Chapter 12 – The Pages Between Us
Chapter 12 – The Pages Between Us
The first day of June felt too warm for comfort. The sky was impossibly clear, as if mocking the fog that had begun to creep inside Akira's chest.
Graduation was still a season away. Yet the feeling of goodbye hung in the air like a bookmark pressed between chapters—just waiting to be flipped.
---
Akira had started counting the Saturdays.
Five left before Airi moved.
It wasn't dramatic. There was no looming deadline with black circles on calendars or a suitcase in sight. But each week had a shape now. A weight.
The weight of almost over.
---
Their meetings continued like clockwork.
They met at the café.
They worked on Dream Frequency.
They shared poems, scribbles, silence, and soft laughter.
But beneath the surface, something shifted.
Each sentence they wrote together felt just a little more hesitant.
Like their characters knew what the authors wouldn't say aloud.
---
"I think we're writing slower," Airi said one afternoon, staring at her cup.
Akira nodded. "Maybe we're choosing words more carefully."
"Or avoiding the ending."
He looked up. "Do you think we're afraid of it?"
"I think we know that once we write it, it becomes real."
He leaned back in his seat. "Then maybe we write it differently. Maybe we end it like beginnings."
---
They decided to do something bold: to write a chapter that never ends.
A dream sequence.
A loop of memory, layered with everything that felt like now.
> The boy and the girl met in a dream that lasted forever.
The world changed around them, seasons folding into each other.
But every time they woke up, they remembered the same thing:
"I found you again."
---
It became the centerpiece of their novel. Not a climax, not a conclusion—just a soft loop. One that made every other page shimmer slightly more.
---
At school, Akira's classmates started noticing how he drifted off more during class. He stared out the window longer, doodled in his margins more carefully.
"What are you writing lately?" one friend asked.
"Something that keeps moving," Akira replied.
"What's it about?"
He paused.
"A girl I almost never see, but always hear."
---
Airi, on the other hand, found herself walking to new places in her town. Exploring bookstores alone, sitting on benches longer, listening to strangers' conversations just for the texture of words.
She sent Akira an audio recording one evening:
> "I passed a street musician today. He was playing something quiet. I didn't know the song. But it sounded like the kind of music you'd listen to when you want to remember something, not forget."
Akira listened to it twice.
Then wrote a line in their story:
> "Her voice became the music he didn't realize he'd been missing."
---
Two weeks before the move, Airi mailed him something unexpected.
A sealed envelope.
Inside: a single page from the journal.
But instead of writing, it had only this:
> "Draw something."
No other explanation.
Akira stared at the blank space for a long time.
Then, carefully, he sketched.
It wasn't perfect. His hands weren't trained for art.
But he drew them.
Two people. Sitting back to back.
A book between them.
Cherry blossoms falling sideways.
Their expressions soft—not sad. Not happy. Just… still.
He mailed it back the same day.
Airi replied with a photo.
The drawing was now framed on her desk.
> Caption:
"If I can't take you with me, I'll take this moment."
---
On their second-to-last Saturday together, they didn't write.
They just sat together on the library steps.
The sun was warm.
Airi rested her head on his shoulder.
"Do you remember," she said, "the first story we ever shared?"
He thought for a moment.
"Yours was about a girl who traveled by stars."
"And yours," she smiled, "was a boy who never spoke."
They both laughed.
"I guess we kept writing them all along," she added.
"I guess so."
They sat quietly after that.
No need to say what they were both feeling.
The end was close.
But the story—still breathing.
---
The night before their final meeting, Akira couldn't sleep.
He opened their manuscript again.
Read every page. Every annotation.
Then reached the last chapter.
There, between the margins, were the last words they'd written together:
> "Even if this dream ends, I hope I meet you again in the next one."
He closed his eyes.
Then opened a fresh page.
And began to write:
> "This story doesn't need an ending.
Because we are still writing.
Maybe not with pages. Maybe not with ink.
But with memory. With time.
With the spaces we both agreed were sacred.
So here is my final line—
Not as goodbye.
But as a beginning you can keep:
'Find me in every word you write.'"
---
The next morning, he handed her the page.
They sat at the riverside park, the breeze soft and steady.
Airi read his words once, then twice.
Then hugged the page against her chest.
"You wrote my favorite sentence," she whispered.
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
---
The train that would take her away arrived at 4:27 p.m.
They waited at the platform, surrounded by the hiss of brakes and murmurs of weekend travelers.
Airi wore the necklace he once gave her—a tiny silver pen pendant.
Akira had their journal tucked in his bag, along with a printed copy of Dream Frequency.
"Thank you," she said, holding his hand tightly.
"For what?" he asked.
"For giving me a place to belong when everything else felt temporary."
He looked into her eyes. "You gave me the words I didn't know I had."
The train door opened.
Airi stepped in.
She turned back one last time.
"I'll write you tomorrow."
He smiled.
"You better."
---
And just like that, she was gone.
But not far.
Not really.
Not where it mattered.
---
That night, Akira sat at his desk.
He opened a blank notebook.
On the first page, he wrote:
> "This is the story of how we stayed—
even when everything changed
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