A lot of time has passed, now, since that year of emo­tions that sur­passed all our expec­ta­tions. It was that year more than any other that changed all our lives for­ever — none of us will ever for­get our deal­ings with Chi­nese magi­cians, our trips to the hot springs, our party or our sum­mer fes­ti­val, all the times that eter­nally left their mark.

Still, a lot of things change in a decade. We grew up, even­tu­ally, and became adults rather than school kids. Each and every one of us is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent now than we were back then. These are my mem­o­ries of those years.

Take Tsumi, for exam­ple. She’s become the joint owner of her mother’s restau­rant now, and I think both of them are a lot hap­pier now that they’ve cast off the shadow of Tsumi’s father. She never said what hap­pened on that day, but from then on Tsumi’s used her name and her­itage more confidently.

She’s devel­oped boyfriend after boyfriend, and some­times girl­friend, since our school-days, but still has never felt like set­tling down with some­one. Part of me doubts she ever will – for her, the sin­gle life is far too much fun to leave behind.

Come to think of it, Set­suya is much the same. He still lives in that huge house on the hill, and these days rev­els in his own money as much as his par­ents’. He’s become and entre­pre­neur and a mil­lion­aire in his own right. Of course, that does noth­ing to put off the end­less stream of young ladies who pur­sue him – mostly with­out suc­cess. Rela­tion­ships, right now, are not a con­cern for him; they’re just clutter.

Talk­ing of end­less suc­ces­sions of casual part­ners, I hear Ritsuko’s still up to her old tricks. There’s rumours that she might have a long-term boyfriend now, but that doesn’t seem to stop her act­ing sin­gle when­ever she can.

Jump­ing back to the sub­ject of her­itage, it looks like Tora’s becom­ing more and more proud of hers with every pass­ing year. What began as a thing to be ashamed of on that day after her 18^th birth­day has now become a drive that keeps her going through any dif­fi­culty. To be able to walk the streets of Tokyo unashamed of her wings is some­thing truly spe­cial, I think.

She briefly returned to the armed forces after leav­ing school, but it seemed to hold too many painful mem­o­ries for her to stay there for long. She works for the police force now, and runs a gym and dance stu­dio with her long-time friend Tsune — yet more things in her life that she’s intensely and rightly proud of.

Her friends Erik and Naomi are mar­ried now, some­thing that none of us were expect­ing. After col­lege, Erik never did move back to Ger­many – instead, he and his wife-to-be started work­ing on government-funded research projects here in Japan. I don’t know exactly what it is they do in that job of theirs, but I can assure you that noth­ing could pos­si­bly make them hap­pier than they are now.

Ichiro still prac­tices mar­tial arts, and undoubt­edly will one day become the suc­ces­sor to his father as head of the Kura­manji dojo. The fam­ily (now only four due to the pass­ing away of the grand­fa­ther) have become even more tightly-knit than they ever were, and they still keep in con­tact with Alex despite the vast dis­tance that now lies between them.

Ah, yes, there was some­thing I for­got to men­tion when I said that there were four mem­bers of the Kura­manji fam­ily – some­one, rather. Ichiro’s wife, Yasa.

Not real­is­ing about her promise, Ichiro beat Yasa in a tour­na­ment match some seven years ago now. Her par­ents spoke to his par­ents, and it was decided that the two of them should marry. Thank­fully there was some­what of a romance between the two of them any­way, and although talk of mar­riage was some­what sud­den for them they decided in the end to go along with it.

On the sub­ject of sur­prise mar­riages, who’d ever have thought that Sho would ever man­age to pop the ques­tion with­out dying from some kind of nasal haem­or­rhage? But ask the ques­tion he did, even­tu­ally, to Azumi.

He learned about the world quickly since the time Tsumi’s fam­ily adopted him, and even­tu­ally lost a lit­tle of his shy­ness too. He and Azumi, once too embar­rassed even to talk to one another, are now almost oppo­sites of what they once were – happy, extro­verted, and at times even bor­der­ing on being loud.

As far as loud cou­ples go, you can’t get much louder than Mizuki and Daisuke. Upon leav­ing Inazuka High they set up their own dojo together, and their train­ing and teach­ing have now become their lives. Despite lack­ing the wis­dom of any old men, their style is so pop­u­lar that stu­dents travel from all over Japan to train under their supervision.

