The Last Person to Marry

Synopsis
Makoto Sato, who runs a marriage agency, is diagnosed with one year left to live. Although he has helped over a thousand couples find their match, he has lived only for his work since a heartbreak twenty-five years ago. On a dating app he registered for while contemplating his end, he meets Haruna, a woman with whom he feels a mysterious connection. However, her true identity is Miwa, the lover he parted ways with twenty-five years ago.
Overcoming their mutual regrets and misunderstandings, Makoto decides to spend his remaining time living with Miwa. After Makoto's death, Miwa inherits the "desire to connect people" he left behind and begins to walk a new path in life.
This is a bittersweet and warm pure love story for adults that questions what it means to "graduate from marriage" in life. It depicts the true love and hope found at the end of life by two people who took many detours.

Prologue

Autumn, 2001. From a twelfth-floor window overlooking the city's office district, the afternoon sun, beginning to tilt, dyed every corner of the room in a pale golden hue. On the floor, the backs of employees facing thick CRT monitors were lined up in an orderly fashion, and the dry, continuous sound of typing on keyboards echoed low, as if it were a single living creature.

Outside the window, the expectations for the new century and the remnants of the collapsed bubble mingled, and a dry wind peculiar to the city center blew through. It was an era where everyone was chasing a new future on the screens in front of them, without realizing that the ground beneath their feet was just beginning to shake slightly. It was a somewhat poignant afternoon, filled with the omens of gradual collapse and change.

Makoto Sato stared intently at a single white envelope hidden in his drawer, as if he were a predator eyeing its prey.
A letter of resignation. It was Makoto's very "ambition," which he had rewritten many times over the past few months, only to push it to the back of the drawer each time.

Makoto slowly shifted his gaze to the seat next to him. Miwa Yamagishi was there. The calmness of her profile as she typed on the keyboard with practiced hands tightened Makoto's chest.

Makoto gently took his hands off the keyboard and leaned back in his chair. Then, in a voice so small that no one else could hear, he sent a signal that only Miwa would understand.
"...Today, at 18:00, at the usual coffee shop."
Miwa's hands stopped for just a fleeting moment. She did not take her eyes off the monitor, but she nodded slightly, as if to show that she had indeed received Makoto's message.

As the sun set and the city began to light up with neon, the two were at an old coffee shop in a back alley a little away from the office. The shop was filled with the fragrant aroma of coffee and the faint melody of jazz. It was a sanctuary for just the two of them, where they could shed their work armor and talk.

Sitting at a window seat, Makoto took that white envelope out of his pocket. He placed it gently on the table. The moment she saw that sight, the composure vanished from Miwa's expression.
"...I'm quitting the company."
Makoto's words were absorbed into the silence of the shop.

"I'm going independent. I don't want a life decided by someone else; I want to create my own future."
It was a declaration of determination to inspire himself. However, Miwa kept her coffee cup gripped tight and said nothing. The smile she forced onto her face sent a sharp pain through Makoto's chest.
"...That talk again?"
Miwa's voice was so small it was drowned out by the shop's background music, and it was trembling.
"I'm serious."
"You have plenty of fulfillment here, don't you? ...What's wrong with things as they are now?"

What Miwa was trying to protect was not her "career at the company." It was "their present." Shopping at the supermarket, visiting home for the holidays, laughing together ten or twenty years from now just as they did today... that kind of ordinary, irreplaceable happiness.

"I want to do something bigger."

Makoto, too, did not raise his voice. The more he suppressed his voice, the more the desperate impatience contained in his words sank heavily into the dimly lit shop.

"I don't want to end up as a cog in an organization. When I imagine the future passing by like this for ten, twenty years... I feel like I'm suffocating."

Miwa's eyes wavered. She knew that Makoto's sharp words were mercilessly tearing apart her modest dreams.

"I'm different."

Her single remark was quieter than a whisper. Yet, those words pierced Makoto's chest like an indelible thorn.

The old clock in the shop clicked, and the sound of a car passing by in the distance could be heard. Even though the world continued to spin with the same face as yesterday, it felt as if only the two of them were drifting apart at an irreversible speed.

Makoto could say nothing. Miwa, too, said nothing more. That silence determined their future.
A few days later. Personal belongings had vanished from Makoto's desk.

Miwa found herself looking at Makoto's empty seat, where no one sat anymore, time and time again. Every time the phone rang, every time she heard footsteps in the hallway, her body reacted on its own.

From then on, the two began to walk, each holding onto their own sense of what was right. Makoto, to climb the steep mountain called the future. Miwa, to protect the happiness that should have been right at her feet.
Neither of them was wrong.

It was just that the paths they chose were different. However, at this time, the two did not yet know what kind of ending that small rift, which they left unspoken that day, would bring about after the staggering passage of twenty-five years.

Chapter 1: One Year to Live

"The detailed test results are in, so I will explain them to you."
A chilling air hung in the examination room. Outside the window, the June sun reflected white off the asphalt, and the innocent laughter of children faintly leaked in from the waiting room, which should have been a space isolated from that.

Makoto Sato sat across from the doctor, staring at the CT images placed on the inorganic desk. Fifty-eight years old. Since leaving Miwa behind at that coffee shop a quarter of a century ago, Makoto had kept running without ever stopping once.

Twenty-five years of running a marriage agency. His former "ambition" had transformed into a "mission" to lead many members to happiness. Makoto had stood by people at the crossroads of life, prioritizing their happiness above all else, even at the expense of his own private life. The "future ten or twenty years from now" that Miwa had once hoped for, Makoto had built up alone, just by himself, steadily.
--In the end, what did I actually gain?

His own end was etched into the gray images. His recent physical condition had been giving him signs he couldn't ignore. An indescribable lethargy. Food that wouldn't go down his throat. He understands now that he had just been deceiving himself, using the busyness of work as an excuse.

The doctor opened his mouth heavily.
"A malignant tumor has been found in your pancreas."
Makoto nodded slightly. It wasn't as if he hadn't expected it.

"It is pancreatic cancer. ...Unfortunately, metastasis to the liver has already been confirmed."

At that moment, all sound in the examination room faded away. A silence as if he had sunk deep into the ocean. He had experienced countless crises in his life. The extreme poverty immediately after going independent. The crisis of the agency due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He prided himself on always remaining calm and devising the best strategy in any situation. However, against the fact that his own life was coming to a close, no wisdom or experience could compete.

Twenty-five years since the parting at that coffee shop. Makoto had thought he had come further than anyone else. However, what was thrust upon him at the end was an ending that was far too quiet and far too lonely.

"How much time..."

A voice came out, damp and raspy, surprising even himself. The doctor did not look away, staring straight at Makoto.

"There are individual differences, but assuming you undergo treatment, it is thought to be around one year."

One year to live. Only that number beat a rhythm in the back of his ears in time with his heartbeat. Twelve months. Three hundred sixty-five days. Eight thousand seven hundred sixty hours. When converted into concrete numbers, it was far too fragile and short.

Makoto thanked him and left the examination room. The hospital hallway felt like a corridor to another world. Not a single person passing by realized the death that existed inside him. It was as if he alone had become a monochrome inhabitant, cut off from the colors of the world.

He looked at himself reflected in the elevator mirror. His gray hair had increased. Deep wrinkles, like proof of having faced the worries of countless members, were etched into the corners of his eyes. He was by no means young. But he was still too young to end his life.

In the lobby, there was a young couple pushing a stroller. The husband muttered something, and the wife wore a cherishing smile. That smile stabbed Makoto's chest like a sharp blade. He instinctively looked away and rushed out of the hospital.
The sky outside was cruelly blue. The world hadn't changed one bit. Only he had been handed a one-way ticket.

On the way to the parking lot, his feet stopped.
He suddenly wondered. If he died, who would cry for him? His parents had long since passed away, and he had no siblings. No wife, no children. A man who had seen over a thousand families off as the representative of a marriage agency, when he imagined his own curtain call, there was no one there.

His staff would be sad. But that would never go beyond the bounds of a "work relationship." Would his death ever remain as a painful void in someone's life?

Makoto, who had gotten into his car, gripped the steering wheel without even being able to start the engine. The coldness of the plastic transmitted to both his hands felt like his own current state of mind.
One year to live. Those three words, like invisible smoke filling the car, eroded deep into his lungs and would not disappear.

Suddenly, his gaze turned to the passenger seat. No one was there. For twenty-five years, no one's body heat or presence had existed there. Without even having the means to comfort the loneliness of the driver's seat, he had just kept running, surrendering himself to an accelerator called work.

But at that moment, unexpectedly, in the corner of his vision, the scenery of the passenger seat distorted. Long hair was translucent in the sunlight streaming through the window. A habit of smiling as if slightly troubled, yet lovingly. The sweet scent of canned coffee he drank while looking up at the station clock in front of the station on his way home from work. The smell of damp asphalt on that night when they huddled together in the rain, walking while getting their cold shoulders wet.
Even after twenty-five years, the memory was as vivid as if it were yesterday.
"...Is it too late now?"
The voice, muttered with self-mockery, echoed emptily in the narrow car. That the first thing he would remember after receiving a death sentence would be the lover he had once discarded for his own ambition. There was a limit to how pathetic he could be. Success, honor, the medal of having over a thousand successful marriages. Now, facing death, those were as fragile as sandcastles and meant nothing.

