'Tatta Hitotsu no Koi' Episode 9 review
I've been wondering what on earth I could possibly say about this episode without crying. So to begin, I just need to rant a wee bit. Especially after seeing this episode, but really throughout the entire run thus far of THnK, I find the ratings to be OBSCENE. It really breaks my heart that such a beautifully and sensitively acted drama has been so ignored, and I am so sorry for all those people in Japan who didn't drop in to see what an amazing actor Kamenashi Kazuya has become, and indeed, the entire cast (with the exception of the guy who played Yamashita) has done such a wonderful job, especially Ayase. I have loved so much about this drama and so thoroughly that I am mortified for everyone involved in the production for its dismal ratings.
We left off episode 8 with Ayuta embracing Nao and as you know, I was appalled and pre-emptively angry. I was wrong, and I'm so glad! Ayuta realizes his mistake and backs off Nao very quickly, and he proves himself to be Hiroto's true friend, the kind of person who would not betray his friend like that. Ayuta then grabs his coat, keys and cellphone, and leaves Nao alone in his apartment to wander around all night in the cold without anywhere else he could go. What a good guy! He later calls Hiroto to tell him of Nao's situation, and then calls Nao to tell her to meet Hiroto at the Yokohama Harbor at 3:30 in the afternoon.
We then see Hiroto who is clearly sunk in his own Deep Thoughts and trying to decide what to do. I knew that Hiroto wouldn't run away with Nao, but he doesn't do it for the reasons I had imagined. I had thought (based on his concern over her family's reaction to him and the way he kept asking her how her family felt, and the way that he went to talk to her father) that Hiroto was the kind of guy who wouldn't date a girl against her family's wishes, and so if her family was against it, he wouldn't press it until he had their blessing. In fact I think this is exactly what he would have said if Nao hadn't run away. Because she ran away, it forced him to do the unthinkable, which is so appallingly sad, but I understand completely. They were, as his voiceover continues to repeat, only 20, very young, with their lives ahead of them still, and he wouldn't sacrifice everything important in his life to make a foolish choice that would hurt other people even if it meant that he and Nao could have a little happiness.
The drama continues to surprise me with scenes of Hiroto watching his mother and beloved little brother sleeping together so peacefully and idyllically, and then later we hear Hiroto ask Ren if he likes their mother...I just never expected these things, but obviously, these are the things that Hiroto thinks about: even though his mother has wrecked his life and destroyed the hope he had with Nao's family, he still puts Ren first and his blood first because they are all he has left to him that will always be left to him. I think in part this goes back to the lack of self-esteem we saw in Hiroto in episode 1 where he describes himself and Kou & Ayuta as losers who fail at life - I believe that there is a huge part of Hiroto who always knew he never had a chance with Nao and that the little happiness they did share was like a dream snatched from a cruel world. So when these massive obstacles are put in front of them, I think he does take it as a sign that it's not to be - and if you remember in episode 8 how he walked away from his mother saying "It's the end, it's the end" - there was such a horrible note of finality in him, and it still rips me up to remember him tipping that gorgeous HN ring into the water. He already knew it was over then - he lost all hope. So when Nao runs away from home, he thinks about it hard, no doubt, but in his gut he already knows what he will decide, no matter how painful or how tempted he may be.
I've watched the episode only once with subtitles, but I've rewatched almost the entire thing several times now during my commutes and other snatched moments (on the iPod) and from the moment that Hiroto runs to meet Nao at the harbor through to the end, I continue to be a ball of misery as I watch this, like watching a trainwreck unfold over and over again. Kamenashi's expressions and the subtlety of his portrayal of Hiroto's suffering are just stunning and powerful and it hurts like rubbing your eyes with broken glass might hurt.
Nao is such a besotted darling, she never imagines that Hiroto won't run away with her - she sees only that their love is more important to her than anything else and she is willing to abandon her family, her life, everything, to be with the man she wants for the rest of her life. Or at least that is what she thinks right now. And Hiroto knows this. He suggests to her that they could go away to the country and live together in a small apartment (and just imagine the pain he must be in as he even thinks about what that could be like: to enjoy his life with her), but that in three days she would miss her mother, her brother, her father, and she would cry. She would cry, he emphasizes to her, and Nao can't really say that she wouldn't. Ayase does a great job of presenting Nao's disbelief and frustration, especially when she confronts him on how calm he is, and then seconds later yells at him that she wants him to give up something really important to him for her the way that she is willing to give up everything for him.
