Wow... after the intense ride the Manga brought us readers on I must say this chapter feels so refreshing seeing everyone older and living in their own truth, I really enjoyed it.
There's a lot to unpack from that dream, assuming that it's prophetic.
The first thing that sticks out to me is that Saeki seems genuinely happy. What's more, her husband appears to look far different. Either she got a new boyfriend, or her old one ended up a lot different. Either way, this outcome seems promising. It implies that she's no longer chasing after somebody who merely reminds her of Kasuga, but is very much his own person. Then there's Kinoshita. She only appears for a bit, but it seems that she and Saeki eventually managed to meet each other and reconciled.
Both are good for the same reason; it seems like Saeki's managed to grow up despite her circumstances and the horrible things she did, and is living as a reasonably functional adult who's living a peaceful life and is making amends for her wrongdoings as much as she reasonably can. She does not appear to meet Kasuga again, but considering the trauma she inflicted on him, not making him see her again really is the most fair thing she can do for him. This mostly shows how Saeki turns out, with an added bonus of implying that Kinoshita eventually escapes her loneliness in the village and reconnects with more people.
Then there's Takao and Aya. Both are living happily. They seem to have a daughter. They appear supportive of her and of each other. They've both managed to chase their ghosts away. This is the most unambiguously happy ending for these two.
And then there's Nakamura. She's first seen living and serving at her mom's restaurant, cool as cool can be. Then we see her meet up with her father again after presumably being separated for at least three years. The last time they'd have seen each other would have probably been a little after the festival where he prevented her from taking her life in the nick of time. In contrast to how awfully she treats him as a kid, she is genuinely happy to see him, and the tears in his eyes indicate that he's happy to see her as well.
Then there's her appearance in the last part of the dream. She appears to be walking alone, albeit in a crowd of people. In this last appearance, she seems to be a mix of her pre and post timeskip selves. While she's clearly an adult now, is still without glasses, and still has her hair black, she's also wearing the black dress (or one similar to it) that she wore in the earlier chapters of the story. She's also cut her hair back to its original length. Her facial expression does not seem like the devious, mocking one of the original, nor the bittersweet one of the original timeskip version of a few chapters ago. It just is. If anything, she's looking up with a neutral (if not slightly curious or expectant) expression.
I think we're to take this to mean that Nakamura will be okay. She will always be herself - distant yet seeking a more honest side of others, weird and unapologetic about it, alone to a degree - but she's far less tortured over it and has become able to go about a day-to-day life in society without hating everyone around her.
Seeing as this is chronologically the final chapter of the story (since
the final written chapter is effectively Chapter 1 from Nakamura's perspective
), I think it's a nice wrap-up of everyone's tales. Saeki's growth from the bitter young woman who can't let go of the past that we saw after the timeskip to who she ends up as in the dream is not something we'll really get to see, but a good part of it might have just been time needed to grow into her own person instead of a fragile one who's dependent on being perfect and retaining the affection of her first romance. Ultimately, this isn't really her story, which makes it reasonable enough that we just see how hers continues without having it stuck to us. I'm a bit more miffed about Nakamura, who IS the deuteragonist of Part 1, though there is reason for that, too. Her mother said that she's been becoming calmer, which is why she asked Kasuga to leave her alone. She's pretty calm for the most part, though she's perfectly happy to respond to Kasuga chucking her onto the ground by slugging him and then dragging him into the water. What she probably needed more than anything else was time in a different place, where she wasn't stuck in Gunma and not stuck around people she had such toxic relationships with.
Kasuga's growth is much better illustrated, and this is his story after all. His ending up with Aya seems to be the best result, too. Nakamura is the character who will probably stick with me the most, though.
When I read this manga for the first time I couldn't even imagine that we would get a happy ending after everything they went through
But yeah, definitively mt favorite manga of all time, what a beautiful story.
I'm happy with how things turned out for the characters. I was worried and holding my breath about things possibly going wrong just as Kasuga was getting better, glad it that never happened and he was able to move on.