Chapter 11 – Not the Ending, Just a Turning Page
Chapter 11 – Not the Ending, Just a Turning Page
The cherry blossoms didn't just bloom that week—they shimmered.
Petals floated through the air like pieces of a paused dream, each one falling gently over the world Akira had once thought was too gray.
He found himself walking slower that morning.
Not because he was tired.
But because he didn't want to miss it.
---
Ever since the reading event, everything had changed—but also, nothing had.
People started talking more to Akira at school. Some asked if he was that Akira—the one from the spring festival reading. Others just smiled knowingly when he passed by.
But he didn't care about that.
All he thought about was this:
Airi kissed him.
And nothing had ever felt so certain.
---
They couldn't meet every day. The distance was still there, still inconvenient, still a quiet ache in their routine.
But now, instead of silence, there were video calls at sunset.
Text messages with lines from the books they were reading.
Photos of half-written pages, tea mugs, messy desks, and once—a single blossom pressed between the cover of the journal they still shared.
Airi sent that.
With a note:
> "It's from the tree we stood under. I didn't want it to fall without being remembered."
Akira replied with a poem, short and folded like breath:
> "If petals fall to be remembered,
Then let my memory always catch yours."
---
It was in mid-April that Airi suggested something unexpected.
"Let's write a new story."
Akira blinked. "Aren't we already?"
"No—I mean something else. A real story. A novel."
"You mean fiction?"
She nodded. "I want to write something long. With chapters. With characters who… aren't us. But still, somehow… are."
He smiled. "Then let's give them a beginning."
---
Their process was simple—though never easy.
They met every Saturday at the halfway café.
Airi would arrive with her ideas scrawled in a blue notebook. Akira would bring typed outlines and lists of names he wasn't sure about.
They debated everything: setting, plot, tone, point of view.
They laughed over terrible ideas. Argued over great ones. Compromised in the middle.
Eventually, they settled on a story:
> Two students who could hear each other's thoughts—but only while dreaming.
"Cheesy," Airi said.
"Interesting," Akira countered.
She rolled her eyes. "Fine. But no clichés."
"No tragic endings."
"No forced misunderstandings."
They wrote that night until midnight.
And again the next.
---
Back in school, Akira found himself more focused—yet more distracted.
Focused, because he had purpose.
Distracted, because every moment not spent writing with Airi felt like a delay.
Still, he used his time well.
Every lunch break, he jotted ideas in the margins of his math notebook.
During history class, he drafted dialogue between scenes.
Even walking home, he recorded voice memos with passing thoughts:
> "What if she forgets him each morning, but remembers everything in dreams?"
> "What if love isn't what they want—but what they can't avoid?"
He sent those thoughts to Airi nightly.
She responded by the next morning.
---
May arrived quickly—bringing warmth, sudden rain, and blooming sidewalks.
Their novel, tentatively titled Dream Frequency, passed 20,000 words.
They didn't tell anyone.
Not even their families.
It was theirs—a private creation between shared distance.
But as they neared mid-May, a strange silence entered their rhythm.
It began with one delayed reply from Airi.
Then a skipped Saturday meeting.
Then a message sent at midnight, short and vague:
> "Sorry. Everything's just… heavy right now."
Akira didn't push.
He just replied:
> "I'm here. Whenever you're ready."
---
Three days passed.
Then finally, a message.
> "Can we talk in person this weekend?"
> "Of course."
---
They met at the library, the one where they'd first written beside the poetry shelf.
Airi was quiet when she arrived.
She sat down. Smiled, but not with her usual warmth.
Akira waited.
She finally spoke.
"My dad's transfer wasn't supposed to be permanent," she said softly.
He blinked. "Wasn't?"
"It's not two towns anymore. It's… across the country."
He said nothing.
Just stared at her.
"I'm moving. For real this time. At the end of the semester."
The words landed slowly—like snow instead of rain.
Heavy. Soft. Inevitable.
---
Akira leaned back.
Tried to breathe.
Tried to think of something to say that didn't sound like goodbye.
"So," he said. "We're writing a long-distance novel… because we're becoming one."
She laughed—but tears came anyway.
He reached across the table and took her hand.
"Then let's keep writing," he said. "Even if the chapters are slower."
Airi looked down.
"I'm scared."
"Of distance?"
"Of forgetting."
"You won't forget."
"How do you know?"
"Because forgetting is the opposite of writing. And we… never stop."
---
The next day, Akira printed out their manuscript.
Page by page. Chapter by chapter.
He bought a binder and labeled it in block letters:
> Dream Frequency – By A & A
He left the first page blank.
Then wrote:
> "This is not our last story.
Just the one we needed to tell right now."
---
When they met again, he gave it to her.
She hugged it like it was something sacred.
Because it was.
---
On the last day of May, they wrote in the journal again. This time, they didn't share the pages in photos or text.
They mailed them.
Real ink. Real stamps. Real distance.
> From Airi:
"Every season we write together is a place I can return to.
I'll leave the next page blank for you.
Not because I don't know what happens next—
But because I trust that you do."
> From Akira:
"I don't need to know how far you are.
Only that every word brings us closer."
---
The next chapter was already forming.
Not in their notebooks.
Not in their scripts.
But in the space between them.
The space they were no longer afraid of.
---