But he won't. Hiroto just tells her that quite plainly: he won't sacrifice his brother and his mother - his father is gone and they are all he has left, and he won't abandon them - he can't abandon them. Poor Nao: she asks him if he likes her, and his disbelief that she could even ask such a question are clear in how he responds by asking her if she's a middle schooler to ask that - which reminds me of how he was with her in the very beginning in those first 2 episodes where he thought her very young and naive and forthright: all the things that charmed him then, but now he's chosen to be the adult and reminds her that they can't live on her childishness.
For Nao, things are very black and white, which I can understand, particularly knowing how much of life she's missed out on and how much she thought she might never experience. She basically gives Hiroto an ultimatum: if she can't be with him now, it's over. From her perspective, life is right now. She can't wait. When she spent her youth in hospitals and looking forward to a future that could end tomorrow, I can sympathise with why she feels that if she can't be with Hiroto right now, she can't wait for things to change when it could take a long time for them to be together and she may not have a long time. Her experiences have stolen her ability to be patient and have taught her to be wary of anything that is in some distant future. She lost that sense of the future that most of us have as something that is waiting for us, so she can't afford to wait for the future to happen.
The things is: Hiroto knows this about her, and he understands, which is why they end things. The rest of the scene is a killer, from them holding hands for fifteen minutes, the last fifteen minutes of "them" - and the way that Hiroto's voice breaks when he tells her that he wants to say a whole lifetime's worth to her (winterspel curls up into a ball and sobs). Everything else: the whales that she wanted to see with him, the way she tells him that she loves his hands and how he squeezes her exactly when she wants him to...the way he tells her he's worried about her and her health and he wants to know she is still alive so they agree to shine their lights on Christmas Eve for three years.
How can your heart not break for everything that they're giving up and walking away from? The romantic in me wonders how can you walk away from what you love, when you love someone that much?
***Hiroto: [voiceover] We were holding hands for just 15 minutes in our long life, and like this, my love from when I was 20 ended. I still remember it well on that ship. I should have said to her "Let's take time and straighten things out [in] our lives around us." Nao graduating from university and I settling the factory, then maybe things could have been different, but that time, on that ship, in front of your eyes, I stayed silent. Your eyes didn't allow any time. It said that if the answer didn't come right then, it would die.
***
The time jump was handled well, although I am a little fuzzy on exactly how much time passed, 3 or almost 4 years. In that time, Hiroto and his mother sold the factory because they couldn't keep up with the loan payments, and they moved and started a new life. But they were there for at least 3 years because Hiroto says that he watched for her light on Christmas Eve and for 2 years it came, but the third year her balcony was dark. Hiroto's voiceover again is just to kill you:Hiroto: The orange...orange light shone for two Christmas Eves and I shone back as if I was shining all of Yokohama, but the third year it didn't shine. I couldn't find the light. It was dark. My heart became dark, too. I didn't believe she died, but thought she just forgot me for some reason. Without any doubt, I was sure it wasn't her that died, but me inside her heart that died. Maybe I could have run off with you..but I couldn't. I mean, we were only 20. We were too naive and too young and uncontrollably only 20...and my love at 20 ended. But to think, back then did I love you well?
When we see Hiroto again, he is changed: he is dressed in a black down jacket over a dark suit and tie, and his hair is a little shorter, black, and the only thing that is familiar really, is that he is looking out over the water, like we've seen before, and smoking. Ayuta meets him there, and he's also dressed in a suit and it's clear they haven't seen each other in a while, and we discover that they are in Yokohama for Kou's wedding...NOT to Yuuko, but to some stranger, but everyone looks good (except for Koki's new orange hair, ew!) and Kou looks gorgeous in his white wedding suit...They are all changed, these three amgigos - a little subdued, more mature both in looks and in the way they hold themselves, and it's clear that the youth they shared is now in the past and that they have moved on and are continuing to move on.
When the three young men meet for a drink later after the wedding, Ayuta tells Kou that Yuuko is on her way to join them from Kobe where she is in medical school, because she really wanted to congratulate him. So they talk about how Kou & Yuuko's relationship dissolved into friendship which is rather sweet and very nice, but as soon as Nao's name is mentioned, we can see Hiroto's face change subtly and he deflates by increments and it's clear that he still lives with that old pain. He absents himself very quickly on the pretense of needing to buy cigarettes, but really, he just wants to be alone for a little while. Unfortunately, while he smokes alone by the water, he sees Nao.
