Love Comes After Simulation-Chapter 170 - Reina Seeks Confirmation.
Nakajima Reina was searching for confirmation.
The morning sun cast its light on the south wall of Chigusa University Hospital’s convalescent building. What had been a misty white wall in the darkness now glowed with a gentle orange hue under the dawn’s embrace.
Nakajima Reina sat on her hospital bed. Sitting beside her was her father, Nakajima Youhei.
“What’s wrong? Did you miss Dad?” Youhei smiled, keeping his inner doubts hidden from his face.
Early that morning, his daughter had suddenly sent him a message asking him to come. By the time he woke up, over an hour had passed since the message was sent. He hurriedly took a leave from school and rushed to the hospital.
Usually, when faced with his not-so-clever jokes, his daughter would respond with a polite smile. But today, that smile was nowhere to be seen, and that made him uneasy.
“Dad, the girl you mentioned these past few days—the one who suddenly got close to Minami Yuuki—her name is Ibuki Yuko, isn’t it?” Reina looked at her father, verifying the information from her dream.
Youhei was first surprised, then thoughtful.
Where had his daughter learned Ibuki Yuko’s name? These past few days, he had only referred to her as “that second-year girl” and had never once mentioned her name. His daughter had no friends, so she couldn’t have heard it from anyone else.
He looked into her eyes, hoping to find some trace of emotion. But those deep, quiet eyes were like a still pond, concealing all turbulence beneath its undisturbed surface.
“Yes,” he answered. “Do you know her?”
Nakajima Reina didn’t reply. Instead, she asked another question.
“Ibuki Yuko’s mother—is her name Ibuki Honoka?”
“I’m not sure. I can check on the school’s computer when I get back.” Youhei’s unease deepened.
Reina parted her lips, about to ask for more names. There were many people she had seen in her dream—people she didn’t know yet but would come to know in the future.
She stopped herself. Her father wouldn’t know those names.
She changed the subject, shifting to another category of information.
“Is there a park next to the hospital? One with only a single swing? And nearby, a 24-hour convenience store?”
“There is a park. When you were little, I even thought about taking you there to play. As for the convenience store, I’m not sure. I haven’t passed by there in a long time.”
“Have you ever been to Azuki Mountain?”
“Azuki Mountain? The one nearby? I went a long time ago.”
“Is there a pavilion at the top? And an iron fence near the cliff’s edge?”
“There is a pavilion. The iron fence...I don’t remember. Maybe it was installed in recent years.”
“Hydrangeas don’t have a fragrance, right?”
“That’s right.”
“The beautiful lake in Yoshida Town that you mentioned before—is it called Sora no Ike?”
“Oh, so that’s its name? Now that you mention it, I do remember hearing that before. I didn’t think you’d remember it too.”
His daughter, who usually never asked about anything, was suddenly throwing out one strange question after another. Inside, Youhei felt a storm brewing.
He forced down his unease, doing his best to answer in a casual tone—like a ship desperately trying to stay steady in the midst of a tempest.
Nakajima Reina asked no further questions.
She already had her answer.
The movie she saw in her dreams was her future.
That boy who had stepped into her hospital room, that garden, that park, Azuki Mountain, Yoshida Town—they were all real.
If the dream’s future unfolded as it had shown her, then in just a few days, that boy would come to her.
A distant joy and anticipation wrapped around her.
She thought of those people on television, floating on the ocean’s surface in summer, basking in the sun.
Now, she was floating atop an ocean of expectation, letting the golden rays of happiness shine upon her.
Her heart’s ocean was calm, the wind gentle, the sun warm.
But this peace was only the future casting its reflection upon the present—a mere illusion.
A faint wind swept through that illusion.
Then, it turned into a storm.
It tore through the white clouds, churned the sea, lifted the water into the sky—until it became a cold, torrential downpour.
Would that boy really come to her?
A ripple spread across Nakajima Reina’s quiet eyes.
She thought of the question her husband had asked her in the VR headset.
“If everything were to rewind, and your memories remained—returning to a time before I went to the hospital—but in that timeline, I might not choose you... would you still think that the memories of our future together are a good thing?”
Everything rewound.
Nakajima Reina looked down at the familiar hospital bed beneath her, at her father, who had yet to grow old.
Her memories remained.
She recalled the scenes from the dream movie.
The first two sentences her husband had spoken seemed to summarize her current situation—a prophecy.
If the first part was a prophecy, then... could the latter part be one as well?
“I might not choose you.”
She clutched her chest. A sharp pain shot through her fragile heart, and the dazzling sunlight outside the window felt unbearably harsh.
“Reina?” Nakajima Youhei called out to her.
She turned her head to see her father’s anxious expression.
“Are you feeling unwell?” Youhei glanced toward the hospital room door.
His body leaned forward, ready to rush out and call for a doctor the moment she nodded.
“I’m fine,” Nakajima Reina lowered her hand and shook her head.
The pain in her heart was fleeting, but the storm within her heart’s ocean refused to subside.
Her brief response did little to ease Youhei’s concern. Carefully, he asked, “Did you have a dream? Or is there something you want? No matter what it is, I’ll get it for you.”
“I want Yuuki,” Nakajima Reina murmured.
“...Huh?!”
Youhei was stunned.
“You said you’d get me anything, didn’t you, Dad?” Reina turned to him with a faint smile.
“Don’t tease your father,” Youhei sighed in relief, seeing the smile on his daughter’s face.
He assumed she had merely been playfully rebuking his grand declaration.
Reina didn’t explain further. Instead, she said, “I dreamed of Yoshida Town.”
“Is that so...” Youhei’s voice lowered, his last syllable barely audible.
If his daughter had dreamed of Yoshida Town, then perhaps her strange words today had an explanation.
Back when she was younger, there had been a brief period when her heart condition showed signs of improvement. He and his wife had taken her to Yoshida Town, hoping to see Sora no Ike’s first snowfall.
But before the first snowflake even fell, her condition worsened. They had to return to Misaki in a hurry, and she was hospitalized again.
His wife had never gotten over the disappointment of that failed trip. She grew increasingly resentful of the burden their daughter had become. Not long after, she divorced him.
For Reina, Yoshida Town was not a place of happiness. It was steeped in misfortune.
Yet when Youhei glanced at his daughter out of the corner of his eye, he saw her smiling.
Her eyes, half-lidded in her smile, were more dazzling than he had ever seen them before.
“It’s so beautiful,” Nakajima Reina whispered in awe.
She recalled the scenery from her dream—the memory of lying in the snow, hand in hand with Yuuki, as gentle snowflakes caressed their cheeks.
She gazed out the window. The blue sky and white clouds, separated by glass, looked just like Sora no Ike after the first snowfall.
Their conversation soon ended.
Nakajima Youhei left the hospital and returned to the school, but his daughter’s smile lingered in his mind, unsettling him.
He spent the entire afternoon lost in thought at his desk, unable to determine whether this was a good thing or a bad thing.
When the school bell rang, signaling the end of classes, he snapped back to reality.
He felt like he should do something, but he had no idea what.
It was like wandering through dense fog—he knew he had to move forward, but where was forward?
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He walked to the classroom door and called out to Minami Yuuki, who was flanked by Ibuki Yuko and Chitose Kazumi.
“Minami, come to my office for a moment.”
