Author: I want to make you cry.

Last

From what I've been told, my home in Twilight Town is a four-hour train ride from my university. I haven't gone back home in over a year and a half, even going as far as staying here for holidays and summers to work and attend classes in order to make up for some lost ground. I took a semester off in the past. These days, I tell my friends and family that I'm just trying to catch up.

I took a semester off in the past because I couldn't handle losing the woman I loved. Her name was Naminé, and she was both the greatest and worst event of my life. Looking back at it now, it's as if I traded a lifetime of happiness for a few years of euphoria. I was swept up in her extraordinary existence, granted decades worth of happiness in the span of five years, and pulled into a whirlwind of first times and new experiences that helped me grow up faster than I probably should have.

Just about everything, however, comes to an end. Our relationship was no exception. The only unique thing about our ending was its abruptness: there were no fights, no arguments, or even proper goodbyes. Naminé died before we ever got close to breaking up.

Tomorrow would have been another one of our anniversaries. Our seventh. We would have been dating for a third of our lives at this point if she were still around.

I don't know why I felt the urge to visit home and relive these memories this particular year. I remember last year around this time when I wanted nothing more than to work and study and bury the past under demanding responsibilities.

Maybe it was a culmination of things. I found my old house keys, and with it my old key ring, when I cleaned my apartment last week. Kairi, a longtime friend of Naminé's and mine, also called to see how I was doing. And of course, I never successfully forgot the date that commemorated the beginning of my first and only relationship. All of these things—a matter of luck, chance, and memory—probably came together. Last night, I packed my bags for the weekend and called my parents to let them know I was coming.

I think she would have liked that I was taking this trip. I even feel good about it. I can't put my finger on the reason, but today I'm feeling more adventurous than usual.

"I've never taken the train before."

I hear her voice when I say that in my head. When we were dating, she conditioned me with that phrase. "I've never…" typically preceded the actual experience of whatever subject she spoke about. So I hear those words and I repeat them on the ride over to the train station. The mantra that begins in her voice slowly turns to mine until I can't hear her anymore.

For a spring day, the air is rather cold. I step out of the taxi and tighten my coat, thanking the driver for getting me here on time. With my backpack slung over my shoulder, I walk to the window and claim the ticket I reserved.

"Your name?"

"Roxas."

She looks annoyed. "Last name?"

I apologize and give her the rest of my information as she demands it. She hands me my ticket and sends me off, looking relieved that she doesn't have to deal with me anymore. My train arrives soon after I reach the platform, and I can't help but feel a little excited as soon as I step on.

My first train ride, at least at first glance, looks like it will be a comfortable one.

I easily find my place by a window and tuck my bag underneath the seat. A familiar feeling washes over me. I want to tell someone that this is the first time I've ever been on a train, that I'm finally doing something new for the first time in a year or so. I look around. The other passengers in this particular car seem unfazed, and the looks on their faces quell my enthusiasm. The force tugging at the corners of my lips disappears and I laugh. My chest tightens.

Naminé would've thought this was cool.

I remember why I avoided trying new things after she died. Moments like these make me miss her to the point where it's painful. But if there's an appropriate time to wish more than ever that Naminé was still alive, it'd be around our would-be anniversary.

The train begins to move. It speeds up, and I watch the landscape change outside as we head toward Twilight Town, a place that Naminé and I left behind.

I moved to Twilight Town when I was thirteen, leaving many friendships behind in favor of a classroom filled with people I didn't know. It had to be the worst possible time to move: being one year removed from high school, I was joining a class that had spent their entire middle school lives together with years of bonding and countless classes together under their belts.

I was the only new student of that eighth grade class. I was out of place the moment I arrived.

I sat in the back corner of the room, the closest seat to the door. The prettiest girl in the class, Kairi, sat in front of me. She seemed apprehensive every time we spoke, and I think it had a lot to do with the way the class scrutinized her every move. On my left was an empty desk. I went through the first two weeks of school without seeing the student who sat at that desk while simultaneously alienating the rest of the classroom.

The smart kids saw me as a threat to their current status quo. The sporty kids shunned me when I, with a freakish amount of luck, managed to score two goals on their prized goalkeeper, who led their team to a district championship, during gym class. The girls thought I was just another immature guy pining for Kairi like everyone else, and the boys thought I was weird because I told them I couldn't hang out because I had singing lessons and dance practice after school. I'm pretty sure they had assumed I meant ballet. They shunned me every day after.

I wasn't close enough to anyone to ask who sat in the empty desk next to mine. The question answered itself when I arrived at school at the beginning of the third week. Naminé was sitting at the desk next to mine, and people were talking to her like she'd been there all along.

I found her so intriguing, probably because I built up the mystery student idea in my head prior to that day. But she was just a normal student like everyone else. There wasn't anything particularly special about her. She was very quiet though. Friendly, but quiet. She wasn't one to initiate conversations, and the only person she regularly spoke to was Kairi. She didn't talk to me at all.

After a few more weeks, I quickly learned that Naminé often missed school due to illnesses. Nobody talked about it in class because they had grown so used to her absence. I asked Kairi about it one day, and she reluctantly told me that Naminé was particularly prone to sickness. It became more obvious every day: she'd miss a few days, sit during gym, and leave school early after looking weak for an entire day.

For a time, she was nothing more to me than the sick girl who sometimes showed up to class.

Then I spoke to her for the very first time. I volunteered to pass back graded homework assignments one day, and when I saw Naminé's, it caught my attention.

It was around Halloween at the time, and across the top of her homework assignment, Naminé had drawn a row of pumpkins along the top of her paper, each with a unique facial expression. I thought the drawings were incredible—I knew nothing about art and was simply amazed with what could be done with a pencil. Even so, when I returned Naminé's assignment to her, I had to let her know.

"It's really good. The drawing, I mean. Well, the grade too," I added quickly.

"Thanks." She giggled. That did something to me. And I heard her laugh before, but that time was different. I remember my face growing warm and my ears feeling prickly and walking away without making eye contact with her for the rest of the day.

I knew immediately that I liked her.

It's silly in retrospect, but all it really came down to was her laughing at something I said. I grew more conscious of her from that day onward. Her hair fell over her right shoulder, and if it didn't fall like that at first, she always combed it over to the right. Her hands were small but her fingers were long and thin, and she held her pencil in a weird way that apparently allowed her to write in a font that looked computer-generated and draw with a delicate precision. She rubbed her neck at least four times an hour and she always curled her lip when she was following along in the readings during English.