Nao, of course has changed, too, and is dressed quite elegantly and looks gorgeous, gorgeous! Their meeting is painful as Hiroto explains that he's here for Kou's wedding...and then he notices her engagement ring, which she immediately tries to hide which makes her drop the folders she's carrying which are for planning a wedding. Hiroto walks away as quickly as he can after than, and we can see in his face the pain rising ever higher to the surface, and it has sharp jagged edges still that don't seem to be dulled by the passage of time. And then comes the voicover that makes me feel his pain and it's really the most awful, painful, heartbreaking line in the episode - somehow it's worse than him saying that the me inside Nao's heart had died: Hiroto: I am the most embarassing guy in the world right now...drinking and getting a headache. How old can one be an adult? Please tell me, how old do I have to be to not be hurt, be sad, or be all mad?
This voiceover plays over Hiroto getting completely drunk later and being cared for and propped up by his friends, and Hiroto's pain must be awful for him to be so devastated by the knowledge that she will marry someone else.
We then see Nao and Yuuko together and Yuuko fills Nao in on Hiroto's life: that they sold the factory and moved, that Hiroto now works for a big company as a ship mechanic, that his mother now works in a department store (and she looks so respectable now!) and that Ren is in middle school and plays baseball. I love how Yuuko says that it's like Hiroto's family is her family from how she reacts to hearing about them. It's also very interesting that Nao seems to be getting married less for herself and more because it's expected and she wants to do it while her grandmother is still alive and healthy - she sounds so far away from the idealistic twenty-year old who asked Hiroto to give up everything for her and who could even ask him if he liked her when he said no. But then Yuuko tells Nao that Hiroto was very upset when he found out that she was getting married....
I know, it's easy to be disappointed in Nao, but everyone changes and I know for sure that the person I was when I was twenty was very far from the person I became even a few years later. Life and people change a lot - sometimes it happens quickly, and sometimes it happens over longer time. But I don't blame Nao for moving on - but I do blame her for her choice of life partner because that guy is just...not right. Perhaps she feels like he will be easy to live with: someone who dotes on her and will always take care of her, and that if she can't have the bright flame of true love, she'll settle for the gentle flame of a friendship? I don't know. I wish she could have found someone better, but I guess within the constraints of the drama, she ends up with who we've already been introduced to (having Kou marry an unknown was enough, I suppose).
(Seeing Nao as a schoolteacher was soo awesome, but how sad is it that she was teaching Romeo & Juliet? Ack!)
In any case, we discover later that Nao has saved all her memories of Hiroto: the gloves she knit for him, the orange ball (which still works!), etc. in a box in her closet, which she pulls out, and she goes to her balcony with the ball...and is surprised when twice she sees a light shine from Hiroto's old place. And so she grabs her bag and coat and runs (in her high heels!) all the way over to his place, where she wanders around and finds everything empty, until she hears something, and runs until she sees the light of a flashlight, which finds her, and it is of course Hiroto who seems utterly shocked to see her.
I love the final images of the two of them staring at each other in the dark of the old factory, as though within the wreckage of their romance and relationship, with a rope stretched out between them.
***
The whole episode just reeked of change and pain and more pain - there were so many passages, both of space and time and for example the boat scene which I guess should have happened around sunset (yeah, 3:30, whatever), seemed to pass from daylight into darkness quite purposefully: they met on a beautifully sunny day, yet by the time they part, it is dark and night, and their love is over. I love Hiroto's says that his heart became dark and when we see him again, he really has become dark: clothes, hair, more serious than ever. Little things like these really make the drama. The cinematography and direction was really standout in the episode also - so many pieces to fill out the picture and give us something so profound and heartfelt and moving.
I can't imagine what next week is going to be like. I desperately want to know what happens next, but I also don't want it to end, don't want Hiroto to suffer anymore...I'm so torn and so upset and this drama has affected me so much...I just want them to have a little happiness before the end, and I don't want Nao to marry bad-tablemanners-Saito!
