Being a foreigner in a country very much your own is difficult.

I have been, after all, only in touch with the reality there a number of times. Yes, I was educated to know it, and yes, I have its history, its beauty, its art at mind.

And yet, I cannot seem to grasp how real it is.

I don't know how real it is.

And so, leaving for a country that I only know from brochures stirs no such fear from me.

I'll treat it as a form of entertainment—no matter how much 'business' may try to eat me up.

I shall think of going away as a pastime—the way I think of you as one, as mine.

Still, something gnaws at me—something akin to fear or apprehension.

It's funny how I've started knowing these emotions. I have, after all, shut myself from feeling anything.

But you—you whose eyes are always so bright, you who I've always thought were only a hindrance, a sick joke the academy wanted to play on us music students—you managed to break through me.

That isn't what I fear, though (although I used to).

What I fear is that I'll find you foreign when I return—that I shan't know you, not have any inkling of what you are.

I haven't completely figured you out yet, after all.

Then again, I might like you much more (yes I do like you).

Because you'll once again give me something new, break the monotonous line I have for a life.

And once again, you'll find me annoyed at how different you are.

Because you see, I wasn't annoyed at the fact that you wormed your way in.

I was annoyed at you because you were different—that you could be different.

And I'll find myself falling deeper in like with you.

Disclaimer: La Corda isn't mine, but there's nothing wrong with daydreaming.

Author's notes: If there's anything I like writing, it's a romantic Azuma. XD