Positive Backwardness

There was a man walking in a strange way through the park at dusk.
He was always walking backward.
Without facing forward, as if checking the path with his back.

"It's that person again."
Rin, a high school student, spotted the man on her way home from club activities and sat on a bench to observe him.

The man kept his back straight and took each step with a steady gait, as if confirming something as he retreated.
Strangely, he didn't seem unsteady at all.

One day, Rin gathered the courage to speak to him.

"Why do you walk backward?"

The man stopped and smiled.

"To move forward."

"Huh? But if you're walking backward—"

"Sometimes you can't move forward unless you look back at the past. You see, I left something important behind. So I'm moving forward while checking on that."

The man had lost his wife. It was an accident, he said.
If he tried to look only toward the future, he felt like he would forget her smile.
Precious memories he didn't want to erase.
Fearing that, he had started walking backward.

However, he never stood still.

"It's okay to go little by little. You just have to move toward the future while accepting the past."

Since then, Rin also walks backward from time to time.
After a small heartbreak.
When she remembers a friend she couldn't make up with.
Every time she looks back, she feels like she gains the courage to face forward.



The End

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