The computer program

18. Six days at the bottom of the ocean

They kept talking around me. Two of the boys had proposed to their girlfriends. That was okay. But then, one of the girls announced she was having a child.

And I suddenly missed him.

It hit me from time to time, but it was rare now. It was just so, so incredibly long ago. Yet, I sometimes missed him. The first days, I had scream-cried in bed, unable to get up. Madara came three times a day to give me food which I refused. It took me six days until I could go back to university, six days when it felt as if I had been at the bottom of the ocean, and even then, when I managed to get up, I was a shell of myself. My friends had been beside themselves with worry, asked me if it had anything to do with Hashirama's disappearance. Once last year, one of them had told me I had never quite been the same since. I didn't know if it was because of what had happened, or if it was just the natural changes in your personality that came with age masked by the sullenness I felt after the death of Tobirama, but I had felt it, too. It was like I was only a fraction of my old, younger self instead of evolving in my personality like all my friends did.

I suddenly couldn't bear sharing my friend's joy. Feeling incredibly egoistic, I excused myself, went to the counter and paid my share and almost ran out of the restaurant. Once out, I realised how hard I had found it to breathe in there because it felt like the first breath after coma.

And I let the memories wash over me. Everything we had done together during our short life together. But it was the memory of the way he'd made his heart beat for me that caused tears to well up in my eyes. A light rain was falling which I was grateful for; people around me would think I had rain on my face. At least, that was what I was trying to tell myself. Even so, I cast my head down and started to walk. 

It took me twenty minutes to get to the top of the hill. Once there, I sat down next to the tree I had planted for him and cried.

"I wish you were here to hold me!" I cried. "I don't even know if you would have liked me for this long! I'm such a mess! I'm such a fucking mess!"

I cried for a while until finally, I felt slightly better. I stood up, looked out at the view without seeing it. I sighed, put my hands in my back pockets, a habit I'd gotten over the years when I was deep in thought, and...

I frowned, fished something up.

I looked at the object.

A green sticky note.

Folded in two.

I unfolded it.

And just stared.

My hand flew to my mouth.

And I couldn't breathe.

Another six days at the bottom of the ocean, this time lasting a few seconds.

I'm still here: <3

xx, T

And then it struck me.

These trousers had been the same ones I had worn on the day he was destroyed. I had taken them off as soon as I managed to get myself home, hung them in the far back of my closet, never wanting to see them again. But as I had laid on him that last day, he'd put his hand in these pockets. What I hadn't noticed was that he'd put this note there.

For seven years, the note had been there without me noticing.

I had never seen his handwriting before; it was surprisingly non-adult.

It touched my heart.

Tears welled up in my eyes.

I ran away.