Dear readers,

I'm very happy for all the reviews I've received. The impatience, the wait for a new chapter, means so much to me, you know? I mean, that's what I feel when I usually read others' fanfics. And all th wonderful comments! I love y'all.

I'm very sorry for the late updates. I was going to update it today, after what I thought would be a refreshing chat with a very good friend of mine... my best friend actually, who, coincidentally, also happens to be my first real love.

Then when I get to school... I'm all stressed, as every other Monday morning. I'm late for biology class, and I'm ten minutes late as usual. Then after about twenty minutes, they call all the teachers and tell them to go to the 'big gathering-place', I don't know what it's called in English, it's Swedish it's 'aula', there's a big stage and plenty of chairs.

Of course we students are excited. Now we get a longer break! Then we talk about what might possibly have happened, and we joke about possible events.

Then... suddenly... my other best friend rushes to me, and says that the other people in her class has said it's him, (let's call him Zed for now, I don't want to say his real name, that's his screen name when we chat), he has... died.

I stare at her in disbelief. "What?" I say. I heard perfectly clear what she just said. She looks at me back (she has no idea that I love him. Or should I say, had, she knows now), and says, "Well, I don't know if it's true, it might just be a joke, I don't really believe it..."

And I don't want to believe it either. I mean, Zed. Zed, dead? Excuse me? We talked on the phone for one and a half hour just three days ago, and the day before yesterday he was nagging me about going swimming with him!

And I start crying, walking away with my friends to the petrol station behind the school, sitting on the ground, just repeating over and over again, "It's a joke, right? It's a joke... he can't be dead, goddammit! I didn't even HAVE the chance to... to tell him! It's only a rumor. A joke. Right?"

But some part of me knows it's true. It's like this voice whispering to me from the depths of my brain, "You know it can't be a joke... why would someone joke about something as serious as this?"

But out of ALL +500 people at my school, why HIM?

Then my other friends rush to me. They tell me not to cry, calm down... but it's true. Our teacher told us. It's fully true. He died... in a motorbike crash.

And it literally feels as though a hole opened up in the ground and sucked me down, then threw me all the way up again. Zed? Impossible.

I mean, how NORMAL is that? Your normal high school crush, or first love, ends up being a total fiasco, what with him not liking you or whatnot, or he liking another girl, and yeah, there WAS this melodramatic love triangle thing, and it was just like in a book... and like a book it ends. In a tragedy.

I'm really sorry, guys. For the meantime, I can't really continue updating this fic. In about a couple of weeks or something, maybe. Because... it hurts so much to say it, but this fic, it was dedicated to him.

I never even had the time to tell him what I felt. What he meant to me. That practically everything I write, everything SasuSaku, everything ShikaIno or NaruHina, is actually about him. Everything...

I mean, just yesterday I was sulking over the fact that he DIDN'T write anything cute in an entire week. That he hadn't even logged in that night to check on me, to cheer me up or anything.

I didn't realize that yesterday afternoon, while I was baking a pie sulking over the fact that he hadn't logged in to chat specifically with me or that he hadn't written anything cute for an entire week, he had passed away on the way to the hospital.

It feels melodramatic. Like something in a book, something in a movie; something that I have created, something I've written, like a fanfic or something. It seems so UNREAL. He's my best friend. My first love.

And then it all ends like this?

I didn't even manage to tell him that this fic, that he thought was so good, was dedicated to HIM! That despite calling him Shikamaru, I really wished he was Sasuke, because he kept saying I was like Sakura, and he knows I'm this huge SasuSaku fan? Did he ever realize that the main source of my love for SasuSaku was the fact that I wanted an impossible fairy tale dream come true? And that it really had, when I was with him... until now?

He didn't even tell me, what he felt. Was it really jealousy back then when I told him about the crush I had on a guy that, now, I find out, practically was friends with him, but he back then said that they were neutral?

And was he really honest when he said that he was never going to lie to me, then not long afterwards he said there was a chance he'd fall in love with me, and I said the same about him? Despite having promised not to lie to him, I lied again... in fear of confronting him, in fear of losing our precious friendship... losing that sparkle of chemistry that I had always hoped for... those flirty, yet so honest compliments...

And then, he's just gone.

I know he's here somewhere still. But...

... I can't ever talk to him again...

... I can just hope he can hear me.

Rest in peace, my most beloved friend.

- Tsukiko