I saw Tsukasa in the real world for the first time, today. She was not like I had expected, but what had I expected, really? I suppose in a way, in a stupid, childish way, I had expected a flesh and blood version of the Tsukasa I knew from The World. Yet I had known it wouldn't be like that, I had known Ann was a girl. Why does seeing her make it all that different, all that more shocking, all that more real? Why, in spite of my best efforts, do I seem to think like a small child?
And why did I ever fall in love with someone that doesn't even exist? I don't know when I started feeling the way I do towards Tsukasa, or why, considering he seemed to make me angry more than anything else. But the truth, the stupid, childish truth, was that I have a crush on a computer character. Subaru may have been able to take her feelings outside the game but, for me, Ann is not the same. I suppose I didn't love Tsukasa enough, although I find it difficult to imagine how I could've loved him more. Him, yes, him, because I loved him, not Ann. How stupid of me to feel this way for some data on a computer somewhere, how childish of me to be jealous of Subaru, of Mariko, not for having her love returned, but for being able to love herself. When we saved Ann, we killed my Tsukasa.
How stupid, how childish.
How true.
Mimiru contemplated the page, some characters blurred by fallen tears, and then carefully closed the small notebook. With trembling hands she picked it up to put it away, but she could control herself no longer, and threw the diary with a scream of pain and rage. She barely heared the sound of it slamming against the wall, for it was all but drowned out by her sobbing.
[A/N]: Short chappie, but necessary for the continuation of the story, now no longer so much a loosely connected collection as a storyline in its own right.