SUMMARY
Historical Hetalia. APH Germany publishes his diary, which contains his memories of his brother. Tribute to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
First-person narrative diary entries, attempting to write in a style without dialogue tags.
Foreword
I'd originally written these entries in Bruder's old unused diary. It was a large one, with a brown, wrinkled leather cover that was beginning to peel at the ends. Its pages were bound by hand and were thick and hard to write on. The thing had been covered with dust when I found it stuffed between Bruder's stuff. It was selfish of me to use it, I know. But Bruder was gone, and I found it comforting to use something of his. It was like I was actually talking to him and his presence was close, even though it was, in reality, not.
The thing about this diary is, it had been loved and written and carried around everywhere. I've already had a handful of pages fall out and I didn't know between which pages they belonged. After all, it's almost been half a century, and material objects only last so long when they are used as much as I did this book.
It took me about a month to put the old thing back put together and to type it up on an old typewriter. I had to decode the smudged words, and find some loose pages among my other things. But I managed to complete it. By the time it was finished, I hadn't even noticed how much time had passed. It's November again, and twenty-seven years since the Wall fell. After I send this book on its way to the publisher's, I'll be going to the site to pay tribute.
Many of the entries I'd written were missing dates. Looking back, most of it was of me reminiscing on a certain days of months of certain years. As for the rest, due to my depression in his absence at the time, the days mixed into all the others and I left the date blank. I've since edited those with the general month and/or year that it occurred.
It wasn't my original plan to make this diary public. I didn't even want to write a diary in the first place. I've never been one to have a diary, both in the past and present. But throughout these many centuries I've been in existence, I forget so many things; my people forget so many things. And I was afraid that, someday, my people will forget—I will forget—Bruder. So if I turn this into a book, if enough people read this, will his memory live on? I truly hope so.
Für mein Bruder— (For my brother—)
Die Namen der Länder (The names of countries)
können sich im Laufe der Jahre ändern, (May change over the years,)
aber "Bruder" ist ein Name (But 'Brother' is a name)
das sich nie ändern wird. (That never changes.)