She wrote him a letter in August.
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She did not tell him she was going to. She just left it on the counter one morning before she went to work and he found it when he came home in the evening.
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It was on lined notebook paper in blue ink.
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Ren,
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You kept twelve letters in a shoebox for fifteen years. I never wrote you a thirteenth.
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This is the thirteenth.
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I don't know what I'm supposed to say in a letter. I've never written one to you that wasn't about a homeroom teacher or a book or a documentary I watched. I've never written one that was about anything that mattered.
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So here is the thing that matters.
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I met you when I was fifteen and I have been leaving you since I was fifteen. I left Kamikochi and I left the letters and I left the ramen shop and I left the wedding and I left the film festival and I left every place you and I have ever been. And every time I left, I told myself it was because of something else. Because of a job or a move or a mother or a man or a film.
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It was never because of something else.
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It was because of me.
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I was afraid that if I stayed, you would find out what I was. You would find out about Turkey. You would find out about all the things I did and didn't do in twenty years of moving. And you would leave.
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So I left first.
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That's what I've been doing since I was fifteen. I've been leaving first.
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I don't want to leave first anymore.
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I want to stay. I want to stay with you. I want to stay in the apartment and put more things on the walls and go to work and come home and eat dinner at the counter and hear about your day and tell you about mine. I want to be there when Hana graduates. I want to be there when Mei starts school. I want to be there when Renji wins whatever game he's playing.
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I want to be there.
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I don't know how long I'll be able to. I don't know if I'll be good at it. I don't know if I'll leave again and I can't promise I won't.
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But I want to try.
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I want to try with you.
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- S.
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He read it twice.
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He did not say anything about it when she came home.
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He just put it in the shoebox with the other twelve.31Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR073uDPzd9
and then Add to home screen.