𝐒𝐄𝐀 𝐆𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐒. rin matsuoka

6 | lapiz lazuli

松岡 凛
RIN MATSUOKA

When I reached her grandparents home, Hiro was no where to be found.

"Matsuoka-kun! Hiro—Is Hiro with you?" her grandmother greets me frantically as I arrive at their front door.

"No...uh... I came here to meet her" I greet her back politely, as I attempted to catch my breath.

"Hiro's not home yet. She hasn't been back since this morning." She tells me, anxiously. "It's late in the evening, that child always sticks to her curfew. What if something happened to her?"

"Please calm down, she's bound to come back. I'm sure your grandchild will never runaway from home" I assure the old woman as she looks at me with tears in her eyes.

"You don't understand. Haven't you heard from Hiro?"

"Heard what?"

"My health isn't the only reason she's living with me. It isn't the only reason she's here in Iwatobi. That child... On the summer of her third year in middle school, she tried to take her own life."

It was like she dropped a bomb on me. Something inside me broke, as I imagined what hell Hiro must have gone through, the demons she faced alone, the monsters she hid in her closet alongside the phantoms she had met in the past.

Hiro went through all that alone?

I felt a gut wrenching pain in my stomach as I imagined the young girl crying every night, as she sobs silently, as she hides her pain through all the smiles and laughter. I felt the overwhelming guilt engulf me as I realize every wrong thing I've done to her. I left her to fend for herself when she was always ready to help me with my problems. How could I have been so cruel?

▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬ ▬

"Gou, did you find her?" I asked my sister over the phone.

「No. Mom is also searching for her but we can't find her」she says, panting over the phone.

"Okay. Thanks. I'll update you" I tell her, as I end the call.

'C'mon. Think, Rin. If I was Hiro, where would I hide?' I think, trying to calm myself down, gazing at the sky, only to remember where we spent most of the time every summer.

'Our hideout' the thought enters my mind. 'But will she even be there? She hates me know for all I know'.

'But it's better to check, just in case' my subconscious answers for me.

I run towards the abandoned light house and catch sight of a silhouette of a girl at the balcony. I immediately run upstairs before she does anything stupid. And as soon as I reach my destination, as soon as I reach the last step of stairs, I pull the girl into a tight embrace.

"Why the fuck are you here?" she asks.

"Thank god, you're alive" I sigh in relief, brushing away the tears forming at the corner of my eyes. "You won't answer calls or text messages. You weren't at home by curfew. Don't scare us like that, Hiro. I lost you once, I don't want to lose you forever".

"Can you hear what you're saying? You leave me and now you act like you're fucking concerned with my life?" she hisses, pushing me away from her. "Don't leave if you'll fucking come back in the first place."

"I hate you. I hate you so damn much," she says with tears brimming in her eyes, as if every single word was something she felt deep inside her heart.

"It hurt. Being pushed away as if you were so useless. Couldn't you count on me more? Weren't we friends?" she told me, reminding me of the moment I stopped writing her letters, and the moment I wrote to her that she'd be better off without knowing me.

"It hurt. The moment you ignored me during the time I needed you most." she spat spitefully, as I recall the time I ignored her during her grandfather's wake. I couldn't face her grandparents after everything I've done to hurt their granddaughter. I couldn't bring myself to face Hiro because I became a coward who couldn't chase his dreams.

"It hurt. Because nothing hurt more than the thought of not knowing, than the thought of not being able to do anything for you. You even broke your promise because of god knows what." she tells me, with tears at the corner of her eyes; tears that she was trying so hard to hold in.

"It hurt because I liked you so damn much and more than anyone in this planet, I trusted you the most. And fuck, you wanna know what the worst part is?" She asks, before answering her question herself. "The worst part is that it hurts every single day because I still fucking like you and I can't bring myself to move on despite all the shit that's happened."

That gave me the punch in the gut.

"That's why it'd have been better if I hated you. That's why it'd have been better if we never met. That's why I'm here for closure. So I want to ask one last time, Rin. What the fuck do you want from me?" she glares, and I come to wonder what I did to deserve someone like her.

"I know this would be a stupid answer. But I want you, Hiro." I look at her in the eye as I tell her, "I want who you are now and who you were in the past. I want the girl who smiled whenever I talked about my far fetched dreams. I want the girl who supported me from behind. I want the girl who saved me. But I also want the girl who faced her demons all alone. The girl who smiled through the pain. The girl who's actually so fucking vulnerable, she tries to act tough on the outside. And I know all the things I've done to you were messed up. I know what I did to you ended up hurting you, but all this time I still like you. And all I want is another chance to treat you the way you deserve to be treated."

"That's unfair, Rin. It'd have been better if I actually hated you" she finally breaks, tears streaming down her face as she admits, "But, I like you so much it fucking hurts."

"I know," right then I pull her into a hug, and I swore to myself, I'd never let go of this girl ever again. "I won't make the same mistake again."