Do you want to know what made me write such a ferocious title? Because other than that lost diamond ring, the hardest thing in this world is my heart.
Books say you should not answer boys who stagger through the street drunk in the middle of the night. But aside from the smell of alcohol, you had none of a thug's air. Instead, you carried a kind of disheveled elegance. I had just come out of Xinghai Hall after shouting myself hoarse all night, dry-throated and exhausted, while you were leaning against a wall with one hand, staring blankly at the revolving glass door behind me as if waiting for someone. Your blurred drunken gaze bumped into my bored one. To be honest, even with your eyes red from drink and your fringe sticking up like a henhouse looted for eggs, you were not ugly. But you were not the sort of demonic beauty who makes people fall in love at first sight, either. I suppose I looked equally unremarkable to you. After our eyes met for that brief instant, neither of us meant to look again. Two very long minutes passed, and that damned Meiichi Sanada still had not rolled out of the private room.
Maybe time really is a blade. We are onions being peeled open layer by layer. The farther we go, the more we weep, and yet we never call the past back.
By five in the morning the wind was not quite cold to the bone, but it was enough to leave me in disarray. So I took out my phone and shouted Meiichi's name with all the force I had. Before I could finish yelling that if he didn't come out right now I was leaving by myself, you lunged forward like a bandit and snatched the phone from my hand. People who have been awake all night probably aren't thinking straight. I decided you were robbing me, but instead of grabbing back the phone you had already lifted to your ear, I flew into the air and kicked you squarely in the side. You probably never expected a girl who looked this flimsy to do something so violent. You staggered two steps, turned back, and shot me a look of utter disbelief mixed with anger, grievance, and injury. I thought you were about to pounce on me for revenge, but all I heard was a crack. My Sharp phone hit the ground, and you, after taking my kick, missed the next step and went down like a telegraph pole. To be honest, if Meiichi had not come rushing out at that exact moment and recognized you immediately, I might have gone up and crippled the hand that smashed my phone with my twelve-centimeter heel. Even Meiichi said our horoscopes were probably at war, if our very first meeting ended in blood. That day my poor Sharp phone was disfigured, and you bruised the bridge of your nose. Only afterward did Meiichi tell me, laughing helplessly, that you had gone to a school reunion in his place and been drunk senseless for his sake. When you got back to the place you rented with others, your roommate was gone and you had no key on you, so you came to ask Meiichi to take you in. You had waited so long that you were losing your mind, and when you heard me shout his name into the phone, you had rushed over to yell something back, which was how all of that happened. Even so, I felt no gratitude toward you whatsoever. Before leaving, I even shot one last murderous look at you lying on the snow-white hospital bed with that peaceful expression on your face. I wished from the bottom of my heart never to have anything to do with you again. I even cursed you inwardly and hoped your nose would collapse and your cheeks cave in, just to see whether you would still dare be so rude.
I am a little vain, and I do not think that is a bad thing. Vanity is not a privilege reserved for pretty girls. When I have nothing better to do, I like to hold my phone out at arm's length and take pictures of my face. It may not be beautiful, but at least it is bright and clean. My mistake was that I should never have left those slightly distorted photos from two years ago sitting in my album because I could not bear to delete them. At nine one evening, full and warm, I was doing what best suits that hour: sitting on my bed with the heater on, one leg crossed over the other, browsing Taobao and chatting on my laptop. I was looking at an outrageously expensive snakeskin handbag when the group chat suddenly popped up. A photograph filled the entire window, either grotesque because it was so large or ridiculous because it was so grotesque. My heart stopped for two seconds. Then one comment containing the word ugly jolted my nerves back to life. My hand shook on the mouse. I scrolled up for ages before finally opening the private chat from the person who had posted my picture. Before I could decide what to say, a message came in first: "Hi, fatty." The man had to be blind. How could anyone say that to a girl who weighed less than eighty jin and was tall enough to look down on half the men in Japan? Yet instead of snapping back at once, I did something almost crazed. Maybe it was the inferiority buried in my bones. I sent blank message after blank message to flood the chat, then typed out, in full seriousness, that anyone who posted other people's photos deserved to die. I was genuinely furious. So furious I called the group owner, Xie Yi, roaring at him to tell me who exactly this person named Tokiomi Kanzaki was. He only laughed. I was just about ready to let out a lion's roar when another voice came over the phone, strange and male, saying, "Hi, fatty." My whole body went cold. Only then did I connect your elegant online name to you. Later I heard people say that those who used their real names online were confident and intent on getting whatever they wanted. I have no idea where that nonsense came from, but it suited you perfectly. The truth is, once I learned that you had guessed my password and gotten into my page to