[JExStardust] Letters From No One
Title: Letters From No One
Characters: Nishikido Ryo, Sawajiri Erika
Rating: G
Summary: Haikei, Erika, he writes.
Hey.
I really miss you.
Erika,
I still love you. Come back.
Haikei Erika,
Today I watched a film entitled 'Five Centimetres Per Second'. I don't usually watch animated films, but the title caught my attention. It's like that because the premise of the film is, for a cherry blossom to reach the ground it moves at a speed of five centimetres per second. I never knew that before. Did you? I find it fascinating.
I did some research online. The distance between Tokyo and London is 5,956 miles. In kilometres, that would be 9,585. The flight from Tokyo to London would take 12 hours and 35 minutes. For me to reach you when you were in London I would be moving at a speed of approximately 3 kilometres per second.
Here in Japan, where we both currently are, it would take the speed of 0.07 kilometres per second for me to go to wherever you are by train, 0.002 kilometre per second if I'm walking, and 0.004 kilometre per second if I'm running.
I could go to you, right now, but I can't be with you. Because the truth is, you left. You don't want me anymore.
Ah, it feels really painful to write those words.
I cried when my sister got married, have I ever told you that story before? She requested I sing, me and my brothers, and tears and snot were running down my face while we sang. You would have laughed if you saw me then. When Chibi, beloved dog of the Nishikido family, died, I cried. I cried even more when I got home and learned that the moment he died, the sanitation men came around to pick up the neighborhood garbage so Dad threw his body in with all the trash. I was furious with all of them for a while for not burying Chibi properly. Furiouser ('don't you know there is no such word?' I can hear you saying in my head) when my brother said, 'he's not a person--get over it.'
You're a person. But you're not dead.
Perhaps the reason why my eyes are dry is because I can hear you saying, 'Please...' and your eyes are rolling upwards. 'Don't be such a sap.'
Do you know those choose-your-own-adventure story books, where there are a lot of alternate endings? I used to love reading those as a kid. If I didn't like the ending I got, I'd just go several pages back and make another choice until I reach an ending I am satisfied with.
In the real world, though, there is only one ending. You can't say, hey, I don't like what's happening, what's my other ending? There is no other ending.
There is no you and I. There is no us.
Have you ever done something crazy just to see if someone will care enough to pull you back, if someone will rescue you? I know you must have, or at least thought of it.
I did it a few days ago. For some strange, impulsive reason, I felt like sticking my head into the freezer. So I did. 'Ryo, what the hell are you doing,' you were saying exasperatedly in my head. 'Stop that at once. Don't act so stupid. Ryo, stop.' But I didn't--it felt good, you know, and when I finally stuck my head back out, bits of ice were sticking to my eyebrows and lashes.
I came down with a fantastic cold that same night, but I didn't regret it, sticking my head in the freezer.
It is only now, writing this, that I realize that maybe when you did your crazy thing, I wasn't there in time to pull you back. Or maybe I didn't know you needed rescuing.
I think I've finally understood what it means to love someone.
You know, it's just as cliched as all those songs and stories say. You know the one about how love is like holding sand in your hands? How, the tighter you hold the sand, the more it trickles out through your fingers? But when you hold it carefully, tenderly, it remains in your hands.
And you keep holding it even if you can't rub at your eye because it itches or something.
Loving you isn't about looking back and holding onto the happy memories we had; it isn't about looking at you and trying to remind myself why I fell in love with you. It's about loving you for everything: the way you look out of the kitchen window while holding a mug of coffee between your hands as the sunlight tumbles in, looking straight at the sun as if you won't be blinded... embracing you and feeling all your sharp edges, piercing through my skin.
('Now don't get too poetic,' your voice, amused, in my head is saying now.)
It's about loving you for everything--even for leaving me.
Hey, isn't it strange how we've been together all this time and there are only a handful of pictures of us together? I wonder for a few moments why is that, and then I remember why. It's because most of the time, when we were together, our arms were too busy wrapped around each other to be reaching for a camera.
The truth is, ever since you left, I somehow fell in love with you all over again.
As I'm writing this, the setting sun outside turns everything into the color of low-saturated yellow. I can hardly see what I'm writing now. And then you would come in and turn on the light, and I'll be thinking, 'hey, everything's much clearer now, why didn't I think of that?' That's what you did to my life. You turned on the light. You turned it off and then on and then off again, just to be a tease.
'Turn on your own goddamn light,' you'd say.
Maybe I will, this time.
Sayonara.
Goodbye.
--
Written with several references in mind:
Drama Queen by Abi Aquino--Filipino chick lit at its mediocre finest;
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold--to finish reading it I had less than six hours of sleep but I didn't care;
and Byousoku 5cm (5 Centimetres Per Second)--the most beautiful sad love story in ANIME guys it wins my heart and makes me cry.
