Work Text:
The 17th.
It’s been four months, Osamu.
Four months too long, four months too many; four months that should have never happened.
As I write this, tears continue to fall onto my precious notebook: they stain the pages, wet them and smudge my heartfelt words.
My sorrow festers and molds my heart, remaining an inconsolable stain.
I wish I could forget about that day, about how I saw your beautiful body so limp. I wish I could forget how you looked, still and unmoving on the floor. I will not write the appearance of your state in detail, as to spare myself.
I wish I could forget the way your hand felt in mine: once previously warm fingertips, fingertips that would annoyingly jab at my cheek, fingertips that would grasp and brush against my own two hands to embarrass me in public, cold as ice, robbed of the warmth it once had.
I wish I could forget my realization, halfway as tragic as the sight itself: that you had been lying there for hours, alone while I was gone. I wish I could forget when I lifted your head, cupped my hands around your face, and instead of your ear-to-ear grinned that usually adorned your face, your expression was void of any emotion, any life: I wish I could forget noticing the small wet spots around your eyelids, indicating that tears, however small and sparse in number, had been shed.
I wish I could forget how my thumbs scrambled to pull your eyelids up, to look into your beautiful brown eyes again, only to be met with dull, lifeless ones. I wish I could forget how I screamed. I wish I could forget how I held your cold, limp body against me in a clutch so rough for a second I fearfully thought I would break you, I wish I could forget how my tears dampened your hair.
It hurt, the realization you had been lying alone for hours while I was gone. If I had come back a few hours earlier, maybe I could have stopped you. Maybe I could have found you, maybe your head would be resting on my shoulder sleepily, your hair brushing against my neck in a soft manner as I write in my notebook.
I wish you would come back: even as a shadow, even as nothing more than a dream painted by my mind, your body artificial—my memory can never quite give justice to every perfect feature of yours. I’m sorry for that. I hope you will forgive me.
I was so excited for this summer. I was so excited for what we would do together: I was planning it. We would go to the beach together, swim in the beautiful water, look at the tidal pools once the tide went down to look at all the animals: I have a feeling you would gawk at the crabs while I would scrawl down notes on their behavior in the pages of this journal.
I wanted to take you on a picnic too, as I always did. Your legs always get covered in bites from bugs, and you would always whine all night about how itchy there were, and somehow, I find that a fond memory, because we would both love our time there regardless. We would look at the flowers, and eat all the food I made just for the two of us, go for a walk and look at the nature we never grow tired of.
Yet, I spent my summer grieving. Not a day goes by where I don’t miss your touch. I have never felt so fragile, I have never grieved so much. These three sunny months left me grieving, left me meaningless.
Osamu, I miss you so much. There is not a single night that goes by where I don’t weep, where I don’t miss your presence on our bed—it feels too big without you. You were my everything. How often I wish to have you near me, to wrap my arms around you as we sleep. Even in those sleepless nights, where we stayed up all night talking, I enjoyed them immensely, no matter how tired I felt the next day. Even when you kept me awake all night as you slept soundly, tugging the covers when you thought I was asleep and snoring the night away, I still loved it. I loved you. I love you.
I knew you were hurting, I knew all too well. I knew you hated pity, I knew you didn’t like my sympathetic glances whenever I cared for the wounds on your arms, slashed by your own hands: for that, I’m sorry again. I am so, so sorry. I hope you can forgive me, truly.
I knew you were going to do it. I saw it in your eyes one night—I remember it all too well, yet hazily at the same time: my hand grasping yours as we tried to sleep, yet your gaze was vacant as you stared at the ceiling: an expression of unusual melancholy on your face, one you never expressed openly. Yet, stupidly, I ignored it. I ignored that warning, hoping that it wasn’t true.
Stupidly, I thought what you needed to feel better in that moment was a soft kiss to the cheek and for my hand to squeeze yours ever so softly. I thought that was all you needed.
You didn’t squeeze back. I should have realized you had a plan. I should have realized that you were set to go through with it. Most of all, I should have done more, so much more, to stop you.
I should have realized, when we fought the next day for the third time that week, when I left the house, wanting to cool off by going by myself for a few hours, that my action was your intention. That you were purposefully trying to push me away, so I couldn’t stop you—or maybe, you hoped I would love you less so your death would leave less of an impact for me.
Yet, it hurt more. It hurt that our last actions to each other was yelling, instead of feeling your soft lips against mine. No matter how chapped or torn yours were from your habit of tearing off the dry skin, they were the softest in the world to me, the ones that were perfectly fitted for mine.
It hurt that the last thing you remembered weren’t words or comfort, or my love, but instead the words I yelled that day, the tone of my voice too raised to be kind. I said some words I didn’t mean that day due to my frustration, words that must’ve hurt. I regret that deeply—if I could, If I knew what would have happened the moment I stepped out of my house, I would have never indulged in the fight, I would have held you close and comforted you as much as I could. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Osamu. I’m sorry.
I must have written sorry, thought sorry, said sorry to some form of you a thousand times these past few months: yet, it is all I can say, it is all I can feel alongside my grief, festering and tearing my insides apart.
Even as I write this now, the heavy knot in my throat has never quite gone away. They put a portrait of you at the desk you once sat at the agency: it never helps my grief, it only makes it swell and burn, but I do not have the heart to ask the others to take it down. I could never do that to the memory of you. Never.
I have never felt so fragile, soft around the edges. I have never cried so hard, even as I write this. I try my best to cry like you: quietly, not a noise coming from your throat, but I cry like a mess.
Sometimes, when it rains, I feel worse. Rain was your favorite kind of weather, as you would go outside and get yourself soggy to dance in it. It is nothing but a hurt reminder, but I can imagine that, if you were still alive, you would do it again, and I would grumble while cleaning the trail of puddles you left as you went to get a change of clothes.
In a few years time, as I had planned, we were going to get married. We would continue living together, we could adopt a pet, we could live our lives once we retired quietly and peacefully. Yet, inevitably, that dream has been crushed to pieces, and it hurts. It hurts so badly, it hurts.
When you died, I found your trenchcoat on my desk at our home. I cherish it like the treasure it is: I cried into it, I cried so hard the day you passed, clinging onto your smell and the small strands of hair on the shoulders: ran my hands through the familiar texture.
I cried harder when I dug into the pockets and found you had kept a picture of our first date, the one so many years ago. Seeing your joyful expression on it, one that I would never see again, made me sob so hard my chest heaved with each ragged, painful breath, yet I was still careful not to get a drop of water on it.
I look out the window, and I hope for you to come back, for all this to be a sick dream—a sick nightmare. I keep piles of your unfinished paperwork on my desk, once being nuisances to me, now being a reminder of you. I’ll look at your messy, imperfect handwriting and feel a longing pang in my chest, in my heart.
I miss our meaningless rambles and conversation. I miss your teasing and annoyances, I miss our pleasant chats when we were together, and most of all, I miss you.
I bring flowers to your grave every day. It's a small comfort, imagining that, in some form of the afterlife, you’ll tangle them in your hair. I’ll sit by your grave and talk to you, tell you about my day, my emotions, what we could do that day if you were still with me—in hopes that you are listening, it hopes that you are right beside me.
I’ll look back at old videos we took together on dates and at home just to hear your voice, just to see your face: they are my anchor, something that hurts yet keeps me from spiraling. If I were to forget your voice, I would never forgive myself, never. It is my worst fear. I will make sure it doesn’t come true. That is my promise to you.
I miss you, truly. I love you. Please, come back into my arms again.
Please.