see those photos, I already felt that you and I would end up tangled with each other. There could not be many people in the world who would guess my password. You mocked me a few times to avenge that kick I had given you, then earnestly advised me to delete all those pictures, because not one of them was as lovely as the real thing. Girls love compliments, even a meticulous Virgo like me. I knew you were deliberately trying to charm me, but in the spirit of not slapping a smiling face, I let that veiled praise please me. The moment you really tattooed yourself into my heart came half a month later. You and Meiichi Sanada were both masters at rollerblading, while I had only just joined the roller club and was still the kind of beginner who could barely stand upright in skates. Yet your whole pack dragged me out street skating with you. I can still remember how dazzling we all looked. In front was a handsome boy holding his girlfriend's hand with one hand and a huge speaker with the other. Behind him, one person after another rested a hand on the shoulder ahead and flew from the university all the way up to Black Bridge with the wheels under their feet spinning like they had wings. Only I lagged at the rear, legs stiff, letting Meiichi drag me along while not daring to move an inch. So when everyone else easily avoided a small pothole, and Meiichi had even warned me in time, I still went sailing through it like an arrow shot from a bow. I braced myself to crash hard, but just when I thought I had somehow escaped without pain, a foot came flying in at terrifying speed and with real force, kicking me several steps away. My hands scraped open. Blood began seeping slowly out of the dusty skin, and my left knee throbbed so badly that I could not even curse. Then I realized the whole group had stopped, all of them rushing past me in alarm, not toward me but toward the place just behind me. Only then did I see the massive truck that had stopped less than three steps away, and the person surrounded by everyone was you, knocked to the ground by that speeding truck because you had not managed to get out of the way after shoving me clear.
It was the first time in my life I shamelessly threw myself into a boy's arms in the street. A long cut had opened down your right arm. The tears burst out of me at once from pure fright, but you managed to force out a smile worthy of Dongfang Bubai and say, "So what do we do now? I've ended up with a scar because of you." I admit that I have a wicked streak. I actually hoped the scar on your arm would never heal, because then I could have said with perfect justice, "Now that you're like this, who else is going to want you? I'll just take you in as a charitable deed." Who was it that said every unforgettable wound begins in a flirtation someone took too seriously? Kanzaki Tokiomi, if I had known what would come of it, would you have regretted saving me? From then on you made me sway forever between having and losing, and that slow, heavy pain gradually became the way I knew I existed.
You never once said I was your girlfriend. But at midnight, if I said I was hungry, you would bring over delicious skewers and the red bean soup I loved. If you heard me cough twice on the phone, you would leave an interview after waiting half an hour just to bring me cold medicine without drowsy ingredients. I would open the door and find you there with rain all over your hair, pinching the baby fat in my cheeks with freezing fingers. I thought you were merely afraid to say the words out loud. I thought you were just addicted to the game of ambiguity, waiting for the right moment. But later, the first time I saw the look in your eyes when you looked at Kaori, I understood that I had already become yesterday's stars, no longer even fit to set off the moon of today. On Christmas night, with fireworks blooming one after another, I showed up with my old high school friend Kaori on my arm in front of you and Meiichi Sanada. Your eyes rested on her for three seconds, and I felt as though I had lived through a hundred years of weather inside that glance. Even if I looked ordinary and had no special gifts, Kaori was a true beauty, the unquestioned kind. Her features were not especially delicate, but she had something classical about her, a White Snake kind of grace. Countless boys on campus pined for her in secret. Yet beautiful girls are proud, and Kaori was no exception. Sometimes she was as innocent as a child, brushing aside everybody's hints and declarations. Other times she left just enough room for men to stay caught. Sometimes she spoke like a veteran of love and told me which boys were dangerous, the sort who, once they latched on, never let go. I knew from the start that she did not really like you. It did not matter if she went to dinner or to the movies with you, or talked to you on the phone at midnight. There were seven days in a week, and she did exactly the same things with other boys. On September eleventh, Kaori's birthday, you showed up under her building carrying a great armful of white roses. You had to like her very much, Kanzaki Tokiomi. Otherwise how could you have been so open, as if declaring your claim to the whole world? The flower language of the white rose says I am worthy of you. But that day ended badly. Coming out of the washroom in the Taiko tavern, I had not even had time to open the private-room door when I heard Kaori say to you in an apologetic voice, "It's impossible between us. I won't take the boy my best friend likes." Friendship can be so terribly fragile. After Kaori left her seat, you chased after her, and I do not know what she said to you then, only that you finally stood there defeated, the flowers sliding from your hand just as my heart sank with them.
