“One caravan has stopped,
another one starts up. There
are people I have yet to meet,
others I'll never meet again.”

— Banana Yoshimoto,
Moonlight Shadow 

10 YEARS LATER
9 July, 2029

We remember what we want to forget, and forget what we want to remember.

When Edgar asks me why I didn't go to my so-called secret place today like I do every year, I only blink at him a few times at first. My mind goes foggy, unable to process the information. So I look at the date on the bottom right of my laptop screen and see that indeed, today is the 9th of July. The day of the year when I take a leave from my job, cancel all my plans, leave all my mails unchecked, miss Mr. Keith's appointment, and hop on a train to the neighboring city, Heilbur. Specifically the Castletons' family graveyard.

Where he is eternally buried.

Every July 9th, for the past nine years, I have gone to visit him in commemoration of the day he first came to my life. I would spend hours in front of his grave, telling him about every eventful thing that happened to me from the previous July 9th to the present one.

Why, then, did I completely forget about it this year?

I feel as though I have committed a terrible sin. A storm begins to take shape within me. Edgar gets worried at my lack of response and walks over to my side. He asks me if I'm okay, and I say that it's nothing and head to the bathroom.

I splash water on my face. Then I look at myself in the mirror and tell myself, it's okay. That can happen. I'm so busy after all. Aside from my job as an editor in Indigo Publishing, I also work as a freelance beta reader. Sometimes I write paid reviews for the books of authors who are about to debut and post them on Goodreads, where I have a large following. I barely have time to relax, which is how I prefer it. Rather, not being busy makes me feel weird. I like being so occupied that I don't have time to think too much. It's quite alright that it slipped out of my mind.

I forgot. Oh God, how could I forget?

Edgar reminded me this year. But he won't be here next year. What if I forget about it entirely, and don't realize it several days later? And if I forget him, who will keep him alive?

Even worse, what if I do remember it, but not find the motivation to go and visit him? What if my mind tries to deceive me, saying things like it's been a long time already, that it's just a waste of time and energy, that I have more important things to do? Though I hate to admit it to myself, I have had thoughts like this sometimes in the past years, mostly because of my exhaustion from work.

I can't do that to him.

I shake my head, pushing such thoughts away. The more I think about it, the more I will break. This was bound to happen, sooner or later. I knew it was going to happen even back when he was still in my life. But I suppose a part of me overestimated the passage of time, and everything it strips you of, everything it steals from you without notice.

I reorganize my brain, putting my emotions in order, preventing them from going wayward. I don't need to dwell on this so much. It's only 3 in the afternoon, the sun is still out. I just need to pack some things and get on the next train. I'll be there in an hour. I guess I'll have to spend the night in a hotel. I will then take the earliest train tomorrow and head straight to work.

Now that I have a plan, the restlessness melts away. I exit the bathroom and find Edgar sitting on the edge of my bed.

"You okay, dude?" he asks, standing up.

"Yeah. Ev, I'm gonna catch the next train."

He opens his mouth, as if to protest, but then seemingly rethinks something and says, "Fine. Not gonna have dinner?"

"Nopes."

I grab the briefcase lying beside my work table and open it up on the bed. I take out a navy blue shirt and black leather jeans, fold them neatly, and put them in the suitcase. I take the book I'm currently reading from under my pillow and put it beside the case. Then I walk back to my wardrobe, kneel down, remove the shoe boxes, and reach for the object sitting behind.

The sketchbook.

I close my eyes and try to picture him. The image is still there, and in it he looks so young, so beautiful. But the image has almost lost all its colour, like a piece of cloth that has been washed too many times. No, the colours are still there, but it's most likely been repainted by my brain to fit my memory, to make it believable. Those were not the colours I saw, but the colours I'm being made to see. The original colours no longer exist. My memory, time and again, continues to betray me.

I put the sketchbook inside the briefcase case. I'll look at it on my way. Then I check the time for the next inter-city train that will make a stop at Agnes Railway Station. One and a half hours. Great, enough time for a cup of tea.

I head to the kitchen. "Ev, do you want some tea?" I ask.

"Uh, no, I'm good!" he shouts back from his room.

I frown. Putting the water on boil, I walk over to his room, which is placed adjacent to mine. He is sitting at his study table, engrossed in test papers. He is planning to take the entrance exam this September. It took him years of endless toil to finally earn the privilege of continuing his education.

I take the bottle of wine and the half-filled glass from his table.

"Hey!" he protests, trying to grab it from me. "Give that back, nerd!"

"I swear to God, Ev, how many times have I told you not to drink while studying?"

"What? It kinda helps me focus better." He scratches his dark blonde hair.

"You're gonna kinda forget everything you study at this rate."

