Can You Keep a Secret?

Epilogue: Ultimatum

One day.

Two days.

Three days.

Four days.

Five days.

Six days.

Seven days.

Two weeks.

Four weeks.

"I will wait, then."

Two months.

Four months.

Eight months.

"I will wait for the right time."

Two years.

Three years.

"I will wait forever if I have to."

The Last Chapter

ULTIMATUM

The thing is, about love, is that you never know what lies ahead. You can never tell how or when your story will begin. Or how or when you meet the right person for you. There are times when you may have met him, but you don't realize that he's the one for you, so you just forget that you did... until you meet him again and you inevitably fall in love with him.

Falling in love is easy. It's what's in between that's hard – keeping in love, that is. Time will test you. Circumstances will make you question if you're doing the right thing, but let me tell you something: true love is never wrong. No. There's no such thing as wrong love – just right love in the wrong time.

I learned that lesson the hard way. If I'd met him before he was the company's president; if us being together didn't have to be pretend; if I told him I loved him sooner; and if he told me he loved me, too.

If, if, if – different scenarios; different events. Different times; different places. But the thing is with "ifs" is that it's either they haven't happened, or they never will.

I don't regret meeting him on that plane – even if it is the single most humiliating experience of my life – and I don't regret that I fell in love with him. What I do regret is that I had to let him go.

Okay, so maybe I don't actually regret letting him go. Because to find out if he's the one for you, you have to wait and see if he comes back...

… and stays.

I'm Mikan Sakura, twenty-two years old, and today is the best day of my life.

I feel like I've just won the lottery. I woke up to the chirping of the birds this morning and the smell of bacon and coffee from downstairs. For the first time in a long time, the headline on the morning paper wasn't about suicides, robbery or economic crisis. It was actually about a guy who married a llama! And when you see that wide smile plastered in his face, or that twinkle in his eyes, you cannot not be happy for him.

So now I sit behind my office desk as a flame CEO and read and sign paperwork that is half the amount I usually read and sign, I feel like I'm on the top of the world! My best employee from the marketing department – Lisa – is out with her job striking a deal with a new company, Flame has been doing great with Tsubasa-senpai taking care of the main branch in Tokyo, Ruka-pyon in Kyoto, Hotaru-chan in Osaka, yours truly in Sapporo and all the other CEO's in the other branches that I have no names of, (I've seen them in the semi-annual company meetings, and smile and nod at them from time to time, but I still have no names for them... now that I think about it, I feel like I've betrayed them or something by not knowing what their names are. Oh well.) the weather is a-ok, the air conditioner is finally working... what could possibly go wrong?