlights cutting through the rain. His father opened the front door.
"It's time."
His mother embraced him, holding tighter than usual. "Call when you land. And when you reach the dormitory."
"I will."
His father didn't embrace him, but placed a hand on his shoulder. "Remember who you are. Who we are."
Kaito nodded, understanding the weight of the statement. Remember you are an Aoyama. Remember your responsibilities.
The driver loaded his suitcases into the trunk. Kaito stood in the doorway, rain misting his face. He looked toward the Mizushima house next door. All windows dark, no movement. It was too early for goodbyes, and besides, theirs had already happened.
Or so he thought.
As the car pulled away from the curb, Kaito glanced back one last time. A figure stood at the Mizushima gate, barely visible through the rain. Aoi, in what looked like pajamas covered by a raincoat, her hair loose around her shoulders.
She didn't wave. She simply stood, watching him leave.
Kaito almost asked the driver to stop, almost opened the door, almost ran back to say something, anything, more meaningful than their careful goodbye the night before.
Instead, he turned forward as the car accelerated, carrying him away from Kyoto, from Aoi, from everything familiar.
At the airport, everything moved with mechanical efficiency. Check-in, security, the long walk to the international terminal. Kaito moved through the process in a daze, his body functioning on autopilot while his mind remained caught between past and future.
In the waiting area, he found himself surrounded by strangers, all heading to different destinations for different reasons. He took out his phone, scrolling through messages, photos, memories. His thumb hovered over Aoi's contact information. He should say something else, something more.
The boarding announcement came before he could decide what that something might be. He joined the queue, passport and boarding pass in hand, phone returned to his pocket.
On the plane, settled into his business class seat, Kaito finally took out the book Aoi had given him. He opened it carefully, finding a page marked with a small sticky note.
A poem about departure, about distance, about return. In the margin, in handwriting he recognized as Aoi's, a single line:
"Some journeys are circles, others are lines."
He traced the words with his finger, wondering which his would be. The plane began to move, taxiing toward the runway. Kaito closed the book but kept it in his lap, a talisman against uncertainty.
As the aircraft lifted into the rain-heavy sky, Kaito watched Japan recede beneath him, the landscape blurring into abstract patterns of green and gray. Somewhere down there was Kyoto, was Aoi, was everything he'd known.
Ahead lay London. Strangers. Expectations. Freedom, perhaps, but of a kind he wasn't sure he wanted.
The seatbelt sign dinged off. Kaito reclined his seat and closed his eyes, not to sleep but to remember. Cherry blossoms. The wooden engawa. Aoi's silence. The crane on the railing.
He wondered if she would wait for him, as he'd assumed she meant. He wondered if he wanted her to.
Most of all, he wondered who he would be when, if, he returned.