Of course you did not give up. You called her again and again, rang her doorbell again and again. I watched you get drunk again and again. I dragged you from the bar to the sofa. You were too heavy, and I could not hold you. In one dizzy instant our faces were no more than half an inch apart, and I heard you slur Kaori's name. When you were sober, you would sit there smoking and tell me how good Kaori was to you. My eyes brimmed with tears under the yellow wash of the alley light. I turned my face away and asked whether you thought that if it were not for me, things would not be so exhausting between the two of you. And you actually nodded. Because of one thing Kaori said, you treated me as the obstacle to your happiness. You looked straight through everything in my eyes, and gathered all the countless things between us into a single sentence: I think of you as family. Such a beautiful word. I looked at you through tears. How could I have told you that I had heard Kaori in the bathroom that day calling another boy darling on the phone? That I had seen her get into a Buick after class? Such things are the natural privilege of beauties. None of it had ever damaged our friendship. On many sleepless nights I had even listened with relish while she told me all about the hopelessly devoted boys who circled around her. I was only the excuse she used to put an end to her flirtation with you. But when I opened my mouth, the only words that came out were, "I love you." Believe it or not, by the time I was barely twenty I had already had more than a dozen relationships, and in every one of them I was the first to turn away. Not a single one had come to anything. Only when I said those three words to you did I feel my heart turn so heavy I could not breathe. Even much later, so much later we nearly forgot the whole chapter, I could still remember the look on your face then.
Pity, tenderness, something almost like love. I mistook all of it for the prelude to love itself. A moth needs no reason to fly into the fire.
Sometimes fate is cruel. One accidental glance drags out a whole history of feeling. One fevered impulse alters the path of everything that follows. In the second semester of my third year there were fewer and fewer classes. I had more time to miss you and more time to wander with Kaori, shopping, eating, singing, doing everything except speak of you. But how could a girl in love fail to notice the small shifts? Her phone switched to vibrate. She stopped reading her messages aloud to me. Her parents were away so often and she lived alone in that huge house, yet she seldom invited me over for dinner anymore. And how could you have known how many times I hid in the building opposite her house and watched you arrive with fruit and vegetables and knock on her door with practiced ease, while still calling me with concern whenever I changed my online status message into something mournful? The moment you said you felt sorry for me, it was like fireworks exploding in my skull. But no matter how hysterical I became, you apologized with complete calm on the other end. You said it was not love. You said you had decided to spend your whole life with her. And how old were you then? Twenty-one, newly graduated, alone in Osaka, with no job to speak of. I wanted to ask what right you had to make such vows, but in the end my throat closed up. So I simply watched your love for her turn into thick glances and pale, nourishing soup. In that season just before winter, I was like a plant flowering itself to ruin, watching from afar as you and Kaori looked made for each other and yet never truly fit. No one in the world knew Kaori better than I did. Years of friendship are not for nothing. So when she held my hand and asked if I really liked you, I knew she had grown tired of whatever it was between the two of you. After all, aside from that bouquet of white roses, you had never done anything properly romantic again. Other boys bought her Swarovski. You made sushi with your own hands to please her. A calm, companionable life was never suited to Kaori. But I could not say that aloud. The clothes she did not want, I could take home gladly. The man she did not want, I could not simply claim with the same ease. One weekend evening Kaori called and invited me to her place for dinner. When I arrived, I found you bustling around the kitchen. The moment you saw me, your eyes dodged away. I knew you did not want to see me, but as Kaori said, the knot among the three of us had to be untied somehow, or there would not even be friendship left. And what came of it? We each drank two cans of beer. Your eyes went red as you asked her in front of me whether there was really no room left at all. I endured the burning rash of alcohol allergy and wrapped an arm around Kaori with a smile, saying I did not mind in the least. Yet drunk is still drunk. You can still force the lies out, but not stop the tears.
