The Summer Fireworks Never Came

The cicadas were louder than usual that summer.

Their voices echoed through the empty streets of my hometown, a sleepy coastal city where nothing ever really changed. The train still clattered past the rice fields at the same slow pace. The air smelled of salt, cut grass, and memories.

It was supposed to be the last summer before I left for university in Tokyo. I had planned to spend it doing nothing in particular—just lingering in that comfortable boredom of long days and longer nights. But then I met her.

Aya was different. She wasn’t from around here. Her accent, her hair, her headphones always leaking faint city pop—it all gave her this glow, like she didn’t quite belong in our slow-motion world. Her uncle ran the old stationery shop downtown. She was visiting for just a few weeks.

We first talked at the festival preparations. I was hammering wooden signs for the stalls, and she was sketching people in a little notebook.

“You have paint on your nose,” she said, smiling.

“And you have no idea how to survive a summer in this town,” I replied, pointing at her black jeans and long sleeves.

We became friends quickly, the kind of friends who never needed plans. We wandered aimlessly. We skipped stones at the harbor. We shared melon soda under vending machines humming in the twilight. She told me about Tokyo, about neon nights and rooftop parties. I told her about nothing—because that was all I knew.

But nothing started to feel like something when we were together.

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The Hanabi Festival was set for August 10th. It’s the only day the whole town feels alive. Lanterns line the riverbank. Kids in yukata run around with candy apples. The air fills with smoke and sound and hope. I told Aya to meet me by the shrine gate at 7:30. I even wrote it down for her on a paper fan we won at a goldfish scooping stall.

That day, I arrived early. I wore the only yukata I had, navy blue with faded pine patterns. I waited under the glowing torii as people passed me by. Families. Couples. Laughter. Firecrackers.

7:30 came. Then 8:00. Then 8:30.

No Aya.

I checked my phone, but there was no message. I waited anyway.

The fireworks started at 9:00. They lit up the sky like dreams bursting open. But I couldn’t enjoy them. I just watched the colors explode alone, each one a reminder of something unfinished.

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The next morning, I went to the stationery shop. It was closed. The neighbor said the uncle had driven her back to the station at dawn.

She was gone. Just like that.

On my walk home, I found the fan I’d given her, wedged between the shrine’s stone steps. The ink was smudged, but the time—7:30—was still visible.

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It’s been three years now.

I’ve walked through Shibuya crossings and sat under the cold lights of university libraries. I’ve seen fireworks from rooftop bars and tried to forget about a girl who made my sleepy town feel like a movie.

But every August, when the cicadas scream and the heat presses down like memory, I think of that summer that never turned out the way it was supposed to.

She said she came to town to find inspiration.

Maybe I was just part of a sketch in her notebook.

But for me, she was the firework that never lit.

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Author’s Note:

Japanese summer festivals are moments frozen in time—full of color, food, and fleeting emotions. For readers abroad, this story invites you to step into a quiet piece of Japan, where tradition meets youth, and where not all fireworks reach the sky.

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