Pen Pals

Missing Pieces

Gavin laid on the freshly made bed in his childhood room smiling while reading the old letters and remembering things long since forgot.

{Letter} I'm so happy you get to season 4 now in English. So many things are very exciting in this one, I will not spoil this, promise. When you see Episode 12 I will send you a new drawing that I know you will like too.}

The letter had a spot where some words had been unscratched from being hidden under whiteout. This was how they hid spoilers in their letters, but were still able to talk about it without sending another one right away.

Usually inside them, Izuki would write his quick opinions to the episodes he knew were coming up. Then write the episode number above and Gavin would reveal the paragraph as he'd gotten through it.

{Letter} I am so happy to talk to you next week on phone for first time. My mom said we can talk 30 minutes, Thank you for sharing your phone. I promise again not to spoil episode. Thank you for being friend for 2 years now.}

Never forgetting the nervousness of making that call. At the best of times even today when everyone has a cellphone, Gavin still despised making calls and usually had to talk himself into it. That was never the case with Izuki.

There was fear from the threats of his parents. Do not go over aloted time, or be grounded. International long distance was very not cheap.

There was little bit of worrying if they would be able to understand each other. Gavin tended to speak really fast, cut people off, and was easily excitable. He knew first hand from speaking and doing school work with ESL students in his class that it made him hard to understand.

He became self conscious about it, he could see them just nodding along to try and mask not understanding. Something he only became aware of as an adult and always looked back on with a bit of quilt.

For some reason he still felt that guilt, even all these years later. It sucked that his classmates would have to do that to 'fit in' or feel like it was necessary. But as he learned languages growing up he learned that's what immigrants were trained to do.

Regardless he never ever wanted others to feel out of place around him.

Carefully placing the letter neatly back inside its envelope he shuffled through the others. They'd not been kept in any particular order, mixed up from being moved around or being re-read all those years ago.

That familiar feeling dropped into his stomach again. Gavin remembered that emptiness as the letters stopped.

He lost track of how many times he went through and through the years old correspondence to search for a hint.

A feeling that only replicated in the aftermath of the end of his relationship with Kyle. It was like doing a post mortem, and trying to search his fault or read between the lines and assign blame.

Pulling out his phone he searched the common social media apps. Nothing turned up, nothing new. It had been over 10 years since he'd seen a picture of Izuki so he wasn't even sure who he was looking for.

Looking mostly for similarities they once shared. Searching related posts about Manga or artwork.

He always assumed Izuki would have continued drawing, or doing animation because of how talented he had gotten. They had talked about his dream of working for one of the big animation studios in Japan.

But like in all his previous attempts anything that turned up either had no familiarity, or no common threads Gavin could pull on.

From time to time if he wasn't convinced ,he'd send a friend request, and wait for a response. Nothing ever yielded anything results.

Gavin sighed in frustration as he clicked the screen off on his phone. 

Grabbing a letter from the middle of the pack he instantly recognized. The final letter he'd gotten. It was worn and crumpled and weakened from being cried over.

To this day he could almost recite it word for word.

It had absolutely nothing outside of the normal conversations. No clues or hints as to what may be going on or could have come up.

This was where that gross feeling moved from his stomach, to his heart and teased the tears at the back of his eyes.

'What if something tragic happened? A car accident? A family tragedy? Or worse death' His brain spiralled into the darkness. It hurt to think about, even now as a more uh, 'mature,' adult he could never shake that feeling.

For finding that answer could bring peace, but would bring so much pain. So he tried to not spend to much time on that thought process.

But it wasn't done that process for the day. 'If he moved he could have mailed him, If he said something wrong he could have told him. He wrote the address the same as every time previous. Even if he hadn't the other dozen letters he sent him were beyond doubt correct.' Over and over again getting lost in finding excuses for his feelings of abandonment.

"What are you reading?" his mother chimed as she made her way up the stairs spooking Gavin who was lost in those thought.

"Oh, I ah found my old letters from my pen pal in school. I was just going through them" He replied startled

"Oh yes, Um suzuki ? I remember you were so upset when he stopped talking to you. I actually think something came from him a few months ago. I asked your father to send it to you, but he most have forgot" She said

Gavin rose so fast from his spot on the bed he knocked half the pile of letters over.

"What did you say?! Where I don't see it. I" He fumbled his words trying not to sound to excited .

"ANDREW WHERE DID YOU PUT THAT LETTER FROM GAVINS FRIEND?! I GAVE TO YOU BEFORE CHRISTMAS. JESUS YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO ADD IT TO THE PILE" She hollered down the stairs. The families favourite way of communicating.

"ITS IN HIS COMICS ON THE LIBRARY SHELF.  I WAS SUPPOSED TO SEND THOSE TOO SORRY GOT BUSY CLEANING AT THE TIME" His father hollered in return.

His mother went into the hall and grabbed a bankers box full of his old comics off the shelf in the hall and pushed it along the floor to him as she carried on with whatever she was doing.

Nearly ripping the box in half to get into it he saw the letter sitting up top. It was dated a week before Christmas. Gavins hands were actually shaking as he held it up to see the name "Izuki Nakamura" on it.