Even now I remember that night, cool as water. I called your phone again and again, and you never answered. I went looking for you on instinct alone, and when I saw you wandering under Kaori's building, I could not help crying out. Later, I asked whether you hated me. You shook your head lightly, but what I really wanted to ask was this: if she had not been so beautiful, if she had never once given you hope from the start, would you still have thrown yourself in like that, without a trace of regret? To be honest, I hate clingy boys as much as anyone. And yet when you called Kaori over and over, begging her for a year, begging her to wait, begging her to love you, I was right there beside her, listening as her tone went from gentle persuasion to outright fury. "I already said it's impossible. Impossible. Forever impossible. Are you deaf?" Then she hung up. And again I cried. Believe me or not, until I was twenty the only time I had cried for a boy was once, under the blanket, after seeing my first love holding someone else's hand. I was the girl who always did the leaving first, never the one left behind. I would not give anyone that chance. I preferred to leave a proud and decisive back. But I could never harden myself against you, Kanzaki Tokiomi. At times I even imagined absurdly that one day I would subdue you the way the Buddha subdued demons, pinning you beneath my Five-Finger Mountain, so that no matter how grand and wide my world became, you would remain beside me, warm and enduring. When I went to the station to see Meiichi Sanada off, he hugged me and ruffled my hair before boarding the train. Then, standing at the window in the fine sunlight, he asked if it was worth it. I knew exactly what he meant. Though only a bystander, he had seen the entanglement among me, Kaori, and you more clearly than any of us. I knew he blamed himself for bringing me to you. But there are no all-seeing eyes in this world and no superpowers. All we can do is follow our own hearts and keep walking without turning back.
That was how I arrived before you, dust-covered from the road, in the little city called Matsuyama. After eight at night its streets were nearly deserted, with not even one proper hotel to be found. But none of that mattered. It was enough to see the surprise and emotion in your eyes. I knew no boy could refuse a girl who came running to him like that in the middle of the night. When you pulled me into your arms, I felt that even if I died the next second, it would still have been worth it. During the two months you were away on that assignment, I lied to my family, bribed my homeroom teacher, took a long leave from school, and stayed there with you. I ate meals that would not go down my throat, found myself part-time work at a tiny supermarket, hauled boxes of drinks by myself, and each time I grew too exhausted even to speak, I would send my mother a text saying my phone battery was nearly dead, everything was fine, the school food was all right, and I had enough money. Really, when you are in love, water is enough to keep you full. Even now, if I told my friends about those days and saw the pained expressions they would surely wear, I still would not call it suffering. Back then the words I repeated to myself most were, I'm not afraid. At home I had never touched kitchen work. Yet away from home, eating cold food, carrying stock until my fingers split and screws pierced my palm, I never once cried. But when you held me and said that to have found me in this life was three lifetimes' worth of luck, I did cry. Those were the best days. Each night before sleep you said goodnight to me. In that little city, it felt as though there were only the two of us. Many nights, lying in bed and hearing the faint sound of you breathing on the sofa outside, I thought my life could ask for nothing more. I did not even need grander things. You cooked different dishes every day for me. You would take my hands in yours with such tenderness, even help me wash my long hair. One look from you, one sentence, one embrace, was enough to turn into proof that loving you was the best thing I had ever done. Even now those sweet memories hurt like a wildfire crossing the plain, like a city taken by storm. I have to grit my teeth just to endure thinking of them. Before the assignment was even over, you resigned. On the train back to Osaka, we could get only standing tickets. You supported me with your arm when my anemia nearly made me collapse in the airless carriage and lightly kissed my eyelids. At the time I forgot the words of those before us: to share each other's troubles at close quarters is often to forget each other by the rivers and lakes. Kanzaki Tokiomi, at that time I had never once imagined what my world would look like without you in it.