Only the back of the person he parted with at the station on that autumn day was burned into his mind. A woman whose name he had avoided even speaking for a long time to protect himself.
--Miwa Yamagishi.
If he had spun different words that day. If he had chosen to have her sit in this passenger seat and head somewhere. Where on earth would the life of a man like him have led?

Makoto slowly closed his eyes. However, from the deep abyss called the past, not a single answer would return. Twenty-five years was far too long. It was a severance called an irreversible void.
Only the vibration transmitted from the steering wheel trembled slightly, as if mocking his life that had remained stopped.

Twenty-five years ago, he started the marriage agency "Bridge" alone. In the first year, he couldn't even gather ten members, and he worked part-time cleaning at night to pay the office rent. The reason he didn't give up even then was because he had a burning desire to "be a bridge for someone struggling to get married."

Eventually, the number of marriages exceeded ten, fifty, five hundred, and then a thousand, and he even graced the cover of an industry magazine. He was hailed as a successful person. But now, standing in the shadow of illness, he had nothing in his hands. No light waiting for his return, no warm dining table.
Makoto quietly stepped on the accelerator. The scenery of the city flowing outside the window looked strangely distant, like a movie screen.

The marriage agency "Bridge" was on the second floor of a multi-tenant building. It was by no means a sophisticated place, but for Makoto, it was his castle in life and his pride.
"A bridge to connect your future." The catchphrase, which hadn't faded since the opening, was stuck to the glass door at the entrance. The moment he saw those words, Makoto felt a tightness in the back of his throat. Future. He no longer had a long future left.

When he opened the door, the bright voices of the staff welcomed him.
"Representative, thank you for your hard work."
"Ah, thank you for yours."
He replied in his usual tone. He must not let anyone realize that he was standing on the brink of death. That was his pride as a professional.
On the walls of the office, happy photos sent by couples who had successfully married were lined up, filling every space.

"Sensei!" A young male member stood up.
A thirty-eight-year-old office worker. A young man with whom he had struggled and encouraged for a year, and finally succeeded in proposing.
"Actually, she finally... accepted!" Seeing his beaming smile, Makoto reflexively raised the corners of his mouth.
"Congratulations, truly. I bless you from my heart."
They exchanged a firm handshake. Tears of joy welled up in the man's eyes.
"If it weren't for you, Sensei, I would have been single for life. Thank you, truly, thank you so much."

Those words of gratitude were far too sharp and heavy for Makoto now.
This man would now build a family and walk a future sharing life's joys and sorrows with someone. He himself did not have that "path ahead." That overwhelming loneliness tightened his heart.

The day passed, and the shadows of the staff disappeared from the office. Outside the window, the city's night view was scattered like jewels.
In the quiet office, Makoto took a thick album out of his desk drawer. It was the "record of happiness" he had carefully built up one by one since opening.

He turned the pages. Everyone was looking at him with smiles so dazzling they seemed like they might disappear at any moment. Five years, ten years, fifteen years. Their lives were certainly alive in this album.
But the hand turning the pages of the album suddenly stopped. He had realized it. That he himself was in every photo. Himself, smiling in the center of the couples, or perhaps a bit modestly at the edge. Everyone looked happy.
He was smiling too. However, the "himself" reflected in those photos looked like a tourist watching a happy couple from the outside.

He had been able to build bridges. But he himself had never crossed that bridge.

"A person who just keeps seeing people off at the foot of the bridge... huh."

He muttered to himself, his exhausted face reflected in the window glass. Fifty-eight years old. Single. One year to live.
A self-mocking laugh leaked out at the sheer irony. A man who had connected the lives of over a thousand couples had been unable to connect his own life with anyone.
An old photo remained on the desk. The tenth-anniversary party of the opening. Everyone is laughing. Staring at that group photo, Makoto muttered.

"What did I leave behind..."

There was no one to answer. Only the heavy sound of a train running in the distance could be heard. Makoto closed the album and gently placed his hand on the cold cover.

If there were one more chance. If there were still nameless time left in this short remaining life. He, too, wanted to try sharing his life with someone.
Makoto turned off the office lights, but the small, yet desperate fire of regret lit in the depths of his chest continued to burn quietly, without going out, even in the darkness of the night.

Chapter 2: End-of-Life Matchmaking at the Foot of the Bridge

A week had passed since the death sentence.
Makoto's daily life was passing by without a single thing changing on the surface.
He wakes up at 7:00 AM and buys coffee at a familiar convenience store. He opens the heavy door of the marriage agency "Bridge," scrutinizes the members' profiles, adjusts matchmaking meetings, and offers consultations. It is a routine ingrained into his fingertips over these twenty-five years.

But Makoto felt that the color tone of the world was changing little by little. The flower-blooming dating reports arriving from members. The proud profiles when they complete the procedures for graduating from marriage. Each one of those had been dazzling as a "work achievement" until now.

But now, they look like "light of a distant future" that comes with a stinging pain.
They have a "story" that continues six months, a year, five years, ten years from now. But he has no continuation to that.
The declaration of "one year to live" sinks to the bottom of Makoto's chest like a heavy stone every time he wakes up each morning.

It was one night. In the office after closing, Makoto was looking at the computer screen alone. The clock hand had passed 9:00 PM. He suddenly raised his gaze and met eyes with himself reflected in the darkened window glass.
--I've aged.
A mutter leaked out. Fifty-eight years old. Gray hair had increased beyond hiding, and long years of fatigue and loneliness were etched under his eyes.
When he was young, he had believed that he, too, would one day be "by someone's side."
In his thirties, he should have had a partner. He should have been on the extension of that "ordinary life," having a family, watching his children grow, getting angry or laughing at trivial things.

But before he knew it, work had become his life itself.
Directing the happiness of members became his joy, and before he knew it, his own happiness had been postponed to somewhere in the future.
Makoto twisted his mouth in self-mockery. Words he had preached to members thousands of times as a representative crossed his mind.

"Marriage is best done when you think of it." "Don't postpone encounters and miss your chance." "Timing is not something you wait for, but something you create yourself."

Thinking about it now, those might have been words he should have thrown at himself.
The smartphone placed on the desk was emitting a cold light.
That day, during a meeting with a young female member, the conversation had turned to the use of matching apps.
"Agencies are a high hurdle, but apps are easy..." she had said.
The staff had also laughed, jokingly saying, "Why don't you try it too, Representative, also for market research?"

At the time, he had laughed it off. But now, those words wouldn't leave his head like a spell. A fifty-eight-year-old him, a him with one year to live, registering for an app to meet someone he didn't know. --It's ridiculous. It's far too absurd.
But even after returning home, he couldn't escape from that vortex of thought. The room, where only the low sound of the refrigerator echoed, was surprisingly orderly. A perfectly lonely space where someone's presence had been erased.

Makoto couldn't stand it, stood up from the sofa, and walked to the window. A light was on in a room in the apartment across the street. The shadows of a family gathered around the dining table. The figure of a child laughing innocently. Makoto couldn't take his eyes off that casual scene. Why? The back of his throat grew hot, and his vision blurred. He was envious. A very ordinary, yet more precious than anything, life that he had never been able to obtain.

That was the moment. Makoto was clutching his smartphone with trembling fingertips. He called up the search screen, erasing and retyping many times. His heart was beating like a drum. He is a representative of a marriage agency. Isn't it a defeat as a professional for such a person to do matchmaking using an app? What if there was no reaction from anyone? If he couldn't connect with anyone, wouldn't that mean admitting that his life so far had been "worthless"?

Fear and curiosity were clashing. However, the time he had left forced him to do it. Makoto eventually installed one app.
Registration screen. Name, age, residence, occupation. He entered them without falsehood.
"Fifty-eight years old, unemployed (something close to it)"... such a self-mocking thought crossed his mind.
Finally, the biggest hurdle, the "self-introduction text," was waiting. Makoto glared at the pure white screen and remained silent for a long time. Should he write a cool background? Should he list his work achievements? No, that's different. Such things are unnecessary. Makoto quietly began to move his fingers.

"I am looking for someone to laugh with in the second half of my life."

An extremely short sentence. It had no decoration, nor did it have an attractive hook. But that was his true, unfeigned feeling right now. A man facing the curtain call of his life, yet still seeking something at the end. It was just an unimaginably luxurious time of quietly laughing with someone.

He pressed the registration complete button. The screen switched, and a bleak message saying "Welcome" danced.
Makoto placed his smartphone on the desk and exhaled deeply. For twenty-five years, he had always been the "welcoming side." He listened to members' stories on the sofa in the meeting room, pushed their backs, and sent them off in life. But tonight, he stood at the entrance of the rough seas called matchmaking as the "welcomed side" for the first time.

Not to change someone's life. To change the shape of his own remaining life.
Outside the window, the night wind announcing the end of spring was shaking the curtains slightly. Deep in his chest, something was aching, small but certainly. One year to live. That fact would not disappear. But for the first time in his life, he felt he had found "unknown possibilities" in the day called tomorrow.

Perhaps. Something might really be starting.
In the quiet room, Makoto closed his eyes with a faint expectation, while still clutching his smartphone.