***
Below, I've included two dialogue passages from Hiroto & Nao's farewell because they are really beautiful. Huge thanks to dancestar24 for the subtitles!
Nao: I left home.
Hiroto: What are you thinking?
Nao: I'm leaving my family. To me you are important more than anything, anyone. No matter what I exchange you for or leave everything, I need you. To me, you are most important
Hiroto: What are you gonna do?
Nao: I'll be with you. I want to. Forever.
Hiroto: So like this...we're gonna live on like this. Think about 3 days from now. We don't know where we're going. Say we go into the country, in a small aparment we live together. 3 days later, watching out the window you'll cry. Thinking about your mom, thinking about your brother, thinking about your dad, you'll cry. You'll cry...and I can't do anything.
Nao: You're such an adult. You're so calm.
Hiroto: (without rancor) Be an adult. Be calm.
Nao: You don't like me?
Hiroto: Are you serious? Are you a middle school girl?
Nao: I'm worried. I'm worried... because I haven't fallen in love a lot like you.
Hiroto: That's not fair to...
Nao: No. I wanna be with you now. If I'm not with you now it's over. Believe me. Give up something for me. Give up something important for me.
Hiroto: I can't. I can't. My brother or my mom. I can't give them up. My dad passed away...and I can't leave them either.
***
Hiroto: We should go back to our places.
Nao: You mean...we're gonna say goodbyes? Right?
Hiroto: Yeah.
[a little while later]
Nao: Whales. I wanted to go see them with you. Are there any? Not here, right? Why are you laughing?
Hiroto: That's cute I thought.
Nao: It's ok now to say that. I mean, you really don't have to say so.
Hiroto: I want to. I want to say whole life's worth.
Nao: Stupid [she sobs]
Hiroto: Don't cry. [beginning to cry] It makes me sad. I want to cry too.
Ferry Announcer: We will reach the harbor in 15 minutes. We will reach the harbor in 15 minutes.
Nao: The next 15 minutes...can we hold hands?
Hiroto: Yeah. [he hesitates a second before he takes her hand and then clasps it] Here, one thing, can I ask you?
Nao: What is it?
Hiroto: Since transplant...5 years you're ok right?
Nao: Yeah.
Hiroto: And now it's 3 years?
Nao: Yeah.
Hiroto: To make sure you're alive...I'm worried so for 3 years, on christmas eve,
from the balcony, can you shine that orange thing?
Nao: if I do, will you shine back?
Hiroto: Yeah.
Nao: Ok. I love your hand. It's warm and always squeezes my hand when I want you to. I really liked your hands.
We left off episode 8 with Ayuta embracing Nao and as you know, I was appalled and pre-emptively angry. I was wrong, and I'm so glad! Ayuta realizes his mistake and backs off Nao very quickly, and he proves himself to be Hiroto's true friend, the kind of person who would not betray his friend like that. Ayuta then grabs his coat, keys and cellphone, and leaves Nao alone in his apartment to wander around all night in the cold without anywhere else he could go. What a good guy! He later calls Hiroto to tell him of Nao's situation, and then calls Nao to tell her to meet Hiroto at the Yokohama Harbor at 3:30 in the afternoon.
We then see Hiroto who is clearly sunk in his own Deep Thoughts and trying to decide what to do. I knew that Hiroto wouldn't run away with Nao, but he doesn't do it for the reasons I had imagined. I had thought (based on his concern over her family's reaction to him and the way he kept asking her how her family felt, and the way that he went to talk to her father) that Hiroto was the kind of guy who wouldn't date a girl against her family's wishes, and so if her family was against it, he wouldn't press it until he had their blessing. In fact I think this is exactly what he would have said if Nao hadn't run away. Because she ran away, it forced him to do the unthinkable, which is so appallingly sad, but I understand completely. They were, as his voiceover continues to repeat, only 20, very young, with their lives ahead of them still, and he wouldn't sacrifice everything important in his life to make a foolish choice that would hurt other people even if it meant that he and Nao could have a little happiness.
