Maori and Tooru’s end-of-summer fireworks date takes place on August 31, the last day of summer vacation, and turns a carefully prepared outing into a moment of mutual intimacy. Because Maori’s memory resets each day, she approaches Tooru as the boyfriend she has learned about through her binder and journal, yet the attraction she feels is not merely a record she has read: during the crowded festival she reaches for his hand, and under the fireworks she cries that she does not want to forget. The date brings the story’s central tension into the open: memory may fail to accumulate as information, but affection can still take shape in the present and leave traces in objects, words, and bodily feeling.

Background and Preparation

August 31 is already marked in Maori’s planner as the day she and her boyfriend will see the fireworks. She wakes to find a yukata laid out on her desk, prepared by the version of herself who lived the previous day. A Post-it note, bearing a drawing of Maori, tells her to have enough fun for both of them and is signed by her yesterday-self. The message makes her daily discontinuity tangible: the person who prepared for the date is no longer available to remember doing so, but has left her a way to continue.

Maori steadies herself by rereading her binder and journal, the records she consults each morning because she cannot recall the previous day. She knows from those records that she has a boyfriend and that the fireworks are their plan. The fake sunflower Tooru gave her feels special even though she cannot summon a clear memory of receiving it. She attaches it to her hair with a hairpin rather than pinning it to her straw hat as she usually does. This small choice is both practical and intimate: the object’s significance reaches her through an unexplained sense of attachment, not through remembered context.

She dresses by watching a video her past self found to show how to wear and tie a yukata. Since riding a bicycle in the garment would be dangerous, her mother drives her to the station, though Maori declines the offer to be taken all the way to the neighboring district where she will meet Tooru. She boards the train and arrives ten minutes early. The preparation has been shared across time by Maori’s past self, her mother, and the records she has made; the date itself, however, must be lived afresh.

Meeting and Growing Closeness

At the meeting station, Tooru approaches Maori wearing a dark blue yukata. She recognizes him as the boyfriend in the photographs she has studied before leaving home. The encounter puts an actual person beside the preserved image: she knows who he is by consulting evidence, while the two of them must make the day’s relationship in the present.

As the festival crowds gather, Maori notices couples holding hands. She looks at Tooru’s hand and wonders whether she should reach for it; she has never held hands with a boy before, but would not mind. Before she can deliberate further, she takes his hand. Tooru looks surprised, and Maori tries to remain calm as her heart pounds. She explains that holding hands will keep them from getting separated and that, since they are meeting his sister, they can try acting like a couple. Her stated reasons offer cover for a gesture that is already emotionally real to her.

They continue through the crowd holding hands, and the narration marks the difference plainly: they are not walking like a fake couple but like a real one. As the street grows so crowded that they can hardly move, the practical excuse of staying together becomes inseparable from the intimacy itself. The festival’s public setting sharpens the contrast between their nominal arrangement and Maori’s immediate experience: she knows their relationship through written records, but her own actions make it present.

The Fireworks and the Emotional Turn

After talking until after five thirty, they leave a café and walk toward the river, where the fireworks will be held. Restaurants and bars have set up outdoor booths, and festival stalls line the already crowded street. The sky fades from crimson as the festival lights come on; a cool breeze begins to blow while they head toward the bridge, where they are to meet Tooru’s sister. The evening’s changing light and weather frame a date that Maori knows has been planned, but cannot remember planning herself.

At the riverbank, they sit together to watch the fireworks. Maori, who had been uncomfortable in large crowds, feels soothed by the thought that they are simply two insignificant people among all the others. They look up with the crowd, fall silent in awe, and hold hands tightly. The ordinary scale of the scene—two people among many—does not diminish its importance to her; it makes the closeness feel like a refuge rather than a performance.

The fireworks prompt Maori to wonder whether the emotions she feels will vanish by tomorrow along with her memories, unable to take root over time. She hopes that something of the feeling will carry over to the next day’s self. Then, before she has thought through what she is saying, she tells Tooru, “I…don’t want to forget,” and tears blur her vision. She does not want the experience to exist only as a diary entry: the date is a moment that cannot be retrieved once it has passed, and she wants to retain it as lived experience rather than merely documented information.

Tooru squeezes her hand and tells her, “It’s human nature to forget. But don’t worry. No memory disappears completely. I believe that,” he says. His response does not promise that Maori will wake remembering the date. Instead, it offers faith that what is lost from conscious recollection is not necessarily erased altogether. Maori wonders whether he knows about her amnesia and has chosen not to make her feel afraid. In that uncertainty, she makes a wish to remain with him, while his reciprocal grip answers her distress without requiring her to explain it further.

Meaning and Afterlife of the Date

Maori asks Tooru, “Tooru, please don’t go anywhere.” He answers, “Don’t worry. I’ll always be by your side.” The exchange gives the date a promise of continuity at precisely the point when Maori fears that continuity is beyond her control. A firework blooms in the night sky and drowns out his voice. The scene leaves the promise suspended between the two of them: it is spoken in a moment of closeness, but the story’s larger course will make memory and presence fragile in ways neither can settle here.

The date’s significance also depends on the records that surround it. Maori’s binder and journal let her meet each morning’s life with knowledge of what her previous self experienced; later, photographs and videos of Tooru give those entries faces and movement. A video of the two riding together, for example, shows Tooru pedaling through twilight while Maori’s voice sounds playful behind the camera. On the fireworks date, the same divide between record and experience becomes painful: Maori wants the feeling itself to persist, not merely a written account that a future version of her will have to read.

After Tooru’s death, Izumi Wataya and Keiko Nishikawa remove his traces from Maori’s records and digital life, acting on Tooru’s request and fearing the pain his presence might cause. While replacing Maori’s notes, Izumi finds a message on the back of one: “Even if I recover, always remember Tooru Kamiya. The important things will always be in an important place.” The note makes the date’s hope more complicated. The promise that memory cannot disappear completely is not a guarantee that conscious recollection will remain available, and the records meant to protect Maori can also be altered or withheld.

When Maori eventually recovers, she finds Tooru in drawings Izumi has never seen before. They are not the earlier sketches of him looking aside, frowning shyly, or smiling faintly; they show Tooru as Maori remembers him. The drawings make visible a form of continuity the date could only hope for: a remembered person preserved through Maori’s own art. The fireworks scene thus stands both as a romance turning point and as an early statement of the book’s larger question—not simply whether a day can be remembered, but what remains of an experience after the mind can no longer call it back.