riki.nishimura. → yours sincerely

EPILOGUE 2

→ A YEAR LATER

Nonetheless, days pass by, and months slip out of your fingers like silk.

It's been a year.

No calls, no messages, no trying to rekindle what we had.

I made a desperate attempt to foolishly send some letters to him, like the old days between the two of us, when the only thing we looked forward to was a bunch of letters addressed to us.

I had no reply, no acknowledgement that they even made it to him.

But, what can I say? He's a star now, his band made it out, he's surrounding himself with the future he always imagined.

I hope he's happy, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart.

I don't avoid his band, If I see it on the tv screen, I'll take a long, intrigued look, or if a song plays on the radio by them, I'll listen till it's over.

I'm not running away, if Niki came to me and said he wanted me back, I would probably still say yes.

I grew quickly to learn that silence is actually not the best remedy, and it's actually a more scary thing than a peaceful thing.

My heart squeezed at the brief mention of his name, the moments I see his face on the tv, or anything related to him.

Stupidly, every time the mailman slips letters through my box, I run down my stairs like a maniac just to check as to whether I had received something from him.

Nothing - and I kept leading myself on to think he would.

Eventually.

Besides that eventful year, I had a birthday reunion type of thing today. Mina had organised it, it was a blend between my birthday, and a high school reunion.

I had nothing better to do, I lived alone and worked a job that I was happy with. I couldn't complain, yet I always felt a small part of me that wanted to.

I had changed briefly, and grabbed my car keys from the desk, heading down to unlock my car.

It was peak times in the winter, and the forecast predicted that snowfall was bound to happen, I didn't believe that - since when is the forecast ever correct about what will fall when.

The moment the bell of the door to the restaurant dinged, a bunch of heads from a long table shot over to me, and all of a sudden the atmosphere became warm and cosy, like a fireplace.

"Look who we have here, birthday girl!" Jihyun clapped, her cheeks radiant with a tint of pink.

There were a few other people from high school, the table was pretty much almost full. But my eyes, almost as if automated, only glanced over to my old clique of girls from high school.

Don't get me wrong, we were still close, but not as close as in high school. We had all parted ways, went different directions, the group chat still remained - active as hell I'll tell you - but nothing could return back to how it was back in high school days.

I sat beside Go-eun, and she wrapped her arm around my shoulder, squeezing me into a tight hug.

I'm pretty sure Go-eun was still insane. One of my fondest memories with her was when she was put into a cell for the night, and me and Niki had to come and bail her out.

Ah, there it is - Niki.

I did have a smile on my face, but even thinking about him, my smile dropped, and I was left with this strange feeling that had felt as if I had a chunk missing.