I have no excuse. Kill me now.

Chapter 13: Letting Go

Things change. Friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody.

~Stephen Chbosky, Perks of Being a Wallflower

In the end, Mayura never did see Loki again.

She waited and waited, hoping that he would come to her—for one last time—so that she could give him one proper goodbye. But the days came and went, and he never arrived.

The once large mansion Loki and the others had occupied was now gone just like how it was when they'd disappeared the first time. Even the apple trees she grew, nothing was there. Now the empty lot had been bought so that constructions for an apartment complex would begin. And to her, it was as if nothing had ever occupied the spacious lot, as if the memories of their laughter, sweets, tea never happened. It was almost like a figment of her imagination that Mayura conjured up in order to cope for something she had lost and could never get back.

It was only the hairpin and the letter Loki had left that reminded her that none of it was the work of her overactive imagination. Yet it didn't really matter, Mayura concluded, tucking a stray piece of bubble gum pink hair behind her ear. Both things would be quietly placed inside a box—that she knew—would be tucked away, long to be forgotten, hidden underneath other boxes and dust.

Mayura was sad but she was not bitter. Moping around had done nothing for her and she knew Loki wouldn't like how she was making his leave affect her so much. For him, she would allow herself to let go. She had survived without him. She could do it again.

So she made her days fill with late night studying, friends' smiles and horrible singing voices and papers, pencils and bitter tea. It was a year later, after they graduated, that Saki invited her to attend a party for her older brother who was a newly elected politician. Mayura held herself together with Saki by her side as she mingled and laughed with the other guests.

It would have been only that if Mayura went home early, but when she turned her head around to greet the person Saki brought over to their little group, her eyes locked unto him and they never looked away.

It wasn't his rather appealing looks or his deep green eyes that reminded her so much of Loki that managed to catch and keep her attention, but it was his profession. He was Saki's cousin and was nine years older than both of them. He was a college professor in Todai University and taught classical studies. Aside from teaching the classic myths of Japan, he also taught Norse Mythology. Hearing that, Mayura couldn't help but befriend him.

Looking back, Mayura should have been ashamed for only befriending him because of his profession, but she understood that the mind had a strange way of coping. She didn't complain because she learned so much more she could have imagined about Norse mythology, and on the way, she was picking up a piece—no matter how small—that connected to him and the world that he lived in. And as their talks from the party evolved into having teas, strolls, lunch, dinners at home, the pink haired young woman knew that despite what she had done, she hadn't fully let go of everything. She decided she would take what she could get, because it was the only link that she had to Loki and she held on, disregarding her self-promise to let go.

Later on in the long run though, Mayura learned to stop looking at him as only her last connection to Loki, but as a young woman would to an attractive man. She soon began to see the laughter in his green eyes instead of the deep, worldly ones she pictured behind her closed eyes.

And after three years of dating, he had asked her to marry him.

The proposal was unlike those she sometimes saw in tv dramas. He proposed when they were having their strolls (less frequent now because of work). Mayura would be lying if she said that she had fallen in love with him. She knew and accepted since high school that she had given her heart away—completely—and it would be a very long time until she would find it again.

But as she stared at his green, green eyes and the slight upturn of his lips, she couldn't have had a better partner and supporter. She wouldn't have been able to finish her own books—one that is now a bestselling mystery trilogy and the other she didn't have the heart to publish—without him, and she knew deep down that a piece of her heart that was given to another, belonged to him and only him—to the man who asked her to marry him.

So now, Mayura breathed and let go.

There will be an epilogue after this. So, review?