So it's the end. I knew it might end some day. I just never saw it coming at a time like this. I know I never really understood you. I knew I couldn't. I still don't. But I still had hope. You never made promises. I never expected anything from you. My pass was long since outdated. There was nothing else I could do. Maybe I am too weak, maybe I'm not enough of a challenge... I'm just so tired. You don't have to be sorry. I don't regret anything. I never do. They were some of the best times of my life. I wish I could tell you..."good luck"... "take care"... "ganbatte"... but words are lost upon us. Nothing matters anymore.

They could sit together happily and revel in each other's presences even if they were to not say anything for hours. But both disliked this cheap idyll, the burnt-metal taste of this supposed languor. There were moments in life that passed, and moments that you were supposed to acknowledge. Words that tumbled without waste, warm whispers over skin, casual skimming of hands over fabric, fingers twining gently through hair, faces affectionately pressed together. Everytime they talked, they both felt like they were going somewhere neither had ever been before. No one else had ever given them that sense of possibility, and they both clung to it even while they understood that its promise was false in the way that a journey undertaken in a dream does not really get you anywhere, at least not when judged by the moment of waking. It was good and it was fun and it would keep on going as long as you wanted and it was perhaps blissfully shallow sometimes but it made the burdening death of time seem worth it and it could make you look at your own life from a distance and wish for just one second that maybe, maybe it could always continue to be like this.

Breathe in. Breath out. Walk on.