Today is International Freedom day, a day celebrated all across the globe.
Taiki's face will be plastered all over TV screens, the internet, the newspapers. He's rightly hailed as a hero.
Despite changing my phone number and email address countless times now, journalists have hounded me in the weeks leading up to this day, as they do every year. I'm sure it is the same for the others, but perhaps they don't mind the attention as much as I do. We don't keep in touch, although I do see them in the tabloids every now and then.
I'm surrounded by blissful silence now; I've unplugged the computer and disconnected the phone. Taiki being emblazoned across the media is still too much to bear. Today is a day the world celebrates... but I don't want any part of it.
Seeing the repeats of interviews with Taiki's family is unnecessary when I can cite them perfectly word for word, their tears and pained expressions clearly etched into my memory.
We are supposed to celebrate our freedom, but I feel that Taiki had no idea that he was handing me a death sentence. I wonder what he would say to me now if he knew?
It is hard not to envy him sometimes, in that world devoid of humans- the place I came to call home. I so badly want to reach out to him, but I know it's an impossibility, that he is as good as dead to us in this world.
To begin with, I told myself that time would make things better. I could grow accustomed to this world, I would live the life Taiki said I deserved. The only problem was, his definition of the life I deserved differed greatly from my own.
The older I get, the more I realise: I do not belong here. In the end... Taiki's sacrifice was meaningless.