When we returned to Osaka, I deliberately cut off contact with Kaori. But the world is small, and sooner or later we crossed paths on the tree-lined road before the school gate. She stood there frozen for a long moment, then chose to pretend not to see me. The roller club friends drifted away one after another too. Only once, when I opened one of Meiichi Sanada's group chats, I accidentally saw a line clearly meant for Kaori, asking whether I had stolen her boyfriend or whether you had changed your heart. Before I could scroll further, I was kicked out of the group. Meiichi messaged me to say the roller club had disbanded. I did not have the luxury then of wondering what expression he had worn when he sent that line. At that time I had taken you for my whole heaven and earth; even the end of the world would have left me indifferent. But I had not expected Meiichi to come looking for me. He waited for me outside the supermarket I passed every day and said all kinds of things that made no sense, even hauled me into his arms with force. For some reason I secretly dialed your number from inside my bag. I told him that aside from Kanzaki Tokiomi, there was no room in my heart for anyone else, even if Tokiomi did not love me. Meiichi shouted that I was an idiot, that you still liked Kaori and I could not even see it, that my one-woman performance was pathetic, that staying beside you longer would never make you look at me. Then I slapped him. I knew from the sound alone that I had used all the strength in my body. The five red marks rose on his dark face as though blood might seep through them, but his eyes were redder still. He stood there a while in silence and finally forced out three words through his teeth: "I'm sorry." Then he vanished at the end of the alley without turning back. When I looked at my phone again, I realized the call had ended. The talk time was three minutes and forty seconds. I waited the whole night, and you never called back. Thinking of what I had said to Meiichi, I burst into tears. You had heard it all, and still you neither explained nor asked. By then you had already made up your mind. I could not find you after that. Your phone became a dead number, and someone else had moved into the room you rented. If I asked one question too many, they chased me away impatiently. But I would not give up. I sat on the stair landing not far from your place and waited. The early-summer night was a little cold, brushing my thin calves and the arms I wrapped around myself for warmth. Now and then dubious little hoodlums went by and whistled, asking if I wanted to have fun with them. I answered neither word nor glance, crouched there like a small animal on guard. They took me for a mute or a lunatic, cursed once, and went away. By the time you finally appeared, dawn had begun whitening the sky. You were dressed in a mess, cigarette hanging from your mouth, fishing out your key to open the door, and I rushed you like someone mad. You had really fallen, just like all those proud boys in their early twenties who could not find proper work and began surviving by edging along the law, relying on a quick mind. When I hugged that huge crate of counterfeit cigarettes and liquor and told you to turn back while you still could, you smashed a bottle and shouted at me in pure desperation. If I didn't do this, what could I do? The world was darker than you had ever imagined, you said. I had never seen you so ruined. You crouched on the floor, raking your hands through your hair in helplessness, and it felt as though you were not tearing at your hair but at my heart. Only then, after knowing you all that time, did I truly learn about your family. Your father died when you were nine. Before dying, he had been a local official of some standing and had insisted, against everyone's objections, on a traditional burial instead of cremation. Your mother had honored that wish, offending your father's former allies over the use of land. After that she lost her job. You had an older sister still in junior high then, and your mother had lived ever since by cooking for others. Years of smoke and grease had wrecked her health, and now she needed a large sum for surgery. You snatched the crate from my arms and looked at me pleadingly. "Chinatsu, do you think anyone in this world doesn't want a normal life? Who wants to spend every day frightened, terrified, unable to sleep? My mother is sick. Today, pretend you never saw me." After today, then? Was I supposed to pretend I had never met you at all? When I said that, I had already bitten through my lip. But you were merciless. Without even lifting your head, you said that if I could do that, it would be best. One light sentence, and you sliced my heart open. But you never saw. You never once saw.
Other than borrowing money, I could think of no way to help you. And the only person I could think of in that emergency was Kaori. She came from a good family and always had savings. The moment I opened my mouth, she understood almost everything. Was it worth it, she asked, the same question Meiichi had once asked. I said nothing. Tears trembled in my eyes. Kaori sighed and hugged me. She said, "Chinatsu, why can't you be a little smarter? Where did your confidence go? Your pride? We used to be so alike. Now I feel as if I don't know you at all." She also said that girls should treat themselves better, that love was worthless if it only made you unhappy. I understood every bit of that logic, but I could not bear the image of your hopeless, exhausted face. Maybe everyone has a bit of a Jesus complex. I felt that if I did not help you, if I did not go to you, then no one in this world would help you. When we parted, Kaori told me seriously to make sure you wrote an IOU. I only smiled and did not take it seriously. Yet when I rushed to your dim, cramped room with the soup dumplings you liked most, your face was harder than ice. I tried to please you, and you struck my hand aside. The thin skin on the dumpling wrappers split. Scalding soup ran down my fingers and sleeve. Your face was iron as you demanded to know whether I had told Kaori you had borrowed money from me. The whole room froze. I felt the blood in my body turning to ice. I tried to explain and was cut off by you at once. You looked at me as if I were a stone in your path. Grabbing my hand still covered with soup, you asked, "Chinatsu, was I wrong to trust you?" Kaori had done nothing more than call and tell you to solve your own problems and stop using a girl who liked you. I knew Kaori's temper too well. Perhaps at first she had felt something for you. But after you kept entangling yourself, after things had reached this point, in her eyes you were no longer the funny boy with the clean smile you had once been. Yet you would hear only her name, over and over. Did I want her to have no respect left for you? Did I want her to think that what you had with me was nothing but taking advantage of me for money? You shouted her, her, her with every ounce of yourself. All the blood in my body rushed to my head. I tore my hand from yours and screamed yes, yes, of course I did. I wanted her to know exactly what kind of person you were, just a heap of rotten mud, someone who would never be able to give happiness to anyone because you had no right. Then I turned and ran as if escaping. The weather answered with rain. In the rain I remembered you. I remembered you holding an umbrella over me in Matsuyama, coaxing me to drink hideous ginger soup, tucking my frozen hands into your coat in winter and saying that for the rest of my life you would never let me feel cold again.