Chapter 3: A Woman Named Haruna

Three days since registering for the matching app. Makoto Sato was facing this unfamiliar tool with a passion that surprised even himself.
Of course, that change hadn't been hidden as well as he thought.

The staff at the marriage agency had noticed that Makoto had been paying unusual attention to his smartphone lately. During breaks, he would peek at the screen, confirm something, and then sigh slightly. Sometimes he would even smile as if he had just remembered something.

"Could it be, Representative..."

When someone said that, the other staff also looked at each other meaningfully.
No one had heard directly that Makoto had registered for a matching app. But for them, who see many people looking for marriage every day, they had somehow guessed it.
However, no one touched upon it.

He is a director who has supported the happiness of others while putting himself on the back burner for twenty-five years. If he had finally started to look at his own life, they wanted to watch over it warmly--the staff shared that thought.

Every morning, he peeks at his smartphone screen before the light streaming through the gap in the curtains. During lunch break, he rereads his profile while the taste of his lunch remains vague, and at night, he taps the keyboard as if to dispel the silence of living alone. It was as if he were re-experiencing the "beginning of love" he had dreamed of but never walked, at the age of fifty-eight.

He had lived as a "pro of encounters," so to speak, as a marriage agency.
"Don't chase ideals too much." "Profiles are just resumes."
The golden words he had preached to members were now like shackles binding himself. Disappointed by reality that differed from his ideals, every time a message was cut off, the loneliness and impatience that the members had been holding pierced his chest with reality.
One night, when he threw his exhausted body onto the sofa. Suddenly, the device trembled, and a notification lit up.

"You have matched with Haruna."

The profile said: fifty-two years old, living in Tokyo, no marriage history, no children. Hobbies are reading and walking. The photo was only of her back walking on the beach, and he couldn't even distinguish the outline of her face. But Makoto was strongly drawn to the unique "margin" emitted by that single photo.
In the self-introduction text, it was written like this:

"It hasn't been a flashy life, but from now on, I want to cherish calm time."

A silence like a withered leaf, as if she had finished a long journey. Makoto was drawn in and sent, "Nice to meet you." What came back was only the concise words, "Nice to meet you, too." But from that one line, Makoto somehow felt he could sense the temperature of a woman named Haruna.

The exchange was surprisingly natural. There were no games like when he was young, nor vanity to show himself excessively. In the exchange of calm words, the nuances of each other's lives floated up softly.

One time, when Makoto revealed that he ran a marriage agency, Haruna only replied, "That's a wonderful job." Usually, it's the theory to ask, "How about yourself?" questioning marriage status. But she didn't do that. Makoto felt intense relief at that consideration.
Because it was conveyed that for her, more than him being the "representative of a marriage agency," it was important that he was an "individual human being" with whom she was exchanging words.

The distance between the two closed at once through the topic of books. Historical novels, non-fiction, human dramas. She traced the world of reading, which Makoto hadn't been able to share with anyone for years, accurately and gently.
"I've met someone who can share the values of the same book for the first time," when Makoto typed that, a reply of "Me too" came immediately. Outside the window, the streetlights were shining lonely, but from the device in his hand, a warmth like soft sunshine was transmitted. He stared at his smartphone and laughed out loud. He hadn't had such an experience even once in these twenty-five years.

He had a reason to wake up in the morning. He had time to think about replies during the day. At night, he didn't find his own face reflected outside the window as annoying as before.
One year to live. The omen of death he was diagnosed with was still sitting coldly in the depths of his chest as always. But only during the time he was exchanging words with Haruna, the concept of death hid in the shadows. A mysterious sensation as if someone was taking him, who should be in a hospital room, to another place.

"...Shall we meet once?"

The moment he left it to momentum and pressed the send button, his heart jumped greatly. To think that even at fifty-eight, he would feel the time waiting for a reply to be this long. Ten minutes later, the ringtone rang. Makoto tapped the screen with trembling fingers.

"I'm sorry."

As expected, huh. Makoto exhaled deeply, and just as he was about to sink into disappointment, the continuation of the screen entered his eyes.

"I don't have the courage to meet yet."

Courage. Those words spread ripples in Makoto's heart. --What on earth does she have?
"Do you have circumstances?" when he asked, after a little pause, she only replied, "Just a little. But I will tell you someday." He didn't pursue it. A person's resume is not just what is written on paper. Divorce, nursing care, illness, scars of the past that no one can tell. As a professional, he should have known that better than anyone. That's why he wanted to respect her "reason."

That night, a message arrived from Haruna. "Mr. Sato." His chest heated up and soared at the name he was called for the first time.

"I'm looking forward to every day recently. It's been a really long time since I felt this way..."

A confession through the screen. He didn't know what to write. Neither the manual as a representative nor the words of encouragement as a counselor were of any use to him now. Makoto just spun words with trembling fingers as one man.

"Me too."

It was marked as read. There was no reply. Instead, a small smiling stamp arrived. At that moment, Makoto laughed out loud in his room.

Outside the window, spring rain was beginning to fall quietly. The countdown to death would not stop. But in Makoto's heart, rather than the footsteps of the end, the budding of a new season was certainly felt.

One year to live. That fact was still cruelly real. But at the end of this life, a light named Haruna was lit. Makoto held his smartphone to his chest and spent the calmest night he had ever had.

Chapter 4: The Man Who Makes People Happy

"Mr. Sato, thank you so much."
The woman bowed deeply. Next to her, her fiancé was standing by with a slightly nervous look on his face.
The meeting room of the marriage agency "Bridge" was wrapped in the soft light of early summer. Asami Nakamura (33) and Ryoichi Tomita (38). Their marriage was truly a victory of the "bridge-building" that Makoto believed in.

In the world of marriage agencies, there is a rule that you must decide within three months of dating. From matchmaking to temporary dating, and then to serious dating based on mutual agreement. Once they advance to serious dating, it becomes a world of just the two of them, but until then, matchmaking with others is repeated.
In a relationship premised on marriage, "dilly-dallying dating" would mercilessly shave off the members' marriageable age.

Asami was a kind-hearted woman, but she had deep wounds from matchmaking with members of other companies. When she advanced to temporary dating with a man she chose for his "specs"—an annual income of 8 million yen and working for a major company—she was notified of the end of the relationship mechanically by the other party's agency just because she gently pointed out a trivial discomfort, the sound of him chewing while eating. Since then, she had been possessed by a "fear of being rejected," holding trauma toward the act of "pointing out," and was passive toward matchmaking.

On the other hand, Ryoichi Tomita was an honest man working as hospital administration, but even after repeating 60 matchmaking meetings, his serious dating was zero. His challenge was clear. In the battlefield called "matchmaking," he always made a face like an interviewer trying to sell himself, and he would over-read the other party's reaction, creating silence. His condition of an annual income in the 4 million yen range was also inevitably disadvantageous in matchmaking centered on system searches.

"Ms. Asami, at the matchmaking seat, look not at how he eats, but at what kind of stories he has prepared for you until today. That is the perspective of 'sharing life.' However, if a man rejects you just because you pointed it out gently, it was good that you didn't marry him."

"Mr. Tomita, you don't have to try to talk well. The failure of 60 matchmaking meetings is not a lack of your humanity, but just that you were acting out 'playing love.' From now on, is this a partner you can share your life with for decades? Just try to do a very rational partner selection to determine that."

Usually, matchmaking is done in a hotel lounge. But for members, that is nothing more than a "battlefield to be judged." There are far too many members who lose their true selves due to nervousness, worrying about the eyes of others.
Makoto, to push the backs of the two, who were members of his own company, dared to choose the meeting room of "Bridge" as the matchmaking place. In the space of the office they were familiar with, by Makoto warming the air next to them, the two were finally able to have a dialogue close to their true feelings.

Makoto's guidance was thorough. When Tomita invited anxiety by refraining from contact too much during the temporary dating period, Makoto called Tomita late at night and gave instructions, "LINE her your gratitude for today right now."
Members tend to prioritize self-preservation, "What if I get rejected?" rather than the emotion of "liking the other party." Makoto had been pushing their backs as a professional, mercilessly but warmly, for such people.

"I, until I came here... thought I would be single for life and never be able to form a deep bond with anyone."

Asami said while tearing up. Makoto smiled calmly.

"That is not true. You just had the courage to choose the right partner yourself."

After seeing them off, Makoto looked down at the city from the window of the meeting room alone. Ahead of where they were heading, there was a future of decades. Aging, illness, children's growth, there was a tomorrow where they could share everything. A future he didn't have. That fact had been with Makoto all day and night since receiving the diagnosis of illness.

That afternoon, another male member rushed into the office saying, "I can't do it anymore."
"No matter how many people I meet, in the end, it's just rejection notices. Especially those with good conditions, the dating ends immediately."
Makoto carefully placed his teacup and stared at the man.

"Matchmaking is the work of piling up failures. In a system that divides people by conditions, you are looking for the one 'compatibility of life.' Deciding in a short period of three months is to not waste your precious time. We push your back so that you don't stop at the entrance of the maze."

