Your Lie In April: Across The Multiverse

Epilogue: Old Man Arima

Epilogue: Old Man Arima

"Everybody say cheese!"

"Cheese!"

The shiny black Canon camera mounted on the tripod was set to burst, and for good reason. As soon as the shutter finished clicking, Gaku felt his grandson squirm out of his grip and dash back into the park.

"Takeda, wait!"

But as soon as the other grandchildren—or great-grandchildren, from the perspective of the eldest reunion attendees—saw Takeda's blue-shirted, blonde-haired form sprinting back to freedom, the tinder box was lit, and they all stampeded after him.

"I want to go on the swing first!" a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl wearing athletic attire shouted.

"Race ya to the seesaw!" another blue-eyed boy dressed in a superhero outfit challenged his companion.

"Gah, come on!" Gaku fumed, sighing in defeat.

"Son?" a gravelly but gentle voice said to his right. "Is everything alright?"

"Sorry, dad," Gaku groaned. "I was just hoping to get perfect pictures for you and mom."

"You've done more than enough, son," Kousei said, his lips cracking into a small smile. "Go on. Enjoy the day with your wife and children."

"Thanks pops," Gaku said, giving his father a hug. Unlike past times, however, he didn't squeeze too hard.

His father was eighty-six years old, after all.

As Kousei sat back down on the bench, he took a deep breath and basked in the warm sunshine that blessed the Towa Hall Park. An occasion like this where all of the children, grandchildren, and their family members were all in one place was a rare commodity.

So Kousei made sure to enjoy every minute of it.

His son, Gaku, now sixty-two and the CEO of a prominent railway company, had married a tall, beautiful French opera singer after having met her on a business trip to France. Kaoto, for her part, had been proposed to by an average-height, brown-haired man by the name of Asahi during her time in grad school for Nursing. Kousei recalled the reservations he'd had about Asahi at first. But as he watched his son-in-law help Kaoto clean up the badminton set, he was glad that Asahi had proven him wrong.

Over by the merry-go round, Tsubaki and Watari were helping their daughter Hana give their twin great-grandsons a spin on the play structure. Takeshi and Emi sat at the picnic table and recounted their love story to their great-granddaughter, whose big eyes full of childish curiosity and wonder lit up with amazement. Their son Himari, a stoic but caring gentleman with thick glasses and a red baseball cap, sat by Takeshi to make sure he didn't fall over.

Kousei chuckled to himself. Growing old was a part of life. That was just a simple fact.

It had seemed so far off back when he was still a young, naïve, passive middle-school boy.

And yet, here they all were now.

Old, gray-haired, and sentimental.

Kousei and his friends had gone through many of their own impressive adventures here in their own timeline. Him and Kaori, for example, had performed in countless countries. France, Germany, Ireland, Brazil, Egypt, and South Korea just to name a few. Wherever they went, their music reached their audience, leaving an unerasable trace of happiness on their souls.