Words of Winter

✧. ┊You're on Your Own, Kid

In every game, there's a winner and a loser. For Yuki, he knows that there's no winning or losing in this match. Because the game he wants to win isn't on the court, it's at home.

He doesn't know when or where, but it began with the tiniest things: how the books were supposed to be placed, how the toothpaste was supposed to be squeezed out, or how the food was supposed to be cooked. Earlier on, he was less critical with how things went around at home—you were new to your humble abode, you were new to him. Things will adjust in their own time.

"Yuki, where am I supposed to put these plates?" You once asked.

Yuki put out the biggest sigh. "We've been living together for a year. I'm sure you'll remember where they are."

There was an inexplicable feeling in him, like he had wanted to hint the answer to you—no, not in that way. Perhaps, maybe, in a way that you'll come to your senses and know the answer. He hates telling the obvious and the repeated, and the action of doing so is beginning to put pressure in his entire body.

You frowned, then began to open every cabinet, until he walked up and opened the very last cabinet for you.

"Remember, the plates go here. Please remember that. Please?" He told you.

You both looked at each other. Things will adjust in their own time, you both thought.

The opponent prepares to serve the ball. The cheers are loud, but to Yuki's ears, they slowly falter away. The cheers turn into heartbeats. Yuki looks at the ball intently, but there's a troubling thought at the back of his mind.

"Just tell me what you feel. Anything. I don't care if it will hurt me," You begged.

In the few weeks prior to the game, you and Yuki have bickered over things left unsaid. Maybe it was a terrible habit of his, but his emotions could never find a way out of his body.

"Why would you go around telling people what's going on between us? I didn't even know that you felt this way. I'm tired of going around in circles. Can't you just tell me what you feel without putting out the important details?" You berated him.

"Let's break up," you told him.

He ran up to you and begged you to stay.

He said, "Things will adjust in their own time."

They were a set of words that were supposed to help both of you put this relationship in motion. A prayer for every wrongdoing. Now, a chant to summon you and stay.

Before he knows it, the ball has been traveling around. He's out of his trance, and chases after the ball. Now the ball's in front of him, and all he needs is to get this point so he could at least savor a win before what he feels might be a major loss. Then he begins to jump, and when he's up in the air, he's in a different kind of heaven. It's the only place where time stops.

Two years, you and him. But for Yuki, it was four years, for he had been yearning for you in the two years before you got together. He's chased you—and oh, what a chase. He had always fantasized doing everything with you, from quick vacations to sweet nothingness. He's wanted to do so many things with you, that he's even thought about them in his sleep: He once woke up happily after seeing you hold a child in his dreams. But what a waste of time—all that imagining—has been.

For the path he took was always meant to be taken alone.

He spikes the ball, hoping to get the final point, but the ball lands outside the boundary line. The cheers are now in absolute silence. There's a look of disappointment from his face, but God knows what caused it.

Yuki will be preoccupied with the game's loss for the next hour. But when he travels all the way back home, all he'll think about is you. He will rehearse the lines he plans to tell you when he walks in the door and finds you sitting on the couch. He will drink the remainder of his water bottle at one of the stop lights because he knows that he'll be raising his voice at you. When he parks his car and gets his bag out of the trunk, he'll have to take in a few deep breaths, wasting ten minutes in the parking lot. He'll pace around the elevator as it heads up.

Then when he finally gets home...

You're not there.

He goes around the house, searching for your belongings. Your Snoopy cup is gone, and so are your floral plates. Your clothes have been cleared out from the closet, as well as the photos that once sat on the vanity mirror. Your DVDs are gone from the shelves. Only one toothbrush sits on the cup in the bathroom.

It seems as if everything is a dream. If anyone walked in on him at this very moment, they would assume that he lived alone. All the proof that you once lived here is gone.

He sits down on the couch and stares at the floor. He's imagining things again: he should chase after you once more, and ask you to stay. Why did he think of throwing you away? Who's going to ruffle his hair now? Or kiss his fingers every time they hurt? Who's going to listen to his every thought? Who will be the cause of his happiness?

He damns himself. The way he hesitates. The way he hides. The way he sometimes looks down on you when he now realizes that he's not any better.

He lies down. As he adjusts his head to the pillow, he feels a hard object behind it. He finds a small Cinnamoroll miniature. You once told him that this tiny dog was your son, and you squealed every time you'd see Cinnamoroll in the mall. You joked that you'd replace all the household items in the house to make them Cinnamoroll-themed, and that everything your children would inherit were going to be related to that small, white dog. He's thinking of keeping it, for in this miniature was his hopes and dreams for and with you.

As Pablo Neruda once wrote, "Love is so short, forgetting is so long."

For the next few months, he'll put it in his pocket when he goes out for groceries. He'll hide it in the bottom of his bag when he travels. He'll kiss it before every game.

The photos on his phone mean nothing. The miniature is the only remaining testament to your existence, your touch. It's the hope that you'll get back together. He knows you're out there, wanting to get back together with him. You will get back together. He knows because, according to him, he knows you.

What a foolish thought.

In his four years of knowing you, you were always one step ahead of him, and it seems that he was none the wiser about that fact.

A year later, he looks at the miniature after a game. He stares at it, then throws it into the trash can. Then he forgets about it, and then you. Days pass, then weeks, then months. You're no longer you, but a former lover, an individual of meager importance. In the story of his life, this paragraph is the last you will find yourself in.

For the path he has walked has been lonely and bare, for many years he will continue to walk by himself, and till the end, he will walk alone, and the path he will walk is long and far, with nothing but the endless road when he turns and looks back.