Purple Ink (SatoGou)

Chapter 4

There was a letter sitting in the mailbox. My heart surged forward in my chest, and a little noise escaped me as my eyes fell upon the familiar handwriting, my nickname scrawled over the white envelope. I snatched it out, my chest going so tight I could barely breathe. She had written. She wasn't gone.

I didn't even go inside to open it. I stood at the end of my drive and pulled the envelope open. It had been two and a half weeks since her last letter, and I desperately needed to know what had happened.

Dear Blue,

I'm sorry for not replying sooner. Something came up, and I couldn't, but I'm alright.

How did things go with Lillie? As always, there's no luck on my end, of course.

Red

I read it over again, my throat tightening to the point of pain. It was so short, and so vague. There was no explanation at all. No response to the way I'd poured my heart out to her. I didn't know how to react, and it took me a few minutes to be able to go inside. I hurried upstairs, not wanting my mom to question me if she saw the letter. I sat at my desk, trying to make sense of it. I was sick with relief, that she was alive and okay, but also annoyed, because she'd barely bothered to write three lines.

Dear Red,

Is everything okay? You were gone for a while. It's okay if you don't want to tell me. I'm just worried about you. You can tell me anything, remember?

Things are going well. She's my girlfriend now. She has been for a couple of weeks now. I think her brother hates me, though. They're twins but I've barely spoken to him. He just shoots me dirty looks down the corridor when he sees me. He's probably just being protective of his sister, but he's kind of intimidating. I told Dawn that we're still writing to each other and she's pissed off at me for keeping it from her.

Blue

Her response took five days to come, instead of two.

Dear Blue,

Yeah, everything's okay, I promise. I know I can tell you everything, but I think this is something I should just keep to myself. I'm sorry that's so vague. Just know that I'm absolutely fine.

I'm happy for you. I'm sure her brother is just being protective like you said. What is she like?

I know I don't know Dawn personally, but based on what you've told me about her, I wouldn't have thought she'd be pissed off about that. Are you sure it's about that?

Red

I wrote back about Lillie, describing her, and her shy personality, and how I asked her out. I wanted to ask about what had happened again, but I wanted to respect her decision to keep it to herself, even if it pained me. Again, her letter took almost a week to come. I wondered why we'd gone back to only writing once a week, but I didn't want to come across clingy or pathetic.

Still, I couldn't help worrying that she'd lost interest in me. For seven years, since we swapped addresses, we'd always made sure to write back the moment we got our letters, so we could write as many as possible. Now, it was clear she was waiting a few days to bother writing her reply. It upset me more than I was willing to admit.

The school holidays came around, and we carried on writing once a week. I carried on dating Lillie, becoming more and more comfortable with her. Red didn't really talk about her, and when I mentioned her, she hardly ever commented on it. Dawn didn't ask about Red aside from one time, when she noticed me staring off into the distance in class, and asked if we were writing again. When I'd said yes, she'd just nodded once, and then left it alone. I had no idea how she felt about the whole thing, but I didn't want to cause an argument, so I didn't ask.