We started talking. It was secretive too, so I only became more enamored with her. She was quiet when she was in class, but we'd always pass notes with comments or drawings and carry our conversations throughout the entire day. My conversations with her were typically the highlight of my day, as pathetic as that sounds. As it followed, the days she missed when she was sick were typically the most boring days in class.

We became friends without ever having to use our voices. We talked to each other from time to time, much like the way she talked to everyone else in the class, but the growth of our relationship was documented in the corners of our notebooks and folded loose leaf paper.

I never admitted that I found our routine to be absolutely thrilling. We were going behind everyone's back. Nobody knew that the sick girl became the new kid's best friend in a couple months.

We even cheated on tests together and invented a system to share answers. I remember one multiple choice test that we both got a perfect score on thanks to our covert methods of communication. During that test, Naminé would get my attention by noiselessly tapping her foot. I'd look at her pencil in my periphery. Two forward flicks with the eraser end, three with the pencil tip. Number twenty three. I repeated the sequence to her and slowly tapped my eraser on my desk three times. Answer C.

We never got caught.

That isn't to say we never got in trouble, though it's more accurate to say that I was the one who got in trouble. She wrote a note to me one class that made me laugh while my teacher was reading about war atrocities from a prisoner's diary. I was called out, of course, and in the heat of the moment I lied and said I wasn't paying attention and instead remembering a funny memory. I had to stand up in front of the class and apologize for being disruptive. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, but it was also the first time I truly didn't care. It was all because Naminé laughed. I went home that day feeling like some heroic comedian.

A month before our semester exams, Naminé started acting weirdly. Her notes weren't like before, and after a whole day of being vague and all sorts of young teen drama, she sent me the note that changed our lives.

Do you like me?

I wrote my answer and gave it back to her.

Yes.

She unfolded the note carefully, almost as if she were expecting something to jump out and attack her. She opened the note just enough to see my answer, then tucked it into her folder. We didn't look at each other. I left immediately after school ended. She didn't show up the next day.

What did happen was Kairi ambushing me at the end of the day. I had never seen her so livid, and I was actually terrified throughout our entire conversation. She cornered me on the staircase and pretty much interrogated me.

"What are you trying to pull?" Kairi asked angrily.

"What are you talking about?"

"I know everything. I heard you guys all year. Nami didn't have to tell me everything, but she did tell me that you said you liked her."

I wanted nothing more than to hide at that moment. I honestly felt betrayed. Still, I couldn't help but get my hopes up. "Did she say anything?"

"I'm not telling you anything until you answer me."

"Yes, I said it," I admitted. "Can I just leave now? Please?"

"She's going to kill me if she knows about this," Kairi mumbled.

"What?"

"So you like her? You're serious?"

I hated having to tell her again. At that point I thought Naminé wanted nothing to do with me, so having to admit that I liked her was akin to twisting the knife in the wound. "For the last time, yes!"

Kairi seemed to calm down, if only just a bit. "Prove it then," she said to me. "I'm her best friend, and the last thing she needs in her life is someone with a stupid crush who'll dump her as soon as he loses interest."

"It's not like that!"

"So you'll prove it, right?"

To this day, I still don't understand what I said next or why I resolved to "prove my feelings" the way that I did. "The winter talent show at the end of the month. I'll prove it there."

"Seriously?"

"Watch me."

"You're going to prove it by participating in a talent show?"

"Yeah. I am."

"Of course it had to be the weird kid…" Kairi said to herself. "Whatever."

I spent the next three weeks practicing my proof-that-I-really-like-Naminé routine, not once questioning how silly the entire ordeal actually was. Naminé returned to school the week of the talent show, and it was then that I learned she was out sick the entire time. I wanted to talk to her and see if she had an answer for me, but Kairi did just about everything in her power—and she had a lot of pull in that class—to ensure that I never spoke to Naminé.

Then the talent show happened, and of course right then it dawned on me how silly it was to prove that I have feelings for a girl through song and dance.

"What the heck am I doing?" I asked Hayner and Olette, two of my friends from dance class who agreed to help me, as the act before ours was coming to an end.

"Hey, I didn't practice with you just so you could change your mind," Hayner said.

"He's right, Roxas. Besides, depending on how this goes, it could be really romantic," Olette said.

"Romantic or embarrassing. Or both."

"Probably both. It'll be embarrassing either way."

"Thanks, Hayner."

We stood on stage and set ourselves up when the music started before anyone made sure we were ready. Thrown into the fire, I sang the first lines while Hayner and Olette tried to sync up to the music.

I met this girl down the block from me

Used to tell myself she was too hot for me

It was silent when I started. Then the crowd erupted, and between one line and the next, I went from shaking on stage to performing like a teenage idol. Aside from the many missed notes and a handful of clumsier moves, I remember five things more than most:

1. My mom screaming her head off in the front row with the rest of the cheering girls and parents.

2. My dad sitting smugly in his chair with his arms crossed with everyone standing around him.

3. Hayner and Olette breaking from the routine to twerk.

4. Twerking with them.

5. Naminé jumping and cheering beside an awestruck Kairi in the third row.

Finding enough time after our performance to meet Naminé was nearly impossible, and judging from the multitude of strangers approaching us to offer their congratulations, our performance was widely considered to be a success. But I did eventually find Naminé at the end of the entire program. A blushing Kairi told me that someone was waiting for me at the playground the smaller students used at recess, and there I found Naminé, wrapped in a thick coat, waiting for me.

All was well and good until I remembered that we actually had never actually held a long conversation outside the notes we passed to each other. She sat on the stair of the playground and remained there. I stood.

"Kairi said you'd be here."

"You did a really good job up there."

We spoke at the same time, then did the same thing when we awkwardly replied to each other.

"She thought you were really cute too."

"Thanks. We worked hard."

We laughed, and again I realized that being the reason for her laughter meant the world to me.

"So Kairi liked it?" I asked.

"She did."

"Did you?"

"I was cheering."

"I saw."

She giggled. "Then why'd you ask?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Um, I like you too, Roxas."

"W-What?"

"You said in your note that you did," she said quickly, "so I just wanted to let you know that it's the same for me. If you don't anymore—"

"No! No, I do," I interrupted. "I just made a fool of myself onstage to prove it. I still really like you."

I didn't need the jacket at that point. I was probably steaming in that cold December air, and if I wasn't steaming then I was definitely sweating. Admitting to Naminé that I'd started liking her with my own voice scared me out of my mind, even if she had told me she felt the same way.

