Considering her birthday is soon, I gotta say I find the line about her last secret of her 16th year to be quite an inspired wording.
Can't really remember my 16th year. I'm stuck here wondering what trauma I was dealing with that year. That was the year after my father disappeared (for about a 15 year stretch) from my life, and I think I was starting to socialize for the first time since elementary. Not too different from the original Sawako, but no one to break my shell proper. This aspect of these school romances really makes me jealous.
Good year by my standards though, even found my love of computer programming (C++) and algorithms. Wish I had the time to program still. Think about it every day, but too many other priorities. For my birthday that year I do remember getting a huge 23" computer monitor (17" was my old one, 15" before that) and a cd burner. Good memories for me.