~and I only returned what you were always meant to be.~
1. The Sentence That Closed the Day
"And I only returned what you were always meant to be."
That sentence closed our afternoon—yet it never truly left.
Hours later, in a shivering night, those words still echoed in my head like a whisper that refused to die. In my small room—four by five meters, feeling more like a box of isolation—I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the window.
The sky remained gray. The rain kept falling without pause, as if the heavens were repeating something I could not understand. Cold air crept into my lungs, forcing me to draw long breaths again and again—each inhale feeling like a futile attempt to ease the tightness in my chest.
I tried to untangle the afternoon.
About Tomo.
About Suri.
About the way Misaki spun her words like spider silk—fine, adhesive, never revealing the true center.
And among all of it, one answer lingered from the question that kept rotting in my mind:
"Do you hate Suri?" I asked, my voice breaking under the creeping tension.
Her reply was cold, flat, almost without pulse:
"This isn't about hate or not. Someone like her isn't worth your concern. Think of her as roadside weeds—easy to step on, easy to forget. Whether she returns or not is none of your business."
She said it while looking at the sky. Gray. Just as gray as her tone.
To me, those words sounded honest—too honest. And precisely because of that, I felt something was hidden behind them. Like a truth deliberately wrapped in a lie—not to deny it, but to protect something far more fragile.
Perhaps… herself.
I wanted to understand her. Truly.
But the more I thought about it, the deeper I sank. Misaki's words were not meant to be understood—they were built to mislead, to make anyone who heard them question their own footing.
Just as I did.
From the outside, my life still looked normal.
But I knew—that normal was false.
I no longer recognized who I was becoming. The version of me who dared to stand against Tomo. The version who remained standing despite doubt. What frightened me more was this:
I liked the change.
It felt closer to my true self.
And if Misaki was behind all of this… then maybe it was what I secretly wanted.
To see justice carried out through darker means.
To see the cruel receive consequences.
Strangely… it felt satisfying.
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2. A Misguided Prayer
My once-flat life cracked at a single point: Misaki's presence. That crack widened into a gap, then into a path.
She was like a small flame in the cold—fragile, yet captivating. And to keep that flame from dying, another fire was needed.
That fire… was me.
The cold no longer felt too cold.
The heat no longer felt too hot.
A balance formed—yet a strange one, like swimming on the thin line between sinking and breathing.
Over the past few days, I've changed.
The way I think.
The way I see life.
Things that once felt impossible now feel real—too real, almost frightening.
Before we parted, Misaki said something in a tone so calm it sounded like a misguided prayer:
If the life she would never regret was a straight, quiet life free from burdens, then that was the life she was living now.
She added that admitting this life was not normal would be the same as admitting she herself was not normal—and only a fool would do that.
Hearing all of that, that afternoon—whether driven by courage or my own downfall—I asked her:
"Can you go further?"