Makoto's words had a deep and warm resonance that only those who had faced countless loneliness for many years possessed. But after seeing him off, Makoto sank deep into his chair. Immediately, an intense lethargy attacked him. He ran out of breath just by climbing the stairs. The disease was steadily eroding the depths of his body.

Makoto headed in front of the mirror. In the mirror was the smile of a perfect "reliable agency representative." However, those muscles had already exceeded their limits and were twitching. He slapped his cheeks with both hands and forcibly maintained that smile. One year to live. Sealing the secret he couldn't tell anyone and continuing to maintain this mask was the only professional work left for him.

In the evening, when the staff went home, the office was wrapped in silence. Makoto continued working overtime without turning off the lights. Only while working could he forget his own "end."
9:00 PM, returning home. Dark room. Silence where only the operating sound of the air conditioner echoed. He picks up his smartphone. A message from Haruna.

"How was your day today?"
Makoto types a reply.

"Today, I saw off one couple."
A reply came immediately.

"That's wonderful. Did they look happy?"

"They looked very happy. Almost enviously so."
After sending it, he regretted it a little. He felt like he had shown his weakness. But the reply from Haruna exceeded Makoto's expectations.

"A job that can make people happy is truly wonderful. There aren't many people who can witness the turning point of someone's life."

Makoto stared at the screen and forgot to blink. There was a warmth in Haruna's words that seemed to affirm everything about him. For Makoto, who was dominated by thoughts of only one year to live, single, and lonely, those words were the only light thrown into the darkness.

"Thank you. I was saved a little."

A few minutes later, a reply arrived from her.
"Me too."
"Me too?"
To Makoto, who asked, she spun quiet words.

"When I talk to Mr. Sato, my heart becomes light. For me, Mr. Sato is... a salvation."

At that sentence, Makoto's heart beat hotly. He didn't know her face. He had never met her. And yet, beyond the physical distance, an illusion as if their souls were touching. The illness wouldn't be cured. The remaining life wouldn't be extended. But the loneliness of this night was no longer the "nothingness" like before.

For the first time, Makoto thought that he, too, might be able to become a "bridge" for someone. In the dark room, a calm smile was floating on Makoto's expression. He was not walking toward death. He was still trying to start something. The night wind blew through the room, and the curtains swayed quietly.

Chapter 5: The Lost Dating Partner

The end of June. That day, from the morning, rain pregnant with the humidity of the rainy season continued to fall. On the window glass of the marriage agency "Bridge," several streaks of raindrops were constantly flowing down, blurring the world outside the window. Makoto Sato faced his desk and looked at the members' profile sheets, but the letters ahead of his gaze didn't enter his head at all.

Recently, the exchange with Haruna had become the only moisture filling Makoto's dry daily life. Morning, checking his smartphone with waking up. Lunch break, refining the words of reply while listening to the sound of rain. Night, exchanging conversations as if to fill the loneliness like talking to himself. He didn't know her face, nor had he heard her voice. And yet, each one of her words entered Makoto's heart, which he had kept a lid on for twenty years, as if opening a key.

The smartphone trembled slightly. It was a notification from Haruna.

"It's a cold rain today."

He could hear her voice through the screen. Makoto smiled slightly and moved his fingers.

"It's heavy rain here too. On days like this, going out feels like a chore, doesn't it?"
A reply arrived immediately.

"When I listen to the sound of rain, I can't help but remember the past. Don't you, Mr. Sato?"

Makoto's fingers stopped. The past. It is heavy sediment that everyone has in their life. Memories he had tried not to remember, regrets he had sunk into the abyss of his heart.

"I do. ...A person I couldn't forget."

After sending it, he was bewildered that such honest words had come out, surprising even himself. He hadn't intended to talk about such things. But he felt like he could offer this accumulated burden to Haruna.

"...What kind of person were they?"

Makoto leaned deep into his chair and looked up at the gray sky. The memory of twenty-five years ago revived vividly, riding on the sound of the rain.

"There was someone I was thinking of marrying. It's a story from twenty-five years ago."

The "read" mark appears on the screen. Had she gasped? After a silence of a few seconds, a reply came from her as if chasing after him.

"May I hear it?"

Makoto began to tap the keyboard.
Her name was Miwa. Twenty-seven years old, a junior employee when Makoto was still working as sales for a major manufacturer. Bright, often laughing, no matter how desolate he felt when returning home, just seeing her smile made him believe in tomorrow. The two naturally became conscious of marriage and began gathering furniture for a new life. Life was continuing in a straight line toward promised happiness--he believed that without doubt.

"What happened?" Haruna asked.

"Starting a business."
Makoto typed calmly.

When he was thirty-three, Makoto decided to go independent. A dream of launching a human resources company without any capital. There was no guarantee of success. Everyone around him was strongly opposed. Even Miwa said with anxious eyes.
"Why can't you do it after we get married?"
But Makoto at the time was young, and arrogant. The madness called passion for work blocked her words.
"If we get married, things to protect will increase. I want to become someone now," he said.
Makoto's eyes were turned not to her, but to the "market." The time they met decreased drastically, contact became mechanical, and before he knew it, a crack large enough to be irreparable ran between the two.
One rainy day, at a small coffee shop, she said quietly.

"I'm sorry. ...I can't wait anymore."

Makoto didn't chase her. He didn't hold her back. He still cannot forgive himself for prioritizing the phantom called work at that time. After that, he launched a human resources company, but it didn't go well, and six months later, he opened the marriage agency "Bridge," which was relatively cheap to start.

"Do you regret it?"

To Haruna's question, Makoto typed without hesitation.

"I do. I haven't said it even once in twenty-five years, but... I regret it to death. I gained a lot from work. But as a price for that, I lost the most important person in my life."

Immediately after sending it, the screen sank into silence. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes. No reply. Had he thrust a heavy confession upon her? Had he troubled her? Regret pushed like a wave, and at that moment, a message arrived from her.

"...Is that so."

The weight that cannot be put into words behind those words is conveyed. Makoto asked fearfully.

"Is something wrong?"

"I was thinking a little. ...If you could return to that time, would you make a different choice, Mr. Sato?"

Makoto stared outside the window. Raindrops were hitting the glass violently. The coffee shop of twenty-five years ago, her back as she turned away and left. And his current reality of one year to live.

"I would. Without a doubt."
Makoto typed with trembling hands.

"Rather than work, I would choose her. That is my current, unfeigned answer."

The reply didn't come immediately. But seeing the message that arrived ten minutes later, Makoto was stunned.

"Hearing those words, I felt a little relieved."

...Relieved? Why would she feel relieved at someone else's past heartbreak? Makoto tilted his head. The true identity of the woman named Haruna was grasped as if she were on the other side of the fog. But that discomfort strengthened his interest in her strangely.

That night, the two exchanged words until late. However, in the corner of Makoto's consciousness, her word "relieved" remained stuck like a sharp thorn.
As if she knew the inside of Miwa's heart... Makoto shook his head and dismissed the absurd thought. It's just a coincidence. He told himself that and put down his smartphone.
However, he had no way of knowing. That this night's conversation was the beginning for filling the last piece of Makoto's life.
Outside the window, the rain continued to fall forever. As if to wash away the time of twenty-five years ago that had stopped.

Chapter 6: The Reason for Not Meeting

Entering July, hot days pregnant with the humidity of the rainy season continued. In the meeting room of the marriage agency "Bridge," Makoto looked up at the sky from the window. Thick clouds covered the sky in a dull color, drifting with a sign that it might start raining at any moment.

Before, the weather was nothing but an obstacle to work. But recently, the temperature of his heart sways with just the color of the sky. How many more times will I be able to see this summer sunshine? When such a thought crossed his head, Makoto shook his head slightly and returned his consciousness to the documents. In the meeting room, a male member in his thirties was reporting on his matchmaking.
"...She was really a good person. Our values are similar, and above all, it's easy to be with her."
The man's cheeks were flushed like a boy's. Makoto smiled from his heart.
"That's good. I'm looking forward to the development from now on."
"Yes. I definitely want to meet her again."

After seeing him off, Makoto sat deep in the sofa alone. Perhaps there is no age boundary to the pure emotion of liking someone. At fifty-eight, the current him, whose heart rate rises at a single notification sound on his smartphone and who is looking forward to messages from Haruna, was the best proof of that.

Night. In the silence of his home, Makoto was clutching his smartphone. The exchange with Haruna had already exceeded one month. Hobbies, work, favorite foods, faint memories of early childhood. While piling up fragments of trivial daily life, the distance between the two crossed at a deep place of their souls, beyond physical locations. Makoto decided and typed a message.

"Ms. Haruna. If you don't mind, shall we meet once soon?"

The moment he sent it, his chest jumped greatly. A few minutes later, the smartphone screen emitted a pale light, announcing a notification.

"I'm sorry."

Again? Makoto exhaled greatly. Expectation and resignation crossed. However, reading the continuation of the message, he gasped.

"I don't have the courage to meet yet. ...It's not that I dislike you, Mr. Sato, but rather the opposite. If we actually meet and you become disillusioned with me, I think I would lose even this current relationship..."

Seeing those words, Makoto was convinced. Why Haruna stubbornly refuses to meet. The "fear" that a woman at the age of fifty-two with her own rhythm of life holds might be in a different place from his current self.

