Dear Motoki,

How are you, Motoki-san? I know we have not had contact for much time, but I do not know who else to speak to. I am surprised I remember your address. It was a long time since my parents brought me on their business trip to Okinawa, where we met. I hear you now have a job in your father's company. Congratulations.

I write to you because I have no one else, and I am afraid that this will not be a pleasant letter. You certainly saw the newspapers of my parents' crash when we returned to America. But you do not know that I was discovered to have a terminal illness when I was recovering in the hospital. It was progressed, and I had never known about it. It is tragic to realize that even despite the crash, I would have been separated from my mother and father nevertheless.

For the past five years I have lived in an orphanage for children with terminal illnesses. Oh it was terrible...not the place itself so much as knowing that the friends we made would last only a few short years, and that if we were fortunate. There I made the friends that grieve my heart now: Amy, Mia, Serenity, and Reina.

Amy was so intellegent. Out of all of them, I think I spent most of my time with her, because she wanted me to teach her to play basketball and soccer. But most of the time she read histories and science books, and would be able to tell us wonderful things about nature. Reina loved it when she spoke of birds. Unlike the rest of us, Amy was not an orphan, but her mother worked long hours at the hospital next door to us, and since this orphanage was run by the hospital, we saw much of Amy's mother when she was not seeing a patient. Amy did the best with grades, better than all of us.

I wish Mia's dream had come true. She always wanted to be a performer, whether it was in singing or acting. She knew about clothes and movie stars, and even tried to write songs during the last year. Only occasionally would she play soccer with us, but she was truly kind. She deserved her career.

Reina liked books, but not the ones Amy read. She loved religions and world myths, as well as some fantasies. She was probably the only one there who could both explain Confuscius and also tell us what a dullahan was. She also wanted to be a singer...well, perhaps not at first, but after the time she spent with Mia, she couldn't help but think it would be nice. Reina is almost as athletic as me, and she is very good at basketball.

I think if we all had told each other that Serenity was our favorite friend, then all of us would have agreed and no one would have been offended. The rest of us had our own ways and were not social, not until we met her. Without Serenity, life would have been very bleak. It was her that cheered us up and made us laugh when we had nothing to smile about. She said that she was going to be Mia's and Reina's managers, and that Amy would be the nutritionist and I would be their trainer, so that they would always be fit for the screen, and that we would live and be together always. When I first arrived at the orphanage, she immediately welcomed me and pulled me into the group when I was too terrified from my circumstances to try to make friends. I cried a lot at that time, but I cannot remember having cried without her there, telling me that things were going to be alright.

As kind as this was, I never believed her. There never was any reason to. Life was wonderful, but we all knew it was only a matter of time until our group was broken. It started with Amy, on a day when we had finally convinced Mia to play soccer with us. We thought nothing of it when Amy said that she was tired and wanted to go take a nap. But we never saw her again.

Mia was always a fragile sort of person, and it was when one of us finally died that she began to weaken. The rest of us were so frightened to see her dwindle, even to the point where she rarely got out of bed and never left her room. We visited her, and tried to keep her spirits up, but there was little we could do when her voice started to fade, and she could no longer sing, though she did start writing feverishly (she wrote a song for each of us, but she could never sing them). Because of this, it was a complete shock the day when Reina did not wake up. Mia did not last very long after that.

It was the worst when Serenity began to fade. I was able to take care of her for a time, but I began to be truly sick also at that time, and they put us in the hospital together for observation. It began to be obvious that our time would be soon. I remember, she looked at me and smiled, saying she was glad that she would not die alone, and also that we should be happy: we would be with our friends again soon. I held her hand...she lost consciousness about the day before she died, but I still held her hand, though she could not know that I was there. I was weak and felt I would faint before I could make it, but I sat on her bed with her, and I was there when it happened. The alarms went off and they took her away, but they could not revive her.

