The summer sun bore down on the Kaimei courts like it was determined to burn itself into memory. The prefectural semifinals were everything they'd trained for, everything they'd dreamed of.
Aoi Minami and Mirai Saito were in sync. Two years undefeated in doubles. One mind split between two bodies.
Aoi didn't think. She just moved.
Forehand. Smash. Serve. Set point.
"Let's end it in style," Mirai grinned between points, tossing the ball in the air. "One more point, partner."
"Always," Aoi answered.
Mirai served.
The ball hit the net.
Then so did she.
A stumble. A fall. A sound Aoi would never forget—the thud of a body, not a ball.
"Mirai?" Aoi called.
Nothing.
She dropped her racket and sprinted across the court. Her partner lay still, dark hair splayed like ink against the sunlit concrete.
"Mirai!"
Her knees hit the ground hard. She shook her shoulder, brushed the hair from her forehead. Her skin was too pale. Her chest rose shallowly—then not at all.
Whistles. Screams. Coaches yelling. Someone pulled Aoi away. She resisted, then gave in.
Everything blurred—sirens, wheels, the squeal of shoes against court. The sun kept shining like it didn't know what it had just done.
The hospital walls were blank and white and endless.
Aoi sat in silence as Mirai's parents arrived, as Coach Kubo bowed his head, as the doctor quietly explained: a congenital heart condition. Undetected. Stress and heat triggered cardiac arrest. Immediate. Sudden.
Not her fault.
That's what they all said.
Not. Her. Fault.
Aoi didn't believe them.
The tournament was canceled. The news reached the papers. A photo of Mirai mid-serve—hair flying, eyes bright—circulated with headlines like Tragedy at Prefectural Semifinal and Prodigy Lost Too Soon.
Aoi didn't read them.
She stayed home the rest of the week, sketching aimlessly—shoes, rackets, courts, shadows, a girl she couldn't draw quite right. Her sketchpad was a graveyard of half-finished Mirais.
The racket sat in her closet, untouched.
It still smelled like sweat and strawberry shampoo.
The funeral was quiet but crowded. Too many faces. Too many eulogies that didn't sound like her. No one mentioned her dumb obsession with strawberry melon bread, or how she hummed anime intros when she served, or how she'd write their match strategies on napkins in purple pen.
Aoi said nothing when it was her turn. She just stared at the casket and tried to understand how someone so loud could be gone.
Coach Kubo found her afterward and handed her a journal. Mirai's.
"She wanted you to have it."
Aoi opened to a random page.
"If you're reading this… I lost. But you better WIN."
She closed it again.
"I'm not playing anymore," she said.
Coach nodded, just once.
He didn't try to change her mind.
A week later, she returned to the courts.
Not to play.
Just to stand.
The wind lifted the dust from the corners of the baseline. Her footsteps echoed in the silence. The net was sagging.
She stepped onto the service line, looked up at the blue sky, and imagined Mirai's serve one last time.
Then she turned her back on it.
And walked away.