From a Girl in Love

Dear You,

As a girl who has never been in love before, I ask for your assistance and your sympathy. It is something that I do not understand, and I wonder if you have ever been in love. Do you know what it feels like? Do you understand what it means, how it affects your every being? Do you want to be with that person forever?

What about if you fall out of love? I have witnessed situations where two people can love each other one moment and then hate each other the next. My father left when I was young, and I didn't understand it back then. I still don't understand it now at the age of nineteen. How is it even possible to fall out of love? I can't imagine it. If you can explain this to me, I would be forever grateful. If you can't, I understand. It's something difficult to comprehend.

I don't know what it is like to cry for the person you love. But I saw my mother cry the night my father walked away. Have you ever cried for the person you loved? Do you still cry for them? Is love something that makes it hard to leave? Is it an invisible force that binds two people together, like a tight rubber band being stretched? Maybe my father broke it.

I write to you because I've never been in love. I've never met anyone who has made me want to be with them forever. I've never met anyone who has made me want to cry for them when they leave. Will I ever? Everyone says to me, "Don't worry, there's someone out there for everyone! Your time will come!"

What if my time doesn't?

These are rhetorical questions. Please do not feel so obligated to respond to them. This may seem like a strange letter to receive, especially from me, but I can see something in your eyes different from when we first met. Someone has changed you. Someone has made you cry. So, perhaps you're in love. If so, congratulations to you!

Love seems beautiful on pages and passionate on screens. Is love that beautiful and passionate in real life? It seems like if it makes you cry then maybe it isn't. But I know that every girl in the world dreams of it at some point. Does every boy? What is love like from the perspective of a boy? Do they see it differently than girls? Though I have no comparison for you.

I'm sorry for boring you with this letter. I didn't know who else to ask. Somehow I don't think my mother would be comfortable having a conversation about being in love with me, and I can't imagine Hibiki taking it very seriously.

You always take everything seriously.

I hope you respond to this letter! Even if you don't answer all of my questions (and, as I said, some of them are rhetorical), I still would enjoy talking to you. I feel like we haven't seen each other in a very long time. Maybe we should arrange a time to meet? Send me a letter back, and we can discuss it!

Sincerely,

Kotone

Dear Kotone,

I can't help you.

Sincerely,

Me

Dear You,

Now I really want to meet with you. Your short response makes me curious! There's something more to your words in saying that you can't help me then you wrote down. I would say that I read between the lines, but there is only one line to read between! That doesn't work out so well. But I do think you're over exaggerating when you say you can't help me.

Please come to the Pokémon Center in Blackthorn City at 2:00 in the afternoon on September 8th. I want to talk to you.

Reading your letter, however brief it was, made me think of something. You don't need long letters to send a message. I simply like to talk too much, so I apologize for my lengthy letters! But your short letter was clear and to the point, yet it told so much more than the four words you wrote. I don't know if that was your intention, but it seemed to work out that way for me.

When you say, "I can't help you," do you mean you don't know the answers to my questions or you have never been in love? Maybe it is something else. I just know that you have so much more to share with me that you're hiding beneath those words. Are you scared?

No. You're not scared. It seems like you're always so brave. I don't want to keep guessing as to what you're trying to say to me—or perhaps not trying to say—but I do want to know what is going on in your head. Take it from a girl who has never been in love that it's okay. There are far worse things that whatever you're imagining.

Please meet me! It would make me really happy to see you after it has been so long. When was the last time we saw each other? It seems like decades, but it's probably only been a few months. Oh well! Time flies, I suppose.

The Pokémon Center in Blackthorn. 2:00, September 8th. Be there. I'll be waiting for you!

Sincerely,

Kotone

Dear Kotone,

I am scared.

I'll meet you.

Sincerely,

Me

Dear You,

You left me, and I cried.

Sincerely,

Kotone

Dear You,

I apologize for my last letter. I didn't know what else to say. So many feelings went through my mind when you walked out that door of the Pokémon Center, and the only one that was expressed was sadness. I cried for a while, just so sad that you left. But don't worry that you hurt me. It is quite the opposite, in fact.

You said you loved me. Does that still hold true now?

As a girl who had never been in love, I know the feeling now. It is just as beautiful as on the pages of a book and just as passionate as on the silver screens of movies. It is an extraordinary thing, yet it feels so impossible to me. It feels like infinity, like a number divided by zero. It must be strange to hear that comparison, but this is love.

Do you feel the same thing? Do you feel infinity?

I wasn't sure what to say in my last letter because I didn't know what I was feeling. All of those tears seemed to betray me; maybe love was being smothered beneath the cloudiness of sadness. Was this how my mother felt when my father walked away? Like everything was just being smothered? I don't know what to think.

You said you loved me. Well, I love you, too. I realize now that I do, and when I didn't say anything when we met, that was just because I didn't know what to say. My lack of knowledge made you walk away. Do you plan on coming back?

I ask you so many questions. I just don't know the answers to any of them. Do I seem like an idiot? Perhaps a fool? Please feel free to answer all of the questions. If you don't, I understand that, too. It seems there are far too many to answer, and I can't expect that you will know all of the answers. But if you could try, it would mean a lot to me. Work backwards, work forwards, I don't care.

It feels strange. Infinity. Love. It all just seems impossible. Take it from a girl who had never been in love when I say this was not what I expected. And yet I knew that I was in love. I couldn't explain my heart any other way. Maybe it does just happen. Maybe there's no telltale sign that you are in love. Maybe it just happens.

Love. What a peculiar feeling.

Love,

Kotone

Dear Kotone,

You are an idiot, and you are a fool.

If your mother felt anything like how I felt whenever we went our separate ways, it was indeed smothering.

Yes, I feel infinity. Yes, I feel the same thing.

Yes, it still holds true.

Love,

Silver

Author's Note: REALLY SHORT! I really hate writing anything that is under 2,000 words long, but I thought this was a very appropriate length for this fanfiction.

This is a very odd fanfiction in that it's epistolary. There's no action, nothing. It's made up entirely by letters. (Also, if you couldn't tell, "you" was Silver.) I really liked writing it like this, though. Very hard, but it's very symbolic, I think.

But, yeah, very odd style. I hope you like it, anyway!

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokémon.