do any of you understand how much this cg haunts me. back straight you walk down the stairs with your shoulders tight, poised perfect like the bride you know youāll never be. careful or youāll fall. hand on the banister you walk down the stairs and meet his eyes for the first time in almost ten years and you can tell he doesnāt recognize you, and you almost donāt recognize him, but he still has that gap between his two front teeth, that mole under his eye, that scar on his left knee. probably. aoi was the one who took him. he didnāt trust you to do it. said you wouldnāt be able to hurt him and he was probably right. chest hurting you walk down the stairs and you stop, and you wish you didnāt have to leave again, and you wish you could fall down at his feet and say iām sorry, junpei, iām sorry i left you, iām sorry i have to leave you again, iām sorry and i love you and because i love you sometimes i wish iād never asked to sit with you that day during lunch, itās only that you were always alone, too, and i just thought maybe you would be the one who didnāt get scared by my eyebags, the way my skin drew tight around my bones. iām sorry i was so unsightly, itās just that my brother quit school by the time he was twelve, worked three jobs by fifteen, you know he canāt even do long division? his fists are his only problem-solver, and i know thatās not my fault, but a lot of the time it feels like it is. thatās true for many things. that day on the boat i cracked my head (just like you) so hard i saw stars and i saw a lot of other things, too, and i know youāll be scared, junpei. i know youāll be lonely. i know youāll love other people and maybe itās cruel for me to feel jealous over that. i wish i could stay, but itās hard when i know exactly what will happen if i do. junpei, isnāt it sad? isnāt it tragic, the way infinite histories stretch out ahead of us, but i canāt love you in this one, or the next, or the next. weāll spend our lives missing each other, junpei, and one day weāll meet again and youāll realize iām not that same little girl by the rabbit hutch anymore, and on that day youāll stop loving me the way i need you to. but i owe my life to your love, junpei. sometimes i wish that i didnāt have to fight so much harder than everybody else to keep it. sometimes i wish that the world was kinder. sometimes i wish that i hadnāt met you at all.