"Ms. Haruna. I am not a person who judges people only by such distance or appearance."

Makoto sent a reply with all his heart. The reply from her was after a little time had passed.

"Thank you. ...But, just a little more. I'm sorry for my selfish circumstances, but please, wait just a little longer."

He couldn't pursue it any further. He didn't want to force her to meet and break this irreplaceable relationship. But to be honest, he was lonely. He wanted to see her face. He wanted to feel the change in her expression up close, not just the resonance of her voice. Such desires were swelling day by day. The next day, an unexpected proposal came from Haruna.

"If you'd like, shall we talk on the phone?"
Makoto's heart leaped. The moment to step from a relationship of only letters to reality.

"Of course. By all means."

The promise was 9:00 PM that night. Even while working, the clock hand was turning somewhere in Makoto's consciousness. He spent an unsettled time, to the extent that his staff asked, "Representative, something good?" 9:00 PM. The smartphone trembled. Makoto took a deep breath and pressed the call button.
"...Hello?" A woman's voice was heard.
It was a voice that carried a resonance that was much softer and warmer than he had imagined. Makoto lost his words for a moment.
She, who existed only as letters on the other side of the screen, is now there as a certain "sound."

"...Is that Mr. Sato?"

"Yes. It's Sato. ...Somehow, I feel very nervous."
A small laugh was heard from the other side of the phone.

"Me too. My heart feels like it's going to jump out."
From there, the conversation overflowed as if a dam had broken. Work worries, city weather, a calm and comfortable rhythm that only adults who have piled up ten, twenty years can resonate with, wrapped the two. Before he knew it, an hour had passed.

"I'm really glad I could hear your voice."
At those words Haruna said quietly, Makoto felt the depths of his chest heat up.

"Me too. ...How many years has it been since it was this fun to talk to someone?"

From that night, the phone became a habit for the two. Two or three times a week, on nights when he was released from the pressure of work, he listened to her voice. She was good at listening. She laughed out loud at Makoto's failure stories, and when he talked about faint memories of the past, she listened as if she were there.
One night. In the middle of the phone call, Haruna said in a quiet voice suddenly.

"Mr. Sato is really mysterious."

"...What is?"

"You are very good at listening to people's stories. ...Not superficial words, but it's like you're listening to the heart. Even when I'm crushed by guilt, when I hear your voice, for some reason I feel saved."

Makoto was at a loss for an answer. As a representative of a marriage agency, he is used to consultations. But a sadness-like resonance was mixed into her current words.

"That's because it's Haruna-san, I think."

Silence flowed on the other side of the phone. How sweet and heavy that meaning was. After hanging up the phone, Makoto was looking up at the ceiling. The same room as before, the same silence of living alone. However, the cold loneliness like before was not there.

The reverberation of her voice left warmth in every corner of the room. He didn't know her face. He had never met her. Even so, he thought that maybe there was no need to meet. No, he wanted to meet. Actually, even right now. But for him now, this "distance of voice" was the only and greatest support to face the reality called one year to live.

Makoto had not yet been able to name that light "love." But one certain thing he could say was that his current heart was not walking toward death, but was certainly craving a future with someone.

Chapter 7: Remaining Time

The end of August. The sound of the cicadas was fading, and the evening breeze had begun to carry the scent of autumn. However, for me, Makoto Sato, there was not a shred of room left in my heart or body to enjoy the changing of the seasons.

My appetite was completely gone, and the person reflected in the mirror looked like a living corpse, nothing more than skin stretched over bone. Every time I climbed or descended the stairs, I was plagued by a suffocating sensation as if someone were gripping my lungs, and a sharp pain that pierced my back.

Even so, Makoto continued to stand in the office as the representative of "Bridge." All of the members were looking toward a shining future. I simply could not stop the work of building that bridge for my own personal convenience.
That was the only pride I had built up over twenty-five years, and the only "anchor" I had to keep this fragile life tethered.
However, the limit was approaching without a sound.

One afternoon. It happened while I was listening to a female member's dating consultation in the reception room.
“...And so, on our date the other day, he remembered my preferences...” Her bouncy voice suddenly faded away beyond a fog. My vision swayed violently, and I lost all color in my face from the intense pain surging from deep within my chest.

“Are you alright?” At the woman's worried voice, I desperately moved the muscles in my face to form a distorted smile.
“No, it was just a slight dizzy spell. ...So, what happened next on the date?”

The next day, I headed to the hospital with heavy steps. When I opened the door to the examination room, a reality as cold as it was certain awaited me. The doctor's expression as he stared at the CT scan on the monitor was sterner than before.

“...It is progressing. I must say that the effects of the anticancer drugs are now limited.”

Makoto nodded slightly. It was just as I had expected. In my heart, there was even a feeling close to relief.

“To be honest...”

The moment the doctor paused, I said it myself.

“It's my remaining time, isn't it?”

The doctor lowered his gaze and spoke quietly.

“...I believe it is a few months.”

A few months. Those words sank to the bottom of my chest like a heavy stone. Not even half a year had passed since the day I was told I had a year. Before the seasons could complete a full cycle, Makoto's life would come to an end.

When I left the hospital, the sky was cruelly high and blue. The city was overflowing with vitality, and everyone was living under the assumption of tomorrow. Plans for next month, aspirations for next year. All of it seemed like events from another world to the current Makoto.

By the time autumn ended, I would no longer be in this city. Makoto thought of Hina while walking slowly, blending into the crowd. Our nightly phone calls. The only sanctuary for me now, where just hearing her voice brought me peace.

Should I disappear without saying anything? Or should I confront her with this pathetic truth? At night, in the dark room of my home, I stared at my smartphone. A casual message from Hina saying, "It's a bit cool today, isn't it?" With that single line of text, Makoto's heart was torn into a thousand pieces.
The message I finally gathered the resolve to send was a short one.

“Can we talk on the phone tonight?”

Nine o'clock in the evening. The phone rang as promised. I went out to the balcony and took a deep breath. When I pressed the call button, Hina's familiar, gentle, and calm voice reached my ears.

“Hello, Mr. Sato?”

The moment I heard that voice, my resolve wavered. Should I destroy this peaceful time with a death sentence? But how much more cowardly would it be to remain silent?

“Hina-san. ...There is something I would like to talk to you about today.”

The other side of the phone went unnaturally quiet. Makoto looked up at the moon floating in the night sky. The words most difficult to say in my life rose to my throat.

“...I am ill. It is pancreatic cancer. ...I have been told my remaining time. I was told a year at first, but the other day... I was told it was a few months.”

The words vanished as if falling into cold water.
“Hina-san?”
When I called out to her, I heard a stifled tremor from the other side of the receiver. She was crying. It was a death-throes wail, as if she had lost a family member who had supported her for years.

“I'm sorry. I was afraid of being hated. I thought that hiding it and eventually disappearing would be the least troublesome thing to do.”

“That's not true at all!”
Hina's cry was so earnest, so pitifully deep. Why would she grieve so intensely for the medical condition of a man she had never met, a relationship based only on voice? A small sense of unease crossed my mind, but the current Makoto had no room to process it.
Even after hanging up the phone, Makoto could not move, leaning against the cold railing of the balcony. Why does Hina grieve so much? Suddenly, the face of "Miwa" from twenty-five years ago crossed my mind. If Hina's cry tonight overlapped with the cry of Miwa's heart back then—.

Such an absurd premonition ran down my spine. The illness was steadily driving me toward death. However, at the edge of that death, Makoto was slowly beginning to touch something great that he had never seen before.
Hina. The fact that this woman had been close by and deeply connected to Makoto's life all along was an undeniable truth. Makoto looked up at the night sky and called her name in his heart with trembling lips. There was no answer yet. But even in this suffering, a faint light was now certainly shining through.

Chapter 8: The Last Promise

The end of September. As a clear chill enveloped the city, Makoto stared at the distant scenery from the office window. Time spilling away like sand in an hourglass. However, there was a light named Hina in his heart.

“I... will meet you. Mr. Sato.”

The resolve told over the phone. Makoto's agitation and joy were transmitted through the telephone line. While listening to that voice, I just felt the receiver I was gripping tightly slipping from the sweat in my palm.
◇
Meanwhile, at that time. Miwa was clutching her smartphone to her chest, collapsed on the bed in her dimly lit room. We had made a promise. There was no turning back now.

These past few months, pretending to be a friend's name and staying connected to him. Miwa's heart was constantly exposed to cold waves called guilt. After parting at that coffee shop 25 years ago, Miwa had lived desperately trying to forget him. She quit the company she was at then and jumped into a small specialized trading company for a fresh start. The days there were harsh, and she swallowed tears of frustration many times.

Even so, Miwa immersed herself in work to blow away the self that had parted from him. And before she knew it, a quarter of a century had passed as she climbed to the chair of Export Department Manager.
Those around her called her a "work demon." A brilliant career, sophisticated attire. But behind that were nights that knew no one's warmth and holidays where no one called her name. Miwa's life had frozen the moment she parted from him and had been trapped in a glacier called the passage of time ever since.

Now, Miwa was trying to enter his final moments using the name "Hina." Was this not an act too cowardly, too cruel?
However, after hanging up the phone, Miwa was swallowed by a vortex of regret even more intense than that.
(If he meets his end at the hospital today, Miwa will live with this regret and emptiness forever.)

