Pain Pain Go Away

I thought about what she was saying. “You mean, you want us to be
penpals?”
“Y-Yeah. That’s the word,” Kiriko confirmed bashfully.
“Why me, though? It’d probably be more fun to do with someone
you’re closer to.”
“Well, you can’t send a letter to someone who lives nearby, right?
That’s boring. I’ve always wanted to send letters to someone far
away.”
“But I’ve never written a letter in my life.”
“Then we’re even. Good luck to us both,” she said, shaking my hand
up and down.
“Hey, hold on, you can’t ask me this out of the blue...”
In the end, though, I accepted Kiriko’s request. Having never
written a letter worth calling a letter outside of New Year’s cards,
the old-fashioned idea seemed fresh and interesting to me.
And getting such an earnest request from a girl my age got me so
excited that I wasn’t about to turn her down.
She sighed with satisfaction. “I’m glad. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if
you refused.”
After handing her a note with my new address, she smiled, said
“Wait for my first letter,” and ran home with a speedy trot.
Didn’t even say goodbye. Clearly, her interest was in the letters I’d
write, not the flesh-and-blood me.
As soon as I’d transferred to my new school, her letter came right
away. “More than anything, I think we should know more about
each other,” she wrote. “So first, let’s introduce ourselves.”
7