Scarlet

12. Letters

Gouenji locked himself in his room for a month straight after the day Kira left. He didn't come out to even have his fortnightly dosage of blood. Mr Watanabe made several efforts to get him out of there but eventually got tired and left him on his own accord.

During this time, all he did was incessantly stare at the sketch Kira had once gifted him. He had had it framed and put up in his room and now he was fixated on it thinking about her and the way she always sketched in the garden.

He didn't even open his window for moonlit nights as it reminded him of his conversations with Kira.

As a result of it all, when he finally decided to step out of his room, he was slightly weakened. He stumbled a little coming down the stairs and took the support of the handrails.

Mr Watanabe saw him and immediately presented him with a glass of blood. Having been deprived of blood for over fifteen days, he quickly downed the entire glass in one go. Once he regained his energy and his mind cleared up he began thinking of a way to bring Kira back.

After pondering for a while, something suddenly clicked in his mind and he rushed back upstairs with the same haphazardness with which he had descended, except quicker.

He found out a detailed map of the country that listed even the small towns. It was an extensive and very confusing map and there weren't many of such great detail that existed.

He began studying it, based off of where Kira had mentioned wanting to go. He calculated where she could possibly be by that time if she left a month ago. He spent the entire day and an entire night over it checking and double-checking his estimate.

Once he was able to make a somewhat reasonable guess, he began writing letters. Letters to Kira, asking for her forgiveness. He didn't ask her to return nor tried to appeal to her emotions by telling her how miserable he was without her. He only asked for her forgiveness because he knew she would return the day she forgave him and until then no amount of convincing could sway her decision.

He sent the letters to all the towns in the radius of his estimate, in time that whenever Kira made it to one of these towns the letters would be waiting for her. Most of them had the main inn where all travellers visiting that town could stay. These inns followed a very basic format of address so it was easy to send letters to even if one had not been there before.

He didn't stop after sending out the first batch. He kept writing and sending them out. Half of his time was spent in figuring out where to send them next and the other half went in writing said letters, saying the same thing over and over again, asking for forgiveness.

A few months passed and he wondered if his letters were actually reaching her at all. He began doubting his calculations and became obsessed with constantly checking them over and over again making sure he was sending them to the right path. But eventually, his worry subsided as he thought about how angry she had been with him and he assumed that the letters must be reaching her but she must be ignoring them. She needed more persuasion and he needed to keep at it.

As the distance between them grew further on the map the radius of probability increased and so did the number of letters. He spent more and more time writing the letters. His fingers ached consistently and there was a temporary dent in his finger from holding his pen a certain way for long periods of time but he didn't stop to consider any of it.

He wrote by the window on moonlit nights using the extra energy the moonlight provided him to write for longer hours. By now he had learnt the contents of them, by heart. He could keep writing while reminiscing about the beautiful moments from the time when Kira was with him.

He didn't know what gave him the confidence to continue this convoluted plan. Perhaps it was the absence of any other method that he had put all his hopes in it.

He neatly placed the letter inside the envelope and pulled up a blank paper and began writing again.

A/N: Do you think Gouenji's letters are reaching Kira?