A train station on a clear autumn day.

Hester Green was reading the letter from her maid Lerry for the sixth time, and it was still funny, still exciting. Everything about today was.

〈To Miss Hester.

Miss! As I mentioned when I called, the bodyguard, no, Mr. Aaron. I’m sorry for crossing that out so many times.

I’m writing this in a hurry in the hotel lobby and I don’t have fresh stationery. Anyway, your boyfriend. There’s really no way I can bring him his meals myself. He already knows my face well… he’d catch on.

And if he runs off somewhere else again… the, the part above, I was tired and the words came out wrong. I’m sorry.

Anyway, catch him quickly! I think it would be best if you took care of him yourself. That way I can go back to Kirsten too!

And you’ll be happy! What I mean is… I’m doing my very best. I really am!

So I’ll see you at the Lebrott Hotel lounge at seven in the evening on the fifteenth! Please do call me when you’re about to leave.

From Lerry, who misses you, with cheers and love.〉

Of everything she was looking forward to today, the one she was most excited about was her brazen little boyfriend.

“So he’s here.”

Hester grinned.

She had just stepped down onto the platform, and her eyes shone with anticipation. Her steps were light because of it.

With every quick little stride, her braided brown hair swayed like it was dancing, and beyond the steam and noise of the trains, the energy of the crowd seeped through.

And where exactly was this place? Why, Heraza, of course. Originally, Heraza was said to be a small, quiet village on the outskirts of Tashhezh, the capital of Levanya……

That must be old news, though?

She tilted her head, eyes busy sweeping the scene.

And no wonder. There were far too many people. The tiled floor of the platform was barely visible.

So Hester got jostled this way and that, and being on the short side, she got more than her fill of gentlemen’s shoes and ladies’ shoes.

Not that she had ever wished for that.

Still, it did make her curious about what had drawn such a crowd to fill the small station to bursting.

The more unfamiliar a place, the better to have information. But that was all.

Not enough to go around asking people about it. What truly mattered was something else entirely.

Hester’s smiling face was as bright as the late autumn sun.

She lifted her head and looked through the glass ceiling above. A season in full ripeness. The days had grown shorter, but the sky was dazzling and the sunlight was warm. Today especially.

What a beautiful autumn this was.

It felt like something good was about to happen.

No, no. Something good is going to happen.

“Without a doubt.”

Whatever you say, so shall it be.

Hester tapped her own lips, then clenched her fist.

The mood about her said she would grab misfortune by the collar and wring it into something good if she had to.

Splendid, one might say!

“Ow, that’s bright.”

……A little clumsy, one might also say!

She shielded her eyes from the light pouring through the glass roof and quickened her pace.

The sunlight that settled on the round toes of her Mary Jane shoes moved along with her. And at last, she reached the entrance of the station.

She stopped in her tracks and checked the large clock hanging from the central structure.

A warm five o’clock in the afternoon.

Back in Kirsten, wasn’t this the hour when the young lady and her bodyguard used to share tea together, and walk the promenade side by side? A time that had felt like a blissful dream.

Today, the young lady intended to reclaim that hour.

“Just you wait. Aaron.”

She would.

“Hester is coming.”

Hester broke into a run toward the exit.

The woman pressing forward into the light, where white steam and the train had vanished, didn’t even notice the newspaper slipping out of her bag.

A strange newspaper, filled with all sorts of strange scripts.

The title pressed firmly just below the headline caught a child’s eye in an instant.

A little one who had stopped with her mother among the passersby read it slowly.

“Mama, what’s ‘My Runaway Male Lead’?”

“Well… I’m not sure? Hmm… I suppose the male lead ran away… oh dear. He really shouldn’t do that.”

And so the mother clicked her tongue.

“Why?”

“The man is so petty, no, no. The female lead must be sad. Oh, what am I thinking. We’ll be late. Come on, let’s go!”

She did her best for the child. The grayish-white newspaper left behind as the mother and daughter hurried away flutters in the air.

