Green plums cannot become lovers.

It's not the kind of sudden, unexpected sorrow that catches you off guard, but a fainter, more distant sadness, like the shadow of autumn. You know it's there, but it won't pounce on you and crush you; it just quietly accompanies you, like an old garment that no longer fits, but you can't bear to throw it away.

Kimura Ichiro opened his eyes.

The image on the computer screen has changed from black to a pale blue sky, a long slope lined with cherry blossom trees, and petals are falling one by one.

A girl stood at the top of the slope, her back to him.

The wind made her skirt flutter slightly, the hem like a soft flag, slowly unfolding amidst the falling petals.

Looking at the scene, Ichiro Kimura suddenly remembered the first time he played the game "Asuka". At that time, he was a sophomore in high school, his grades were dropping sharply, and he couldn't sleep every night, tossing and turning in bed thinking about things he couldn't understand.

When his deskmate recommended the game to him, he said, "Give it a try, it'll help you relieve stress."

He thought it was some kind of fast-paced action game.

After playing, I cried even more than before I relieved the stress.

Strangely, after crying, he actually fell asleep, something he hadn't been able to do all night. When he woke up the next morning, the sunlight was shining on his face through the window. He felt as if something had been moved from his chest, creating a small space—not big, but enough for him to breathe more easily.

From then on, he bought every game that "Asuka" made.

Ichiro Kimura gripped the mouse, the cursor hovered briefly over the "Start Game" button, and then he pressed it.

The screen dimmed briefly.

When the screen lit up again, a dialog box appeared in the corner of the screen.

There were no words, only a cursor blinking there, as if waiting for him to say something first.

Volume 1: Chapter 289

The story begins on a long slope.

The slope was lined with cherry trees, which were in full bloom. Petals drifted down from the branches, not as if they were withering, but as if the trees were voluntarily returning them to the sky. The wind blew down from the top of the slope, and the petals flowed with the wind, forming a pinkish-white, translucent river.

A brown-haired girl stands in the middle of the slope, her back to the camera, looking up at the sky full of flowers.

She was talking to herself. She wasn't saying anything profound, just sighs of admiration for the scenery, complaints about the weather, and anxieties about the new semester. Those fragmented, everyday sentences, meaningless to others, sounded warm coming from her lips.

The male protagonist, who looks like a delinquent, walks up from the bottom of the slope.

The two people brushed past each other.

It stopped again.

He turned around, and she turned around too. For a fraction of a second, their eyes met.

Ichiro Kimura leaned back in his chair, a smile unconsciously curving his lips.

He had seen this kind of beginning far too many times—campus romance, meeting on a slope, slow-motion shots of cherry blossoms falling, so cliché it couldn't be more cliché.

Strangely enough, even though he knew it was a cliché, he still found it appealing.

It wasn't because he hadn't seen better beginnings, but because the people in the story weren't "falling in love," but rather "spending time together." They went to and from school together, ate in the cafeteria together, and enjoyed the breeze on the rooftop together.

Later, they created a drama club together. She stood on the stage, the lights shining on her, her voice not loud, but every word was pronounced clearly.

He sat in the last row and kept watching her.

My dream of acting came true, and I made many friends.

The first half of the story is bathed in warm light, like a spring that is stretched out infinitely and will never end.

Ichiro Kimura stared at the screen, a smile playing on his lips. The cola beside him had been sitting for over an hour; the bubbles had long since dissipated, turning it into an overly sweet syrup. He didn't drink any more, only occasionally reaching out to touch the side of the glass to make sure it was still there.

The plot unfolds smoothly and steadily, like a car with the accelerator pressed, making you forget about where the destination is.

Later, the male protagonist proposed to the girl.

On a sunny day, baseball sealed the boy's fate. The girl's usually arrogant father finally acknowledged the boy's efforts and decided to marry his daughter to him.

"I will make Nagisa happy."

"If you make her cry, I won't let you off the hook."

