"Granddaughter of the Tsurumi Family, you seem to have thought of something."
The painter noticed a change in Tsurumi Aoi's breath and mood, and said this.
He took a deep breath, as if calming his emotions, and then said in as steady a tone as possible:
"My story is about to end, why not listen to the end? Granddaughter of the Tsurumi Family, you should listen to the end."
"Where were we just now? Oh, right. I came to Ibaraki Prefecture and found Ruri's grave."
"Since then, I would often come to visit Ruri and bring her a bunch of edelweiss. I would sit in front of her grave and have a date with her, talk about recent happenings, kiss her... those days were not so bad."
"Until I met that person. Haha, if only I had never met that person, but I loved Ruri, I was bound to meet him sooner or later."
"Koyamada Kazuya, a man much older than me, an unremarkable man, actually not worth mentioning. When I met him, I was still young, and he was already a potbellied middle-aged man."