Wataya and Sanae erase Tooru from Maori’s records in the aftermath of his death, turning the diary, binder, phone, laptop, and sketchbooks that sustain Maori’s daily life into objects of deliberate revision. The act is meant to spare her from confronting her boyfriend’s death while she is vulnerable, but its careful substitutions and hidden originals make protection inseparable from concealment: the records she relies on to know herself are rewritten, while fragments of the life they erase are kept beyond her reach.

Background and Decision

After Tooru dies, Wataya considers his request that she remove him from Maori’s journal and binder. Maori has anterograde amnesia and depends on these records to understand her situation and the events of her life. Wataya is also concerned that she could fall into depression if she faces each day pessimistically. Yet Wataya recognizes that this concern might serve to justify a decision made on Maori’s behalf; the choice is not simply a medical precaution but an intervention into the story Maori can read about herself.

Wataya consults Sanae, Tooru’s sister, and explains both the risk to Maori and Tooru’s request. Sanae offers to type the binder and journal into a computer, removing Tooru and repairing the passages around each deletion. She refuses to decide whether the act is right or wrong for Wataya. Instead, she lays out the uncertain consequences: Maori might suffer if Tooru remains in the records, while Wataya might feel guilty if she erases him, and she might also regret not carrying out his request. Sanae agrees to help if Wataya chooses to proceed, making the decision Wataya’s even as she offers to share the labor.

Wataya decides to act without telling Maori, believing that Maori would stop her if asked. She takes the binder and journal while Maori is away, then makes copies of the journal, which fills several notebooks, and of the binder. When she returns, she finds Maori still in bed and apparently unaware of the missing records. The copies preserve a version of the material before alteration, but Maori herself is not consulted about whether she wants the change.

Rewriting the Record

Sanae stays up through the night typing the binder and journal into her laptop. Rather than merely removing Tooru’s name, she replaces him with Wataya and adjusts surrounding details to make the new account read smoothly. For example, the revised diary says that Maori and Wataya were in the same class in their third year of high school, although they had been in different classes; it changes the account to match the previous year and modifies references to other people. Sanae asks Wataya to review the rewritten diary for anything that sounds unnatural. The textual substitution makes a practical record coherent, but its coherence is manufactured: a relationship with Tooru is converted into a different history with Wataya.

Wataya reads the new diary alongside the original. The pages of the original bring back the happy experiences Maori and Tooru shared and the support he gave her. Within several days, Tooru’s funeral has taken place and Wataya has finished checking the altered version. Maori’s parents, who knew about Tooru before his death, are grateful for what he did for her and mourn his loss. The family’s grief and the decision to conceal him thus coexist: the records are altered for Maori, not because those around her have forgotten what he meant.

The erasure extends beyond the written diary. Tooru appears in Maori’s phone through photographs, videos, messages, and conversations with Wataya. The group decides to replace the phone, telling Maori that her old one broke, and to explain the missing messaging history as a failed data transfer. Tooru’s sister initially tries to buy the replacement as his last wish, but Maori’s parents insist on paying; in the end, they share the cost. The new device is not simply a replacement for damaged hardware: it removes the everyday digital evidence of a relationship Maori cannot independently recall.

The Morning of the Switch

On the morning of the third day after Tooru’s funeral, Wataya goes to Maori’s home early, while Maori is still weak and sleeping in her parents’ room. Wataya gathers the binder and the many volumes of the journal from a desk drawer, then transfers Sanae’s edited digital notes and diary onto Maori’s laptop. Sanae has added entries covering the days since Tooru’s death and falsified the files’ timestamps, so the replacement documents appear to belong to the established record. From then on, Maori is to read the digital notes and journal to learn about her life and enter new diary entries on the laptop.

Wataya also carries out the phone substitution. She deliberately disrupts the data transfer and registers Maori on a new messaging app, ensuring that their old messages referring to Tooru will no longer appear. She keeps the old phone rather than discarding it, leaving the deleted history in her own possession. She likewise removes drawings of Tooru from Maori’s sketchbooks, carefully tearing out the pages and cutting away the remaining torn edges. These actions extend the revised account from written memory into images and communications: the aim is not only to remove a name from a diary but to leave Maori with no readily accessible trace of her life with him.

The wall notes that direct Maori to the records must also be changed. Wataya replaces all the notes, not just the one that needs editing, so the sheets will look consistent. The original reminder directs Maori to read the notes and journal on her desk; the replacement sends her to the materials on her laptop. Among the old papers, however, Wataya discovers a sticky note on the back of one sheet: “Even if I recover, always remember Tooru Kamiya. The important things will always be in an important place.” Wataya suspects Maori put it there so that she would see it when she took the note down after recovering. Unsure whether the message reflects foreknowledge of the planned erasure or simply the strength of Maori’s feelings, Wataya keeps it rather than destroying it. The new printed notes go on the wall, while the handwritten appeal is hidden away with the original records.

Consequences and Significance

After the switch, Maori follows the familiar routine through her laptop, believing she has always kept her notes and journal there. She does not know that Tooru has died, yet she feels that something is wrong. When she discovers that the messaging-app transfer failed, she says the messages had reminded her of the fun she and Wataya had shared and regrets that she can no longer see them. Wataya embraces her and promises that they will have more fun together in real life. The comfort is sincere, but it operates inside a false account: Wataya’s reassurance fills the space left by memories that the intervention has made inaccessible.

The act’s stakes arise from Maori’s dependence on records, not from the assumption that those records are neutral. Her binder and journal help her orient herself each day; they also preserve relationships and experiences she cannot carry forward as ordinary recollection. Rewriting them changes the past available to her, while keeping copies, the old phone, and the sticky note creates a concealed counter-archive among the people around her. The arrangement protects Maori from an immediate revelation but deprives her of the chance to choose what she wants to know about Tooru.

That concealment does not make Tooru disappear from the story. Much later, Maori’s drawings of him reappear as evidence of a connection that the edited records could not wholly contain. The drawings show Tooru as Maori remembers him, and their force depends on the contrast between the pages Wataya removed and the images that remain. The preserved note also points toward a future in which Maori may recover and encounter the name again. The erasure is therefore a consequential, temporary reshaping of access to memory—not proof that the relationship has been eliminated.