Ichiro Kimura gripped the mouse tightly, sprang up from the back of his chair, and swung his fist at the screen.

He opened his mouth wide, suddenly punched the air, and shouted loudly.

"it is good--!"

The sound echoed around the room, hit the walls, and bounced back.

A mother's voice came from the next room: "Ichiro, what's wrong?"

"It's alright, it's alright."

He quickly responded, lowering his voice, but the smile on his lips remained.

Later, the girl became pregnant.

Ichiro Kimura thought this story would continue to be so heartwarming.

He will see them move to their new home, see the crib assembled, see the girl cooking in the kitchen with her belly sticking out, and see the male protagonist clumsily helping her tie her apron.

However, the plot took a turn when he was least expecting it, like a train being silently pulled from the main track onto a side track.

The direction has changed, but the people sitting in the carriage won't notice it for a while.

Something began to feel off between the lines.

She would suddenly stop to catch her breath while walking, and she said she was "a little tired" more often than before.

Kimura Ichiro's smile slowly faded.

He leaned back in his chair, pushed the Coke aside, and placed his hands, folded, on the table. The light from the screen illuminated his face, making his expression clear.

Something was wrong... He had a vague feeling that something was amiss.

Although I've rarely played this type of game before, I've seen quite a few similar movies or animations, and this development is definitely going to be a disaster.

He didn't think any further; his fingers gripped the mouse, and he clicked "next sentence."

At the same time, in another corner of Tokyo.

After dropping his two children off at school, Ueno Ken returned home, kicked off his slippers, and sank into the sofa. The sofa was old; the cushions had sunk into large dents, and the springs made a sharp creaking sound at certain angles.

The living room curtains were half-drawn, letting in no sunlight and casting a gray, gloomy atmosphere. Takeout containers, empty beer cans, and a few comic books, barely touched, were piled on the coffee table. A thin layer of dust covered the TV cabinet; someone had drawn a line on its surface with their fingertip, the mark still clearly visible.

Thirty-eight-year-old Qun_Liuyiqi2Dis48, divorced, with two children.

Ueno Ken slumped into his chair, took out the clapperboard next to him, and opened the game he had just bought but hadn't had a chance to play yet.

He could hardly remember the last time he had gotten up from this sofa in the morning; it was as if he were sealed here.

Time here is a viscous, slowly flowing liquid, without scales or direction; it simply exists and is consumed. Every morning, the two children wash themselves, put on their school uniforms, and pack their backpacks by themselves. They call out "Dad, I'm leaving!" from the entryway, then close the door, and the house falls silent again.

Sometimes he felt that after that marriage ended, his life had come to a standstill. Like an old computer that had crashed, the screen was still lit, but the image no longer changed, and the buttons did not respond when pressed.

His two children are the only reason he still feels "I must live," but this reason itself causes him pain.

They are his children.

This was also the source of his misfortune.

Sometimes he would sit by the bed late at night, looking at their sleeping faces, and what welled up in his heart was not warmth, but something so complicated that he himself could not figure it out.

If they hadn't been born, if she hadn't had a difficult childbirth, she would probably still be sitting next to him now, telling him what happened at work that day at dinner, taking him shopping on weekends, and putting her cold hands under his neck in the winter.

He misses her. He has been thinking of his beloved every moment since she left. It has been eight years since she passed away.

He had thought about her for eight years, and at the same time, he had resented the two children for eight years.

He knew it was unreasonable, he knew it was unfair, but he couldn't control himself. Every time he saw the faces of those two children, he would remember how bright the lights were in the delivery room that day, the doctor's expression when he came out, and the pain of his knees hitting the floor tiles as he knelt in the corridor.

Those memories are like a knife without a sheath, placed on my chest; it doesn't hurt unless I touch it, but it bleeds the moment I do.

So he chose not to touch it.

I lock myself in my house, play video games, drink, and sleep. I try not to think about the past, not to think about the future, and not even to think about today.

Days passed by like this, one after another, like a video recorder with a broken fast-forward button, only able to play at normal speed, but with nothing playing.

He saw the game on the promotional page.

The title is "Clannad," and the illustration features several silhouettes with indistinct faces. The tagline is short, just one sentence: "This is a story about family."

Ueno Ken hesitated for a moment, but still bought it.

It wasn't the promotional slogans that moved him, but rather the fact that the person who made the game was named "Asuka".

He had played this person's works before and knew that this person's games were different from others. Other people's games made you feel good, but his games made you think.

And he really needed to think about it. It had been too long since he'd thought about it; if he didn't, his brain would rust.

When the opening scene appeared, Ken Ueno was stunned.

The screen shows a sky full of cherry blossoms and a long slope. A girl stands at the top of the slope, the wind blowing her skirt.

He recalled his first meeting with his wife.

He was late that day and planned to sneak into the classroom through the back door. So he bent over and sat down. When he looked up, he saw the girl in the next seat looking at him.

She didn't speak, but glanced at him calmly, without reproach or curiosity in her eyes, before looking away and continuing to gaze out the window.

The leaves outside the window are yellow. A gust of wind blows, and a few leaves fall from the branches, twirl in the air, and land on the windowsill.

But he remembered that profile, and he remembered it for an entire autumn.

Ken Ueno leaned back on the sofa. The room was still dimly lit, with the curtains half-drawn, preventing sunlight from getting in. The light from the handheld game screen shone on his face, clearly illuminating the wrinkles around his eyes.

His finger remained hovering above the screen, without pressing it.

The living room was quiet. The hum of the refrigerator came from the direction of the kitchen, occasionally mixed with the sound of the upstairs neighbor dragging a chair.

He stared at that slope for a long time.

Then he pressed "Start".

The story on the screen continues to unfold.

Ken Ueno couldn't remember the last time he had been this quiet.

It's not the kind of silence that comes from death; that's not true silence. It's just a dead heart leaving only the body still alive.

This time, the quiet was a time to completely calm down and focus on doing something.

He witnessed the male and female protagonists' journey from acquaintance to love, saw them eating lunch together in the clubroom, saw him clumsily helping her tie the straps of her stage costume, and saw the almost imperceptible tremor in her voice when she stood under the spotlight and uttered her first line.

The images flowed into his eyes like water, not causing much of a stir, but the water level was gradually rising.

Then, the female protagonist became pregnant.

As Ueno Ken watched this scene, his fingers tightened slightly as he gripped his phone.

His Adam's apple bobbed, but he said nothing.

From that point on, the plot slowly and irreversibly began to sink.

The female protagonist started going to the hospital frequently, and the male protagonist accompanied her. Each time, they would sit on a bench in the corridor, looking at the closed door.

Ken Ueno remembered the corridor outside the delivery room.

The lights that day were a stark white, the walls were a stark white, even the air was a stark white. He sat on the bench, in the exact same posture as the boy on the screen. A nurse walked past him, pushing a cart full of instruments; the sound of the wheels rolling over the paving stones was particularly loud in his memory.

He waited a long time back then.

Later, the doctor came out and told him, with an expression that was hard to tell whether it was sadness or congratulation, that their child was healthy.

But the child's mother did not get up from the bed again.

She lay weakly on the bed, gazing at him with longing eyes. The monitor's sound drowned out her final words, then continued to monitor her death.

Death is a very sad thing. They went from being strangers to getting to know each other, falling in love, getting married, and starting a family. They had so many memories along the way.

Those were such wonderful times that he forgot all about sadness.

Later, he experienced the greatest grief in the world.

Ken Ueno placed the handheld console on the coffee table, stood up, walked to the window, and drew back the curtains.

Sunlight streamed in suddenly, making him squint. The street outside the window was quiet. On the balcony of the house across the street, several children's clothes were drying—pink, round-necked, with a cartoon rabbit embroidered on the cuffs.

The clothes swayed gently in the wind, as if beckoning to someone.

He stood by the window, motionless.