[I first had this idea in September.]
[Your wife is nearing the end of her life. You are thinking hard about what else you can give her and how you can make her happy and comforted in this last part of her life.]
[The only things that remained in my wife's mind were the children and the snow in Yoshida-cho. The risk of traveling was too great. You wanted to go to the orphanage, bring some girls, and let my wife pick the one she liked. At the end of September, she first rejected your tentative words, and then faced her first death hurdle.]
[In early October, she was in good spirits the day before, but that night she began to have fever, pain, and her heartbeat and breathing stopped for a short time. After a night of emergency treatment, she lay weakly on the hospital bed.]
[Her body was severely injured. She slept most of the day. Occasionally, she opened her eyes slightly, and her sight fell on a piece of nothingness. No matter what you said beside her, you couldn't get a response. The doctor said that her consciousness was not clear yet.]
[My wife started talking in her sleep the night after the rescue.]
[She was transferred to the intensive care unit, where she was monitored by instruments and nurses. When you came in the morning, the nurse told you that she said something in the evening.]
[The communication device used to monitor emergencies faithfully recorded the wife's mumbling. The voice was faint, vague, and dry. As soon as she made the sound, the nurse who was guarding her immediately called her in surprise. The nurse's diligent behavior brought you trouble. Her voice covered up the wife's mumbling in her sleep.
[You can't tell what your wife said, but you can tell that her tone was calm, not a groan of pain or a wild rant of resentment and hatred.]
[You enter the ward, hold your wife's hand, ask her what those words mean, and tell her how happy you are to hear those words. Your wife sleeps quietly in the white quilt, without any response, without her lips opening or closing, without any change in expression, and even without the slightest tremor of her eyelashes.]
[You think of the sleeping princess in the fairy tale, and the image of candy apples appears in your mind again. This time it no longer represents beauty and temptation, but the malice and poison of fate.]
[No matter how many times you kissed those cool lips, your wife could not spit out the cursed apple and regain her health and vitality.]
[At night, you stay in the dim ward, sitting next to your wife.]
[In the silent night, only the sound of medical equipment running nearby can be heard. You lean on the edge of the bed, lower your head, and try to find your wife's voice in the silence. You haven't slept well for many days, and sleepiness quickly erodes your spirit and makes you tired.]
[When you heard that voice, you thought it was an illusion in a dream. You had heard this familiar voice countless times in your dreams. Fortunately, the sound of the equipment running next to you reminded you in time that this was not a dream.]
[You turn your head and listen to what your wife says.]
[—Are you tired? You caught this voice accurately, and your heart trembled suddenly, thinking that your wife had woken up and was caring about you. You looked at her face, and under the dim light of the night lamp, you saw her closed eyes. Your wife did not wake up, it was her sleep talk. ]
[Look at her lips again, there seems to be a smile on her lips.]
[What made the wife say that and smile like that? What did she dream about?]
[You have a guess.]
[In the next two days, the wife uttered four more sentences, three of which you heard and one of which you learned from the recording. These four sentences were all fragments of very ordinary conversations: It will fall off; The sugar coating is so hard; It won’t come again; It’s so solemn.]
[Every word is very gentle, with a touch of charm. ]
[“Are you tired?” is when you were climbing Mt. Azuki. Before marriage, your wife often asked you this question when you carried her to the top of the mountain on your back. “You’ll fall down.” is when you were on the swing in the park. You always played tricks on her and made the swing sway, so that she would hold you tightly. “The sugar coating is so hard.” is when your wife liked to eat sweet and sour apple candies at a festival in a small town. The sugar coating of the apple candies was hard, and she had to use a lot of effort to bite it open. “I won’t come again.” is when you were discharged from the hospital. Your wife happily said goodbye to the hospital building. “It’s so solemn.” is when you were getting married. The wedding ceremony at Minayohime Shrine was particularly solemn.]
[From these words, you inferred the first word of the first blurred recording - purple. Your wife was talking about hydrangea.]
[Six voices, six phrases, six important memories between you and her. Do you think that your sleeping wife has returned to your past and the beauty of the past in her endless dreams?]
[This discovery comforted you and made you happy. It turned out that her deep sleep was not wrapped in endless darkness, but was illuminated by the colorful bubbles of dreams.]
[On the third day, she uttered her last mumbling words: The snow is so beautiful.]
[You shudder suddenly. What kind of snow is your wife talking about? Is it the snow on the bushes that she licks greedily, or the snow in Yoshida-cho that she has been thinking about since she was a child and has been waiting for it but has missed it all the time?]
[In late October, my wife's condition improved. She was conscious, although only for a few dozen minutes a day, and every word, movement, and look took up a lot of her energy and made her tired.]
[The doctor told you that this is probably the flash before the flame of life goes out.]
[Your wife's last whispers keep echoing in your mind, making you restless and forcing you to make up your mind.]
[You invite your wife to go see the snow in Yoshida-cho together, and she responds softly with a smile.]
[For your wife, whose life is only a fraction of a second away, any external stimulus is a place where the god of death is hiding. If you don't pay attention, the god of death's scythe will pierce her chest. You hired the doctor from Chigusa University Hospital and tried your best to prepare your wife for the journey.]
[You first took a medical-modified plane to Hokkaido, then took a similarly modified bus to a small town on the edge of Yoshida Town and stayed in the hospital you bought.]
[The death that ambushed you on the journey failed to touch your beloved wife, but the omnipresent creepers of time kept gnawing at her body. You prayed that the first snow of this year would come soon.]
[In early November, the sun was shining brightly, and a dry wind blew across the mountains, making the forests lush and green.]
[In mid-November, it rained. The rain showered the mountains, making the forests more lush and green. The fire wheel in the sky became brighter after the rain.]
[My wife's awake time became less and less, her consciousness became more and more blurred, and her eyes, which occasionally opened, seemed to be covered with a layer of gray fog.]
[On the fourth Saturday of November, it finally snowed.]
(End of this chapter)