Miwa rummaged through the back of her drawer. There, she found an old card case he had left behind and a receipt she had taken home when they parted at that rainy coffee shop twenty-five years ago. It was Miwa's heart itself, with time standing still. Should she take this with her? No, if the current Miwa brought this, Makoto would surely realize her true identity immediately.

She stared at herself in the mirror. What was in the mirror was not the fresh "Miwa" of 25 years ago, but an elderly woman who had applied makeup to hide the stern gaze of an export manager and the fine wrinkles carved by loneliness.
(Makoto, what will you think when you see me now? Will you find traces of those days? Or will you be disappointed that I am just an old stranger?)

“I want to see you. But I don't want to see you...”

Her monologue vanished into the corner of the room, reaching no one. Miwa ruminated on his words, "I put life second to work too much."
The loneliness that Miwa was now trying to fill. Was it salvation, or self-satisfaction? There was no answer.

The night before the appointment. Miwa chose clothes to head to the office and waited for the call that should have come for the umpteenth time. However, the phone that should have rung as usual did not ring today.
(Strange...)
The night deepened. The sound of the second hand echoed loudly like a heartbeat. She tapped her smartphone screen repeatedly and sent messages. They were not marked as read. Every time she thought of his well-being, her breathing became shallow.
(Makoto...? Did something happen? Are you in pain somewhere...?)

A sharp pain pierced her chest. It was the same premonition of loss that Miwa had felt in the rain on that day she parted from him 25 years ago.
Miwa continued to pray, relying on the light of her smartphone.
Please, let him be there in good health tomorrow.
Until the moment she could take off the mask of playing Hina and hold his hand as just "Miwa," her time had remained frozen.
◇
Late at night, on the hard bed of the hospital room, Makoto was looking up at the white ceiling. Today, we were supposed to meet. I was supposed to meet Hina.
Makoto's body was as cold as the autumn wind. The shadow of death was trying to tear apart the fate of the two who had finally tried to overlap. Makoto quietly closed his eyes and, in his fading consciousness, just called her name.
(Hina-san... I'm sorry. I don't think I can keep the promise.)

Outside the window, the dawn, still unknown to anyone, was advancing with cruel silence. Makoto's consciousness slowly faded, as if melting into that light.
—At that moment, I heard the sound of heavy rain in my ears.
The nostalgic scent of coffee pierced my nostrils.
Startled, I opened my eyes, and I was not on the bed in the hospital room. Amber lighting, a well-used wooden table. It was the coffee shop from twenty-five years ago, that day, that moment.
“...Makoto?”
In front of me, twenty-seven-year-old Miwa was sitting. Loneliness and resignation seeped into her eyes.
(Ah, I have returned.)
Makoto was convinced. This might be a hallucination seen at the brink of death. But if so, this time I would not make a mistake. Without hesitation, Makoto knocked the business plan on the table into the trash can and gripped Miwa's hand tightly, ever so tightly.
“I'll stop quitting. I don't care about starting a business. Miwa, I need you. Please, stay by my side.”
Tears overflowed from Miwa's eyes as if a dam had broken. She jumped into Makoto's chest. Wrapped in that certain body temperature and the scent of her soft hair, Makoto felt, for the first time in his life, that he was filled from the bottom of his heart.
(...From the moment Makoto gripped Miwa's hand and the two were united, the surrounding scenery began to flow like a revolving lantern.)
The two's time rushed by at an astonishing speed from there.

In their thirties.


A newlywed life started in a small, old apartment in a corner of the city. The salary was never high, but a warm atmosphere always flowed at the dining table. One night, when Makoto missed an important contract and returned home in deep frustration. Miwa didn't ask for the reason, just silently steamed something in the kitchen. When I took a sip of the miso soup she offered, the back of my nose stung with heat.
“You must be tired. Eat slowly.” Watching her back, Makoto felt a lightning-like shock deep in his chest. I had thought that quitting the company and chasing ambition was the only proof of a man. But having a place to return to like this, having someone standing in the kitchen to heal my fatigue. Makoto realized painfully that this ordinary daily life was actually the "dream" he had craved most in his life.In their forties.
With money saved through hardship, we got a home in the suburbs. In the small garden, we planted a small dogwood tree we had chosen together. One holiday evening, when we were sitting on the veranda looking at the garden.

Miwa looked in the mirror and smiled bitterly, saying, "The wrinkles at the corners of my eyes have increased." Makoto looked at her profile and felt so cherished it made his chest tighten. More than the glossy skin of her youth, he felt that the history of the two was packed into every single one of those fine wrinkles carved by shared hardships. The sunset sinking into the garden, in contrast to the gloomy gray seen at that rainy coffee shop twenty-five years ago, was a vivid orange that seemed to burn the soul, gently wrapping the two.In their fifties.
Makoto stroked Miwa's hair, which had begun to gray, as lovingly as if handling a jewel. Seeing Miwa rubbing her knees every time she walked a little, Makoto realized that his former ambition and desire for fame had already vanished beyond a distant fog.

Now, just walking beside her as her cane, carrying heavy luggage on the way back from the supermarket, that was enough. The two's conversation was filled with such deep trust that they could understand each other's breathing without exchanging words.Makoto carved this "lost twenty-five years" into his body like fast-forwarding a video. I see, I had thrown away the happiness that was right here.The success and evaluation I was chasing back then were nothing more than empty sandcastles compared to this peaceful scenery where Miwa smiled beside me.In his dream, Makoto hugged the warmth of the 52-year-old Miwa as strongly as he could. ...Ah, Miwa. This long time spent with you was the true "success" I wanted to see.
(...But that happy darkness was suddenly torn apart by a white light.)

Chapter 9: Hina's True Identity

I was discharged from the hospital three days after the promised Saturday.
The doctor gave me a stern warning: "You cannot push yourself. If there is a next time, it will be..." I nodded silently.
I understood better than anyone that my life was as thin as a candle wick, swaying in the wind.

When I passed through the hospital's automatic doors, the dry autumn wind stroked my face.
(What did Hina think of me when I lost consciousness and was carried away that day? Will she forgive me for standing her up?)
I took out my smartphone with trembling hands. The notifications were lined with earnest messages from her. "Are you okay?" "I'm waiting at the agency." She had believed in me and waited. My chest tightened at that fact, and I headed to "Bridge" by taxi.

When I opened the office door, the staff looked surprised.
“Representative, you shouldn't push yourself...”
“There is someone I must meet.”
My steps toward the reception room were heavy in proportion to my heartbeat, but fast.
When I opened the door, she was there. An elegant woman dressed in a calm-colored dress. The afternoon sunlight streaming through the window outlined her silhouette in white. The moment I saw her, Makoto's breathing stopped.

The "owner of that voice," that gentle person who had saved me almost every night for half a year, was right in front of me. I had wanted to meet her for so long. I wanted to meet her and confirm the identity of that voice. Yet, when I finally faced her, Makoto's heart was sounding a violent alarm not with joy, but with an indescribable "strange sense of unease."
This presence, this atmosphere. Even though she should be a stranger, every single cell in my body was aching as if trying to awaken an old memory.

“Mr. Sato...”
The woman bows quietly. Even her movements were somewhat nostalgic.

“Nice to meet you... Hina-san.”
Makoto's voice was trembling more than he expected. She slowly looked up. The moment I saw her eyes, the back of my throat felt as if it were burning.

...Could it be? No, that's impossible. Is it a hallucination created by my own desires, or a prank caused by death? When Makoto muttered in a raspy voice, the woman shook her head sadly, and with painful gentleness.

“No. I am not Hina.”

My mind went blank. Not Hina? Then who was that voice that had supported me? In front of the confused Makoto, she slowly reached for her bag.
What she took out was an old photograph. A sepia-toned surface. Twenty-five years ago, a young, hopeful me, and a woman smiling beside me with the same eyes as now.

My heart creaked as if it were being crushed. The warmth of that day, which I should have buried in the depths of my memory, and the light I should have lost, resided in this single piece of paper.

“...Miwa.”

The moment that name spilled from my lips, transcending a quarter of a century, Makoto's vision swayed violently.

“You remembered me.”

Everything connected. She was my dating partner, Miwa.

“...Why did you use Hina's name?”

“Hina is a friend who was my colleague and also a former member of your agency. Because of her husband's overseas assignment, she was going to be away from Japan for a long time... I had never been able to forget you.”

Miwa began her confession in a trembling voice.

“I also joined another agency last year and started marriage hunting. But I couldn't get used to the system aiming for short-term marriage in three months. Because your shadow was always flickering in my heart... At that time, I found a matching app that starts as acquaintances not aimed at marriage. There, I found your profile.”

“The moment I found it, I thought my heart would stop. The miserable feeling of not wanting to be noticed by you as I am now, mixed with the painful feeling of wanting you to remember me... I wanted to peek at you by borrowing Hina's name. I'm sorry, I could only connect with you through such a cowardly method...”

The regret of twenty-five years, and Miwa's maddening love that tried to save me even by wearing the mask of Hina. Her desperate resolve to watch over and save the final moments of a man like me from the safety zone of anonymity.

