A/N: Hello! Thanks for checking out this one-shot. I'm not used to writing 5 Centimeter per Second stories, so I apologize if I write something wrong. I wrote this while listening to 'Distant Everyday Memories', and I recommend it.
Edited 11/5/15
I don't own anything.
Sometimes… I look back at things and ask myself, 'if I had done that, would things be different?' There are so many questions that I can ask...so many questions that had been left unanswered. The what ifs were so abundant that I had to push them away.
If I had tried to keep in contact more...that thought haunts my mind, creeping up in my thoughts at the darkest moments.
Would we be together? Or would we still drift apart?
Slowly my feelings withered, and all that was left were those memories we shared… so distant, so far away. Sometimes I would feel a tinge of regret. What exactly happened that made us become so far apart? We were always together before. Tohno and Akari was how we were called by our peers, because we always were at each other's sides. When had we begun to drift apart?
I can't really identify the sole moment that begun to create the chasm that kept us apart, and perhaps that is why I still wonder.
Sometimes I wish we could go back to those old days, when all we had to worry about was getting home in time for dinner. Running, hand in hand, through the pathway framed by cherry blossom trees.
Do you remember? Those days…
I do. I always will. Even when time passes by, even when our time ends, even when it is time to go...
… I will always remember.
Will you?
.
I miss you. That feeling, however faint, is still true. It will be true until the end of time. I can never stop the aching of my heart when I see the cherry blossoms falling. I cannot stop the tears from falling as I remember you. Your smile was as bright as the sun. Your laugh was like the tinkling of bells, one of the happiest sounds in the world.
I happened to catch a glimpse of you through the window of a train. You probably didn't notice: it was just a quick moment that went by in a flash before I could even do anything about it. When had your shoulders become so broad? I asked this to myself.
In the same instance, I also asked myself this: where had your smile gone?
.
Today was your birthday. If it was back then, we would probably have a surprise party with cake to finish it. Probably from that bakery that you used to love to go to, after all, the lady in front of the counter always liked you best out of all of the elementary school students that came by. Perhaps you would smile at me, right before you would blow the candles.
That thought strikes me cold, and I have to close my eyes to block out the sound of my ears ringing.
Today was your birthday.
It's not that I remember. It's that I can't forget.
.
Today is the anniversary of when we first met.
Do you remember?
The world seems to continue to move forward, yet I am still suspended in the past. Time passes by, yet I can't do anything about it. Why should I be so caught up on something that had happened so long ago? Yet...all I can do is ask questions. That makes me feel somewhat bitter.
Do you remember? Those days when we would walk to school together, chatting and smiling as we laughed over some strange fact one of us would come up with. The days when we would share a story beneath the fresh canopy of cherry blossoms, signalling the ephemeral spring that would once again fade away before we could even miss it.
.
Tonight I met someone from our past. Not anyone very important, but a classmate of ours back in elementary school that you might vaguely remember. He was the kid who always sat in the back corner of the classroom while the other classmates would tease us. It was sort of a surprise and left me thinking. If I could meet him, then why couldn't I meet you again?
He asked me if we were still in contact with each other.
I wish I could have told him yes.
.
I sometimes think, 'If that letter was sent... if we still talked… if so many things did not draw us apart… would things be different?'
But tonight I realized it was time to move on. Some things...some things are best left in the past. Why it has taken me so long to realize, I do not know. You will always be a chapter in my life, no matter how much I try to change it. You will forever be my first love, and thus you will forever be engraved in my heart. Even so...I have to move on. So I am sending you this to tell you one last thing:
Goodbye, Tohno-kun.