With a deep breath, I move on to Dawn's next note.

Last night's breakdown was a rather serious one. But later, when I thought calmly, I realized what July said was right. I don't have to read these with the intention of understanding Dawn. Is it ever possible to fully understand someone? No, these are just words Dawn left for me. Thoughts he wanted me to know, things he wanted me to remember. And that's exactly how I will see them now.

For this note as well, Dawn has marked a line, said by Toru to Naoko — "Both of us have a lot of feelings we need to get out in the open." He had a lot to say about this, because there are two whole sticky notes filled with writing. I prepare myself for the worst again.

Lately, I've been wondering about the consequences of lack of communication between two people. A hole is created, and that hole only gets bigger, until it's too big and too deep to fill up. I realized I willingly dug that hole between us to protect you from my pain, but when the pain got too unbearable I tried to blindly reach you again and fell into the hole, and that was the end. I realized I tried to protect you when I wasn't even strong enough to protect myself.

Do you understand what I'm saying, Cedar? I think: the inability to express our feelings to someone in the open, depends more on us than the feeling itself. A fear of rejection, or invalidation. Fear of being selfish and burdening others. Or sometimes a fear of acceptance even, because what if the changes are hard to deal with? But I wish I had tried to fill the hole first instead of jumping into it. And what I wish more is that I never let the hole be created in the first place.

— D

With every word, the sinking feeling in my heart deepens, going further down, intensifying. His words make me ache, because I can hear the deep sense of regret in them. He has truly exposed himself naked in front of me through these notes.

I realize that it makes me feel somewhat relieved that he had as much regrets as I do. However, I don't think it was only his responsibility to fill the hole. It was mine too. But I didn't even notice the hole, or even if I did, I didn't bother to acknowledge it.

I let out a deep exhale and close the book. I lean the back of my head on the bedside and stare up at the ceiling.  "July?"

"Yeah?" He faces up from the sketchbook.

"What kind of things did I say to you when I was drunk?"

"You wanna know?"

"Was it things like how much you mean to me, and all those stuff?"

"In a way, yes. But you said them in a more forward way. You said . . . you said, Take me with you. That's what you kept repeating again and again. You won't say something like that normally, would you?"

I bite my bottom lip. "Maybe."

"You said other things too but I'm not gonna tell you what those were, hmph!" His voice is filled with mischief.

I roll my eyes. "I don't want to know either, hmph!"

Take me with you. An irresponsible, unrealistic thing to say. It's true. I wouldn't let those words out of my mouth if I was in my right mind.

I say, "You know, you are probably the only person with who I've been the most open about my feelings. But I think that came more out of the certain knowledge that you will soon be gone, so there was always a sense of urgency within me to tell you everything. But it's not the same with the other people in my life, even if I know they are as temporary as you and Dawn. I don't know why it's like that. It's like . . . the stronger my feelings are, the less words I have to express them."

There is a lot I want to tell Dale. I want to thank him, I want to let him know that having him in my life has started to give me a sense of security and comfort. I want to stop calling him by his name and start calling him brother. He will be so happy when he hears that. And though I'm still struggling with it, I'm not too worried. We are both filling the hole up quicker than most people can.

A massive distance has always existed between me and my father, because he occupied very less of my life. Out in the sea for most of the year, stuck in his room when he would be home. It's like he never really knew what to do with us. But still, there are things I've wanted to tell him as well. I've wanted to make these little demands, ask him questions. Take me to your ship again. Is it true that seagulls eat snacks if you hold one out to them? Have you ever been in a storm? Are there always enough safety equipment for all passengers? Tell me about your most memorable voyage. The distance, however, always made me hesitate. But I believe that my father isn't a bad person, he doesn't hold malice in his heart. He loves us, but he doesn't understand how to be a father to us. And I have no idea what I can do about that.

With Edgar, I suppose Dawn's theory is true to a great extent. I want to tell him that I will always support him, but I'm afraid of making that promise, because I can't predict whether I'll be emotionally stable enough to support someone else. I want to tell him that when things get too hard he can ask me for financial help, but I'm afraid he will think I'm looking down on him, when I'm only trying to do for him what I couldn't for Dawn. I want to tell him to stay with me forever, but I'm afraid of him saying that it is unrealistic, that we will eventually have lives of our own, that life hardly ever works out the way we wish to.

That was how it was always like with Dawn. We shared everything with each other growing up, but the sharing became lesser and lesser the more we grew up. The more I realized what an indistinguishable part of my soul Dawn is, the less I treasured him. No, I treasured him deeply, but in secret, without letting him know, though he was right there, treasuring me openly. Perhaps I was afraid of crushing him with the intensity of my love, of burdening him with my dependency, of making him feel like he can no longer handle it. But now, as I'm reading his notes, I realize that his own love was no less than mine, and not telling him more and more about what he meant to me is perhaps going to be the greatest regret of my life.

My only solace, however, is the fact that I had managed to tell him that I want to be buried beside him. Though I had said it jokingly back then, he had taken it seriously. And he was happy.

As with my mother . . . that's where things get too complicated. It's like Dawn said. The hole is now too big and too deep, and I don't know if I can reach her without falling down myself.

"Feelings work in strange ways," July tells me in response. "I myself haven't managed to figure it out. But I do remember that after I had written that letter to my parents, I was crying so much that I could barely see what I was writing, but it was the first time in my life I had felt true freedom. Because I let out every bit of spite I had for them, things I wouldn't be able to say with my mouth because of how extremely strong those emotions were. Unspoken feelings can be like a cage, Cedar. And the only way to let yourself out is to let them out first."

