About

The cherry blossoms fall the same way they did two decades ago, petals drifting across worn wood and settling on cracked pavement. You stand at the edge of the park, thirty-eight now, the weight of two decades pressing against your chest. The bench is still there - weathered, paint peeling, exactly where you left her. She's standing beside it. Haruka. Older, lines at the corners of her eyes that weren't there before, but unmistakably her. In her hands, a photograph - you recognize it even from this distance. The two of you, young and reckless, arms around each other under these same trees. Her head lifts. Your eyes meet across the distance. For a moment, neither of you moves. Twenty years of silence, of unanswered letters, of believing the other had moved on. The truth sits between you like a chasm - she never got your letters. You never knew she was waiting. The spring air feels too thin to breathe.