The day Meiichi Sanada came back from Tokyo was Mid-Autumn Festival, and also the twenty-fourth day since I had lost all contact with you. He treated me to steak. We wrestled over the bill for ages until he said that if a girl paid for dinner, what kind of man did that make him? Only then did I lower my raised hand. Watching him hand the money over with a self-satisfied grin, I suddenly thought his face looked like yours, and my vision blurred with tears. I never once told you that before every date with you, I always stopped by the bank first. Whenever the bill came, I acted as though it did not matter. I was afraid of humiliating you and afraid you would lose face in front of others, so when people were watching I would quietly slip red banknotes into your wallet. Meanwhile I ruined my studies, took on two part-time jobs, and even sold my beloved Sharp phone for your mother's operation, and still you never noticed that the old Nokia in my hand was the proof of it. Under the lights, the red wine looked more seductive than ever. Once you had said that Kaori was like red wine while I was just plain boiled water. At the time I secretly rejoiced. I thought plain water might be flavorless, but no one can live without it. Only now did I understand that the more plain water you drink, the more tasteless it becomes, while one taste of red wine can stay with you for life. In truth, I know you did try to find me later. But you never imagined I would disappear so completely. I told the school I had started an internship and never went back to class. I moved early into an unfinished new home, changed my QQ and my number, and vanished entirely from your world. Yet do you know that when it was only me and Kaori left in the room, I still cried? I still hated you to the bone. She told me that even while you were in Fukuoka, you had never quite broken off contact with her, that you still hoped she would give you a year. When the matter of the loan came up, she said she had merely called to tell you to be kinder to me and not make things difficult for her, and you had taken that to mean I was slandering you in front of her. Was it worth it? In truth, I had asked myself that question long before, before you and Kaori had truly broken apart, when I sat in her room with tears all over my face and begged her to please get together with you because you would be good to her. How low does love have to bring a person before she can say such things? At that time I had already gone blind with it. Kaori answered me with a hard slap. That slap broke whatever friendship remained between us. Yet now, when she told me that you had gone to her and nearly dropped to your knees for my number, I still felt my chest hurt so badly I could not breathe. Yes. Yes. I know it was true. Everyone only understands the value of what they have after they lose it. Hit me again, I thought. I really do not want myself to turn back. Kaori said nothing. She only looked at me with pity. We sat there like that the whole night. The next day I called Meiichi Sanada and agreed to go to Tokyo with him.
I heard that after Meiichi and I left, you often went to my door. I heard that you and Kaori had become good friends and that you told her you had only understood, after wandering so long, what it was you actually wanted. In the phone call you made to Meiichi, you shouted that Chinatsu was especially fickle and that if he was not careful, I would love him one day and dump him the next without leaving him even a path back. But by the end you were choking up as you told him to take good care of me. You said I hated ginger most of all, so none of it should go into my food. You said the chocolate I liked best was Ferrero, too expensive, and that you had never bought it for me even once. You said my favorite flower was the ginger lily, cheap enough, and yet you had never bought me that, either. Then you fell silent and hung up. I was wearing enormous sunglasses, but the tears still gathered in my eyes. Suddenly I remembered something I once said to you: that the deadlock among the three of us would only end if I were the first to let you go, only then would you be free of your obsession with her. See? I had not been wrong. But what good did it do in the end? No one speaks of the past anymore. We are all too tired. There is no going backward. Even though I once screamed myself hoarse, even though I once spent night after sleepless night, even now remembering the old days still hurts like a volcano striking the earth. Probability is honest. It has never lied to me. You and I went through such beautiful years. I cried for you countless times. I snooped through your phone at midnight and saw the two-hour calls between you and Kaori. I found traces of you in her blog. I guessed wildly every time you frowned in thought that it must be because of her. I know that suspicion and fear can never fully leave the heart once they have settled there. Who does not have a past? It sounds simple when people say that. But who wants to watch the person they love's past with their own eyes? And who can truly accept it calmly after seeing it? Still, my love, after enough years have passed, I know I will thank you. And I will bless you.