The Wish From Heaven | ✓

chapter 21 : love and loss

16 July, 2020; Tuesday

"I've decided to cancel Question Of The Day."

July and I have made up. Right now, it's almost one in the morning, and I am taking a small break after studying for three hours at a stretch. I have turned off the lights, so it's only the moonlight shining in through the window, creating a rather intimate ambience in the room. To anyone else, I am the only one lying here in darkness.

"Why?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.

I turn to my side to face him. "You can tell me what you want and not tell me what you don't want. I will wait for you to explain everything. I'm not going to force you and create another big fight."

"I don't think you've ever forced me."

"I think I have put pressure on you."

He doesn't reply, which means he agrees. As usual, he stares out the window, but I am pretty sure he can't see the moon from this angle. But he probably can see the flickering streetlamp Dawn was unreasonably afraid of. In fact, I have a feeling that he is looking at it right now. The endless differences between him and Dawn are a constant alarm to me that the two of them are completely different individuals, and yet, I still get the feeling that July thinks of himself as a mere replacement in my life.

"Hmm, I will tell you everything," he says, breaking the silence. "I must. But I do think it's easier to say it if I have to answer a question. Which is why I agreed to the QOTD system." He turns his head to me. "Go on, ask something about last night."

"Last night?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure?"

"Yep."

"Well . . ." I focus on scratching my pillow with my index finger as I ask, "What is her name?"

He lightly chuckles. "You're still holding back, aren't you? Well, can you guess her name?"

I shake my head.

"It's Moon."

"Oh. That's why you-"

"No, not exactly." He turns to the ceiling. I unconsciously become fascinated by all the beauty spots dotting his entire neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt. Even his neck is beautiful. 

"Oh, it's unrelated?" I ask.

"Not really, either. You see, the last time I saw her, I asked where I can find her, you know, later. She didn't reply and just left. The next day . . . she killed herself."

My eyes widen, and I let out a small gasp.

"In her note," he continues nonchalantly, "she wrote only one sentence. Can you guess what?"

"No."

"Find me in the moon."

I exhale. His relentless fascination with the night sky and the moon that dimly enlightens it with her borrowed light, finally makes a lot more sense.

"Love and loss," he says, "when the two of these combine, humans lose all their common senses. We turn reality into fragments of our imagination to escape the pain. All the questions we didn't have time to ask, we seek their answers from things most incapable of giving them. Because in the end, no matter how many times you ask the sky why Dawn left you, it won't give a reply. And no matter how many times I ask the moon if she ever forgave me, it won't give a reply either."

Forgive him. I wonder what he could have done to Moon for him to so desperately seek her forgiveness. I wonder, if it had anything to do with what happened to her after the day they last met.