empathy (rewritten 2019)

chapter sixteen

The letter. Keiko anticipated her return to her apartment so intensely Kakashi noticed her impatience and said with a raised eyebrow, "well, go along now, I wasn't gonna keep you long."

And she stalked out of the lively green cemetery, listening to Kakashi's cries of "take care" and "bring me some pastries tomorrow!", with her fingers fiddling by the paper's edges in her pocket. The sun was just peaking through the fragile leaves and so she hurried past the sun's climbing height and the indifferent passersby rushing on.

Climbing in through her window, she shut the door and pulled the blinds and wished for early bird neighbors to stop frying the chicken for breakfast. She pulled folds and stretched corners, reliving a writing that was once dead with the body.

Keiko,

That day I almost jumped after failing the prelims, you told me about how you didn't want me to end up like you. How you were bullied for being a civilian in your home village. You enrolled yourself at an Academy and learned how to use chakra so you could prove them wrong but you were held back. And the day your village was attacked you couldn't do anything to help because your mother locked you out and told you to run.

You didn't want me to fall the way you did, believing you weren't perfect or strong enough to ever measure up. You didn't want me to end up like you, because despite all you've been through you still believe you're not enough. But I can see you the way you can't and I know the part of you that is strong and enough. And for a while I lived, knowing that someday I could be as strong as you. Maybe that day was coming but, I don't know, I just had to leave.

I considered leaving at an earlier time but you stopped me for a while. You helped me when nobody else would. You were the only one who could understand me. Who could listen. And I owe my life to you for that, truly, and I planned my entire life to pay my debt to you.

But Naruto's words reminded me that no matter what I did, said, or gave, it could never be enough. Not for you, for my parents, for anyone, not even me. I don't have it in me anymore to keep going. You say you don't want me to end up like you, but you're the strongest person I know. And I'm living a coward's life, never amounting up to what I should be.

I should have given you a proper goodbye and I know that. But to leave, knowing you'd be at Konoha waiting for me, I couldn't let you see me like that. We promised each other to come back alive after every mission, but this one, I had to break it.

I don't want you to blame yourself. You were the one who saved me. The only one to blame is myself.

I love you,

Sakura

The letter was a bundle of thoughts and wishes and Keiko felt nothing close to a goodbye. It was a letter.