Jiyugaoka is the apartment setting for a night when Aomamé lets Ayumi stay close to her, briefly loosening the emotional isolation she has maintained since Tamaki’s death. The domestic calm of the visit ends with Aomamé noticing an unmistakable discordance in the sky, making the apartment a threshold between private recollection and altered reality.

Setting and Arrival

After changing trains in the subway, Aomamé and Ayumi arrive at the apartment in Jiyugaoka shortly before eleven at night. Both are pleasantly drunk and sleepy. Aomamé prepares a place for Ayumi to sleep on the sofa and lends her a pajama, making the apartment an ordinary refuge after their evening out.

Ayumi then asks to share Aomamé’s bed for a little while, promising that she will not do anything unusual. Aomamé agrees. The arrangement begins as a small negotiation over closeness and boundaries, with Ayumi asking to be near her and Aomamé deciding to make room for that request.

A Night of Care and Recollection

When Ayumi is fully asleep, Aomamé gets out of bed, apparently intending to spend the night on the sofa after all. She drinks two glasses of mineral water from the refrigerator and sits on an aluminum chair on the small balcony. The spring night is peaceful; distant traffic sounds like an artificial sea, while the neon lights have grown sparser after midnight.

In the stillness, Aomamé considers her affection for Ayumi and the limits she set after Tamaki died: she had decided not to form another real relationship or make a new friend. Yet she finds that she can open her heart to Ayumi naturally, at least to a point. Her thoughts distinguish that new intimacy from the singular bond she shared with Tamaki, whose presence she addresses inwardly as she recalls their years together and their caresses.

The Sky and the Scene’s Significance

The apartment’s movement from bedroom to balcony gives Aomamé space to shift from the immediate comfort of Ayumi’s sleeping presence into memories of Tamaki. Looking up from the balcony, she notices that the night sky is not the one she ordinarily sees. The difference is subtle but undeniable: something has changed.

Jiyugaoka thus holds two kinds of closeness at once: the fragile possibility of allowing a new friend near, and the continuing intimacy of memory. The quiet domestic scene culminates not in resolution but in a perceptual rupture. Against the peaceful spring night and thinning neon, Aomamé’s recognition of an altered sky turns the apartment into the setting for a decisive encounter with a world that no longer matches her familiar one.