my drawings are full of ancient curses btw

(Unsent letter with circular traces of liquid at the corner of the envelope.)

Dear Raul.

I will never admit it verbally, but I did miss you all this time. All these years I kept thinking of what I should've done. What I could've done to make you return to me.

You charmed me. A man who became captivated with replikas' intricacies after witnessing their destabilization, someone who had enough knowledge to aid one, someone whp had seen horrors of war, someone willing to explore and learn. It was one in a lifetime chance. Teaching you and listening to your inputs helped me understand replika on a deeper level, bringing soul to my otherwise stagnant work. Something about you clicked into the collective neatly, bringing 5 years of enjoyable work and close bond with others on the department.

But then you realized something. Certain truth that was delivered by a bullet to my shoulder. Piercing it into my muscle and leaving forever damage that makes my arm ache to this day. Leaving me in the dark, vanishing from the face of capital one day.

I wish I could tell you how many years I had spent skimming through every record of your existence just to know where you had gone. Records of your service, your accounts on war, every opinion and wall of text, every word and letter that belonged to you.

There never will be words to describe how this act of disservice brought me great motivation to keep going. To understand what made replikas so repulsive to you. What made your skin crawl one day to join a mob to burn down our only place of bond. Someday, I will understand it and then I will bring you an answer.