Here's a story…
About a sunrise, a sunset, and a kid who watched them both from the roof of his house everyday. But ever since a very special girl he once knew had to leave, the sunsets and sunrises only made him sad.
This girl, you see, used to watch the sunrises with him.
So, one morning when the sun came up over the horizon, he took a picture of it, and put it into a scrapbook. That evening, he raced home from the ramen stand to take a picture of the sunset.
Before he knew it, a week had passed, and in his scrapbook he had seven sunrise pictures and seven sunset pictures.
This week got together with a bunch of other weeks and grew into months, and these months split into groups of twelve and formed years. The boy was eighteen, a man now, with a very important job as leader of his village. He had prestige, power, and all the love and respect of his peers. He was a very busy man, often times working day in and day out with no sleep at all.
But still, everyday, he made time to take a picture of the rising and setting sun.
One evening, the man was running home from work as usual, scrapbook under his arm and camera around his neck. The sun had already started setting, and if he didn't hurry he would miss it altogether. Preoccupied with these thoughts, he almost didn't even notice the pretty young female with strawberry-colored hair bent over on the sidewalk, scrambling to pick up a large amount of spilled groceries.
Normally he would have stopped to help her, but there was no time. He would come back to make it up to her somehow-after the sunset.
So the man made it home in time to take his picture, and he was on his way to put it into his scrapbook when he realized it was nowhere to be found.
Frantically, the man tore apart his home, upturning all the furniture and emptying all the drawers. At this point, the doorbell rang. In no mood for company, the man swore a little under his breath and reluctantly made his way to the front of his estate.
The man opened the door.
It was her.
Once, when the man was a boy, she was a girl who would come sit on his roof and watch the sunset with him. But she was eighteen, a woman now, who had just returned home after years of living in an apartment with a view she could never really get used to.
"You dropped this," she said, presenting the man's scrapbook.
Lost for words, he invited her in.
"Why…why did you do this for so many years?" she asked.
The man was silent for a long time.
"It…comforted me," he began slowly.
"I guess I thought that if I captured the sunrise and sunset everyday…that you would have to have watched at least one of them with me."
He blushed.
"So that, in some small way, we'd always be togeth-,"
She cut him off with her lips.
They spent the night together there, at his house, sometimes talking, sometimes content with silence. It was funny, thought the man, that they hadn't spoken in years and yet, somehow, there was nothing to say. He fell asleep on the couch next to her.
The man felt that he had probably slept no more than an hour when he felt a small pair of hands shaking him.
Slowly, the man opened his eyes, giving his houseguest a quizzical look.
"C'mon," she smiled, helping him up and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. "The sun is rising…"