IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS

INTRODUCTION

In 2010 I began to get to know a lady by the name of Rei, who so happened to be from New Zealand. I am from Dublin, Ireland. We got to know to know each other through a short story site where we both were posting stories of which we had written.

Through Messenger and Skype, we would regularly chat for hours. We would also send whatever stories we were writing at the time to each other via e-mail and would offer up opinion and encouragement to one another.

At one point we were chatting three or four times a week, sometimes even more and we had the occasional video chat too. Our chats lead me to write a story entitled SCENT which I have since posted on Wattpad. The ideas in that story came about through our conversations.

As time went on, our conversations became less frequent though they still did come. We added each other on Facebook as another way to keep in touch. On the second day of September 2015, I was saddened and shocked to see a message of condolence on my Facebook feed which had been posted to her page.

Rei had passed away at the very young age of forty-six. The last chat we had, probably had been about five or six weeks before that day. A message from her family to her page had said that she took a turn two days prior to September Second and sadly passed away.

I couldn't believe it. I regarded her to be as good a friend as any I have off-line. I didn't know if she had been ill or not, if she had been then she never told me. Perhaps she was expecting to recover, perhaps she didn't want to cause worry, and that would be just like her. I would have liked to have known more about the circumstances of how or why she passed away though I did not want to trouble her family to ask what exactly happened.

Over the years, the site we both were a part of would have its problems having to have kinks sorted out and so on. Sometimes it would go down for a few days, but it would always come back. In January 2017 it went down once more only not to re-emerge again in the days, or years, that followed. That site also had a Facebook page, and its Facebook page has gone too, a long time ago now, as it is.

Unfortunately, it is gone for good; both site and Facebook page which means Rei's stories are no longer on-line and this definitely is unfortunate. So, I hope that Rei would not mind that I have taken one of her stories that I still have, with the intention of posting it here on Wattpad, so at least something of hers still exists.

I had posted this early on in 2017 though I took most everything I had on Wattpad down at one point to give a lot of it the once over, including this. I had originally gone over it once or twice early on in 2017, catching typos and so on and adding a little bit here and there to it. Then in November 2025 I gave it another bit of an edit. I know Rei wouldn't mind.

So, Rei, my friend, this is by you and for you, this is IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS.

P.S Trigger warning for abuse and some colourful language.

November 29th, 2025.