Toward the exit. Toward that man.

* * *

Meanwhile, Aaron, who had his reasons but had still run away and thus become a petty man, was in a plaza not far from the station.

His face was dry and weary, and he did nothing but watch the people passing by. In the midst of a crowd buzzing with the start of a festival, he looked like a man living in a different world entirely.

He didn’t seem to care what kind of festival it was. The man’s expression was blank, and he kept lowering and lifting his eyelids without any energy.

He thought about it for a moment.

Are all impulses bad?

Not necessarily……

‘Then what about mine? That is to say, what about what I’m doing right now?’

“……”

Aaron, sitting at the fountain, ran a hand down his face. A sigh heavy enough to sink the ground came with it.

The impulse telling him he had to leave, the boldness that had told him it would be fine, both were growing hazy.

Just like that late spring that had always felt like a dream. He raised his head again and asked himself.

‘Surely you don’t want to go back? To Hester?’

‘Yeah… I think I do.’

He had asked himself hundreds of times, and the answer was always the same.

‘Honestly, more than I can say. In truth, even now I want to go back……’

“Pathetic bastard. You really have no shame.”

Aaron laughed, bitter and self-mocking. All of it was true, wasn’t it. That he was a pathetic wretch, and that this shameless heart of his was this stubborn……

He put a cigarette between his lips, his eyes sunken deep. Thinking of that woman, Hester, whom he could now only see in dreams.

The tip of the unlit cigarette shimmered in the sunlight.

Before long, the light poured down over the plaza like sunbeams. It was white and blue, like the last day in Kirsten.

Just like spring sunshine.

Cruelly, everything about today was beautiful to him, standing there in the middle of a swamp looking up. Like the garden of Evergreen House. Like that white cottage beyond the mimosa tree.

Balloons rose up with the fanfare that began ringing from the center of the plaza, filling his vision. And her voice, rippling like a wave, was lovely.

— I like the cottage because you’re in it.

Really lovely.

He felt certain he would never forget it. Truly, not even in death.

— I’m going to make up stories with the children at the tutoring school.

— What kind of story?

— Ahem! What kind, you ask… well, first of all, the female lead is me. The male lead is you. And these leads will never, ever be replaced.

‘No, I want everything to change. Everything except you. I want us to build a truly happy and beautiful story.’

Before long, he finally let his head drop. And just as the fanfare faded at last.

Aaron’s throat bobbed, and his voice came out wet.

“Goodbye, Hes—”

But he couldn’t finish even that short word. Because a figure suddenly stepped in front of him.

“……”

A familiar feeling made him lift his head, and there was Hester, standing right before him. Glaring at him with a face flushed red like a raspberry.

It was a sight he couldn’t believe even while seeing it.

How on earth did she find this place?

How? Me?

So Aaron couldn’t say a word. In the middle of everything turning hazy and slow around him, he stared blankly at the one woman who still had color and movement.

But this wretched silence didn’t last long. Hester, glaring down at him with sharp eyes, shoved him in the chest.

As men in love tend to do, Aaron offered no resistance and toppled right over. Into the fountain. Back to Hester’s side.

Unlike the firm push of a moment ago, the woman who pulled him up with quite a gentle touch couldn’t hold back and burst out laughing.

“No, really. You’re even more handsome when you’re wet.”

Apparently she found that delightful.

“……Hester.”

In any case, the only one who couldn’t laugh was this man. Aaron, and Aaron alone.

His two green eyes looked wetter and sadder than the body soaked from head to toe.

So there was nothing for it. She had to cheer him up again. The female lead herself had to step forward for the sake of her tearful male lead.

“Ahem!”

Hester cleared her throat and elegantly unwound the light blue scarf from around her neck. Then she tied it around Aaron’s wrist and her own.

She spoke without a gap, firm and loving all at once.

“Caught you. My runaway male lead.”

Aaron’s raspberry had returned.

Hester had returned.