"Not everyone has the alcohol tolerance of a goat like you, dumbass. I'm perfectly sober."

I ignore the insult. "You think Alex would approve of this? Knowing her, she will probably throw out every bottle of wine in the house if she sees you drinking while studying."

"That's exactly why I'm trying to savour it while it lasts!" he argues. "Pre-wedding freedom or whatever they call it."

I roll my eyes. "Just wait until I tell your mother about this."

He opens his mouth to protest but then scowls in defeat. "Okay, fucking Draco Malfoy." Then he lets out a hmph and goes back to studying.

I laugh. No matter how old you become, getting scolded by your mother will still remain on the list of fears.

After making a cup of tea, I go and sit in the living room. It's quite a nice apartment. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. Edgar and I moved in here at my second year at the Apollo Institute of Fine Arts. It was fairly inexpensive too, at least in comparison to the housing costs in the post-COVID days. 

It's a shame I'll have to leave this place next year, after Edgar gets married. It won't be hard for me to pay the whole rent, but it's unnecessary.

I look at the walls of the living room, which are embroidered with framed photos, photos that carry beautiful and irreplaceable memories, freezing time in a moment of happiness.

There was a photo from autumn of '23, when Edgar and I went on a short trip to Madison Bay. It was one of the many places we would travel together in the course of the past few years. In the photo, the vibrant blue sea and the white sand served as a picturesque background, as Edgar held up a peace sign, and I had my hands shoved in my pockets. It was taken by a stranger we met at the beach.

There's another photo of me and Edgar, where we are sitting at the counter of Pinwheel Bar, a place we started to frequent. In the photo, he is holding a glass of draft beer, while I held a glass of lemonade. It was taken in '25 by the bartender, who is still a close friend of mine.

A photo from my high school graduation day, taken with all my friends. Lexi's hair reached a little above her shoulder then, Ayesha in a blue hijab as always and smiling beautifully as always, Edgar's arm wrapped around my neck, the mere hint of a smile on Louis' face, Tiara most possibly zoned out, Daisy pulling my ear for no apparent reason, while a scowl covered my own face. All of us look so young in there, it amazes me. It saddens me.

Yet another photo, this one showing my family. It was taken when I was only six. In it, I sat on my mother's lap, smiling wide and bright like children do. I can no longer imagine myself being that young and that small at some point in time. Dad and Dale stood behind us. Dad had a soft smile on his face, but neither mom nor Dale smiled as much. Mom and dad have the same photo framed in the bedroom of the house I was born in.

There are also photos with my university friends. In those days, I mostly hung out with five others. The six of us were part of a literary group named The Coffeetable Society, and I was the only non-writer there. We had loads of fun, and they were some of the loveliest people I'd ever met. I'm still in contact with four of them. The only one I'm not in contact with, is an NY Times bestselling writer now.

I finish the cup of tea while it's still warm. Looking at old photos, these days, makes me so terribly sad. And it feels as though the sadness gets a shade deeper as one more year is added to my life—or shall I say, deducted from it. There is no source to this sadness, nor any end. Maybe it's an inherent part of growing older, universal and unavoidable. As a teenager, I would always be looking forward to becoming an adult, because I believed only then I could be more in control of my own life. I wasn't wrong, but I was unaware that being in control of my life would be, to put it simply, extremely exhausting.

In my late 20s, time has began to weigh over me. I have grown a kind of morbid despise towards my birthday—not only because I lost someone precious to me on that day, but also because nothing saddens me more than seeing the two-digit number increase one by one. I wonder how depressed I will become when the 2 becomes 3.

After all this time, I finally understand how my Dawn felt.

As I'm sitting there in the living room, facing that wall of memories, the remaining tea on the cup growing cold, in the late afternoon quietude, I get reminded of the loneliness that inevitably swept over me as I stepped into adulthood. Edgar is in the room nearby, I have several contacts on my phone I could dial up and have a talk with, maybe I could get a pet cat and play with it. But none of these can fill that gaping hole within me.

And it's no one's fault but my own.

Solitude is a choice, loneliness is a disease. This is what I have always told myself. This is what I still tell myself. I tell myself, this is the life I have chosen, not an incurable illness that I carry along with me to every step of life. I'm not sick, rather I'm content, because this is the life I have chosen for myself. And why would I willingly choose a disease? Why would anyone willingly choose something that harms them?

But these are lies I can tell myself under the daylight, when I'm surrounded by people I care about, when I'm engrossed in doing what I love, when I'm thinking of anything but the ones who left me behind. Then the sun drowns down the horizon, paints the sky a striking shade of orange, and I come home. And I remember once again that I am blessed, because when I come home I am not greeted by emptiness—not yet—but rather by my best friend, a partner in crime unconditionally staying beside me as the years pass us by. So until then, the lies remain, believable and tangible, and I thank God for what I have been offered, for what I've been given.

