“10???8??????????????”
juunengo hachigatsu mata deaeru no o shinjite
I believe we can meet again, ten years later in August.

- Secret Base (Kimi ga Kureta Mono), Zone

The pen sweeps across the page, long loops and gentle curves appearing out of the ink that flows from within the barrel. Words begin to take shape, words that are unremarkable, simple and elegant, that get to the point and mean what they mean to mean. And yet, they are filled with the weight of many worlds, unkept promises littering the page, and yes, there are hidden words as well, words that are not as straightforward. Words that beg to be released so they will be able to let the girl feel that she has nothing left to regret. But she does, and the words remain locked up in their steely cage inside her mind, dissolved in the ink from which they could spring forth, trapped between the letters on the page, the letters that lie and say that he never mattered to her. But he did, oh he did, he was her best friend first and always, and secretly she knows that as much as she tries to pretend, he will always matter to her. She knows he would keep this secret if she had asked him to. But she didn’t, and even now as she is writing the poisonous letter she is debating whether -to heck with it all, just tell him- but deep down in her heart she knows she never will because the secret is hers to bear and hers alone; though it might slowly overtake her, its weight sinking her into the ground day by day, minute by minute, she knows she will never pass it on to someone else. To make someone else feel the pain that she felt- that she feels every second of every day: it would be a cruelness worse than anything ever conceived- and yet. And yet she still wants to tell him, to at least explain the reason for her leaving, to convince him that it has nothing to do with him. That in fact it was him who almost convinced her to stay. Tears run down her face and land on the thick cream paper and she wipes them off the page before they can leave a lasting impact and give him any reason to think that the false words are not true. The texture of the page is slightly rough, and as her fingers catch on the ridges, her sorrow turns to anger and now she is mad, mad at him for not convincing her to stay, though he never once knew she was ever going to leave; mad at him for treating her so well, when he didn’t know that she didn’t deserve an ounce of his kindness; mad at him for understanding her so well, when he really didn’t know a thing about her at all. Just as quickly as it came, the fury switches to a cold, cold hopelessness; she doesn’t want to lose him, not forever, but she is standing firm on her decision to never let him know. She contemplates the word, never, so ugly that word, ripping people apart from each other, very upfront,  and cold like ice. Her heart sinks as she thinks and sees the comparison to herself- she is an ice cube, she has been keeping her secrets frozen away inside herself, she will be hurting him nearly as much as she is hurting herself- and then she covers her head in her arms because she does not want to be ice, she wants to be warm summer sunshine, -but maybe- she thinks, the barest hint of a smile starting to form on her face, -maybe I can be the in-between. A compromise of sorts. I will be spring.-
She hums softly to herself, a  bittersweet tune as she writes two things on the back of the page:
A place,
and a date.
She will see him again in ten years.