From London, With Love
Memory really is a resentful thing — as time passes, the memories you most want to keep just keep slipping away, spilling right through your fingers. I only really understood that once the spring I’d chosen to say goodbye had passed, summer had come and gone, and autumn had arrived.
Time is cruel. Just from you not being beside me, my whole world lost its color like this, and the seasons kept rushing past, like wind.
England’s weather is always dull, blanketed in thick cloud. It felt like a perfect mirror of my own heart, and these low, heavy days just kept going, even now.
A Sunday with nothing to do. On the bed, I readjusted my grip on the orca plushie, worn thin and limp from being hugged so much.
“…I want to see you.”
I picked up the pink perfume bottle, still sitting on the nightstand where I’d left it. On nights the loneliness got unbearable, I wanted to fall asleep wrapped in that scent. That’s why I’d bought it, the bottle with its cute ribbon design — it had become my own kind of sleeping pill.
A small spritz, and the scent spread. Unmistakably, Yui-san’s scent. And yet — something was different, something missing. It has to be her, the actual person. Every time I thought that, I felt struck down all over again, and sank into the bed.
No regrets. I mustn’t have any. I made the right choice. Surely, this wound will heal eventually too. Convincing myself, over and over, I kept turning it over in my mind.
I’d thought putting physical distance between us would help me let go. I don’t want to forget this feeling — even while thinking that, some part of me was growing exhausted, unsure how much longer this pain would go on.
Wallowing like this, endlessly — I feel like I’m the living embodiment of exactly the kind of “high-maintenance woman” Yui-san always hated.
I wonder how Yui-san’s doing right now. Has she already forgotten about me?
Being apart like this, nothing but unhelpful thoughts keep surfacing. Never mind, nothing to do anyway, might as well take a nap.
Just as I let out a sigh and closed my eyes, a knock sounded at my bedroom door.
“Hey, sis, can I come in?”
My younger brother Kaname’s voice came from the other side of the door. I called back, “sure,” and he peeked his head through the gap.
While I’d been away, Kaname had grown into a proper high schooler. His height had shot up too, and by the time I got back, whatever rebellious phase he’d had was already over — he looked like a completely different person.
“What’s up?”
He slipped smoothly into my room and quietly closed the door behind him, and, puzzled by that, I tilted my head.
“…Huh, something smells nice. Sis, do you even wear perfume?”
“Um, yeah… sometimes.”
A lie. I’ve never once worn it myself. This is the scent of someone I love — unable to say that, I deflected, and Kaname, not particularly bothered, said, “well, whatever,” pulled out my desk chair, and sat down.
“So, actually, I wanted to ask your advice about something.”
“Eh, what?”
He said it with such a serious face that whatever this was, it clearly wasn’t easy for him to bring up. Coming to me, rather than Mum or Dad, for advice — that had almost never happened before.
Wanting to read his intent, I looked straight into eyes the same pale brown as my own.
“Actually, I’ve got a girlfriend now…”
“A girlfriend.”
The shock was enough that I just repeated the phrase back. I stared, blank, at my little brother, faintly embarrassed, restlessly smoothing down the not-especially-long hair at the back of his neck.
Here his big sister had just been through the worst heartbreak of her life, wound still raw, and this kid — until recently so small, and now suddenly has a girlfriend? I nearly put my head in my hands.
“So, um, it’s her birthday this month. And… I don’t know what to get her.”
Ah, I see now. His body had grown a lot, but the inside apparently hadn’t changed much. Watching my brother fidget, clearly struggling to get the words out, his kind big sister decided to throw him a line.
“…You want to pick out the birthday present together?”
His face lit up instantly, eyes shining, and he nodded, and something in me softened, disarmed. I said “sure,” and Kaname smiled, happy, and immediately stood, saying we should go right now.
This is a sister’s duty too, I told myself, standing up. I hadn’t had plans today, but there was nothing to be done about it. I’d been lazing around since Saturday, so I flipped two pages ahead on the desk calendar I’d fallen behind on.
It’s not that I didn’t think — of all days, why today.
Today is October ninth. Tomorrow is Yui-san’s twenty-second birthday.
*
A few stops on the cramped subway. At the department store I brought him to, watching my brother do lap after lap of shop after shop, agonizing seriously over the right present, I saw myself in him.
I remember doing the exact same thing at Valentine’s, unable to decide on chocolate for Yui-san, circling the floor over and over, teased by Yuuri the whole time.
“…Genetics really are something scary.”
“Eh, what?”
“Nothing. Just thinking you’re exactly like me, Kaname.”
“…Well, we’re siblings, of course we’re alike.”
Fair point — Yui-san and Yukiya-san look exactly alike too. I can’t ruffle his hair anymore now that he’s taller than me, but my little brother’s still adorable, no matter how old he gets.
After agonizing and agonizing, he finally landed on an accessory shop, and picked up a necklace. Not bad taste, for my own brother. That’s really cute, I think, I said, nudging him along, and he seemed to settle on buying it.
It’s for my sweet brother’s sake, and yet — why does something ache, deep in my chest, the whole time? Everywhere we go, everything I see and hear pries open the drawer of memory, and my chest tightens, painful.
“…Sis, don’t you have a boyfriend? Did you leave one back in Japan, maybe?”
Asked so suddenly, I froze for just a beat.
No boyfriend, and what I left behind in Japan wasn’t a man. Laughing, I shook my head. “Your sister’s just not popular,” I said, and Kaname replied, “I don’t think that’s true.”
Out of his small allowance, Kaname treated me to tea as thanks. On the way home, we stopped by a cake shop and bought a single shortcake to bring back.
Since coming back home, neither my father nor my mother had pressed me for details. They must have understood, surely, that something had happened. But I had no intention of talking about it with anyone.
I was scared. Scared that telling someone, sharing this pain, would turn this feeling into nothing but a memory, and someday it would vanish without a trace.
Contradictory, I know, even to myself. My chest aches, it’s painful, and yet I don’t want to forget this feeling.
The promise I’d made last year, on Yui-san’s birthday. Not being able to keep it weighed on my heart.
*
Back in my room, I stuck a candle into the shortcake I’d bought and lit it. Japan runs ahead of here in time, so the date there was about to change any moment now.
I stared at the second hand. Who is Yui-san with, right now, I wonder. Is she home alone? Has she thought of me, even a little?
Thinking that, I said it.
“…Yui-san, happy birthday.”
Right as the second hand swept past the top of the clock, I blew out the candle.
Please — let this feeling reach you faster than anyone else’s in the whole world.