Withered Summer Fireworks

✦ Story of "Withered Summer Fireworks" ✦

The protagonist doesn't want to recall her identity. She wakes up in a hospital room, reportedly just after a car accident, with her right leg completely gone.

She lies in bed all day - the driver fled the scene, so she has to bear all medical expenses herself, with no family or friends to rely on.

As time passes in the empty hospital room, she can only watch a cloudless summer gradually accumulate rain clouds, eventually beginning to thunder.

Looking at the calendar, she realizes summer is almost withered away, time is almost up.

Thinking about having to undergo surgery while bedridden, her leg gone, her stage career ended - she has only one thought: "Suicide."

The phone she angrily clenched slips from her hand, shattering on the floor, the screensaver showing a photo of her closest friend from years ago.

That friend died by suicide - driven to desperation, she jumped from a residential building rooftop. At the time, the protagonist was on tour, and by the time she arrived, the friend had already been cremated.

Seeing the friend's family setting off fireworks in memorial, the protagonist felt furious - her friend had clearly wanted to be buried, laid to rest properly. That day, it was also the end of summer.

Without much hope, the protagonist escapes the rural hospital on crutches. The only tall building nearby is an abandoned church.

The church has been neglected for years - reportedly, the congregation moved to Taoist and Buddhist temples. Naturally, what was once the largest church here fell into ruin.

But because the church land has no value, and churches are associated with deities, no one has demolished or renovated it.

The protagonist painfully climbs to the church roof, sitting on the glass dome. The colorful glass dome resembles a Mondrian painting, but with scattered holes.

She sits near the largest hole, close to the dome's peak, throws her crutches down through the hole, then collapses on the dome. The crutches make a heavy sound on the floor below, broken like her leg.

Lamenting the impermanence of life, she opens a box of fireworks, planning to light them and jump, to have the same memorial as her friend - releasing fireworks after death, using her own body to fulfill her friend's wish to return to the earth.

But she slips - the lit fireworks fall from the glass dome, landing on leather seats below, shooting vertically upward.

For the first time, she watches fireworks from above through the glass dome - brilliantly dazzling, but they also ignite the church.

The entire church bursts into flames, fireworks continuously resounding inside.

The protagonist suddenly thinks being cremated like her friend might be better.

So she moves her body, grabs the remaining fireworks and lighter, and falls backward into the church. At that moment, the air in the church center miraculously generates airflow, then begins to twist, creating a "time collapse" - the protagonist falls into the vortex.

Waking on an asphalt road, but with no cars or pedestrians.

A withered summer deathly silent night, the protagonist has only a lighter and fireworks, lying confused.

Suddenly, she sees someone on a rooftop, and the time collapse airflow in the sky ahead - she might think she's seeing her life flash before her eyes, or truly believe she's traveled to the past, or genuinely feel she's saving someone from the past in the present... but regardless, she firmly believes the person above is "her."

Forgetting her broken leg, she stumbles directly downward, lighting fireworks immediately.

If she attacks the time collapse airflow with fireworks before "she" jumps... it should be in time! What if she returns at this moment?

At this moment... time doesn't return to the past or go to the future. In the withered summer's silence, the sky blooms with ultimate colored fireworks. The rooftop "her" gets startled and retreats immediately.

The fireworks bloom with ultimate colors resounding through the clouds, becoming celebration for this event.

Time happens to be when summer is about to wither - after fireworks, autumn descends, desolation sweeping through the fireworks' final moment.

Autumn wind simultaneously blows away the bandages on the protagonist's leg.

The protagonist falls to the ground, while the rooftop "her" quickly runs down, supporting the protagonist.

"What happened to you?" "I'm glad you're okay" they say simultaneously.

Amid confusion and uncertainty, they don't explain much, just realizing that in difficult times, at least they have each other.

The two walk along the starry path illuminated by fireworks, step by step toward days when summer hasn't yet withered away.

If they head west, perhaps they can still catch up with summer... and live again.

While supporting each other, the protagonist suddenly sees her friend's face glitching, blurring, collapsing - suddenly清醒 in daze and hallucinations.

Finally returning to the hospital room.

Fireworks are going off outside, the calendar by the bed still shows 2025. Wanting to watch the fireworks, but her crutches are gone.

She doesn't know if she saved her past self, or if it was a dream, an illusion, if time collapse was just mentality so strong it distorted local causality - but as a familiar voice calls out at the door, time happens to be at the last second of the withered summer.

"I saved you too, hey!"

（Unofficial Translation）

Animation

Currently in preparation... (date TBD)

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