Espan and Sayuri, how­ever, we haven’t heard much from. They moved to Espan’s home town in France less than a year after we all left school, appar­ently lured by the taste of Euro­pean ice cream. Despite hav­ing hounded them for the major­ity of their school life, Erik seemed rather sorry to see them go.

Speak­ing of those who went back home, Alex now lives back in Ire­land where she’s now set­tled and started a fam­ily. We all were dis­traught at her deci­sion to return to her home­land, but she keeps in such reg­u­lar con­tact with all of us that it seems almost like she never left Tokyo.

Maiko Buz­z­saw, not such a lit­tle girl any more, now lives in Ire­land too. In much the same way as Alex came to Japan, her father sent her to col­lege in Ire­land. She’s now, we hear, study­ing vet­eri­nary med­i­cine at uni­ver­sity there. Rabbit-san has barely left her side in the last ten years. Now she’s aged twenty-two the stuffed toy seems to oth­ers like strange anachro­nism, but to her that doesn’t mat­ter. After all, Rabbit-san will, always, pro­tect her.

Also in Ire­land, Shi­rou and Mor­gainne are rumoured to be liv­ing together. Shi­rou went through a bit of a men­tal break­down a few years back, and decided to leave Japan for good. He headed to Ire­land to see Alex, but didn’t stay with her for very long before decid­ing that he had to move on again. It was about that time that Mor­gainne moved back to Ire­land, and the last mes­sage we received from Alex said that they were now rent­ing a place together, although appar­ently it’s more likely to be for finan­cial rea­sons than any­thing else.

There’s an odd thought, on the sub­ject of finances. Does any­one remem­ber those four girls that we ran into a lot dur­ing that year at school? Appar­ently they have their own busi­ness now – pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tors, who’d have thought it? Despite another ten years of life, they haven’t changed a lot. They still argue and squab­ble and rant about ice cream, just like they always used to.

One rela­tion­ship where there’s guar­an­teed no squab­bling is Giniro and Risa’s. Not long into our third year of high school, Risa ran away from her par­ents and the man she was arranged to marry, and came to live with Giniro here in Tokyo. Since that day the two of them have been insep­a­ra­ble, the bond between them stronger than any­thing the world seems to be able to throw at them.

Giniro and Risa now travel the coun­try as jour­nal­ists, and they con­tinue to exer­cise their pas­sions for paint­ing and dance when­ever they get the opportunity.

And that, I think, just leaves us. It’s been a strange ten years indeed, but I’ve loved every day of every one of them.

It turns out, when I thought of that sum­mer fes­ti­val day as being the per­fect end to the best year of my life, that wasn’t quite right. In truth, it was more like a new begin­ning. Over the next year, our final year at Inazuka high, Kai’s band turned from being some­thing even I was only vaguely aware of into a world­wide sen­sa­tion. We started tour­ing the coun­try, and within a few years were play­ing gigs in Europe and Amer­ica. It’s some­thing I’ll for­ever feel blessed to have been a part of.

Five years ago, though, at the end of an Amer­i­can tour, the band came to an end. Not abruptly, but peace­fully. We’d all just decided that we’d had too much of the tour­ing life.

Mor­gainne headed back to start a new life for her­self in Ire­land, while Monomi stayed in Amer­ica and took a job as a voice actress. Sadly, we hardly hear from her any more.

Cecil­lia, Kai and I came back to Tokyo and almost regressed to being school kids for a while. It was only a year later, though, that Kai and I were married.

By that time Minami had moved out of the shrine, so the two of us – fol­low­ing a lot of polite sug­ges­tions from the Suzu­miya par­ents – moved there from the dingy apart­ment block that we’d been liv­ing in up until then. An odd year fol­lowed, dur­ing which the two of us finally learned what it was to be adults, and what it was to be mar­ried too. At the end of that year, Hiroshi gave up his role as priest of Yukikami shrine, trans­fer­ring the hon­our to me as he and his wife retired to a house in the country.

So it came to be that I became the priest­ess of Yukikami shrine. Since that day both my hus­band and I have been blessed by Yuki’s pres­ence and fre­quent gifts – not least the gift of a soon-to-be-born daugh­ter. Her name will be Shiaru, in hon­our of my mother, and we pray that the Kami will bless her as they have blessed us.

I feel like I can see the future more and more these days, and what I see is a future full of light, and life, and love. I see a heaven, a glit­ter­ing future story, a never-ending tale of hearts and swords.