Reliving the Past

Kusatsu Kinshiro was not the sort of person who allowed any personal space of his to become cluttered or disorderly. As far as he remembered, he had always been that way. He was therefore slightly irritated at the fact that his mother had decided that now - a week or two before the school's Christmas holiday - was the perfect time to clean out the attic a little, since this involved dumping three or four cardboard boxes full of old things in Kinshiro's room. She had asked for him to sort through them and decide what he wanted to keep. While Kinshiro was also not the hoarding type, he decided that it couldn't be a terrible idea to have a quick look before throwing away most of this stuff for good. Sighing internally, he opened up the first box and was greeted immediately by a large pile of framed photographs.

One and a half boxes full of memories that felt ages ago and unimportant now, Kinshiro pulled out some old drawings (presumably his own, from when he was much younger). While the drawings weren't of any particular significance to him, the act of taking them out of the box to place them on the discard pile made something else visible which immediately captured Kinshiro's attention: a worn journal labelled "DIARY" in big lettering on the front. Kinshiro dusted off the cover of the diary before pulling it out of the box. Carefully, he opened it to the first page to find a note written in what was unmistakably his own writing some ten years ago. The note warned that the contents of the diary were secret (albeit with several interesting spelling mistakes).

Kinshiro flipped the notebook open to a random page.

"July 9th", read the heading in the top margin of the page. Something about that particular entry drew the student council president's attention and held it; before he had time to really think about it, his subconscious pushed him to read the whole thing.

"I went for a picnic with At-chan today - it was the best day ever," it began. "Our moms were there too, but they only stayed for a little bit so me and At-chan spent the rest of the time playing games. I won tag most times." Kinshiro smiled just a little as he read that last sentence, recalling that his old friend Atsushi was always the one to beat him at tag. He was about to decide that that was enough of a trip down memory lane when his eyes caught on a particular section at the bottom of the page.

"At-chan gave me a big hug before he had to go" (Kinshiro winced at the childish wording; he liked to think he had been a bit more sophisticated than that) "and he made me a promise. He said that we'll stay best friends until we're as old as his granny, and then after that too. I can't wait to see what At-chan will look like when he's that old - do you think he'll be all short and wrinkly like Grandpa?" Here the writing became sloppier; Kinshiro supposed his younger self must have been laughing as he wrote that particular part. The entry carried on onto the next page, so Kinshiro flipped it over and continued reading.

"He said he thought my hair would look the same, because it couldn't get any lighter. At least that's good, right? Well, what matters the most anyway is that At-chan and I will be together forever and that we can see each other be old grandpas someday. We said that to each other too and before we left, At-chan kissed my cheek. I asked him why and he said that's what you do with someone you love a lot, and he said that best friends love each other, so I guess I love At-chan a lot then!"

After that came the standard "goodbye diary" and "I'll write you soon", but Kinshiro found he couldn't read them properly. Frowning, he reached up to rub his eyes, only to find that he was crying. He had no idea when he started crying, nor did he care; nobody was around to see him anyway, and the reason he was upset was not about to change. His younger self had such an easy time being open about his feelings... And what was more, his younger self had such a close friendship with one particular Atsushi Kinugawa, something which he himself could no longer claim to have. Was it really so easy to say that I love him? Kinshiro wondered.

... I still love him, he admitted in his head a minute or two later. But it was no longer in the same way he had loved him back then, or at least, Kinshiro didn't remember being in love with Atsushi when they were still children like he was now. Cursing his luck, the stars, his own damn affections, and just about any god whose name happened to pop into his head, he slammed the diary shut.

The silence in the room was overwhelming.

Left alone with his thoughts and some old boxes full of things that would probably bring forth more memories that would have an unpleasant effect on him, Kinshiro rapidly grew frustrated. Choosing not to look through the last box just yet, the student council president stood up and threw nearly all of the contents of the others into a single box, which he then took outside and placed with the garbage.

On the floor of his room remained, among a handful of photographs and an old photo album or two, the diary. For all that he said, he couldn't find it in himself to throw out something so personal, so important, from the time when he and Atsushi were still best friends.

The only other reminder of this fact was the photograph of the two of them as eight-year-olds on Kinshiro's otherwise spotless desk.