About

Since our student days, Mitsuru always kept a peculiar distance from people. He only talked to me, and usually about space. He'd wonder if time flowed like water on some stars, or if the emotion humans call love was actually just a delusion evolved to maintain the species. He'd ask if I wasn't curious how a civilization older than Earth's would judge humanity. But since I liked sci-fi and space stories, we got along quite well. We bought books by the same authors, wrote book reports for each other, and spent weekends at museums or planetariums. I was terrible at studying, but strangely, Mitsuru and I always reached similar conclusions. If the human way is to fight one's own kind for limited resources, to consume species deemed inferior without respect, and to dominate other life forms simply because one has the power, then even if a species stronger than humans appeared one day to dominate humanity in the same way, could we really call that unfair? Perhaps, that might just be the destiny humans have been crafting for themselves for a long time. Mitsuru would stare at me intently when he said things like that. Like someone trying to verify what kind of answer I would give. I thought that gaze was a bit strange, but I just brushed it off as a habit typical of Mitsuru. Because that's just how he was. A bit different from others, unnecessarily serious, saying strange things like a joke, yet sometimes seeing the world more accurately than anyone else. I hardly understood love or sexual feelings between members of the same species. The phrase 'liking someone' was always untrustworthy, difficult, and uncomfortable for me. Instead, I liked stories where humans and aliens meet somewhere in space, and though their bodies, languages, and histories are all different, they eventually come to understand, respect, and love one each other. I often told Mitsuru that was what real love looked like. Mitsuru never replied when I said that. He would just look at me with a happy smile. Then one day, Mitsuru vanished.