City Of Stars; Dazai Osamu

24. Epiloque

It's been 5 years since I saw (Y/N) for last time.

After we parted in the airport on November 14th, we used to chat in Skype every day or when we didn't have time to do it, we texted each other to report how the day went and say, that both of us were completely alright. I was waiting for her every single day. My heart was fluttering when I looked at the calendar and saw how quickly the number of days till those two months would come to an end was getting smaller and smaller.

But suddenly, when it was just one week away from her comeback, she said, that her contract was prolonged and she would stay for one more month.

Then, it all repeated over and over. She would stay for one more month, then for one more, then for 2 more, then for a year...

As time went by, calls from her were getting rarer. First, she only forgot to call me just one day, but later, one day became two and two became three and soon, we stopped talking. I was still leaving messages for her every day until one day, I got a message from WhatsApp (which we used to text each other), that this account was no longer active. I called her on her phone and she didn't reply as well so I supposed, that she either lost her phone or she got a new one and forgot to add my number there.

Or she simply didn't need me anymore.

However, I was still leaving messages for her every day, even though I knew, that she wouldn't see them. Every night, right before going to bed, I was leaving her a message, telling her how my day went, so that if she would decide to check how am I, she wouldn't miss a thing. The time to leave the message was the only time, when I finally let myself break down and just accept how miserable and lonely I felt without her. While typing, I always ended up with Yozo, snuggling closer to me because he was the only one, who could share this pain with me, and he always let me hug him and burry my tears in his white fur.

We were two stray dogs, who lost the only light we ever had in our lives.

Ironically, Yozo became my best friend and support throughout this time. Although I didn't like him and dogs in general at first, after (Y/N)'s departure, Yozo became the only one, who didn't let me fall into depression and start destroying myself little by little again.

He made me go out for walks every day without exceptions, even when I didn't want it. He simply came to me with his leash in his mouth and didn't leave me alone until I walked out with him. This way, he wasn't letting me get apathetic and spend all the days in my room, buried under my despair. He was playing with me from time to time and doing funny things, that made a soft smile appear on my face. Yozo was spending with me nearly every second of my time, not letting me feel lonely. Yes, he couldn't speak and he had four legs and a tail, but he became the closest living creature to me.

He became my best friend, which I was truly thankful to for not letting our apartment turn into a cold silent place, even if the main angel of it was absent.

Together with Yozo, I also visited quite a lot of publishers and several of them agreed to publish my books. 3 months after (Y/N) left, after lots of hard work on my books, they were finally out in the bookshops and to my surprise, they gathered popularity much quicker, than I expected.

Good thing, I was writing under a pseudonym and I have never added any of my photos in my books or else, my quiet peaceful life could be ruined. Since my usual self wasn't known by public as well as "Shuji Tsushima*" was, I could still get enough money from my stories, but I could continue being...well, me.

After 2 years of writing and publishing my books, I found myself, slowly becoming a full-time writer as I started paying less attention to what happened in the ADA. I still wasn't even thinking about quitting it because this way, I would stop helping people, but now, it just wasn't my main way of income.