Pain Pain Go Away

210
“But that desperate effort came to be my downfall. The girl who I
trusted most in the whole world told me she wanted to meet in
person, and yet if I responded to her plea, all of the lies I’d told her
would go to ruin. I knew Kiriko would hate me if she knew what
kind of person I was underneath my cover of lies. She’d scorn me
the moment she found out I’d written falsehoods to her all those
years. So regretfully, I gave up on meeting Kiriko. I never replied to
her letters again, either. I didn’t know what to write. That’s how our
relationship ended. ...Of course, giving up on a five-year habit was
hard. Refusing to let go, I still wrote letters to console myself, with
no intention of mailing them. I slowly piled up letters that no one
would read.”
I took my arms off from around her and went around the bench to
sit next to her.
She took something out of her bag and handed it to me. “I’ll give
this back.”
It was the unsent letter I wrote to Kiriko. So she did have it.
“From what I’ve heard thus far,” she mused, “your story about
sitting on this bench the day of the accident, waiting for miss Kiriko,
doesn’t sound logical.”
“My friend’s death is what set things off. We knew each other since
high school. He was a guy I could trust, so I ended up telling him
about how I’d lied and lied to my penpal, then stopped replying to
her when I was about to be found out. Then about a month before
he died, he told me, “You should go meet Kiriko Hizumi.” He had no
doubt it’d be a positive thing for my life. And it was rare for him to