Dear Yellow Stationery,

You looked so lovely that I could not help but write on you. I knew everyone else would have loved to adore you instead and keep you somewhere safe, from ink and from dirty fingers, but I couldn't. When I first decided to buy you, I thought you were beautiful with the yellow paper and lemon designs.

Additionally, you had glitters on your lemony cover page that gave your beauty some accent. You looked very beautiful, so precious, that anyone else who'd buy you would feel sinful just writing on you, so they would never do so; they couldn't just write on you.

But I couldn't let you go to such waste. You were very much like me. There was a time when I knew I had no other purpose in life but survive with little. Nothing else mattered. I had no other aims besides standing still somewhere like you, expecting to not have other purposes besides being a survivor of time without thinking more, wishing more.

Being more.

But I was past that, Yellow Stationery, so I would help you get past your rather very purposeless life too. Now, I decided to write on you and give you a meaning in your creation. I would give you a purpose that would make you more than just a stationery with pretty lemon designs. When I see you again after many years, I would read what I had written on you. I would treasure you.

You would be the keeper of my secrets. Of my feelings and thoughts.

But first, a little background, hm?

When Naru went back to England, I thought I could come back to the resilient, optimistic me. Bou-san, Ayako, and the others went on with their lives as before. As days went by, however, they met less with me…until a month or so had gone by without seeing them. Mori-san, who took charge of SPR ever since, always went on mysterious trips too, and we had not been taking clients like before.

The SPR I knew…was not the SPR I loved anymore. Everyone else had gone back to their non-paranormal lives, and I…

I found myself not being able to.

Somewhere deep inside me, something awakened. Something changed. Although I kept on telling myself that the family I made in SPR was still intact, I felt foolish.

Then I started thinking like I'd never done before. I started thinking about what my life was supposed to be from then on. Beyond the paranormal investigations and my job at SPR, I felt empty.

Nothing.

My life was an undirected pathway. I was not as intelligent as Naru or Yasuhara. I was not a celebrity like Masako. I was not so religious as to aim to be a priestess like Ayako or become a nun beside John. Before I met Naru, I'd always thought I'd graduate high school and go to work immediately. I could not afford to go to college, so it was the proper route to take. But now, even if I'd worked a lot of part-time or full-time jobs, surely I wouldn't be a cashier or a waitress or an assistant forever? Surely my life could be more interesting like during the previous SPR cases?

That's why, I'd started looking for other jobs.

The first month after Naru left, Mori-san took off for a month. She paid me handsomely during her leave, but I felt like a fraud; I did not even do anything in those days. I had finished all the filing…

So like Bou-san and the others, I stopped coming to SPR. After a brief, whimsical modeling job, I found a job that gave me a different future.

A future that I never thought could exist.

The SPR I loved might never return, so I grasped the unanticipated future offered to me. I grasped the future that did not involve SPR. I grasped the future that I was certain would not break away like the SPR family I had.

I grasped the future that I was sure would be permanent, constant…

Ah, someone's calling me. I should go now. Anyway, enough for now. Would write to you more soon.

Stay adorable,

Mai