In search of a scenery I've yet to see. Prologue 2

There was a funeral or something, but I do not remember much of it.

Because my best friend Luca's parents seem to be relatives of the church's priest, I think they were the people who took care of it.

Without much to do, in the house that had a feeling of becoming too big for me alone, I was in Nii-san's room. I just spent day after day, sitting on the bed where my brother used to spend his seemingly uneventful days.

The smell of paint has been gradually fading.

Every time I notice this, I throw some of the remaining paint onto the bed where Nii-san will no longer sleep.

It really stinks.

But, somehow, it calms me down.

I heard of it later, but it seems like I've been living like this for a week now.

I gradually came to face reality, to understand that fact that I don't want to admit, so I decided to organize all the stuff Nii-san left behind. Nii-san never got the chance to go outside, in his room there were a lot of books and rare objects collected by our deceased father. And there were also various landscape paintings, and other paintings painted by Nii-san.

From some point onwards, Nii-san continued to draw a flower called Myosotis. Big and small, on large pieces of paper and on small ones, there were nearly fifty pictures of that pretty flower.

There's also a picture of me with that flower on my neck.

Transparent crystals that were as large as big copper coins were connected by small chains, like they were trapped inside the painting. I traced the surface carefully with my left hand, while looking around the room, at every single thing, one by one, while evoking my old memories.

It really looks like the picture of this blue flower is everywhere. Ah, this is the picture of the fruit I requested from Nii-san! And this is the stone accessory Mio-nee-san gave to Nii-san, and this thick book, it is an ill.u.s.trated book that Father bought in another country.

What else, what else—

N～?

I wonder, what's this book about?

More than a book… isn't it more like a notebook? I don't remember it. It feels like the cover and back cover are pretty damaged. It's probably very old. After turning the cover with a little fear of tearing it, I found a lot of characters written within.

What's written, begins like this.

『Emperor calendar, Year 342, 10th month, 6th day, Day of Water.

I decided to start a dairy from this day forward. The reason I decided to do so lies in the day before yesterday, that was the day he died of a seizure. So even if only slightly, only a little is enough, but I want to leave a proof that I lived in this world.

Well, let's start, today is Yunu's 9th birthday. By the morning I managed to lift up my mood to some extent. There's nothing I can do besides being her older brother, so I'm glad I can celebrate her birthday. 』

Apparently, this is Nii-san's dairy. Since it began on my ninth birthday, it's been around three years since he started writing it.

Unknown logs from my very own Nii-san.

I continued reading while in a daze.