Synopsis
Shigeru grew up alongside two close friends, Chisato Miyazaki and Mai Takada, though the trio drifted apart once Chisato moved away and shyness pushed Shigeru and Mai toward separate high schools. Open-minded and quietly helpful once people got to know him, he tended to keep serious things to himself until the right moment arrived.
Years later, a chance encounter at Mai's workplace — a bowling alley — brings the two back into each other's orbit. Friends point out that the woman who caught his eye is the same childhood friend he'd lost touch with, now changed by plastic surgery he doesn't immediately recognize. Working up the nerve, he boards the same bus as her, intending to finally talk to her.
That bus never reaches its destination: an accident kills them both at the same moment, cutting off whatever might have come next. His case suggests he may have been planning to ask her out that very day — a possibility that, denied in life, becomes the quiet undercurrent of his time at Quindecim.
