09.01.11

MY FINAL ENTRY

It's funny that today is the first day of the new month and the last day I ever post to this blog. I already did my sappy goodbye last time, so I won't bore you with a retread.

I haven't looked at the comments on the last post yet. I told myself I'd wait until this post was up. Now I wonder if I want to see them at all.

Forgive me for making assumptions, but I'd like to answer a few questions I'm pretty sure my readers have.

Once again, yes, everything in this blog has been one hundred percent true to my life.

Yes, as far as I know, everything Mei told me in her chapter is one hundred percent true to her life.

And no, they never woke up.

...

This is so hard. Harder than I ever thought it would be. I went to be last night writing this entire post out in my head. It sounded great while I was half-asleep. Now it feels clunky and devoid of emotion. It's not that I don't care anymore; it's the exact opposite. Today marks three months since the last time I cried myself to sleep. I don't think I'll make it to four.

But I want you all to know where I am one year later. After thirty-six posts and over a hundred thousand words (I could hardly believe it when I checked the word count), I feel like I owe it to you.

My dad came home a few days later to a clean, empty apartment. No trace of anyone other than to two of us ever living in the five hundred square foot space. Their clothes had been packed and removed. Usa-chan and Kuma-chan had new homes in my closet. Dad found them one day and I told him a friend gave them to me.

He did ask about the guys a few times, why they weren't around and why Kyoya abruptly stopped messaging him. I never knew what to say. My default excuse was that they'd transferred to a new school and moved out of the country. Eventually, he let it go, but I know he still wonders. The bulletin board remains on my bedroom wall to this day.

I don't know what Ouran Co. told my school, but it was well known among my classmates that the hottest boys in class were gone for good this time. Mei was especially disappointed, and for the record, she was pretty pissed when I told her what really happened to them. Apparently, I'm a terrible best friend, but she still loves me anyway because she's nice like that. That is word for word what she said to me over the phone last night, so hi Mei. That's my shout-out to you.

As for Ouran Co. itself, I had the dubious honor of visiting their home base a few weeks later. I won't go into detail describing the place. It was about as un-Lobelia as you could get, right down to the sterile color scheme and lack of Takarazuka musical rip-offs. I was taken into a viewing room where six human-sized pods had been set up. They looked like coffins, and my friends inside all looked frozen. Stuck at a moment in time forever. My heart ached and I had to leave almost immediately.

"We're keeping their bodies incubated," Dr. Suoh explained to me. "There's a chance that one day, we'll have the technology to bring them back. Not a good chance, mind you, but a chance."

"What do I do until then?" I asked.

He had no answer, but I knew he wouldn't.

Mrs. Fujioka actually threatened to sue them on my behalf, but I told her not to bother. It wasn't their fault. It wasn't anyone's. Now that I was thinking clearly, I knew that. It was just a cruel twist of fate. We were finally free to be together as friends, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.

A few months ago, I got a call from Dr. Suoh. He asked me to meet him for lunch after school the next day. We ate at a small cafe at an outdoor table. It was chilly and drizzling, so no one was outside to overhear us.

"We expect to go public with our new line of robotics next month," he said. "The data we gathered from their memory banks has been invaluable to our research."

"Thank you," I said, picking at my salad. I was so glad to know my loss had been such a lucrative gain for him.

"I'd still like to offer you some kind of payment."

"I don't want your money, Dr. Suoh. And I don't want a place in your company either, though I do thank you again for the offer."

He'd brought it up during the HQ visit, and as the wound was still open and bleeding, my refusal was a bit more colorful. Fists were not involved, but it was a really close call. Since then, I'd received a letter in the mail which I filed away with the remains of the previous night's dinner. I think that got the message across that I wasn't interested.

It's not like I'm hurting financially anyway. Turns out, all that money Kyoya was making on the stock market (I hope) had been put in an account in my name. I didn't find out about it until the bank statements arrived and I'm so glad my dad never goes to get the mail himself.

