It is winter. Their 4th anniversary since he confessed to her underneath the sakura tree.
And as she watches him walk away from her, his footsteps clear despite the roaring wind around them, she regrets nothing.
Not even when she glimpses a lone tear.
Then he is gone, his silhouette disappearing against the wide, unending expanse of white.
She regrets nothing. But she picks up the silver ring anyway.
She regrets… nothing.
… Then why are her fingers wet when she lifts them to her cheeks?
He turns away from her. How could he be so foolish as to think she truly loved him?
His fingers curl around the small, intricately carved wooden box hidden deep inside his coat pocket. It falls to the ground, spilling its contents: a silver ring, and a tiny rosebud.
Then he is running away from the girl that had captured his heart.
"We'll always be together, right?"
"Always. Forever."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
Tears running down her face, she folds up the piece of paper, black words written in her neat handwriting, a signature at the bottom, and slides it into a narrow crack between two floorboards underneath her bed.
Then, hands trembling, she loops the rope around her neck and kicks the chair away.
Outside the window, snowflakes start falling from the sky.
At her funeral, he cries.
In her hair, there is a fully grown, flushed and blooming rose.
And glinting on her ring finger, is a silver band with tiny words engraved on it.
We'll always be together.
Always and Forever.
~owari~