“Miwa.”

The moment I called that name, the disconnection vanished. She smiled while crying, just like that day. Transcending twenty-five years, our time was finally beginning to move toward the future from the place where it had stopped at that rainy coffee shop.
Makoto gently gripped her trembling hand. No more words were needed. Just being together. With that alone, I felt as if my entire life had been rewarded.

Chapter 10: The Nameless Promise

The reception room was filled with a profound silence. Miwa took an old notebook and a sheet of stationery from her bag.
“This...?” Makoto narrowed his eyes in wonder. Miwa turned the pages of the notebook in silence. There, the record of twenty-five years of following Makoto's career was written in painfully fine detail.

“Three years ago, when Hina left your agency, I confessed everything to her. ...That I had never been able to forget you. And that I have been carrying the price of disappearing from your life due to my own ego.”
Miwa's eyes wavered, recalling past hesitations.

“Hina said immediately, 'Miwa, you are the one who will save him.' She pushed me many, many times, saying, 'Meet him now.' But I... couldn't move.”

“...Why?”

“I was afraid. To know how much twenty-five years had changed us. ...But above all, I thought that a 'ghost of the past' like me might destroy the life you have built now.”
Miwa handed Makoto a note that had been tucked between the pages of the notebook.

“Hina was acting for my sake. She was still in close contact with the staff at your agency. One day, she heard that the agency had entered a new matching app and that you were making your profile public. ...Hina told me that information and said.”

Makoto was speechless. That even the people around me were secretly coordinating to save a man like me.

“She said that you were 'trying to register for a matching app because you couldn't get married by hiding in work.' ...At those words, I finally made up my mind. I knew it was a cowardly method. But even by borrowing the mask of Hina, I wanted to touch you. I didn't want to leave you alone.”

Tears spilled from Miwa's eyes, blurring the letters in the notebook.
“From now on, never let me go again. Even if it is for a very short time.”
Makoto gripped the notebook and Miwa's trembling hand with all his might. The miracle connected by the friendship of Hina was filling the lonely void of twenty-five years.

“I must thank Hina-san too. ...I thought I was fighting alone, but I had been supported by everyone all along.”

Outside the window, the autumn sunlight wrapped the two even more gently. The "cowardice" and "regret" that each had carried for 25 years finally melted together in one place, and the two snuggled up to fill the long void.

Chapter 11: Life's Marriage Graduation

The orange light that had dyed the reception room gradually shifted to a deep madder red. Outside the window, crows hurried to their nests, and the city lights began to turn on one by one.

Twenty-five years. It was far too long. I had used most of the hourglass of my life arming myself with the shield of work and trying to heal my loneliness. But now, looking at Miwa's profile as she sat across from me, that time dissipated in an instant, and the damp air of the coffee shop that day and the faint sound of her nose when she laughed revived as vividly as if it were happening right there.

Makoto asked quietly, suppressing his surging emotions.
“...I wanted to see you for so long. But weren't you afraid? The me of now is different from the me of those days. I am a man eroded by illness, with only a little life left.”

Miwa smiled slightly, looking at the darkening sky outside the window. Her profile bore the quiet resignation and beauty peculiar to those who know the cruelty of time.

“I was afraid. To be honest, I am still afraid. If you had forgotten me, or if you were hurt by remembering that cold parting of that day... thinking that, I couldn't move.”

Miwa slowly returned her gaze to Makoto. Deep in her eyes, the afterglow of intense passion that she had hidden away for 25 years without showing anyone was wavering.

“But you know, the fact that we couldn't put our 'true feelings' into words at the coffee shop that day. That was what had been binding me for these twenty-five years. I borrowed Hina's name, but it wasn't because I wanted to peek at your final moments. ...It was because I desperately wanted to convey the continuation of what we couldn't say that day, at the very end.”

“The continuation...”

“Yes. No matter what you look like, to me, you are the Makoto of that day. Before the light of your life goes out, I wanted you to remember one more time that a person like me certainly existed in your life.”

Miwa gently placed her hand over Makoto's. A warm sensation, as if twenty-five years of ice were melting, was transmitted.

In the silence, the two's breathing overlapped. It was a nameless, special promise found at the end of life, not work or achievement.
The two looked at each other and laughed out loud. Laughing while shedding tears might be something I hadn't done since my twenties. The pain in my heart eased, and in its place, I felt my soul being filled. Makoto slowly stood up and walked up to Miwa.

“Miwa. I will say the words I should have said twenty-five years ago, now.”

I wrapped her cold hands with both of mine. She is trembling. Even that trembling is now precious.

“Please marry me.”

Those words were spoken in Makoto's trembling voice. Overcoming all the days in the hospital and regrets about work, it was the "one and only desire of a man named Makoto" that remained at the end.
Miwa opened her eyes in surprise. After the astonishment, tears overflowed in her eyes in no time, and a pure joy like a young girl's, which no one had seen for twenty-five years, floated there.

“...I'm happy. Really, thank you.”

Miwa gently gripped Makoto's hand back with her trembling hand, and pressed her cheek against his palm as if in prayer. Her body temperature slowly melted Makoto's loneliness. However, she shook her head with gentle but firm will.

“...But I don't need a marriage registration.”

When Makoto was puzzled, Miwa looked straight into his eyes.
“Because, for us, now is not a time bound by anything social, right? I don't want to stain this time, when we don't even know what will happen tomorrow, with document preparation and procedures. I just want to spend the time from now on laughing side-by-side with you. That alone is more than enough happiness.”

She wiped her tears and gently touched Makoto's forehead.
“What we are seeking is not a contract on paper, but a marriage graduation of the soul, right?”
Makoto nodded deeply and strongly. That's right. Now that I am conscious of the end of life, the remaining time is not a number. Only the density of this body temperature and breathing that connects our two hearts is everything.

“...That's right. We won't take any more detours.”
From that night, the two's "short but dense time" began.

The end of summer.We went on a short trip to a seaside town. Miwa was firmly linked to Makoto's arm as he walked on the sandy beach. In the sound of the waves and the sea breeze, each other's expressions, which could not be seen twenty-five years ago, were vividly reflected. At a cafe, Miwa laughed out loud at Makoto's failure story. Watching that smile, Makoto savored the joy of "being alive," and Miwa gently intertwined her fingertips as if to confirm the warmth of Makoto's hand sitting next to her. In Miwa's eyes, along with affection, there was an earnest light trying to burn this time into her memory for even a moment longer.

Autumn.Miwa always supported Makoto, whose footing had become unsteady, with a soft smile. An afternoon when we cooked together at home. She hugged me from behind as I cut vegetables with unaccustomed hands. "Hey, Makoto-san. ...Can I stay by your side forever?". That word was mixed with an apology for making him wait twenty-five years and a deep sadness for not being able to walk the future together. I turned around and was wrapped in the scent of her hair. "Ah, we'll be together forever." Miwa shed tears at the sensation of the lips he dropped on her forehead. It was a drop of happiness that had finally arrived, not just sadness.

Winter.In the small world of the hospital room, Makoto and Miwa spent a quiet winter. To Makoto, who was losing the strength to weave words, Miwa told stories of the past and dreams every day. "Hey Makoto-san, do you remember? After that rainy day, if you had run out of the coffee shop, what kind of life would you have had?" She talked happily about an "other life" that never existed. Her way of speaking was filled with happiness as if sharing a story that was about to begin, rather than sadness before death. Between the two, the concept of loneliness no longer existed.

And, spring.Around the time the cherry blossoms began to bloom, Makoto could no longer get up from the bed. In the sunlight streaming into the room, Miwa arranged the tulips in the vase as usual. Her movements were calm, and there was even a pride that she had loved a person named Makoto to the end, rather than fearing death.

“Makoto-san, it's nice weather. Outside, it's already spring.”

To that earnest call, Makoto could no longer reply with words. However, Makoto's fingertips touched her palm. Miwa gripped it and pressed her cheek against Makoto's cheek. Through her warmth, we shared a peace like eternity.
As the representative of a marriage agency, Makoto had sent off over a thousand couples. They all graduated with expectations for the future in their hearts. But now, Makoto knows.

That true "marriage graduation" is not the length of the future. Even if the remaining time is short, deciding to cherish the warmth of the person next to you at this moment and to love them until the end of life—that is the most precious, life's greatest connection.

“I'm happy.”

When I muttered, gathering the last of my strength, Miwa buried her face in my chest and nodded strongly.

“Yes. Me too. ...The happiest in my life.”

The soft spring breeze shook the curtains and passed by as if to bless the two's time. The place of truth, finally reached after a long, long detour.
Makoto Sato's life reached a "marriage" in the true sense here.

Chapter 12: The Happiest Person to Marry in Life

The spring breeze is gently shaking the window. Outside, the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, and the pale petals are bathed in sunlight, soaring high into the sky like confetti of blessing.

One week since Makoto departed. A certain silence had settled in the "Bridge" reception room. Miwa is sitting in the place where Makoto always sat, gazing blankly outside the window. It seemed as if his faint lingering scent and the reverberations of words where countless men and women had pledged their futures here were still floating as layers of air.

On the desk, the notebook Makoto used until the end is placed. Miwa gently opened the notebook. A few days before he passed away, the words he left behind with trembling hands, which could be called a summary of his life, are there.