The drama continues to surprise me with scenes of Hiroto watching his mother and beloved little brother sleeping together so peacefully and idyllically, and then later we hear Hiroto ask Ren if he likes their mother...I just never expected these things, but obviously, these are the things that Hiroto thinks about: even though his mother has wrecked his life and destroyed the hope he had with Nao's family, he still puts Ren first and his blood first because they are all he has left to him that will always be left to him. I think in part this goes back to the lack of self-esteem we saw in Hiroto in episode 1 where he describes himself and Kou & Ayuta as losers who fail at life - I believe that there is a huge part of Hiroto who always knew he never had a chance with Nao and that the little happiness they did share was like a dream snatched from a cruel world. So when these massive obstacles are put in front of them, I think he does take it as a sign that it's not to be - and if you remember in episode 8 how he walked away from his mother saying "It's the end, it's the end" - there was such a horrible note of finality in him, and it still rips me up to remember him tipping that gorgeous HN ring into the water. He already knew it was over then - he lost all hope. So when Nao runs away from home, he thinks about it hard, no doubt, but in his gut he already knows what he will decide, no matter how painful or how tempted he may be.
I've watched the episode only once with subtitles, but I've rewatched almost the entire thing several times now during my commutes and other snatched moments (on the iPod) and from the moment that Hiroto runs to meet Nao at the harbor through to the end, I continue to be a ball of misery as I watch this, like watching a trainwreck unfold over and over again. Kamenashi's expressions and the subtlety of his portrayal of Hiroto's suffering are just stunning and powerful and it hurts like rubbing your eyes with broken glass might hurt.
Nao is such a besotted darling, she never imagines that Hiroto won't run away with her - she sees only that their love is more important to her than anything else and she is willing to abandon her family, her life, everything, to be with the man she wants for the rest of her life. Or at least that is what she thinks right now. And Hiroto knows this. He suggests to her that they could go away to the country and live together in a small apartment (and just imagine the pain he must be in as he even thinks about what that could be like: to enjoy his life with her), but that in three days she would miss her mother, her brother, her father, and she would cry. She would cry, he emphasizes to her, and Nao can't really say that she wouldn't. Ayase does a great job of presenting Nao's disbelief and frustration, especially when she confronts him on how calm he is, and then seconds later yells at him that she wants him to give up something really important to him for her the way that she is willing to give up everything for him.
But he won't. Hiroto just tells her that quite plainly: he won't sacrifice his brother and his mother - his father is gone and they are all he has left, and he won't abandon them - he can't abandon them. Poor Nao: she asks him if he likes her, and his disbelief that she could even ask such a question are clear in how he responds by asking her if she's a middle schooler to ask that - which reminds me of how he was with her in the very beginning in those first 2 episodes where he thought her very young and naive and forthright: all the things that charmed him then, but now he's chosen to be the adult and reminds her that they can't live on her childishness.
For Nao, things are very black and white, which I can understand, particularly knowing how much of life she's missed out on and how much she thought she might never experience. She basically gives Hiroto an ultimatum: if she can't be with him now, it's over. From her perspective, life is right now. She can't wait. When she spent her youth in hospitals and looking forward to a future that could end tomorrow, I can sympathise with why she feels that if she can't be with Hiroto right now, she can't wait for things to change when it could take a long time for them to be together and she may not have a long time. Her experiences have stolen her ability to be patient and have taught her to be wary of anything that is in some distant future. She lost that sense of the future that most of us have as something that is waiting for us, so she can't afford to wait for the future to happen.
The things is: Hiroto knows this about her, and he understands, which is why they end things. The rest of the scene is a killer, from them holding hands for fifteen minutes, the last fifteen minutes of "them" - and the way that Hiroto's voice breaks when he tells her that he wants to say a whole lifetime's worth to her (winterspel curls up into a ball and sobs). Everything else: the whales that she wanted to see with him, the way she tells him that she loves his hands and how he squeezes her exactly when she wants him to...the way he tells her he's worried about her and her health and he wants to know she is still alive so they agree to shine their lights on Christmas Eve for three years.
How can your heart not break for everything that they're giving up and walking away from? The romantic in me wonders how can you walk away from what you love, when you love someone that much?
***Hiroto: [voiceover] We were holding hands for just 15 minutes in our long life, and like this, my love from when I was 20 ended. I still remember it well on that ship. I should have said to her "Let's take time and straighten things out [in] our lives around us." Nao graduating from university and I settling the factory, then maybe things could have been different, but that time, on that ship, in front of your eyes, I stayed silent. Your eyes didn't allow any time. It said that if the answer didn't come right then, it would die.