I nod slowly. "I think I understand that. But it's often so difficult."

"That's true."

I've been putting off talking to mom for this exact reason. I don't know what to say to her, because I have too much to say, and I'm afraid she will not understand the volume of my feelings if I don't tell her everything. And there's so much I haven't told her yet. I still haven't directly told her what I want to pursue in the future. I haven't told her about how I feel regarding our relationship, and how I want to make one last attempt at fixing things. I don't remember what I wrote in the letter, but it can't be the same as saying it with my mouth. After all, voice gives away so much.

In the past few days, it's like the whole universe has been telling me: you need to talk to your mother. Edgar's call yesterday, letting me know about my mother's efforts on knowing my whereabouts, and then expressing her guilt to him. July explaining the complexity of the relationship between parents and their children. My conversation with Autumn this morning. And now, this particular note of Dawn.

What if, with that underlined sentence, Dawn was talking about all the unspoken feelings between me and my family? What if this was his way of telling me, don't make the same mistake as I did?

I keep Dawn's copy of Norwegian Wood hugged to my chest. A memory from long ago drifts back to me.

I think it was during the last year of middle school. I had told Dawn something along the lines of how envious I was of him because his mother was so much kinder to him, because she didn't care about his grades. I jokingly told him to tell his mother to adopt me. I expected him to laugh, but he only smiled.

When I asked him if something was wrong, he told me, "I find it very sad, that though your mother loves you as much as my mother loves me, she cannot express it without hurting you, and herself too."

Back then, I didn't really understand what he meant. Rather, I got a little mad. If she truly loved me, why would she keep hurting me? That made no sense. I angrily told Dawn that he understood nothing about my mother and what kind of person she is. He then apologized, and never brought it up again.

Back then, I genuinely believed that my mother couldn't tolerate me for some reason. But my opinion was not a stable one, because there would be moments when her voice would be full of affection, times when she would come to my room late at night and tell me there is no need to study anymore, and next morning she would let me sleep for as long as I wanted. It was her who had suggested to aunt Diana to let Dawn stay with me at night, to see if it helps with his insomnia. And till this day I don't know how she figured that out, but I've always felt a sense of gratitude towards her for it. Nights after nights of studying didn't feel so lonely after Dawn started staying over.

But such moments were so rare that they never managed to stick with me for long. My anger, exhaustion, fear, and resentment easily threw black paint over those moments. Because there would be times she would scold me about not studying enough, about getting slightly less marks than others in the class, about not focusing hard enough on my future target. And there would be comparisons with Dale that would make me feel inferior.

She has said too many cruel things to me. Even if I forgive her for them, I will never be able to forget those.

And yet, those little things she did, these absolute bare minimums, made me hope. No, they made me crave. Crave for her love, for her affection. I deluded myself into thinking that all I need to do is get good grades, and she will love me. But in contrast to Dawn's unconditional love, her conditional one gave rise to a deep hatred simultaneously.

I think of some of the more recent happenings. The first thing that comes to mind is that night, when she came to my room and whispered an apology to me, thinking I was asleep. I remember crying a little after she left the room, because I felt happy. Because I know most people never get an apology from their parents despite how wrongly they'd been treated.

But I wonder, what exactly was she apologizing for, that night? For throwing away my books, perhaps. Or it might have been an apology for something much bigger, something that she realized when she saw me crying and screaming at her, when she saw how Dale protected me.

And the fact that she couldn't apologize to me directly, shows that she, too, can't be open about her feelings.

I think about the time she plucked out the pieces of radish from my soup one by one. The time when I came home from the cafe after finding out the reason behind Dawn's suicide and hugged her, and she had asked me what happened. The several missed calls and deleted messages on WhatsApp. And finally, her calling Edgar to find out about me.

Are these not enough reasons for me to hope, to try?

Maybe, maybe not. Does it really matter? It's just like I told Edgar. It's my choice, whether it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do isn't important here. What's important is what will give me more mental peace. And I genuinely believe it's worth a try.

That maybe, just maybe, if I am the one who starts filling up the hole, she will soon join me too.

After all, now I no longer think my mother doesn't love me. She does love me, love us.

But she does not love herself.

That's it. That's what this is about.

And the more she hurts me, and the people around her, the more her hatred on her own self deepens, and the more she gets tangled in this incorruptible spiderweb. She can't free herself from it; it's too knotted, too thick. She perhaps lost her willpower to free herself long ago. Now the only way to do it is develop that will again, and slowly cut the thick threads of the web one by one to get out. And when she frees herself, she will also free our whole family.

Maybe . . . maybe I can help her with that.

I put the book down. "I've decided."

July looks up from the sketchbook. "Hmm? Decided what?"

I take a deep breath. "I will talk to mom tonight."

His eyes widen. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"I see." July puts his chin on his palm and thinks something for a while. Then he says, "Maybe you can start with a single sentence."

"Hmm? What do you mean?"

"You read my letter right? I'm sure you have."

"Yeah . . ."

"Well, remember I started with a single line? It took me a long time to figure out what exactly I should start with. But once I wrote that, everything else flowed out naturally. So maybe you can try that. Start with a single sentence that captures the gist of how you feel, as honestly as you can. And the rest might just come out without you even having to think about it."

Hale's letter started with Things didn't have to turn out like this. It was quite a fitting way to start it indeed.

But what exactly do I want to tell my mother? What should be my first line? I have no idea, but I need to figure it out.

It was late for Dawn. And now it is late for Dale. But it's not late for me, or for her. Not yet.