It's not everyday you meet the friend that would be there until the end. It's not everyday you can betray someone and still have them ask you for help in their time of need. It's not everyday that someone like me would go back. But that voice brought back the memories I'd long since surpressed and I found myself smiling at their nostalgic visions. So I went back to where he said he would be and I sat with him while he stared blindly at the ground, smiling through his tears as he said over and over again about what he'd done.
"I need you. I miss you. I can't do this alone."
Soft as a whisper and yet it burned me. Good friend, why have you killed yourself? Why have you let yourself fall so far? Why would you call on someone like me, why would you want my shoulder to cry on after what I did? But I still patted his shoulder and let him lean on me while he sobbed. So old now, how many years had it been? And still, I remember your face like it had only been minutes. I'm sure you remember mine as vividly too.
It's time we finished it though. Happy as I am to be back here with your company, I know it's time we ended it. And we did. On that day that all business was finished, I sat next to you before the heaving waves we had stood before so long ago, smiling, happy, together, and I put that memory before us as the sun shifts higher into the sky. Once you were mad at me for doing it.
"Aren't you afraid of me?" and the little boy shook his head and smiled at me. Now, the little boy is grown and when he looks at me and smiles with that same smile he had all those years ago, I know I had made a friend just like Fuka had told me to. "The sun is coming up." But all you can do is nod and close your eyes in anticipation. I grab your hand and do the same, so close to the end. So close to what I'd wanted all along. I stayed alive for you all this time, to be there for you because I knew I had to. Because I knew you were the last one. "Sho."
"Yes?"
"I love you." Those pale blue eyes fall on me for the last time and I stare back at them.
"Indeed, Kei. Indeed."
