A Letter

Dear Hajime,

I’ve been told that you live. And I’m happy for you. Not because you’re the “immortal wolf”, but because that wasn’t a fitting ending for you. Just as my death would not have been for me.

I’ve also been told that you know that I live, and that time moved on. But altough time has passed, my love for you has not. There’s a place for you, should you ever wish to come. Today, tomorrow, next week, ten years? My arms are open and welcoming. This isn’t Ito, a place where I went out of bitterness and fear. I wear the ring you would have given me as a token of a promise we never got to fufill, but was always true in our hearts.

Kyoto didn’t feel like an option. It was… a past would have been too much. And after the kidnapping and the news about it, I thought that I was probably too notorious for it, to live with my brother again. I couldn’t imagine rebuilding a life there.

Hokkaido I always felt was one of our futures. It was where we went, in one of my earliest versions of my writer trying to find a place for us. It was a place you offered me, the last time we cheated death. It was the place of the Shinsengumi’s last hope, so I thought it would work for mine as well. Had the kidnapping not have happened, this would have been my counter-proposal to you.

I know these words may not be ones you want to read right now. It’s a hard time for all four of us. You and her may even read this letter as insincere, or naïve. But I have something to show you here. How Ai-chan has grown, how strong Makoto-chan is, what good girls they are. But like me, something is missing for them. But I’m teaching them to hope. I was wrong, in telling you that it was Souji I learned hope. It’s a core to my being, taught to me from my earliest years. Gardening is hope – what is more hopeful that putting seeds in the ground, and tending them, not knowing if they will flower or fruit – bugs, weather, anything could take our their fragile lives. Or our own. Many a gardener plants a tree, knowing that they may never live to rest in its shade, but that maybe their children will. That is hope.

You’re a good man, Hajime, and if you never come to see me again, know that I love you and that I never regret a moment of it, from the first time you smiled at me and took my breath away and showed me that I could matter to someone, even when I thought I would never find a place to live. We had troubles and trial and struggles, but there was beauty and joy. But I always loved you, and you were always worthy of it. I’m sorry for all the times I hurt you. That I love you may never counterbalance that.

And I certainly don’t regret the last year. It was a year ago, today, that you woke me up. Thank you. Any time that I get to have lived with you is precious.

In hope, and love,

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