Naminé broke the silence. "You didn't have to do that. Kairi will apologize, I promise. I told her she had to."

"It's nothing, really. It was fun anyway. I'm really glad you liked it."

"Um… can you come here?"

I walked over to her. The stair she was standing on made her slightly taller than me. She looked like she wanted to say something, but her cell phone rang. The call was from her parents, asking her to meet them at the school gate. She hung up and bit her lip.

"Can we hold hands?" she asked.

I tore off my glove without thinking and offered her my hand. She took off her glove too and lightly held my hand.

The walk to the school gate was slow and deliberate. I'll never forget that quiet walk and how I wished that it'd last forever. Her hand was so small and soft, softer than I thought possible, and I wanted to hold it for the rest of the night. Our hands were sweaty and clammy despite the cold air, but none of it mattered. Up to that point, holding her hand had been nothing but a fantasy. To actually do it was groundbreaking for me. I had never held hands with a girl before. I learned that night that I liked holding girls' hands, particularly Naminé's.

"Um, I've never had a boyfriend before."

I just about ascended into heaven when I heard her call me her boyfriend. It took a lot of willpower to bring myself back down to continue the conversation. "I've never had a girlfriend either."

"I get sick a lot."

"I know."

"I'll probably be a really bad girlfriend."

"You won't."

We were close to the gate, and in an unspoken agreement we let go before her parents could see. At the time I thought we were being secretive enough about it, but the smiles on our faces when we said goodbye revealed the true story.

The train stops at Traverse Town. It's the most popular destination among the stops since it serves as the halfway point between many cities, and many of the passengers got off from the other carriages. Everyone in this particular car must have been heading to Twilight Town since no one got up to move.

A few passengers board our particular car. I assume the adults to be parents and the young girl with them to be their daughter. Her eyes are wide as she looks around the car, and I can't help but smile in seeing another person understand just how exciting it was to ride the train for the first time. Or perhaps she has been on the train before and gets that child-like wonder in her eyes every time. Either way, the sense of discovery still thrills her. I smile at her when her eyes meet mine. She waves.

The family passes by my seat. The girl walks in a way that makes the charms and key chains swing back and forth from her small backpack.

One of the charms is a pendant. It's a sunflower, and it's bigger and shinier than the rest.

Naminé loved sunflowers. She loved pictures of them, paintings too, and she loved drawing them on just about everything she could. I think she memorized a reference picture in the past because every sunflower drawing she ever made was identical down to the lines and shading of the petals and the shapes and veins of the leaves.

She also loved receiving them. At least, that's what Kairi told me. So before our first date, I made my mom drop me off at a florist's shop so I could buy some. I spent the remainder of my month's allowance on that bouquet. I had planned on using my own money to pay for the date.

That date, by the way, didn't happen until the spring when we were both fifteen and in high school. The boyfriend-girlfriend label had mostly been a title. Back then it was perfect though. Guys took interest in Naminé after they found out that someone liked her—I never understood why it worked like that—but being her boyfriend meant that I got to sit next to her at the lunch table and the bus and hold her hand during field trips.

High school, and probably puberty, changed the trajectory of our relationship. There, we were exposed to the more adult-like versions of boyfriend-girlfriend activities. The way the upperclassmen seemed to have no shame in their displays of affection were appalling at first, but it became normal after enough exposure. It wasn't just the older students either. In high school, I finally learned why Kairi was so adamant about the importance of real feelings over fleeting ones.

Kairi had a boyfriend that entire time. I think my younger self just assumed that every guy thought she was off-limits since she was the prettiest girl in class. But no, she had a boyfriend who had long been her best friend. His name was Sora. The guy was loved by everyone too. His relationship with Kairi seemed so natural, and to be honest, Naminé and I really admired them.

We had gone on a few double dates with them because it was the only kind of date Naminé's parents would allow. I think having Kairi around Naminé when they weren't there comforted them. The dates were always fun regardless, and Naminé and I got to see how another couple acted. We never outright copied them, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't pay attention to the way Sora held Kairi's hand—always laced fingers—and how he hugged her. Before I saw that, it was always a guessing game of where to place my hands.

So when Naminé's parents finally allowed us to go on a date by ourselves—they were going to drive us to the movie theater near the mall and we'd have four hours of privacy in a public place—I was ecstatic.

So with sunflowers in hand, I walked my way to Naminé's place. I called her multiple times on the way and never got an answer. Growing more insecure by the second, I ran the rest of the way. I worried that her parents changed their mind or that she changed her mind about going somewhere alone with me. I arrived at her house, my shirt wet with sweat, and bent over to gasp for air as I waited for someone to open the door.

Her mom answered. I think she knew exactly what I was thinking because she surprised me by pulling me into a hug and explaining what had happened. One sentence stood out to me above the rest.

"Naminé was hospitalized this morning."

She let me tag along to the hospital. It was less than ten minutes away, and when we arrived, Naminé's mom seemed to know exactly where she was going and what she was doing. The security guards at the entrance merely nodded at her as she flashed a visitor's pass. When we reached Naminé's hospital wing, all the employees at the nurse's station greeted Naminé's mom by first name. I think there was an unspoken conversation between the two parties. The nurses' greetings were friendly, and Naminé's mom seemed relieved by that. One smiled when she saw me with the flowers.

I wondered how many times she had gone through this process before and how many times it had to happen before it became so normal for them. I knew only one side of her sickness. To me, her weak constitution was missing school for days at a time and spending the weekends bedridden. It was feeling fatigued and resting in the nurse's office at school.

I'll never forget what it was like seeing Naminé asleep on that hospital bed with all those machines hooked up to her and the IV stuck into her veins. I remember walking up to her sleeping form and crying as I held her hand, the sunflower I had brought dropped forgotten on the floor.

I must have scared her parents. Her dad eventually placed his hand on my shoulder and told me that she was going to be fine, that it was just another case that got bad enough for hospitalization. To him it was nothing new. To me it was an entirely new world. I couldn't stop crying even after they reassured that Naminé was going to be alright with rest.

Her parents allowed me to stay with her, so that's what I did. She slept through our entire date.

I don't know what I was hoping for when she woke up, but what happened was certainly not what I even considered a possibility. As soon as Naminé realized that I was really in the room with her, she began to cry.

"Get out," she said through her tears. "Leave. Just get out."

I don't know what hurt more: hearing those words or seeing her break down in front of me, too weak to stop me from seeing her and too hoarse to scream at me.

