The pain had cut so deep, I thought I would never breath again. It was like a fist had slammed into my stomach and forced all the air from my lungs in one fell swoop.

At first, tears had refused to come. Instead a strange numbing had spread through every nerve leaving me feeling cold and empty. The world went mute and while I stared I still saw absolutely nothing but my own bleak existence stretching out before me like some dark abyss.

The same words kept echoing over and over in my mind.

We can't be together.

Why not? Why NOT!

No explanation would surface. The comment had come so suddenly, so out of the blue! The day before we had been laughing, teasing, flirting.

We. Had. Been. Happy.

It seemed as though the bottom card of my castle had been pulled and the entire deck had come crashing down without any warning.

I felt like the proverbial frog just figuring out that the pot was boiling and it was too late to jump out. Part of me screamed that I should have seen this coming. Mamoru was older than me, so much more mature. It was logical to assume someone at his maturity level would come along.

The tears had came, welling up in my eyes before they spilled over, hot and wet against flushed cheeks. No words could express the anguish I felt inside. So silence became my closest companion as noiseless sobs racked my frame.

I pressed my body against the cool tile floor of the bathroom and cried until I was too tired to even do that anymore.

Seconds ticked by into minutes, minutes mutated into hours until I had no sense of how much time had past. The world seemed... surreal. Everything was moving in slow motion and there was nothing I could do to speed it up or make it go away.

As I lay there, I thought about what to do. My mind reeled with all the possibilities, the results and outcomes of whatever decision I made. Only one came to mind that would prove definite and unchangeable.

In a moment of clarity, of stark realization, I knew what I had to do.

As I rose slowly to my feet, I offered my reflection one that glance.

It was a grim, but determined face that stared back at me. One that had found the perfect solution... to everything.