“Life is mysterious. I lived thinking only about getting people married. But in the end, the one who was saved the most was me.”

When I traced those letters with my fingertips, tears spilled out naturally. These past six months were far too short. But in Miwa's fifty-two years of life, it was a time that was as dense as could be, filling her to the depths of her soul.

On days when his condition was stable, we walked in the nearby park together. We talked about the past, drank casual coffee at a coffee shop, and waited together for the cherry blossom buds to bloom. It was not the young two who parted twenty-five years ago, but there was a silence that could be shared only by the two of now, who carried the weight of accumulated years. Just that alone was a miracle like a dream for Miwa, who had been waiting for twenty-five years.

“Hey, Makoto. I thought I was alone for those twenty-five years, but... it was actually different, wasn't it?”

I try muttering that. Every time I tried to face someone, Makoto's shadow fell into my heart. That's why I didn't unite with anyone. But now I understand. I wasn't thinking of him for twenty-five years, but I couldn't give up the future of living with him somewhere in my heart and was "waiting." That waiting time was an irreplaceable run-up to reunite with him.
That last night, in the hospital room, Makoto said while gripping Miwa's hand.

“Thank you.”

When Miwa replied, "That's my line. Because I met you, I am so calm now," he smiled gently.

“No, that's not it. ...I feel like I lived for myself for the first time in my life. I was truly happy.”

With those words, he closed his eyes as if sleeping. Without a shred of a painful expression, just as if finishing a long, long job and resting in the arms of a loved one.
◇
The day of the funeral. On the way to the venue, Miwa lost her words. Because an astonishing number of people had come to pay their respects. A long line formed at the reception, and the venue was filled with quiet sadness and, even more so, an atmosphere of deep gratitude.

Hundreds of photos decorated to fill the area around the altar. A groom in a tuxedo and a bride in a dress. A smiling family. A baby being held up. It was the "proof of happiness" itself that Makoto had led to marriage throughout his life.
Here and there in the venue, people were holding hands and shedding tears.
“It was thanks to the teacher.”
“If you hadn't pushed me back then, I wouldn't be here now.”
“I am truly grateful.”
Makoto remained single and had no blood-related family. However, hundreds of people in this venue adored him as a "benefactor of life," just like real family. Makoto certainly lived within these countless lights of life.

The moderator read his career and marriage achievements in a gentle voice. However, the words added at the end were deeply carved into Miwa's chest.
“Mr. Makoto Sato continued to support the happiness of many people.”
Miwa shook her head quietly while staring at the altar. No. He didn't just support them. He himself also grasped a happiness deeper than anyone else at the final moment. Because he, who continued to send off many people, finally became able to love his own life, which he should have cherished the most, at the very end.

In the venue where the attendees had left and it had become quiet, Miwa stood in front of the altar. Makoto in the photo is smiling more gently than ever. It was a smile of "marriage graduation" in the true sense, filled with the sense of accomplishment of having finished connecting many bonds and the fulfillment of the six months spent with his beloved partner.

“Hey, Makoto.”

Miwa talks to the photo with her vision blurred by tears.
“You might not have known, but I was always happy. The time I waited for you for twenty-five years, and being able to reunite like this at the end, were all my treasures. You are my first and last person to marry in life.”
And Miwa smiled with heartfelt blessing.

“Congratulations. ...The happiest person to marry in life was you, wasn't it.”

Outside the window, cherry blossom petals soared all at once. The bridge connecting people that Makoto spent his life building. That bridge will continue to lead to someone's happiness along with the thoughts he left behind.

In the spring light, Miwa suddenly felt his presence. From beyond that bridge, Makoto is watching over here with a gentle smile—I couldn't help but feel that way. She took a deep breath and hugged the notebook he left behind tightly.

His bridge will continue from here on. And I also vowed in my heart to live believing in a future where I can laugh with him someday beyond the bridge I crossed.
In the silence, spring light streamed into the reception room, and the story of the two's love was tied to eternal fulfillment.

Epilogue

Spring sunlight is dancing into the reception room along with cherry blossom petals.
One week since Makoto departed.
Miwa was quietly holding the notebook he left behind and the old card case she had taken home that day.
Spring twenty-five years ago.
It was something she had kept on hand ever since the day they parted at the station platform.
She had thought about throwing it away many times.
But every time, she couldn't.
Without knowing the reason herself, before she knew it, a quarter of a century had passed.

Suddenly, Miwa noticed a slight bulge in the lining of the card case.
It was an unease she had never paid attention to before.
She carefully unpicked the stitches.
What appeared from inside was a small, folded note.
Miwa's heart pulsed strongly. She opened the paper with trembling fingers.
Makoto's handwriting from his youth remained there.

“To Miwa. Someday when I succeed in business, I will come to pick you up. At that time, please marry me. So until then, I will hide our future inside this card case.”

Miwa gasped.
Her vision blurred.
Twenty-five years ago.
Makoto was serious.
He didn't choose to part to chase a dream.
He saw a future with her beyond achieving his dream. And he intentionally forgot the card case.
He hid those thoughts in a place no one would find, trying to fulfill the promise someday.

“...You fool.”

Miwa smiled slightly.
She couldn't stop her tears.
If she had found this note back then.
If either of them had been a little more honest.
The two's lives might have been different.
But strangely, it wasn't just regret.
Because we took a detour, we were able to meet one more time at the end.
As lovers.
As the only special person in life.

Miwa gently opened the notebook.
On the last page, Makoto's writing remained.

“—Miwa.
Thank you for finding it.
In the end, you kept a piece of me for twenty-five years, didn't you.
I am a happy person.
If I could redo my life, I would have come to pick you up sooner.
But because I took a detour, I was able to meet you one more time at the end.
That alone is enough.
And at the end, the one who was saved the most was me.
I lived thinking only about getting people married, but you were the one who taught me true happiness.
If it comes true, I want to entrust this place to you.
Because if it's you, you will surely deliver the form of happiness I wanted to see to the members.”

Miwa traced the letters.
As if feeling Makoto's fingertips.

“Really... you're selfish until the end.”

She smiles while wiping her tears.
That smile was strangely calm.
Outside the window, cherry blossoms in full bloom are dancing in the wind.
It was as if they were blessing the promise of twenty-five years.
Makoto's life was a life that produced thousands of marriages.
But he himself also regained one love at the end of his life.
That was enough.
Miwa stood up slowly.
And gently placed her hand on the chair where Makoto used to sit.

“Thank you.”

Only those words remained in the quiet reception room.
One month later.
In the reception room of the agency "Bridge," a couple was sitting.
Both of them had nervous expressions.
Miwa sat down across from them with a gentle smile.

Suddenly, she looks at the pothos by the window.
It was a houseplant that Makoto had taken care of without fail every day.
Since that day, Miwa has been watering it.
A new leaf was spreading a vivid green.
Miwa smiled.

And returns her gaze to the two in front of her.
“Marriage hunting is not something you do to deny yourself.”
The two look up.
“It is a journey to find the form of happiness that only you have.”

Those words were very similar to what Makoto used to say.
But now, they were also Miwa's own words.
A gentle silence flows in the reception room.

The fresh green breeze blew in from the window, shaking the curtains.
In that breeze, Miwa felt a nostalgic presence.
Even if she turned around, Makoto is not there.
But she certainly felt he was in this place.
The bridge he built with his life.
A bridge connecting people to people.
A bridge connecting loneliness and hope.
On that bridge, someone is about to start walking again today.

“Now, let's begin.”

Miwa smiled gently.
Outside the window, a dogwood tree dressed in young leaves is stretching its branches toward the blue sky.
Beyond the bridge Makoto left behind, countless futures will continue from here on.
And on that bridge, someone's life was starting to walk again today.

—The End—

This story is fiction.

Afterword
“I have spent my career building bridges for others, yet I never truly understood how to cross my own bridge until the very end.”
Now that I have finished writing this story, that is exactly how I feel.

For twenty years, I have stood at the crossroads of over ten thousand lives as a career advisor, and through managing a marriage agency, I have watched the beginnings of many unions. Work, I believe, is about maximizing the potential of others' futures and maintaining the paths—the “bridges,” if you will—to realize them.

However, no matter how many maps I drew or how much I illuminated the path for others, I never found a definitive answer to how I should step toward my own opposite shore across the deep valley of life. Or, to be more precise, perhaps while intervening in the lives of others as a professional, I unconsciously kept shelving the burden known as my own emotions.

The story of Makoto and Miwa is a collection of memories from my own experience that I could never put into words.
Wishing for someone else's happiness and grasping one's own happiness. At times, those two things feel as if they are located in cruelly distant places. Even so, at the end of life, one cannot avoid the question of what kind of path one has walked.

The beauty of an ending, social success, or the correctness of conditions—none of these can truly bring peace to a human soul. What Makoto arrived at, after a staggering twenty-five-year detour, was a connection between two individuals that was incredibly small, yet more certain than anything else.

I hope this story serves as a quiet perspective for anyone currently standing at a crossroads in life. After all, the courage to cross to the other side of the bridge has always existed only within one's own heart.

#CreativeAward2026 #RomanceNovelCategory