Our Last Goodbye

好きです

suki desu

There wasn't much time left. He had just left for performance hall, and she only had half an hour before they would move her to the operating room. She tore her eyes from the landscape outside her window.

In the dim lighting of her hospital room, Miyazono Kaori's shaking hand set a pen to paper.

Dear Arima Kousei,

It feels weird writing a letter to someone you were just with...

Her handwriting was crooked.

You're the worst.

Indecisive. Gullible. Twit.

Uneven lines pressed in the paper; strokes too thick where she had pressed down too hard and too thin where her hand was too weak to press at all.

The first time I ever saw you perform, I was five years old. It was at a recital for the piano school I was going to. This awkward, clumsy kid came onto the stage and accidentally hit the piano stool with his butt. It was too funny. He turned to the piano that was way too big for him and the moment he played that first note; I was drawn in.

The sound was beautiful, like a 24-colour palette. The melodies danced.

The faded memory of a young boy whose fingers danced with the piano resurfaced in her mind - it was her favourite - like she thought of it every day.

The girl next to me started crying. I wasn't expecting that at all.

And even so, you gave up the piano. Even though it totally changed other people's lives. You're the worst. Indecisive. Gullible. Twit.

When I found out we were in the same middle school, I was ecstatic. But how would I ever come to talk to you? Maybe I'd hang out at the lunch concession. Instead, I just watched you from afar.

I mean. After all, you all seemed to get along so well. There wasn't really any space in there for someone like me.

Her fingers trembled, and it was all she could do to keep writing.

When I was a kid, I had to have an operation, and I started having to be at the hospital for regular check-ups. In the first year of middle school, I collapsed, and I was admitted over and over. With every visit, I was there for longer and longer. Really, I didn't get to class much in middle school; I spent more time at the hospital. And I knew something was wrong with my body.

Her hands were numb with helplessness. She couldn't feel, and it was tearing her apart.

One night, I saw my parents crying in the waiting room, and I knew that my time was running out.

One droplet and another; smudging the words she wrote.

That's when I began to run.

I didn't want to bring my regrets with me to heaven, so I stopped holding back from what the things I always wanted to do.

I wasn't scared anymore to get contact lenses.

She didn't stop.

I ate what I wanted instead of always worrying about my weight.

Not when the tips of her fingers grew heavy.

And I took the music with all its high and mighty directives and played it the way I wanted.

Not when the thought of never feeling her bow in her hand crossed her mind.

And then I told a lie-just one.