Characters: Nishikido Ryo, Sawajiri Erika
Rating: G
Summary: Haikei, Erika, he writes.
Hey.
I really miss you.
Erika,
I still love you. Come back.
Haikei Erika,
Today I watched a film entitled 'Five Centimetres Per Second'. I don't usually watch animated films, but the title caught my attention. It's like that because the premise of the film is, for a cherry blossom to reach the ground it moves at a speed of five centimetres per second. I never knew that before. Did you? I find it fascinating.
I did some research online. The distance between Tokyo and London is 5,956 miles. In kilometres, that would be 9,585. The flight from Tokyo to London would take 12 hours and 35 minutes. For me to reach you when you were in London I would be moving at a speed of approximately 3 kilometres per second.
Here in Japan, where we both currently are, it would take the speed of 0.07 kilometres per second for me to go to wherever you are by train, 0.002 kilometre per second if I'm walking, and 0.004 kilometre per second if I'm running.
I could go to you, right now, but I can't be with you. Because the truth is, you left. You don't want me anymore.
Ah, it feels really painful to write those words.
I cried when my sister got married, have I ever told you that story before? She requested I sing, me and my brothers, and tears and snot were running down my face while we sang. You would have laughed if you saw me then. When Chibi, beloved dog of the Nishikido family, died, I cried. I cried even more when I got home and learned that the moment he died, the sanitation men came around to pick up the neighborhood garbage so Dad threw his body in with all the trash. I was furious with all of them for a while for not burying Chibi properly. Furiouser ('don't you know there is no such word?' I can hear you saying in my head) when my brother said, 'he's not a person--get over it.'
You're a person. But you're not dead.
Perhaps the reason why my eyes are dry is because I can hear you saying, 'Please...' and your eyes are rolling upwards. 'Don't be such a sap.'
Do you know those choose-your-own-adventure story books, where there are a lot of alternate endings? I used to love reading those as a kid. If I didn't like the ending I got, I'd just go several pages back and make another choice until I reach an ending I am satisfied with.
In the real world, though, there is only one ending. You can't say, hey, I don't like what's happening, what's my other ending? There is no other ending.
There is no you and I. There is no us.
Have you ever done something crazy just to see if someone will care enough to pull you back, if someone will rescue you? I know you must have, or at least thought of it.
I did it a few days ago. For some strange, impulsive reason, I felt like sticking my head into the freezer. So I did. 'Ryo, what the hell are you doing,' you were saying exasperatedly in my head. 'Stop that at once. Don't act so stupid. Ryo, stop.' But I didn't--it felt good, you know, and when I finally stuck my head back out, bits of ice were sticking to my eyebrows and lashes.
I came down with a fantastic cold that same night, but I didn't regret it, sticking my head in the freezer.
It is only now, writing this, that I realize that maybe when you did your crazy thing, I wasn't there in time to pull you back. Or maybe I didn't know you needed rescuing.
I think I've finally understood what it means to love someone.
You know, it's just as cliched as all those songs and stories say. You know the one about how love is like holding sand in your hands? How, the tighter you hold the sand, the more it trickles out through your fingers? But when you hold it carefully, tenderly, it remains in your hands.
And you keep holding it even if you can't rub at your eye because it itches or something.
Loving you isn't about looking back and holding onto the happy memories we had; it isn't about looking at you and trying to remind myself why I fell in love with you. It's about loving you for everything: the way you look out of the kitchen window while holding a mug of coffee between your hands as the sunlight tumbles in, looking straight at the sun as if you won't be blinded... embracing you and feeling all your sharp edges, piercing through my skin.
('Now don't get too poetic,' your voice, amused, in my head is saying now.)
It's about loving you for everything--even for leaving me.
Hey, isn't it strange how we've been together all this time and there are only a handful of pictures of us together? I wonder for a few moments why is that, and then I remember why. It's because most of the time, when we were together, our arms were too busy wrapped around each other to be reaching for a camera.
The truth is, ever since you left, I somehow fell in love with you all over again.
As I'm writing this, the setting sun outside turns everything into the color of low-saturated yellow. I can hardly see what I'm writing now. And then you would come in and turn on the light, and I'll be thinking, 'hey, everything's much clearer now, why didn't I think of that?' That's what you did to my life. You turned on the light. You turned it off and then on and then off again, just to be a tease.
'Turn on your own goddamn light,' you'd say.
Maybe I will, this time.
Sayonara.
Goodbye.
--
Written with several references in mind:
Drama Queen by Abi Aquino--Filipino chick lit at its mediocre finest;
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold--to finish reading it I had less than six hours of sleep but I didn't care;
and Byousoku 5cm (5 Centimetres Per Second)--the most beautiful sad love story in ANIME guys it wins my heart and makes me cry.