That was the worst night of sickness I have had, and I was so weak, so that I really did faint. I spent days either in a restless sleep or a groggy wakefullness, wishing that I might finally die so that it would be over. But I didn't. One day when I woke, I felt a little better. The doctors did scans, and they noticed that every sign of the disease had gone. Though I had suffered from it for years and there is no cure, I lived. But my friends were gone.

Oh, Motoki-san, it was not always terrible times, waiting for us to fade away one by one. Do you remember when I talked constantly of Sailor Moon? I brought the DVD sets with me, and all of the girls became interested in it, especially the live-action series. Amy was Mercury, Mia was Venus, Reina was Mars, and of course Serenity was the princess and I was Sailor Jupiter. I must have told you a million times that we have the same name. Though I admit I was jealous of Reina, because red is my favorite color and Jupiter does not wear it.

In America, they have this organization called Make-a-Wish, where people with terminal illnesses are allowed to travel somewhere or meet people they have always wanted to meet. We all together decided to go to Japan to meet the team that created Sailor Moon. It was wonderful even if we only were able to see the sights, buy fancy Japanese clothes, and do karaoke. But then we were all given Sailor Moon costumes from Bandai, with wigs and the watches and everything! That was when they had began a new Sailor Moon series, so we were all given a script and told to say it, once we were dressed up, and they filmed us as a commercial for the new series! It was wonderful! Oh, but I forgot. You must have seen the commercial.

The only disappointment was that I did not see you there, but I presume that you were busy with your schooling. Your father made you go to cram school so much that I barely saw you when I was there with my parents.

Bandai gave us the costumes, and also designed transformation sequences for us, and also a sequence for one of our attacks. Of course I did "supreme thunder". We had copies of them, and we could play them on the computer. And we were able to wear the costumes at halloween, and they let us go with several children in the neighborhood to get candy from the nearby neighborhoods. Though I don't think many of the children believed us when we said that we were on TV. My favorite present from Bandai was a picture of all of us in our costumes, and we each signed under where we were. We hung it in our playroom.

After everything happened, I was too sad to stay at the orphanage. I wanted to go live on my own. I told them that since I had been cooking, sewing, and cleaning for my friends for so long, that I was capable of living alone and I wanted to be emancipated. At first no one thought that a fifteen year old would be able to be by herself, but then Amy's mother talked to the people in charge. She said that it would be too awful for me to stay there when the orphanage was filled with so many memories of people I would never see again. At one point I had hoped that Amy's mother would adopt me, but she seemed to be speaking then for herself: I would only remind her of her daughter. Besides, with her job, it would be as if I were alone anyway.

The most shocking thing about it was that I was able to move out without having to get a job right away or burden the orphanage: Serenity was rich. Apparently, shortly after I had come to the orphanage, she had made a will, saying that all of her money should go to her friends. It was so tragic -- she had believed that even if she did not live, that the rest of us would. So I ended up with two hundred thousand dollars and some stocks and bonds. If I am wise, I shall be able to live off of it for a long time. I cried for more than an hour when I found out what Serenity had done. She was so good...she should have lived.

If they had lived, then they would have changed the world. Amy could be a doctor or scientist, Mia could have been a generious pop idol, and so could Reina, if she decided not to be a writer or philosopher. And Serenity...everything she held influence over would just be wonderful. It isn't fair to them, especially since I have so little ambition myself. I am too easily content, so I cannot change the world. I wish everyone could know as I what a loss it is for them to be gone...

But it is not good to think that way. I only become more angry. My friends would not wish for me to be angry. At times such as these, I am unable to believe in a God, or in heaven. But I cannot simply disbelieve. I cannot bear the thought that they are not somewhere happy, together, and safe from all the things they had to face in life. Still...it seems evil that they are gone. How can any God take four wonderful girls away when they were so young and had so much to offer?

So I wrote to you because I want to know that someone I care about is alive. I know we have not spoken in years, but please write back. I am very frightened. I do not know what to do.

Sincerely,

Makato

P.S.

I am sorry that I was so self-absorbed in this letter, but please tell me what you are doing so that I can be a better conversationalist.