But then the sky begins to grow darker and darker, the transparent clouds blending against it, and what befalls on me is a sudden despair, a reminder of how everything I have right now is temporary. Nothing is forever and evermore in this world, not even the person I promised a forever and evermore with on the days of my youth. Because when the moon hangs like a lightbulb outside my bedroom window, I sleep at one side of the bed and watch the other side grow colder and colder. Every pore of my skin tingles, craving what I can't offer them. And no matter how much I rub my arms nothing can ever satisfy me, nothing can ever fill up those holes in my existence.

With a sigh, I leave the cup on the coffee table and stand up, walking back to my room. I see the book lying beside my briefcase. The book written by that friend. When I open it to the very first page, I see a letter written in a cursive handwriting. I've read it several times already, absorbing the words, the ink, the space in between. Something about it makes me feel more alone than ever.

Cedar,

I hope this book finds you healthy and smiling from across the continent. It's been a long time since I have seen you, but I wanted you to be the first one to get my book. Because I couldn't have done it without you. I want you to know that I still think of you sometimes. I think of you often. And I dream that you think of me too. When we meet again, I will tell you lots of stories of the past years.

When we meet again. Once more, promises made only to be broken. Maybe this writer friend of mine fell in love with the air of America, because the air there smells of fame. Six years, and this is the sole evidence of any contact established between us. But who am I to complain?

This same person, once told me, People like you aren't meant to be lonely. I still think of this one sentence again and again. If I'm not meant to be lonely, why do they keep leaving me alone?

I close the book and leave it on top of the briefcase. I change into a different pair of clothes. I comb my hair looking at the mirror, parting it on both sides, showing my forehead.

My eyes fall on the beeswax candle sitting on my bedside table, right beside the photo of me and Dawn from back when we were four. Some nights when I feel weak and helpless, I light it up and stare at the letter J written on it. I don't light that candle often, so that it doesn't become smaller and smaller and eventually disappear. Very few things are within my control, and I try to make the most out of them.

I take the book and my briefcase and come out of my room.

"Ev, I'm leaving," I say.

"Yeah yeah, make sure not to embarrass yourself in front of your once-a-year secret lover!" he replies.

"Sure thing!" I laugh. For the first few years, he would pester me about where exactly I go every 9th July. He even attempted to follow me once by getting on the same train. But I got mad at him and ever since then he hasn't asked about it again. He has simply drawn a conclusion that I go to meet a mysterious lover. And what's funnier is that he's not entirely wrong.

I grab a taxi to the train station. The radio is open to a news channel, paying tribute to the completion of ten years since the suicide of Hale Castleton. I feel like the holder of one of the greatest secrets in the history of humans. It feels good.

When I reach the station, there's only less than half an hour left until the train arrives. I sit on one of the benches near the platform. I open the book to the page I left it at. This is my second time reading it, and I still feel awed at how beautifully it's written.

As I'm reading, I notice something landing on the empty space beside me on the seat. My gaze moves to it, and I find it to be a sparrow.

"Because I have drawn you as a sparrow." The voice of the ghost from my past is distorted, but I can still hear it.

Something painful comes alive within me, as simply as that. I never really asked him why he chose a sparrow out of all birds. What of a sparrow reminded him of me?

I stare at the little bird for a long time. It's restless, pecking different parts on the cement seat. For a few minutes, me and the bird sit there in silence, unaccompanied, as the chaos of the railway station continues without rest.

But then, all of a sudden, another bird comes and joins us.

I look again. Now there are two sparrows. They are huddled together, still pecking on the seat, as if trying to find something they both desire. One of the sparrows spreads its grayish brown wings and chirps at the other. The other chirps back. They are seemingly engaged in an important conversation. A moment later, they fly away together.

I smile.

The train announces its arrival with a stretched honk. After I settle down on my windowside seat, I look outside. As the train begins to move forward and the sceneries begin to move backward, I think about the two sparrows. I wonder what they were talking about, what decision they reached in. I wonder how long they will fly together, and whether there will come a point when they go their separate ways. How far and how long will they choose to be each other's companions?

The ultimate answer to it all is same: what exists must cease to exist at some point.

But while it exists, it can always add some beauty to this world.

The two sparrows will fly away together to a new destination. Perhaps they will sit on the wires connecting electricity poles, on the railing of someone's balcony, or the thin branch of a lively tree. Along the way, they will meet more fellow sparrows, and thread stories with them. And maybe with their new companions, they will soar up to the sky and explore the white clouds. And when it's time to say goodbye, they will bump their beaks and say, I had a good time with you. And there will be a beauty within that farewell too.

Because where one story ends, another one begins.

== THE END ==