***
The time jump was handled well, although I am a little fuzzy on exactly how much time passed, 3 or almost 4 years. In that time, Hiroto and his mother sold the factory because they couldn't keep up with the loan payments, and they moved and started a new life. But they were there for at least 3 years because Hiroto says that he watched for her light on Christmas Eve and for 2 years it came, but the third year her balcony was dark. Hiroto's voiceover again is just to kill you:Hiroto: The orange...orange light shone for two Christmas Eves and I shone back as if I was shining all of Yokohama, but the third year it didn't shine. I couldn't find the light. It was dark. My heart became dark, too. I didn't believe she died, but thought she just forgot me for some reason. Without any doubt, I was sure it wasn't her that died, but me inside her heart that died. Maybe I could have run off with you..but I couldn't. I mean, we were only 20. We were too naive and too young and uncontrollably only 20...and my love at 20 ended. But to think, back then did I love you well?
When we see Hiroto again, he is changed: he is dressed in a black down jacket over a dark suit and tie, and his hair is a little shorter, black, and the only thing that is familiar really, is that he is looking out over the water, like we've seen before, and smoking. Ayuta meets him there, and he's also dressed in a suit and it's clear they haven't seen each other in a while, and we discover that they are in Yokohama for Kou's wedding...NOT to Yuuko, but to some stranger, but everyone looks good (except for Koki's new orange hair, ew!) and Kou looks gorgeous in his white wedding suit...They are all changed, these three amgigos - a little subdued, more mature both in looks and in the way they hold themselves, and it's clear that the youth they shared is now in the past and that they have moved on and are continuing to move on.
When the three young men meet for a drink later after the wedding, Ayuta tells Kou that Yuuko is on her way to join them from Kobe where she is in medical school, because she really wanted to congratulate him. So they talk about how Kou & Yuuko's relationship dissolved into friendship which is rather sweet and very nice, but as soon as Nao's name is mentioned, we can see Hiroto's face change subtly and he deflates by increments and it's clear that he still lives with that old pain. He absents himself very quickly on the pretense of needing to buy cigarettes, but really, he just wants to be alone for a little while. Unfortunately, while he smokes alone by the water, he sees Nao.
Nao, of course has changed, too, and is dressed quite elegantly and looks gorgeous, gorgeous! Their meeting is painful as Hiroto explains that he's here for Kou's wedding...and then he notices her engagement ring, which she immediately tries to hide which makes her drop the folders she's carrying which are for planning a wedding. Hiroto walks away as quickly as he can after than, and we can see in his face the pain rising ever higher to the surface, and it has sharp jagged edges still that don't seem to be dulled by the passage of time. And then comes the voicover that makes me feel his pain and it's really the most awful, painful, heartbreaking line in the episode - somehow it's worse than him saying that the me inside Nao's heart had died: Hiroto: I am the most embarassing guy in the world right now...drinking and getting a headache. How old can one be an adult? Please tell me, how old do I have to be to not be hurt, be sad, or be all mad?
This voiceover plays over Hiroto getting completely drunk later and being cared for and propped up by his friends, and Hiroto's pain must be awful for him to be so devastated by the knowledge that she will marry someone else.
We then see Nao and Yuuko together and Yuuko fills Nao in on Hiroto's life: that they sold the factory and moved, that Hiroto now works for a big company as a ship mechanic, that his mother now works in a department store (and she looks so respectable now!) and that Ren is in middle school and plays baseball. I love how Yuuko says that it's like Hiroto's family is her family from how she reacts to hearing about them. It's also very interesting that Nao seems to be getting married less for herself and more because it's expected and she wants to do it while her grandmother is still alive and healthy - she sounds so far away from the idealistic twenty-year old who asked Hiroto to give up everything for her and who could even ask him if he liked her when he said no. But then Yuuko tells Nao that Hiroto was very upset when he found out that she was getting married....
I know, it's easy to be disappointed in Nao, but everyone changes and I know for sure that the person I was when I was twenty was very far from the person I became even a few years later. Life and people change a lot - sometimes it happens quickly, and sometimes it happens over longer time. But I don't blame Nao for moving on - but I do blame her for her choice of life partner because that guy is just...not right. Perhaps she feels like he will be easy to live with: someone who dotes on her and will always take care of her, and that if she can't have the bright flame of true love, she'll settle for the gentle flame of a friendship? I don't know. I wish she could have found someone better, but I guess within the constraints of the drama, she ends up with who we've already been introduced to (having Kou marry an unknown was enough, I suppose).
