Originally written as an extra cred paper for English class. Published at this moment (2.18.11; 11:00 PM) because I'm in a big fight right now with my mom.

Disclaimer: Gakuen Alice copyright © Tachibana Higuchi, 2003-Present


A Love Letter

by foxtrotelly


Love,

There have been many things that caused me to veer to this decision.

I could never be the kind of mother you would need in this life — or want, for that matter. With the tumultuous fiasco I had gotten myself into, I'm not even the most remote hint of one.

It wouldn't have been as difficult for most people in my situation. For sure, they'd give up a responsibility if it meant having the chance to be young and be able to live life more freely again. Not me, though.

I didn't want to bring you into a mess that was never yours to clean up. I didn't want to jeopardize the life you were going to live. Most of all, I didn't want to be faced with the biggest problem of all anymore:

I really did want to keep you. And I abhorred myself for it — not for wanting you of course, but rather for being so selfish for considering on depriving you of a better life that could've been yours by wanting and therefore keeping you.

Before all this, I was just a normal girl living the most mundane of lives one could ever wish for. Everything in my life was average — my grades, my looks, you name it. I faced the same old petty affairs any teenager would have faced, and back in those days the biggest decisions I'd make would differ from the answers to a test to which shoes to wear and what not.

As it was, life couldn't have gotten more ordinary until he came along.

To this day, I could never understand why he chose to sit beside me on his first day here when he could've taken the other vacant seats beside that prettier girl or that smarter kid. And he was just so charming and handsome and friendly and intelligent and funny anyway that he could have befriended anyone at our school in less than five minutes, teachers included.

Expectedly, we quickly became really good friends. Not long after, I was hopelessly enamored with him, head over heels just for. And though I never even saw it coming, he told me he loved me too and that day immediately became the happiest day of my life.

Once I asked him why it had been me he'd chosen, and right then he told me, "You never seemed to make an effort to be noticed by other people nor were noticed much by them, so I did."

I realized then how lucky I was. In fact, from that moment on he truly made me feel something nobody else had ever made me feel before: extraordinary.

Then it happened — I found out I was going to have you. I told him about it and he, without a hitch, promised me he'd stay by my side through all this. Unfailingly, he did so, bearing everything with me from the wildly spreading news to the behind-the-back whispers with unwavering constancy and loyalty.

My parents didn't find out about it yet at the moment, but his parents did soon enough. Horrified, they at once decided to send him off somewhere far — hopefully away from me.

They succeeded, of course, and so I was left alone. It was the most devastating thing.

Afraid, I had no other option in myself but to run — away from everyone and everything. But how could I even escape from an impending complication that was growing right inside of me — that was a part of who I was? So as to say, you have irrevocably been the only thing in my life that I couldn't run from ever since.

I clung on to you since you have been the only thing left to remind me of him. Every kick of yours almost felt like he was reaching out his hand to me and your rhythmic, steady heartbeat just like his beating gently at my ear every time I leaned in close to listen. Often times as I just sat there and remembered him, I wondered if he ever fought to stay with you and me or not. If he did, it always lingered in my mind how things could've been.

But I knew better than to remain in the past. Instead, I focused all my efforts on scraping by with the meager amount of cash I had with me. My heart a void, I did whatever I could to keep the both of us alive. So if he may or may have not given up on you, remember, love, that I never did.

Days and nights got harder and colder as the few remaining months of my pregnancy dragged by. I had you one rainy night in an orphanage and lost you there as well. Then, as I held you in my arms for the first time that night to the last time I did the following night, I couldn't help but ask myself a few things: Will your eyes crinkle endearingly the way your father's did whenever he smiled? Will you, as he had always wanted, ever inherit my brown eyes and long brown hair? And will you ever get to open and read this letter, seventeen years from now, at the very same age as I am now as I write this, just as I had intended right from the very start?

Before I left home, I wrote my parents a letter in hopes that that would explain everything. In that message, I told them that despite my mistakes and actions, I still loved them very, very much. I told them that I was so sorry for everything I've done and that I wouldn't blame them if they would be too disappointed to even take me back. I told them, though, that in seventeen years time, they'd better keep an eye out for a girl who, with any bit of luck, has long brown hair and eyes of the same color to match that crinkle when she smiles.

I will never cease loving you, without a doubt. And I'm sure that my heart and mind, whenever and wherever I may be, will always be partial and beckoned to you, my one and only daughter.

Yours,

Mother

My hands gripped at the brittle, yellowed paper tighter as I read through it again for the second time. Then the third. Then the fourth… Until my eyes were already too full of tears and I couldn't really see anything else anymore and I just felt too tired to read on anymore.

So this was what my real mother had to say to me after everything she's done and everything she's been through.

To be honest, I didn't really know what to feel since it was like all sorts of emotions were going on inside me all at the same time: sadness and pity over her past experiences and losses, anger over the fact that she only chose this moment now to disclose everything to me when I could've known about all of it earlier, and then actual happiness, because I finally knew that, some place out there, was my real mother who still really did love me despite it all. My breath faltered as my heart clenched oddly at the thought.

Don't get me wrong or anything, though, because I still had my parents — the ones who've raised me my entire life — who I undoubtedly loved and was grateful to with every fiber of my being and who, unlike my real mother, were actually there for me these past seventeen years. A dull ache stung my chest again, and at that a fresh wave of tears fell from my eyes.

I mean, how could you even blame a mother who just up and left everything behind for the sake of her child? Probably for good, even? I didn't think that was too fair of me.

Hoping to ease out my thoughts, I quickly ran a hand through my hair. It was then that a smaller scrap of paper fluttered out of my hold and came to rest in front of me.

On it was the address to my biological grandparents' house.


After much paranoia and careful contemplation, it was almost a surprise to find myself standing alone in front of my real grandparents home. It took a lot of willpower and assurance on both my part and my parents' to get me here and surely, it took long enough, too. I had asked them that I wanted to come by myself, and so I did, taking the bus going here. I didn't travel for too long, but this place wasn't too near either. Now it had dawned on me how far my mother had gone away from home — how far we've all gone to get here to this very point, actually.

My heart hammered hard and loud in my chest it hurt, which didn't really help since I was just so, so nervous. But somehow it was comforting, really, to feel the creaks of this house's porch underneath my feet and the cool breeze from the surrounding trees blowing through my hair with every step I heavily took towards what might just become the greatest uncertainty of my life. I've always known I was adopted, but here right now before me were my mother's parents — my grandparents at that — after all. I wasn't too sure if they'd even be willing to face, let alone accept, the very reason that had caused their daughter to run away from their home in the first place.

But then this was what my mother wanted for me, and this was what I wanted for myself too. Questions and doubt filled my head non-stop. Until finally, I raised my shaking hand to ring the doorbell.

The door was answered by a young woman with long brown hair and eyes to match.

The End


So I'm hoping that by the time you guys have read this, my mom and I have already made up.

I just really hate moments like this, you know?

And so I thought publishing this as an AU short would help me release my feelings a bit.

It's just really hard.