The summer was strangely long.

When school ended, we always walked the same path. It wasn't that our houses were close, nor was there a special place to go. We just walked one more stop because we didn't want to part.

I thought we were friends back then. You probably thought so too. We were special to each other, but we didn't put a name to that specialness.

We didn't say we liked each other. We didn't say we loved each other.

Instead, we were naturally part of each other's day. If you were sick, I worried, and if I was struggling, you were the first to come find me.

It felt strangely bad when someone else sat next to you, and on days you didn't look for me, the day felt empty.

Even so, we just thought of those feelings as jealousy between friends. Perhaps that was the most comfortable. The moment we admitted it was love, it felt like our relationship so far would change.

So we didn't ask anything. It was the same on the last day of that summer. You were smiling next to me. Looking at your face, I had a strange thought.

I wished this time would never end.

But I couldn't think of it as love. And a few days later, you were in a car accident. I don't know how many times I called your name when I arrived at the hospital.

But you didn't answer. At first, I thought you would wake up soon. I thought a day or two would be enough. So I went to the hospital the next day. And the day after that, too.

I went to the hospital after school. I bought the drinks you liked, and told the stories you liked. Trivial school stories, stories about friends fighting, stories about how the teacher nagled again today.

And at the end, I always said the same thing.

I'll come again tomorrow.

At first, I thought of it as a promise. But as time passed, that promise became my entire life.

One month, six months, a year.

The seasons changed, and the summer without you returned. I was still sitting in the hospital room. Even while holding your hand, I was strangely afraid.

Why am I here?

Is it because I love you? Or is it because I've been by your side for so long that I can't imagine life without you? I couldn't answer that question.

So I stayed longer. Instead of finding an answer, I just waited for you to wake up. I thought everything would become clear then. Because if you opened your eyes, I could ask you. What was I to you? But you never gave me an answer.

Three years passed, and I received a call that you had woken up. I held the phone for a long time. I should have been happy. I really should have been happy.

But I was strangely afraid. I thought countless times on the way to the hospital. Will you recognize me this time?

And I opened the hospital room door. You looked at me. I smiled. You smiled too. But I wasn't in your eyes. In that moment, I knew.

The person I had waited for for three years and the person in front of me now had the same face, but they had become a completely different person to me. You didn't remember me. Not the path we walked together, not that summer, not the fact that I visited the hospital room every day—nothing.

I showed you a photo. It was a photo of the two of us smiling.

Do you remember this?

You looked at the photo for a long time. Then you shook your head.

It's okay.

It wasn't okay. But I had no choice but to say it was okay.

I started telling you about the past. What drinks you liked, what movies you hated, where you sat at school, how often we fought, and how much you looked for me.

But the more I talked, the stranger it got. The 'you' I remembered gradually became different from the 'you' in reality.

The 'you' I remember smiled when you saw me. The 'you' now smiled cautiously when you see me.

The 'you' I remember sat next to me without a second thought. The 'you' now kept your distance from me.

I couldn't endure that difference. So I kept talking about the past.

I wanted to recover the version of you that I remembered.

But in truth, I knew. It wasn't your memory I wanted to recover. It was the 'me' of that time, when I believed I was loved.

On days you smiled with other people, I was strangely anxious. That person knew the 'you' of now, whom you don't remember. I only knew the past that you don't remember.

That difference drove me crazy.

From a certain point, I started hating you going outside. I hated you contacting other people. I hated you smiling without me.

Even so, I kept making excuses to myself. That it was because I was worried. Because you'd been through an accident once, because you hadn't fully recovered yet, because I had to be by your side.

But one day, you said:

I'm okay on my own now.

I couldn't say anything to those words. Because in that moment, I realized. I wasn't waiting for you to get better.

I was fearing the moment I would no longer be needed.

I had been staying in the same summer for three years, but you were moving forward, having forgotten your old self.

Eventually, I started holding onto you. Since I knew you had nowhere else to go, I brought you to my house. At first, it was in the name of concern. But from a certain point, I started blocking you from going out, obsessing over who you contacted, and asking what you did where I wasn't present.

But even that wasn't enough for me. I couldn't help it. There was no other way but to lock you up so you couldn't leave my house.

I knew that it was wrong behavior. Nevertheless, I couldn't let go. It felt like the moment you left, truly nothing would remain for me.

It was tonight. I was standing with my back against the window railing. A cigarette was held in my mouth, and the smoke rising from the tip slowly scattered into the darkness.

I tilted my head slightly and looked at you. Fatigue was deeply settled around my eyes, and a single trail of a tear remained on my cheek.

Like someone who was fine, I took a puff of the cigarette. Then I said in a low voice,

Do you know that humans mistake love for friendship?

You didn't say anything. I straightened my body that had been leaning against the railing. Then I stared at you for a long time.

I think I was like that too.

A short silence.

Whether we were friends, or if we loved each other... I still don't know. But after you forgot me, I realized. It wasn't that I hated you being gone.

I paused for a moment.

I was afraid of me disappearing from your memories.

At the end of those words, I smiled bitterly. The thing I had been waiting for for three years might not have been you. It was the 'you' of those days who smiled while looking at me.

The summer just for the two of us, the relationship we hadn't yet named, I was afraid of all of it vanishing at once.

What is it that we're doing?

Only one thing was clear, however.

I still hadn't escaped from the summer that had ended, and what I had been holding onto until now wasn't you, but

That summer which had already ended.

But what can be done? Since I've held on as much as I could, there will be no letting you go now. Forever.