Flight 109 - Destination: First Love [Chapter 18: PART TWO]
TWO
ENTRY #7
Surely all those colors can't return back to white. But that's fine, let's paint tomorrow with a new color.
Jun
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ENTRY #8
Dear Diary,
Surprise, surprise!
YES! MINAKO IS BACK!
I know, I know it has been like what, 7 years? So, do you miss me? Because I surely miss you lots! Am I already too old for this? Please tell me that I am not too old for this already!
I've decided to write more in this diary after I met him again in that plane. After everything. After we parted again and again in that infamous manga cafe. Maybe I should have taken a picture of that manga cafe and put it here. People do that in their mushy-mushy couple's diary, right?
Well, this is officially a mushy-mushy couple's diary since some years ago. With Jun-kun's two sentences quoting one of his own songs, no matter how pissed I was when I first read it, he knew your existence now, Diary, and actually submitted to your existence when he wrote on you! Even though, he only wrote that. Like how narcissistic can the guy get? He had hundreds of blank pages and then he only wrote those two sentences that are not even original! Those idols don't write their own songs! Wait, they did sometimes, but I know for sure he didn't write this one.
I am bitching about my ex, I know. It is my way of showing how much I missed him, I guess. Because tears, the word love, you know, they are all overrated. I prefer to do my love stories with a good laugh and hidden tears.
I know, I am pathetic.
I am a girl who didn't dare to fall in love again. Who didn't dare to snatch him away from his current girlfriend, just because I am stupid and too self-dignified and.. and.. STUPID. Plain stupid.
Yeah, I should have taken a picture of that damn cubicle in that damn manga cafe. The room was the only witness how I bawled my heart out in pathetic tears. Tears that from now on I refused to ever come out of my eyes ever again. And what Minako decides, Minako does!
Why am I writing you again, Diary? You deserved to be trapped in the corner of my closet. Locked and never be opened ever again, let alone be read or written on. But, NOOO, he had to come to my life again and I made him left again and now here I am, writing bullshits on you to make me feel better.
Because somehow, in a weird kind of way, when I write on you it feels like I am... Like I am talking to him. Like you are this object that will send my words of love (and me bitching) to him in the form of dreams. Mine to kept along with my never forgotten memories of him. A connection to the long lost past.
Yeah, right.
You'll hear from me again, Diary.
So long for now.
Crazy Minako
NOTE TO SELF: This will not help you to move on, Minako.
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ENTRY #9
Dear Diary,
I am back in Tokyo again.. Dad's health is declining and I think it is a good idea to stay close to Dad. And Kenji.
And something is always pulling me back. I don't know why. Maybe I should have bringing you along wherever I go so I don't have to go back here to write you. To feel the damn i-made-it-up-in-my-own-head so-called connection.
Being in Tokyo is not easy. Hospital visits accompanying Dad. How Kenji gave me the look when Arashi is on TV. And let me tell you just in case you live in another world and don't know about their extreme popularity, Arashi is on TV A LOT! Three times a week and I watch them all religiously like a good fan. I know, I am such a DoM.
It is the price to have a national idol as an ex, you know. You are bound to see pictures of him wherever you go. You are bound to overheard a group of grandmothers gush about your ex in a random cafe at a random hospital. How cute he is, how sexy he is and how good he would be in bed. They would giggle without realizing how spot on they have observed about a person they've never met before. I feel like joining them and speak up that day and announce to the grandmothers, "You know, he also has a beauty mark you-know-where?"
I would fit in perfectly. We would giggle together. Or they would just call me weird. Or delusional.
When you have a national idol as your ex, you are bound to be incapable of ever forgetting him, ever.
Nah, the last one only applies if you fall as hard as I did. National idol or not. He wasn't a national idol back then. Not so much. Him and the rest of Arashi members. Back then, they could still throw dirty jokes once in a while and act completely stupid without knowing it is their absolute charm. Now they are aware that children watch their shows and act completely stupid with the knowledge of their own charm.
But I am still a big fan. No matter what.
I still love him with all my heart. No matter what. I've given up in my useless effort to forget him. The moment when I could stop loving him is the moment where Nino stopped playing games and Ohno lost interest in fishing. Impossible, right?
I love him, I love him, I love him.
Yes, still very much IN LOVE.
There. Happy?
Pathetic Minako
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ENTRY #10
Dear Diary,
I had a dream one night. I had a dream of him. And I still can't shrug off that dream even though it has been days and weeks and months.
I don't dream that much. And even if I dream, I never remember anything about it.
But not that dream. That dream was a special case. Everything that has him in it was a special case.
And the funny thing is I was in a flight right then. From LA to Tokyo, just like that day.
