Three-Part Dialogue Story: 'Bones Buried Under Nemophila, Suited for Rain Boots'

It has been three months since I lost my daughter.
That day, in the vast field of nemophila, my daughter suddenly vanished.
Right before our eyes, my wife's and mine, she suddenly vanished.

A blue carpet. Flowers in full bloom on the gentle hills.
In the middle of the path winding through them, I took a photo of my wife and daughter together.
The two of them smiling.
When I looked up, one of them was gone.
"Huh? Where's Miku?"
"Eh? Miku?"
That was it. There was nowhere to hide.
There was no other way to describe it but a divine abduction.

What was hardest to understand of all was that my wife did not recognize our daughter's existence.
"Eh? Miku? ...Who is Miku?"
That was what she said at that moment.
"What are you talking about? Have you forgotten your own daughter?"
I played back the photo I had just taken on my smartphone.
In it, my wife was smiling all by herself.

They say we were a childless couple.
That can't be right.
I have memories of the three years I spent with Miku.
She had just started kindergarten, and I even took her there and picked her up.
On rainy days, she was a mischievous girl who loved to wear her favorite rain boots and splash in the puddles.
She was never there from the start, you say?
Then what about these memories of mine?
Are you saying everything was an illusion?

"We don't have a daughter. I never gave birth in the first place. Whose memories are those, anyway?"
"She really existed! We were a family of three. We even went to see those nemophila together."
"Enough already. So, where is she now? Our daughter."
"That's why I'm saying, she disappeared in that place. Let's go look for her again."

Everything in our house that suggested our daughter had existed had vanished.
The toys she loved so much.
The countless photos I thought I had taken.
Was everything truly just an illusion?
The reason my wife and I couldn't have children lies with me.
Is this a delusion born from the self-reproach I feel for my own inadequacy?

One day, I happened to open the back of the shoe cabinet and found the rain boots I recognized.
Miku's favorite rain boots.
See, I knew it.
"Hey, look at this."
I show the rain boots to my wife.
"Oh, we bought these in a rush back when we still had hope, didn't we? I remember."
"Miku was wearing these, right? She was jumping in the puddles."
"Like I said, who is Miku? Don't go deciding on a name for our child on your own."
Resignation began to cloud my heart.
Had I been having a long dream?
Miku's smile began to fade away.

A few years later, the phone rings.
It was from the police.
They said that in that nemophila field, white bones thought to be those of a young child had been found.
Several years had passed since her death, and it seems the missing person report I filed with the police at the time was still active.
At some point, it had been treated as a fabrication on my part, but the place where the bones were discovered was apparently the very spot where I had taken the photo of my wife and daughter.
Buried by the growing nemophila, they had gone undiscovered for years, but a family who had come to take a commemorative photo just like we did noticed a white object peeking through the gaps in the flowers.
That family had a daughter the same age Miku would have been at the time.

I still don't know if those bones are Miku's.
No, in the first place, Miku doesn't exist.
There's no way to perform a DNA test.
Surely those bones will be processed without anyone ever knowing whose they were.
But I am certain.
It is Miku.
She had been waiting for us in that place ever since that day.
Waiting for us who never came to pick her up.
Waiting for us who decided she didn't exist.

After my wife's rejection, I never visited the nemophila field again since that day.
The revisit I proposed three months after her disappearance remains unfulfilled to this day.
I think of the nemophila's flower language.
"I forgive you."
Did Miku forgive us for not coming to look for her?
No, for us who even doubted her very existence.

Someday, I will obtain those bones.
Even if I have to fight for them in court.
And I will visit that nemophila field once more.
I don't mind going alone.
Because for my wife, our daughter never existed.
But I had a daughter named Miku.
She was a cute girl who looked great in rain boots.
I will say a proper goodbye in that place.
No matter how late it is, I'm sure she will forgive me.

I have participated in this project.
Thank you for your consideration.