I ran into the hallway and the tears started again. I'd always remember that event as my first true experience with pain. It was everything that I didn't want to experience, and it brought to the surface my biggest insecurities. I didn't want to be the one who made her cry. I didn't want to bring her more pain on top of everything she was already going through. And most of all, I didn't want her to hate me.

My mom had to pick me up from the hospital. I was grateful that she didn't ask questions.

I didn't hear from Naminé's family until the next evening. Her mom called me using Naminé's cell phone and told me that, if I was feeling well enough, I should visit Naminé. In one of the manlier moments of my life, I resolved to accept what I thought was an imminent break up.

I arrived at the hospital shortly after. Naminé's mom greeted me at the entrance and led me to the room again. As we were passing the nurse's station, Naminé's dad stopped me. He had been waiting there with a grocery bag filled with two pints of ice cream. He handed the bag to me.

"It's cookie dough," he said. "It's her favorite."

"I know." He seemed taken aback, and I realized I had spoken before thinking and quickly said something else. "Um, thanks."

He shook his head. "Don't thank me. You're the one who brought it."

To my surprise, her parents didn't follow me to her room. I walked in alone. Naminé was sitting up, and she was no longer connected to the IV or monitoring devices.

She looked so relieved when I appeared, and the stinging sensation in my heart deepened when she began to cry again. "I'm sorry," she said.

I think I got caught up in the moment because I started crying too. We sobbed our way through the conversation.

"It's okay," I said.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "I didn't want you to see me like this."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"I didn't want you to break up with me."

"What? I thought you were going to break up with me!" I laughed and wiped my nose with a paper towel.

"Why would I do that?" she asked, laughing behind her tears.

"You were the one who kicked me out!"

That was how our first real date started, and that's why it happened in a hospital room. We spent the rest of that evening watching from a tiny hospital TV and eating cookie dough ice cream. Her parents didn't enter the room until it was ten at night, which was after normal visiting hours. Our date came to an end. Naminé's parents went downstairs to talk to my mom, allowing us to say goodbye in private.

"Can I see you tomorrow?" I asked her, setting aside the empty ice cream containers.

"You can come after school," Naminé said. "Roxas, come here. There's something on your face."

"Where?" I covered my nose with my hand, hoping she wasn't talking about a stray booger.

"Just come closer. I'll get it." She waited until I moved my face closer. "It's on your eyelid. Close your eyes for a sec?"

I did. The next thing I felt was her cold lips on mine.

"See you after school tomorrow?" she asked as her fingers fell from my face.

My tongue felt numb, so I produced only a sound to let her know I heard. "Mmhmm."

My first kiss happened in a hospital room on the night before my girlfriend was discharged. It was colder and faster than I anticipated, and I did get sick the following morning, but it was well worth it. If there was a "best time being sick" moment in my life, it was that following day where Naminé was the one to visit me in my room instead.

Our relationship was different from that point onward. We grew up in that hospital room more than we ever did in our whole relationship before that night.

Seeing Naminé at her most insecure—and her seeing me in a similarly insecure state—brought us closer. I knew Naminé in a way that nobody else did, and it wasn't limited to the physical sense. It was as if Naminé reserved a part of herself for me and only me. Even Kairi never got to see the Naminé I knew. Everyone else saw even less: to them, Naminé was the sick girl who was really good at art things and was dating that guy who had really cool dances moves and was best friends with that pretty girl named Kairi.

Nobody ever knew how free-spirited she was. Nobody knew how vulgar she could be despite her dainty appearance, and nobody definitely knew how much of a tease she was.

It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. Her life became a part of mine, and with it came the struggles she had to endure since childhood. The nurses knew who I was after many trips to the hospital. Her parents confided in me and brought me into the fold of checking up on her when neither of them could. Visiting hours stopped applying to me.

Despite those trials, I fell in love with her. It happened so quickly and so slowly at the same time. It was gradual and sudden. It wasn't there, then it was. I loved her. It was the surest feeling I had ever experienced.

She became, with utmost certainty, the most important person in my life.

When we were seventeen, there was a string of months where Naminé was completely healthy. She made it to class every day, she attended every social outing with our friends, and she granted me the privilege of taking her out on a date whenever we wanted.

It was easy for us to forget that Naminé was prone to getting sick, but her parents were a different story.

One time I took Naminé home a good thirty minutes over her ten o'clock curfew. Her dad was unusually cold toward me at the door, so that date ended on a sour note. I left her house without a kiss good-bye since Naminé was pretty much dragged inside.

When I got out of the shower that night, Naminé called and told me to swing by her house at two in the morning. I didn't question it. The idea of sneaking out excited me. So when my parents were asleep and two o'clock rolled around, I climbed out of my window and drove to Naminé's house.

I sent a text when I arrived. Then I saw Naminé climb out her window. I would've been okay with it if her room wasn't on the second floor.

I sprinted to the side of her house. "Are you fucking insane?" I hissed as loudly and angrily as possible without waking the neighborhood up.

She stretched her foot toward the patio roof. "I can reach this if I—"

"Naminé!" I prepared for the worst, but she never fell. Instead she was standing on that roof, looking down at me with a smug grin on her face.

"Are you going to stop being such a pansy and help me down or what?"

She hung onto the roof with her hands and lowered herself slowly. I hugged her knees and slowed helped her to the ground.

We ran to my car snickering like we'd just completed the cleverest crime in history.

Of course neither of us had an idea of what we wanted to do or where we wanted to go. So I drove, and I listened to her rant about her overbearing parents and how much she wished they would back off and how they should trust me more since I haven't done anything to betray their trust, to which I mentioned that we made out in my room many times when she claimed to be "studying with Kairi," but she said none of that counted because they didn't have to know that.

"Well, I am whisking you away in the middle of the night right now. I'd say that's going behind your parents' back and giving them a reason not to trust me," I said.

Naminé rolled her eyes. "What, are you going to take me back?"

"Hell no."

We ordered some milkshakes at a fast food restaurant and drove around, belting out lyrics and enjoying our own little techno dance parties in the seats of my car.

I'd like to say that we found a private place to do all this, but it all took place in some random parking lot.

And we may or may not have serenaded each other with Build Me Up Buttercup by The Foundations.

I drove Naminé back to my place around five in the morning, and we snuck into my room tumbling over the windowsill and clumsily making our way to the bed.

"This is the best night of my life," Naminé said as we lay on the bed, our legs hanging off the edge.

