Johnny perked up immediately when River suggested finding a rabbit among the stars. In his moments of boredom, he had often played similar games, yet he had never thought to look for the shape of a rabbit connecting the constellations.
"I'm going to find the best rabbit constellation ever," he declared.
"Then let's see who finds it first."
The boy and the girl sat side by side on the fallen log, their eyes wide with wonder as they gazed up at the pale blue night sky and the soft, yellow glow of the full moon.
"I found it," River said almost immediately.
"Where?" Johnny asked, his voice tinged with urgency.
"In the sky."
"Where in the sky?" He scanned the sky, but his eyes couldn't catch the pattern.
"Think bigger. Think of something larger than everything else."
"I can't see it... wait, wait... I see it now!" Johnny let out a triumphant cheer.
"Tell me what you see." River's gaze shifted slightly, her eyes resting on the profile of the boy beside her, watching his face light up with excitement.
When Natsumi read that specific question, a shiver ran down her spine. The phrasing felt hauntingly familiar.
She remembered clearly from the earlier chapters, back when the protagonists, Neil and Eva, hadn't yet dived this deep into Johnny's subconscious, how the elderly River had behaved.
After Johnny admitted he originally approached her only because he thought her silence made her "cool" and "different," River began folding paper rabbits incessantly.
And she would always ask him the same thing.
Tell me what you see.
The realization hit Natsumi like a physical weight as the events of chapter eight began to overlap with the earlier mysteries.
"It's right there, isn't it? Those are the two ears and the head!" Johnny pointed excitedly toward the moon. At the very top of the lunar disk, a pair of stars rested like twin ears.
"And what else?" River pressed.
"And down there... those are the two feet." At the base of the moon, a dozen stars formed a jagged line that vaguely resembled a pair of paws.
"Exactly right. Is there more?"
"The moon itself..."
"It's the rabbit's big, round tummy."
Natsumi flipped the page and was greeted by a stunning anime-style illustration.
Against a deep indigo sky dotted with brilliant stars, a pale yellow moon hung high. A young boy pointed toward the sky while a girl with a vibrant, bobbed orange hairstyle sat beside him, looking enchanting and mysterious. In the sky, lines connected the moon to more than twenty surrounding stars, forming the unmistakable silhouette of a rabbit with its limbs outstretched.
The moon served as the body, the blue sky as the canvas, and the starlight as the paws and ears. Guided by the prose and confirmed by the art, the image of a blue-and-yellow rabbit came vividly to life in Aika's mind.
The rabbit.
The paper rabbits.
The blue-and-yellow paper rabbit.
Natsumi's breath hitched. She thought back to the earlier chapters where River, in the final years of her life, had obsessively folded those rabbits and asked Johnny what he saw over and over again.
Goosebumps erupted over her skin.
Tears began to blur her vision.
She finally understood. The elderly River wasn't being eccentric or cruel.
She was desperately hoping that Johnny would look at the blue-and-yellow paper rabbit and remember. She wanted him to remember the carnival from decades ago, the starry night, the fallen log, and their first encounter. She wanted him to remember the night they discovered the rabbit made of stars and moonlight together.
"So, what do you think those stars really are?" Johnny asked, looking at River.
"I've never told anyone else this," River began, her voice soft. "But I think the stars are lighthouses."
"Tens of thousands of lighthouses, shining at the end of the world. The stars can see each other from across the void, and they want to talk, but they can't. They are too far apart to hear one another. All they can do is shine as brightly as possible. That is their only way to reach out. To let their light shine for the other lighthouses... and for me."
"Why for you?" Johnny asked, curious.
"Because one day... I'm going to go up there and be friends with them."
Lighthouses. Natsumi realized that River was talking about herself. Because of her condition, she couldn't communicate with the world.
No matter what she said, no one truly understood her. Only this young boy she had just met seemed to share her wavelength.
This explained why, in the previous chapters, River was so adamant that Johnny build their house next to the abandoned lighthouse on the cliff. She saw the lighthouse as a lonely soul, just like her. Even in the face of death, she wanted the lighthouse to be protected, and she insisted on being buried beside it so it would never be alone again.
To River, the stars and the lighthouses were the same.
They were solitary, distant, and untouchable, yet they continued to shine. They were her kindred spirits. They were her friends.
"What do you have in your bag?" River asked, her attention turning to Johnny's backpack. Johnny beamed with pride as he reached into his bag and pulled out a beanbag and a stuffed platypus.
Natsumi hadn't even recovered from the emotional weight of the previous scene before the prose struck her heart again.
The beanbag and the platypus.
These were the two items River had carried with her for her entire life.
Shiori Takahashi, is this how you plan to tie everything together?
The beanbag was the one Johnny had thrown off the cliff in their middle age. And the platypus was the toy River had kept by her side until the moment she died.
"These are the prizes I won at the whack-a-mole stand," Johnny said proudly.
"Can I see them?"
Johnny handed the toy to her.
"It looks so strange," River murmured, clutching the platypus. "I wish I could have won one too."
"My mom is calling me." Johnny heard his mother's voice echoing from the bottom of the hill and prepared to leave.
"Wait... this..." River started to hand the toy back.
"Keep them. They're yours now. I'm giving them to you. I'll just win another one next time," He said with a grin, waving goodbye as he turned to head back.
River fell silent for a moment. "Will you come back here next year? For the carnival?" she asked, gathering her courage to speak before he disappeared.
"Of course. Will you?" Johnny asked confidently.
"I will."
"Same place, same time?"
"Yes."
Tears finally spilled over as Natsumi read those words. Because the story followed a reverse chronological structure, she already knew the tragedy that followed. She knew that six months later, Johnny's brother Joey would die. She knew Johnny would be drugged with beta-blockers and lose all his memories. She knew he would never show up for the promise.
"But... what if you forget? Or what if you get lost?" River asked, her voice small and careful.
To her, this little boy was now as radiant as the lighthouse stars in the sky.
"Then... we'll just meet on the moon, silly," Johnny laughed. "Right in the middle of the rabbit's tummy."
River clutched the stuffed platypus Johnny had given her and sat alone on the log, staring up at the stars. She had held onto that platypus... and she would continue to hold it for her entire life
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