(Seeing Nao as a schoolteacher was soo awesome, but how sad is it that she was teaching Romeo & Juliet? Ack!)
In any case, we discover later that Nao has saved all her memories of Hiroto: the gloves she knit for him, the orange ball (which still works!), etc. in a box in her closet, which she pulls out, and she goes to her balcony with the ball...and is surprised when twice she sees a light shine from Hiroto's old place. And so she grabs her bag and coat and runs (in her high heels!) all the way over to his place, where she wanders around and finds everything empty, until she hears something, and runs until she sees the light of a flashlight, which finds her, and it is of course Hiroto who seems utterly shocked to see her.
I love the final images of the two of them staring at each other in the dark of the old factory, as though within the wreckage of their romance and relationship, with a rope stretched out between them.
***
The whole episode just reeked of change and pain and more pain - there were so many passages, both of space and time and for example the boat scene which I guess should have happened around sunset (yeah, 3:30, whatever), seemed to pass from daylight into darkness quite purposefully: they met on a beautifully sunny day, yet by the time they part, it is dark and night, and their love is over. I love Hiroto's says that his heart became dark and when we see him again, he really has become dark: clothes, hair, more serious than ever. Little things like these really make the drama. The cinematography and direction was really standout in the episode also - so many pieces to fill out the picture and give us something so profound and heartfelt and moving.
I can't imagine what next week is going to be like. I desperately want to know what happens next, but I also don't want it to end, don't want Hiroto to suffer anymore...I'm so torn and so upset and this drama has affected me so much...I just want them to have a little happiness before the end, and I don't want Nao to marry bad-tablemanners-Saito!
***
Below, I've included two dialogue passages from Hiroto & Nao's farewell because they are really beautiful. Huge thanks to dancestar24 for the subtitles!
Nao: I left home.
Hiroto: What are you thinking?
Nao: I'm leaving my family. To me you are important more than anything, anyone. No matter what I exchange you for or leave everything, I need you. To me, you are most important
Hiroto: What are you gonna do?
Nao: I'll be with you. I want to. Forever.
Hiroto: So like this...we're gonna live on like this. Think about 3 days from now. We don't know where we're going. Say we go into the country, in a small aparment we live together. 3 days later, watching out the window you'll cry. Thinking about your mom, thinking about your brother, thinking about your dad, you'll cry. You'll cry...and I can't do anything.
Nao: You're such an adult. You're so calm.
Hiroto: (without rancor) Be an adult. Be calm.
Nao: You don't like me?
Hiroto: Are you serious? Are you a middle school girl?
Nao: I'm worried. I'm worried... because I haven't fallen in love a lot like you.
Hiroto: That's not fair to...
Nao: No. I wanna be with you now. If I'm not with you now it's over. Believe me. Give up something for me. Give up something important for me.
Hiroto: I can't. I can't. My brother or my mom. I can't give them up. My dad passed away...and I can't leave them either.
***
Hiroto: We should go back to our places.
Nao: You mean...we're gonna say goodbyes? Right?
Hiroto: Yeah.
[a little while later]
Nao: Whales. I wanted to go see them with you. Are there any? Not here, right? Why are you laughing?
Hiroto: That's cute I thought.
Nao: It's ok now to say that. I mean, you really don't have to say so.
Hiroto: I want to. I want to say whole life's worth.
Nao: Stupid [she sobs]
Hiroto: Don't cry. [beginning to cry] It makes me sad. I want to cry too.
Ferry Announcer: We will reach the harbor in 15 minutes. We will reach the harbor in 15 minutes.
Nao: The next 15 minutes...can we hold hands?
Hiroto: Yeah. [he hesitates a second before he takes her hand and then clasps it] Here, one thing, can I ask you?
Nao: What is it?
Hiroto: Since transplant...5 years you're ok right?
Nao: Yeah.
Hiroto: And now it's 3 years?
Nao: Yeah.
Hiroto: To make sure you're alive...I'm worried so for 3 years, on christmas eve,
from the balcony, can you shine that orange thing?
Nao: if I do, will you shine back?
Hiroto: Yeah.
Nao: Ok. I love your hand. It's warm and always squeezes my hand when I want you to. I really liked your hands.