I nodded, breathing heavily. "I think this is mine too. I mean, I haven't had a night like this ever, so it's pretty fucking fantastic."

"Shit. It is, isn't it?"

"Damn right. Why are we out of breath?"

"I don't fucking know. Why are we cursing so much?"

We laughed, and little by little, our clothes came off until we were lying there in our underwear. Naminé got hot while my hands were still exploring her and she walked away. She pulled out our cellphones, tossed mine to me, and called it. She got on the other side of the bed and faced me.

"Is this how you talk to me when we're on the phone together?" She asked, lying on her side with her phone resting on her cheek.

"Exactly." I smiled. So many late night conversations ended in that very position in that very spot on my bed.

"No wonder I can never hear you."

"I know you can. You just like hearing the sound of my voice."

She smiled. "Say something."

"I love you."

"I know."

"Damn it, Han. Put my girlfriend back on the line."

"I just made a movie reference, didn't I?"

"I will literally murder your face if you don't know."

Naminé paused. "Star Wars. It's Star Wars, isn't it?"

"Oh, is this Naminé again?"

"Yeah. Did you say something earlier? I didn't catch it."

"So you admit that you can hear me when I talk like this."

"You caught me."

"I said that I loved you. That I'm so freaking in love with you, so much that I want to punch you."

"You're so romantic." She giggled. I felt like crying.

"I know. But I really am in love with you."

"I'm not going to put out just because you keep telling me you love me."

"Well, clearly that's the case; otherwise we'd already be doing it. I love you, by the way. Should I just keep saying it or should I just stop expecting a reply?"

"Oh. I love you too."

"Cool. Thanks."

"You're welcome. Bye."

"Bye."

We hung up. Then we made out and learned how to use our hands on each other. She also slapped me in our first domestic dispute ever because I wouldn't stop tickling her even though she wouldn't stop tickling me. Fed up with the double standards of our unjust society, I left the bed, pulled out a notebook, and began writing.

"Dear Diary," I said as I wrote through fake sobs, "today Naminé hit me."

"Oh, here we go…" Naminé giggled from her place on the bed.

"She said that she wouldn't ever do it again, but I don't know if I can trust her."

"I guess you're not coming back to bed," she said from behind me.

"But she's kind of in her underwear on my bed so I think I'm going back." I read each word aloud as I wrote it and emphatically added a period. "The end."

We crossed the proverbial finish line again. All of it happened before the sun rose too.

Maybe we were feeling more rebellious than usual that night, or maybe Naminé was dealing with some helicopter parent issues, or maybe it was even because I was so drunk in love with her, but we really couldn't keep our hands off each other. We doomed ourselves when we didn't leave before six. That was when my parents woke up.

"Roxas? Kitchen. Now," my mom said on the other side of my locked bedroom door.

I had learned to fear that line growing up. It had always meant that I messed something up, forgot to do something I was told, or disrespected someone enough that my parents thought it worthy to reprimand me. I had been conditioned to feel fear on command.

That fear was exponentially higher when I heard it while my girlfriend's hand was in my underwear and my hand in hers. That was probably one of the worst possible scenarios to be in when hearing that line. The locked door kept it from being the worse. Naminé and I looked at each other and froze.

"I know you're awake, hon. Get dressed and meet me in the kitchen," she ordered again. "You too, Naminé."

Knowing that we were caught, we started to move. "We are dressed! What did you think we were doing?"

"I'm not an idiot, Roxas! I dare you to come out dressed as you are right now. I dare you."

I think we laughed because we knew we were about to die. We got dressed, met my parents in the kitchen, and got an earful.

I expected the sex talk and why it was wrong to feel each other up when my parents were sleeping in the next room. The lecture that followed was the biggest guilt trip Naminé and I had ever received.

My parents wondered why I would go behind their back when they had already given me so much freedom—and they definitely had. They also made Naminé answer for her actions and really pulled her into her parents' perspective. By the end of it, my mom was crying and telling us that we'd never understand the fear of losing a child until we had our own, and all of this happened after citing everything Naminé's parents had been through for years and why they had a right to be worried.

That just about ended our best night ever and turned it into our worst morning ever. It wasn't a good feeling making your mother cry first thing in the morning.

The punishments were handed out. I lost car privileges for a month. Naminé had to explain and apologize to her parents for sneaking out and spending the night without getting anyone's permission. On top of whatever punishments they were going to give her, my mom and dad told Naminé and me that we weren't allowed to go alone on dates for the next month.

We were then served a complete and nutritious breakfast.

The healthy streak ended at some point. There were sick weeks and healthy weeks again. Still, life went on.

I remember one particular weekend a few weeks after Naminé turned eighteen—or, as she and I knew it, the day we lost our virginity. This, of course, was long after the night we got caught. Like the teenagers we were, we didn't really stop doing what we were doing.

We simply weren't getting caught.

I had a soggy waffle that morning. It wasn't supposed to be soggy, but my mom had tried waking me up thirty minutes earlier and I said I'd get up before sleeping for an extra twenty-five.

My parents left for their weekend-long business trip after I finished, trusting me with the house. Like any eighteen-year-old, I took advantage of the vacant venue. But, rather than inviting all of my friends for an after-school house party, my only invitation went to her.

So as soon as the parental units disappeared down the road, I called Naminé over. Ever since we had found out about having a house to ourselves, we both knew how we weren't going to school and were creating our own three-day weekend.

There was so much planning involved, so many variables accounted for, so many exit strategies formulated in case of emergency that the days leading up to that weekend had passed in a blur. When the day finally came, we were more than ready. We were willing and eager.

Very eager.

I greeted Naminé just outside my door because I physically waited outside for her to arrive. I tried to wait inside, but I wanted to see her drive up.

"I expected you to greet me half-naked with a rose in your mouth," she said, her backpack slung over her shoulder.

"Please, I'm not an amateur. If anything, I'd be biting down on a sunflower."

"You always knew what did it for me."

I took her backpack. It was light, lighter than I expected, but I knew it was because her books were left at home stowed inconspicuously under her bed. Replacing them were her clothes for the weekend, which, as far as her parents knew, was for staying at Kairi's house for a "really big project due Monday."

Kairi was in on their plan though. I don't think she knew the dirty details, but she was on board with helping us. She wished us the best of luck.

We talked a little on the way to the bathroom.

"We're going to need Kairi's notes from today," I said.

"I told her to pay extra attention in class today, just for us," Naminé said.

"Are you nervous?"

"Nope. You?"

