I will not cry.
This was the mantra.
With each passing day she promised herself she would not fall back into this practice; with each passing bell the result was the same – running into the bathroom, tears brimming in her eyes, hands cupped over her face as if maybe, just maybe, she could keep them in. Safe in her bag laid the tattered notebook that she would soon open up and write over and over, again and again,
I will not cry.
Years of feeling nothing had taken its toll; now, every sense was fresh and staggeringly new. The slightest provocation sent her over the edge. Again and again she would find herself thinking of him, and again and again she would find herself dying for some form of escape. And still buried in the tightest folds in her mind, left from her vaguest memory, stood one single thought: She had made this world for him, hadn't she?
I will not cry.
Weeks have passed since that day. Since everything changed. She was back to normal now – as normal as she was allowed to be. She was Yuki: expressionless, observant, cold and calculating. She sat, alone and listless, in the corner of the Literary Club.
Waiting. Listening. Observing.
A forlorn notebook waited on the table's corner. Whether it was a cruel coincidence or a glitch in the programming, she neither knew nor cared. Her time to feel has come and gone.
Yet her fingers twitched and, almost involuntarily, she picked up the pencil and wrote.
I cannot cry.