Chapter 30: The World Didn't End, and That's What Hurts the Most
She still went to school.
Still walked the same hallways.
But the color had bled out.
Everything sounded like it was underwater.Everyone looked like mannequins wearing her memories.
Even Reiko stopped trying.
She'd nod in the hallway.
No more apologies.
No more attacks.
Just space.
Yumi wasn't angry anymore.
Anger would've meant she still had fight in her.
She stopped eating lunch.
Stopped talking in class.
Stopped drawing hearts in her notebook.
Instead, she wrote letters.
To Akiro.
"You missed cherry blossom day. They all looked fake without you."
"I heard someone laugh like you. I followed them for six blocks. It wasn't you."
"I don't hate you. But I want to."
She never sent them.
She just folded them into paper cranes and left them under the bridge.
One afternoon, her mother found the sketchbook.
Sat beside her on the couch.
Didn't say anything for a while.
Then softly:
"You look like someone who's still bleeding but trying to dance anyway."
Yumi smiled.
"Because if I stop, I won't start again."
Reiko approached her again the next week.
Her tone was… quieter. Ashamed.
"I didn't think he'd leave."
Yumi didn't answer.
Reiko placed something in her hand.
A train ticket.
"One-way. He always said he liked trains more than people."
Pause.
"I know where he might've gone."
That night, Yumi stared at the ticket for hours.
Then put it in a box with the letters.
Not because she was giving up.
But because…
Some people leave, and you have to let them.
Even if they took the best parts of you with them.