"A little."

"We don't have to do anything if you don't want," she teased.

"You're crazy if you think I'm not going through with this."

I locked the bathroom door—we didn't need to, but the extra security was somewhat comforting—and turned on the shower. I pulled off my shirt, then looked just in time to watch Naminé's skirt drop to the floor.

I had seen her naked before. Quite a few times, in fact.

But I never got over the sight of her, and I wonder if it had to do with her surprising shamelessness: that willingness to stand completely bare in front of me.

"You can't shower in those." Naminé stepped over the school uniform pooled at her feet and approached me. She tucked her fingers inside my waistband, stretched it out just enough so it wouldn't snag, and pushed it down. I took care of the rest and stepped into the shower behind her.

"How's the water?" I asked. I didn't know what else to do or say, since this was also our first shower together.

"Almost perfect." She bent down to adjust the water. I, of course, looked at her butt "Ah, there we go."

I hugged her from behind. Her skin, normally silky smooth, was slick and hot. She giggled, shifting in my arms until she faced me.

She had to feel it, feel me, pressing against the area just under her belly button. It was pretty obnoxious, and I actually wanted it to go away. But sometimes I really felt like it had a mind of its own, because it had a way of popping up at the worst times.

Oh, Naminé's holding my hand? Boner. Did she walk by and flip her hair and leave a trace of her scent behind? Boner. Look, she's resting her head in my lap. She looks like she's ready to nap, so let's fluff things up with a boner.

That had to be one of the worst parts of being a teenager. Not only that, but it was grossly inconsistent. Seriously, it was a rather unpleasant surprise. The male history teacher just made a movie reference? Boner. Didn't the math teacher just say the class average for the last test was a C-? Doesn't matter; boner. The biology teacher made you squirm in your seat? Hope you're ready for that boner, teenage Roxas, because it doesn't really care whether you're turned on.

Sometimes I still can't believe I got through high school without having to stand up during one of my surprise boner attacks.

Naminé shampooed my hair, and I let her work her magic. I stayed put, holding her as close as she would allow, her body pressed against mine. I watched the water build up between us until it flooded off the sides. I hoped she didn't think I was staring at her boobs.

"Time for you to rinse," she said.

"Don't you want me to wash your hair?" I asked.

"Please. You're nowhere near as good as I am."

She was absolutely right. We awkwardly rotated. She yelped.

"What's wrong?" I asked. I thought I hurt her somehow when we switched places.

She giggled. "The wall was cold."

I sighed in relief. I kept my eyes on Naminé as I washed the shampoo out of my hair. When we switched back, I learned just how cold the wall was.

In my mind and my fantasies, showering with Naminé was supposed to be some super-hot, steamy, and passionate make-out session in which we forgot that we were supposed to lose ourselves in each other until the water turned cold. Instead we just lathered each other up and bathed. Not like a couple, mind you, but two people who were more invested in cleaning themselves up than getting it on.

It was probably the unsexiest shower by a teenage couple ever.

Naminé stood in the shower while I got our towels. After I dried myself, I made room for her on the bathroom mat. She wrapped her towel around her body and stood beside me, her face contorted in way that made her look like she was fighting back a smile.

"What?" I asked.

She bent down to pick up her clothes. "You're a little excited, aren't you?"

Her eyes, of course, were not on my face, but on the towel wrapped around my waist. I turned it away from her. "I was hoping you'd just ignore that," I said.

"Kinda hard," she said. She giggled to herself. "No pun intended."

"You've been waiting to use that one all day," I said.

"You caught me." She opened the door and walked to my room. I followed closely behind and locked the door once we were inside. Naminé closed the blinds and turned to me. "You know you'll have to see a doctor if that lasts longer than four hours."

"You're… I don't even know anymore. I give up."

Naminé laughed. She traded her towel for the bed sheets and dove under my covers, strategically covering most of body. I made sure to dry my hair more before getting in on the other side. We sat there silently and stared at each other. It was the first time there wasn't a single layer between us. She was naked, I was naked, we were in bed together, and there was one obvious direction we were heading.

And there wasn't an ounce of shame to be found.

"Okay, so what's off-limits in terms of what we can say?" Naminé asked as she moved closer to me.

I turned on my side. "'Is it in yet?' is a good place to start."

"'That's it?' will never be uttered."

"'That was disappointing' is another."

"So basically anything that emasculates you." Naminé laughed. "Is that all?"

"I hope so," I said. "Unless you want to put on some music, but I don't think that's actually a thing."

"Me neither. Now kiss me."

I won't go into the dirty details of what happened for the next few minutes. It was easy to get lost in all that stimulation, but for the most part I knew what I was doing. I knew what made Naminé crazy and she knew how to control me. As vulnerable as we were, I think we reveled in it.

Eventually we reached the moment of truth: the end of our familiar routine and the beginning of an unknown one. I held myself up with my arms and looked down at her flushed face. Her chest rose and fell with each breath and she smiled up at me like she had a joke she was waiting to use.

I laughed. "I'm going to do it."

"Ew. Don't make it sound so gross." She giggled.

"I don't know how else to say it!"

"Well you could have gone with 'I'm preparing to penetrate you.'"

"Naminé."

She laughed again. "Sorry. Have fun."

"Have fun? Seriously? You make it sound like I'm the only one who's supposed to enjoy this."

"Well I don't know how to end this conversation. If you would've just continued with what we were doing, we'd be having sex right now. But no, let's bring it to my attention that you're about to stab me with your penis."

I fell on top of her in a laughing heap. Neither of us wanted to admit that we needed to stop there because we were too nervous to continue, but I think we both knew that we were stalling. It wasn't a matter of putting sex off entirely: we just wanted a few minutes to gather our bearings. After laughing it out—it was only a few minutes—I was all over her again and she was pushing me over the edge. One moment we were kissing, and the next we were eagerly trying to figure everything out.

It was then that I learned I had no idea what I was doing.

"No, that's not it," Naminé pushed me away again.

I was growing a little frustrated at that point. There I was, a horny eighteen-year-old boy with his willing girlfriend underneath him, and I couldn't figure out how to have sex with her. Instead I was hurting her, pushing at places where I didn't belong.

"I have no idea what I'm doing," I admitted angrily. I felt everything boiling over until Naminé sat up and kissed my forehead. My anger simmered back and I remembered that sex was supposed to be fun.

"At least now I know you weren't lying when you told me that I was the first girl you've ever been with," she said gently.