Dr. Suoh said nothing and bit into his sandwich. Conversation halted as the waitress stepped out to ask us about dessert. Dr. Suoh ordered coffee and we requested separate checks.

"Haruhi, I asked you here today because there's something important I need to tell you, though I don't quite know where to start."

"At the beginning?" I asked dryly.

He smiled. "Yes well, we've completed diagnostics on the ro… well, on the six of them. It took longer than we expected due to the intricacies of their programs, but we received the final results two days ago. They are… interesting to say the least."

"I don't understand," I said. "What does this have to do with me?"

"My first instinct would be nothing, but it may, in fact, be everything." He took out his phone and showed me a schematic. Tamaki's, I understood. "This line of lover figure is meant to last two to five years as an attentive, if passive, lover. Failsafes in their programming were meant to extend that warranty. Over the course of your misadventures, they managed to break every single one. This alone wouldn't have done too much damage, but the strain they put themselves through to protect you whenever something went wrong drained their battery health and ultimately caused a premature shutdown at only three and a half months."

It was a clinical, detached way of saying this was all my fault. At least, that's what I thought at the moment.

"What are you telling me?" I stabbed a crouton with my fork just for the hell of it. I wasn't hungry anymore.

Dr. Suoh took back his phone, examining the screen as only an accomplished scientist could. "We ran so many different scenarios trying to figure out every which way something could go wrong. We accounted for every possibility except this one." He looked back up at me. "How much time passed between the Lobelia incident and the shutdown?"

I thought back. "I think… ten days? No, more like two weeks."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Why?"

He smiled. "They shouldn't have lasted one."

He showed me a new page. No pictures this time, just thick paragraphs that took up the whole screen. Sentences ranged from short to dense, but I like to read my mom's old law textbooks in my spare time. Compared to that, this was easy.

"Fried circuitry, extensive damage," I read phrases at random as they stuck out to me. "Unprecedented capacity for continued operation- what is this?"

"Something big, Haruhi," he said. "For one of them to last so long would've been a miracle. For all six of them to continue at peak performance so that even you didn't notice a problem… it shouldn't be possible, and yet, here we are."

"So wait," I shook my head. Words had failed me. "You're saying by the time they... by that time, they should've been gone for a week?"

"The best analogy I can make is when your phone continues at one percent for a long period of time, but that doesn't come close to describing how incredible this is." He stared at his sandwich, less hungry than I was. "These may be advanced robotics, but the technology is still in its infancy. It's so unpredictable, and I've come to find I know far less about the capabilities of my own creations than I realized. The fact is, those boys did everything in their power to stay alive, even when I'm sure they knew the time was coming."

"But why?" My head was spinning. "Why would they do that?"

There was something secretive about his expression, and the way he whispered even though no one else was around to hear him. "Because they loved you."

That night, when I got home, I didn't do any homework and I left my chores for tomorrow. I went online and I started a blog.

I'm sitting in my room now, trying to think of the perfect way to close my story out. I feel like there's so much I've left unsaid. Loose ends I haven't tied up. Or maybe I just don't want to let go. Ending this blog feels like losing them a second time.

But now you know they did exist. Tamaki, Kyoya, Hikaru, Kaoru, Hunny, and Mori were the best friends I've ever had. More than friends even. They were my family, and I truly believe that one day, they'll come back. While I'm waiting, I'll watch a cooking show from time to time and try some new recipes. I'll sit with the other girls at lunch. I'll go with my dad to visit his friends instead of making up an excuse to stay home. I'll keep Usa-chan and Kuma-chan close, and when I say goodnight to my mother's photo, I'll say goodnight to theirs, too.

And guys, if you ever get to read this blog, I want you to know every word I've said comes straight from my heart. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. I'll never forget the wonderful times we shared, and I can't wait to have more when you come back.

I have faith in you, and I love you.

That is absolute.

posted by Haruhi at 11:59 pm 0 comments