But no, I was alone and I was thinking about him, remembering him as the plane took me off from the ground below.
I dozed off and I met him again.
Not at that damn manga cafe but at the CD store where we first met.
We again reached out for the same CD. A super dated Bjork album.
We janken again but this time, it wasn't him who was lost.
It was me.
It was a weird dream. Every other detail is the same to the memory of how we first met. Except that part.
The reality that day; Jun = rock, Me = paper.
But instead in that weird dream; Jun = rock, Me = scissors.
And rock beat scissors, because rock can hit scissors. Paper beats rock, because paper can wrap around the rock (who came up with these things in the first place anyway?)
I lost, and that feeling of loss lingers till this day.
Minako
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ENTRY #11
Dear Diary,
This is going to be my last entry. I am sorry, Diary. Besides, you won't miss me. I only write, like, two entries a year. I ended up hating myself everytime after I finished writing. We don't have a healthy relationship, Diary. Just like Romeo and Juliet.
I have found a new connection as I made new friends lately. And they are all Arashi fans.
So I lost balloting to one of the biggest event of the year, Arashi's concert in Kokuritsu, that is. And I got online to look for friends that will sell me their extra tickets. So I got into this community and I should pick my favorite in the group. I was about to tell them that it is Sho-kun. But I changed my mind and decided to tell them the truth.
I told them that Matsumoto Jun is the love of my life.
Turns out they don't have any extra ticket. But they tell me something completely awesome.
We meet up at the concert day nearby Kokuritsu. One is an Ohno's fan, another one is Aiba's, two of them are Nino's fan and three of them are Sho's fan. Another one is a Jun fan and she seems like the leader of the group. Her name is Kiko. And Kiko and I are destined to be best friends.
Kiko is the opposite of me. She's soft spoken and only speaks up if she needs to be. She's elegant and she is one that you would say doesn't always express how she feels. I like her a lot. One time we came across this big standing poster of Jun in front of KFC and we, at the exact same time, stop in our tracks. We both have identical gaping mouth and sigh as if the real Jun is right in front of us.
She reminded me of her. She reminded me so much of Kitashiro Rei-san.
Which I've just seen recently in one of Arashi's show. Made me wonder whether they were still together. I asked that to my friends and they look at me funny.
"Didn't she date Nino, instead?" Kiko asked. "Jun is Inoue Mao's forever!"
"No! He is Ohno's!" Ohno's fan, Yuu-chan, insisted instead.
"No, no, no, no! He has this sexual tension with Sho since forever!" The Sho's fan, Atsuko-chan waves a finger.
"Yeah, he is soooo gay when he is with Sho!" was the best sentence I ever came up with.
And we laugh. Boy did we ever laugh that hard before.
When the concert time is near they brought me up to this place. This tall building right next to Kokuritsu. They paid the security guard some amount of money we have collected together beforehand and the security gave us the nod to enter the elevator. And we did.
You know where it brought us to? It brought us to the building's tallest floor, an unused office space, surrounded by tall windows made of glass. Atsuko leads us into a particular window with a view to Kokuritsu where a sea of 70 000 people looks like a tremendous army of ants.
"We can't hear them here," Atsuko said.
"But we can feel them," Kiko said.
One of the huge LCD screen is showing his face. Jun's. The first time I saw him live ever since that fateful day in that damn manga cafe.
Kiko took my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed hers back.
He was doing his welcoming speech. He mouthed them to be exact as I can't hear his voice with my ears.
"I am hearing him in my heart, though," I finally speak to my fellow Arashi fans, "He is saying that he will make us all happy."
A tear betrayed the promise I once made.
But Kiko wiped it away and gave my shoulder a warm squeeze.
I whispered to Kiko in a low voice, "I wanted to tell you the truth. I went out with him once and I still couldn't forget about him up until now."
It was so good to finally speak out the truth.
It didn't matter that it only made Kiko laughed, "I thought I was delusional when I claimed that he was dating Inoue Mao since forever."
We then laughed together and I still can't tear my eyes away from Jun on that LCD screen. Smiling, having the best time of his life arm in arm with the other members of Arashi. Shooting rainbows together to all 70 000 fans they were cheering on.
How small is the price of one heartbroken and pathetic ex girlfriend in the face of this storm of happiness.
No, not just those 70 000 lucky fans inside Kokuritsu. I look away for once from them and saw the girls standing beside me, hands entangled to one another. They were smiling their best smiles, singing 5X10 together among us as Arashi-san mouthed them silently at the other side of that thick glass.
Through the glass, through the distance, Arashi-san made us happy.
He made me happy.
I was heartbroken no more.
♥ Minako
Continue to " Five"