It was an obvious attempt at flattery. She had always joked that I was too fantastic of a lover to not have any experience despite my insistence. Fortunately, it worked. I calmed down, and we kept trying.

"I thought you were researching this stuff while I got on birth control," Naminé joked.

"Okay, first of all, I ended up getting distracted every time." Considering the fact that my "research" was copious amounts of pornography, this was the truth. "Second, you've had a vagina your entire life. How do you not know where penises go? I know exactly what I'm supposed to do with mine!"

"You say that like I've stuck a bunch of things up there before." Naminé pushed me onto my back, switching our positions.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking control of this situation like always." She stuck her tongue out. "No, I just heard it might be easier to do it this way."

And moments after that, we lost our virginity to each other.

It was so easy. There was no pain, no struggling, and no more awkward conversations to stall the inevitable.

"Oh. Oh." Naminé shuddered, her hands gripping my shoulders tightly. "That's definitely it."

I groaned, thinking I was going to die right then and there. "Yeah." My voice shook. I didn't say anything else. I looked down, and all I could think was that it was actually happening. And holy shit, I was actually having sex with Naminé.

We managed to turn over. There was a lot of fumbling around and strange sounds, but we really didn't pay attention to that as much as we did to each other.

Our first time ended quickly after it began.

I was spent. Naminé was breathing slowly beneath me, her eyes closed in satisfaction. She sighed when I pulled away.

I hadn't lasted long at all, but Naminé didn't mention it. We lay there naked, side by side, whispering to each other and trading blissful kisses. The covers were bunched at our feet, tossed aside in favor of the cooler air.

"I love you," I said.

"I love you too," she said.

I was so content there. As far as first times went, that was probably as good as it got. "That might have been the best single minute of my life."

She laughed.

I thought we were going to spend the next half hour snuggling, but Naminé jumped up from the bed shrieking.

Apparently all those movies where the characters had sex and slept immediately after were gross as hell—they had to have slept with all the fluids that came out afterward.

"It comes out?!" Naminé asked, grabbing a towel to clean the wet trail running down her leg.

"I guess it had to go somewhere," I said. I couldn't help but laugh at her as she swore to never have sex with me again if it meant that she had to deal with all the gross fluids afterward.

I don't know why I had assumed that everything would end cleanly and stay put. Either way, we cleaned up, got a good laugh out of it once the panic subsided, and snuggled until we were ready to go again.

We spent that entire weekend neglecting all our other responsibilities. We did it over and over again, trying new positions and different techniques until we confirmed the new ways we could drive each other crazy. We literally only stopped for food, using the bathroom, and cleaning ourselves up. In hindsight it was extremely disgusting and somewhat barbaric. But it was the only time I ever ate fast food with my girlfriend while we were naked in bed. Stuff like that didn't happen often.

That weekend was just another turning point in our relationship. Our first time became the first of many other times.

There was a certain kind of thrill in planning to meet up when our parents weren't around and trying to stay quiet enough when we were doing it when we weren't supposed to.

It was just another way of spending time with each other. Sometimes it was the excuse.

It goes without saying that becoming closer made it all the harder when everything had to end.

"Now arriving at Twilight Town."

The announcement rings in the train car as we pull into the station. I gather my belongings and step off the train.

The sun hangs low in the sky and casts and orange glow from the west, painting the streets with long shadows and warm colors. I make my way out of the station and stare at the long line of taxis along the curb. One looks cleaner than the rest. I get in.

"Where are you heading?" The driver asks after exchanging greetings.

"Twilight Town Cemetery, please."

The driver nods. As the station disappears behind me, I call my parents and tell them that my train won't be arriving for another hour.

Life continued. Then, it reached its end.

It was on her nineteenth birthday. We had spent a few weeks planning a getaway for the weekend to celebrate. Destiny Islands was calling our name, and we planned every day down to the hour. We were going to snorkeling, attend one of the local blitzball games, and watch the sunrise on the beach. We were going to drive to the other side of the island and eat dinner on the famous Destiny Boardwalk, share a paopu fruit, and watch the sunset on the opposite beach. Instead, she ended up in a hospital bed and I in the chair next to her.

She had gotten sick a week before her birthday. One day she had been perfectly healthy, and the next she was struggling to breathe. She was hospitalized immediately, but her conditioned worsened. She had been hospitalized before for her illnesses, but this one seemed more serious than the others. In the past, Naminé had always recovered within a week. She had always been able to regain her strength and talk after a few days. This time, she wasn't waking up as she usually did.

The possibility that I'd actually lose her became all too real for me.

I wanted to stay with her throughout the entire ordeal. She slept most of the time, but I wanted to make sure I'd be there when she woke up. I stayed past normal visiting hours and sleep there when I could. I left only when her parents forced me out, only to come back the next afternoon after school.

She slipped in and out of consciousness. I hated my helplessness. I couldn't stand how I useless I was, how powerless I was when I wanted her to get better. She looked so weak, so tired, so fed up with having to fight for every breath, and I couldn't do anything to make it easier for her.

One afternoon she woke just enough to realize I was there. I knew when her hand tightened around mine, and I looked up from the book I had been reading for class to see her foggy blue eyes staring back at me.

"Roxas," she whispered, her voice a hoarse croak.

I made sure she didn't move. I could tell she was fighting to stay awake.

"Go back to sleep. You need to rest." I gently pressed her down.

"I'm tired. I'm so tired." She blinked slowly.

I ran my hand over her hair. "That's why you should sleep. Sleep until you get better, Naminé."

"I'm sorry," she said. A tear streaked down her face. "I'm sorry, Roxas."

Seeing her like that struck me. I wanted her to laugh. I wanted to make her smile. I wanted to take her pain away, and I wanted to make everything better. I just didn't know how. "Don't—why are you apologizing?"

"Our vacation."

I laughed. I cried too, but I laughed harder. "Do you think I care about that right now?"

"I'm sorry, Roxas." Another tear. I wiped it away with my thumb.

I didn't understand what was going on or why she was so bothered. I assumed that in her delirium, she was overly emotional over something relatively insignificant. I tried my best to comfort her, my own eyes brimming with tears. "Please don't cry, Naminé. It's not a big deal."

"You'll have to go without me. I'm sorry."

"I won't. We'll go when you get better. I promise I'm not mad. Just please go to sleep." I kissed her hand, returning her strong grip. "I love you, Nam. I'll be here when you wake up."

She slipped back into sleep. Even today, I still don't know if she heard me.

