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"A strong feeling of affection usually described as a warmth inside of you or a feeling of belonging and security." The supposed definition of love in most dictionaries I've read. However, I think the person who decided on that must have been joking, because that's all love really is: a joke. A big joke that everyone but me seems to understand. How am I ever supposed to know what love is when I clearly missed the class where it was taught to everyone else? Sharpest soon-to-be detective and doesn't even know what love is — ironic, isn't it?
How was I supposed to know it was there before it was already too late for it? No one ever teaches you how to love; the world just expects you to know when and how. There is no handbook for knowing when you've fallen in love and what it really feels like. "It'll come to you when it's time" or "You'll know…" stupid, stupid, stupid sayings that adults keep telling you ever since you first start to question the fairytale love stories made for children.
You're made to watch people fall in love ever since you start walking, but you're not allowed to know how any of that works: "You're still too young, Heizou; don't trouble yourself with it yet. There's time." But what about the people who knew too late? Why did no one ever tell me about them? What am I supposed to do when it comes to me only after the subject of my love is already too far for me to grasp?
If I know one thing about love, it's that love sure as hell isn't fair. No. It's not fair; why would it be? Because if it were fair, maybe I wouldn't have let him leave that day. Maybe some higher power would've smacked me in the face and made me run after him. But it didn't — and I stood there as he waved at me with that bright smile of his. I watched him walk away before realizing how complete his presence made me feel.
If love is supposed to feel warm, why does it have to make me feel like I'm drowning and there's nothing for me to hold onto? If love is supposed to be altruistic, the love I feel for him must be somehow wrong — because all I want is for him to be back here, back here with me.
Love isn't meant to hurt; It's meant to be tender and comforting, so why does it make me feel like my whole world is going to end, like everything's going to come crashing down the second he's out of sight?
"Out of sight, out of mind," that's how it's supposed to be, isn't it? But I fear him leaving solely infected my mind with only him and nothing else; no one else. The thought of his platinum white hair tickling my neck when he hugs me for the last time and the memories of us laughing together until our laughs slowly blend together. His hand gently touching mine as he guides me with the small things I find troubling. All that, and still, I wasn't smart enough to realize what was happening; because how could someone so perfect like him ever fall for me?
Kaedehara Kazuha is the sweetest person I've ever come to know, but in one way he's not fair — not fair at all.
It's not fair to make me love you and then leave right before I even come to realize it, right before I get to daydream about you, when truly the distance between us is one that I could cross without taking a single step.
Maybe you knew something I'm still looking for, but it's simply not fair to leave someone like that. No one should be left alone to realize that they're too late, that they've been beaten in a puzzle that they didn't even know existed.
A puzzle in which loving you would've been the treasure and to which my feelings would have been the solution. A puzzle that I should've solved but didn't manage to do so in time. Instead, it was taken away from me, and I was made to watch as the treasure got poured out into an open sea, where it's out of my reach.
That day when you walked to your gate, the one where your plane to Liyue was leaving from, I watched. That's all I could do: watch as you left me and as I lost you, the key to my heart. The key that had been right in front of me, and I had been too blind to see. The key that I now yearn for whenever autumn comes around and the first leaves bloom in red.
It might be wishful thinking to say that you're my soulmate, but that's how I truly feel. Or at least you would've been if I had opened my eyes a little wider. If only, but none of that matters anymore, does it? It's over now; you decided we wouldn't be destined together, that we're not supposed to have each other.
If only you could come back; perhaps I too would get to experience love as that positive feeling that most people strive for, and maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't have to watch you love someone else. I promise I'd be better this time and that I'd love you properly, like I was supposed to.
Maybe loving you wouldn't be easy — maybe it's not supposed to be, but I don't want to live my life knowing I could've had you to myself, that I could've held your hands shakily, or that I could've kissed your pretty face for all eternity.
Kazuha, please come back; you've finally opened me — and I see it now; I see what had been locked away from me. A future with you and my love for you, the pieces I didn't know I was supposed to have.