Addressee: Tsukimori Mitsuki
Sender: Hoshikawa Tsukito
Date: 1 January 2000
Dear Mitsuki,
This is the first postcard I'm writing to you. It will feel strange, writing my first goodbye though it's minutes since I saw you last. But I'll say goodbye to you every time I write to you from now on, because not a moment passes that I am not next to you.
Tonight is New Year's Day of the new century. Tell me, what are your dreams and aspirations right now? What do you like? And most importantly, who are you? Who have you become, and how does that measure up to who you want to be?
Though I was the one who asked you this, I'll tell you mine. My dream is to fly to the moon one day, and my aspiration is to be an astronaut. I like the smell of bluebells and raspberries. As for who I am... Well, how should I answer that? I'm afraid I can't without exposing some of my deepest thoughts and feelings. But it's now or never, right? Even though this means that I'm not by your side to tell you this face to face.
I want to ask you... the moon is beautiful, isn't it?
It feels strange to say these words out loud. I don't know when I started feeling this way. I think it was one year ago, when we were in the pool under the New Year fireworks.
Tell me, I'm not the only one who thought the moon was beautiful that night, was I?
I'm not the only one who felt the heady rush of youth, right? I think that night was the most beautiful night of my life. Not because of the fireworks. The whole night, I was staring at you; I couldn't help it.
Who have I become? I've become somebody who tells someone he loves that he loves her through a letter. I've become someone insincere and career-greedy. Because who I want to be is not an astronaut, Mitsuki. Not since the minute I first set eyes on you. I want to be next to you. Every second of every day that I am alive.
But I believe it'll happen. That day when I don't walk the same Earth as you any more, though I have left the Earth in pursuit of my selfish dreams, I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me like I will never forgive myself.
Because even from Mars, I know every day I will still dream that you'll say to me: the moon is beautiful, isn't it?
Wonderfully and wholly yours,
Hoshikawa Tsukito
YOU ARE READING
Et Itur Ad Astra
Teen Fiction"The stars in the heavens sing a music, if only we had ears to hear." (Pythagoras) Side A: Summer 1999, where two teens run headlong to embrace their youth, put the pieces of themselves back into each other and in the meantime find themselves. Side...