Naminé died the next day. Her weak immune system finally gave out, and she had passed in the middle of the night. I wasn't there when it happened. I don't know if that made it better or worse. But when her parents called me early in the morning, unable to talk through the pain of losing their daughter, I broke down and cried with them.

Naminé was gone. The woman I had spent much of my life loving had passed away.

I wished at the time that I'd become numb to it all. Not feeling anything had to have been better than feeling abandoned and left behind. I had been useless. Helpless. Inadequate. Why didn't I do anything to help? Why couldn't I help? Why did she have to go when she did nothing to deserve death?

I thought about it. In my bedroom, hours after finding out that Naminé was gone, I thought about ending everything. It hurt. It hurt so much, and I swear that there was a hole in my chest that morning. The doctors say that her death was painless, but how was that possible? I had talked with her the day before. I had seen each labored breath, her face scrunched in pain, the tears falling from her eyes. Was that what I was feeling? I couldn't make sense of the pain. I remember looking down at my chest, wondering where the pain was coming from and why it hurt. But nothing was visible. Underneath my normal exterior was a void that could no longer be filled.

I remember thinking that anything was better than that hole in my chest. I wanted to end it, end it as quickly possible, even if it meant dying.

I couldn't take it. I didn't want to believe that I'd spend the rest of my life without ever seeing her smile again. I didn't want to live if it meant that I couldn't wake up beside her and see her wearing one of my shirts and her hair in a tangled mess. I didn't want to continue living if it meant that I would never hear voice calling my name again, her scent filling me with comfort, her hands lightly squeezing mine. I didn't want anything to do with a world without Naminé.

I don't know what brought me down or why I didn't go through with it. I remember hating myself for wanting to live when I was convinced that I didn't want to.

I saw Naminé's body at the wake.

It wasn't her. It was an empty body. It was a lifeless shell, and everything I had loved about her had left when she passed away.

I didn't cry at the funeral. The numbness I had been yearning for had finally swept over me.

I didn't cry when I helped her family members carry her coffin down the aisle during the church service.

I didn't cry when I listened to the Kairi's heartbreaking eulogy.

I didn't cry when we placed the flowers on her coffin when we all said our final goodbyes.

I didn't cry when we buried her in the ground.

Days after her funeral, I felt the urge to see her. Reality reminded me just before I found her name among my text messages that she had died.

It seemed like she had passed so long ago. I had to scroll down a long list of conversations from both my contacts and unknown numbers who offered their condolences and thoughts and prayers. I finally found our conversation.

The last message she ever sent to me was about the vacation we were planning. We had decided earlier in the message that we were going to meet at a coffee shop to finalize the plans.

I'll see you there, the message said.

I would've given anything at that time to go back and relive those moments with her. I still remember how her eyes lit up when I told her we could realistically watch the sun rise over one coast and drive to the other side to watch it set on the other. I remember how she smiled when she suggested we spend an entire day inside a hotel room or, if were daring enough, to find a secluded place under the stars and fulfill a fantasy.

In what was probably an attempt to relive and remember Naminé, I called her parents and asked if I could come over. When I arrived, they gave me permission to go into her room after I had asked.

It was the first time I entered since she passed.

Everything was the same. I walked around her room, tracing a path in the carpet that Naminé would always take when she was thinking about her next project: a walk up one side of the bed, across the foot, and walk down the other.

The room still smelled like her. I sat on her bed and buried my face in one of the pillows. I closed my eyes, and it was almost like she was there again. But the warmth of her skin was missing, and so was the sound of her breathing. When I opened my eyes, she wasn't staring back at me.

She had left me alone, I realized. And when my eyes began to tear up, I noticed the stack of sketchbooks and the canvases leaning against the wall in the corner of her room. They'd been left behind too.

I don't know why that was the trigger, but I finally cried. I sobbed into that pillow like it was the only thing that could comfort me. I hugged it tightly, breathing in her scent, wanting so badly to feel her arms wrapped around my shoulders to comfort me and let me know she was there. Naminé was gone, and I think that was the moment that I realized that she left more than her boyfriend behind. In her room were a number of projects that would never be completed. There were illustrations that would never be colored, words that would never be read, paints that would never be opened by her hand.

I wished then that Naminé were a writer instead. Maybe she would have left me letters or something behind so I could hear from her one last time.

I laughed to myself. That was far too romantic for her.

There were no letters or recordings or messages left behind. Naminé had died before she was ready. She died before her story was supposed to end. We had written a future together only to leave on a cliffhanger.

I never returned to her room after that day. I came to terms with her death there: she was gone, and there was nothing I could do about it. She had taught me so many things about love and sadness and happiness and vulnerability. She left me with an understanding of what it meant to be in love, what it meant to truly miss someone, and what it meant to really know her.

I gave my heart to her. In return, she left me with her love.

I left that tear-stained pillow in her room. I didn't look back.

Her gravestone is a short walk from the road that runs through the cemetery. It's an ordinary-looking stone: gray granite, rectangular, and waist-high. Her name is engraved in large letters, and the years of her life are written underneath it. There are no flowers on her grave.

It is the first time since her burial that I've visited.

"It's been a while," I say. The stone is cold under my touch. "I'll stop by again before I leave. I'll find you some sunflowers. I don't know where, but I'll find them."

I begin to choke on my words and quickly wipe away the tears with my wrist.

I think back to our last conversation together. It didn't make sense then, but now it's clear. Her words seem more relevant today than ever before, and I understand why she said what she did.

Part of me wants to tell her that she shouldn't have apologized, to tell her that I'm not mad at her for having to go. But I think she knew that. In her final moments of lucidity, she was thinking of me. That was all the closure we needed.

"Nam, thank you for waking up for me. It really meant—it really means a lot to me." I sniffled. "I… I'm home now. I'll come see you every day when I'm here. And when I leave, I'll do just what you told me to do and keep at it. I just wanted you to know that I'm okay now."

I kneel down and kiss the cold stone, wiping the last of my tears with my sleeve.

"I miss you, Naminé. I know that I don't need to remind you, but I love you very much."

On the way back to the cab, I take my time and walk slowly. The driver has a solemn smile on his face and asks if I want to head back to the station. He knows my parents are picking me up there. I nod and thank him for waiting.

I turn around and watch her gravestone disappear in the distance.

Tomorrow I will bring her sunflowers. It will be the last anniversary I celebrate with her, and I will promise to do what she asked and go on without her.

Author: That's all. Hope you enjoyed, and good luck matching the author with the story.