"....I have a confession to make, Ichinose.", I said with my eyes firmly locked onto hers.
She averted and stood near the window, facing me.
Her eyes were filled with deep pain, a certain type which makes you dead from inside.
Even if I don't have that much similarity to her case, I am all too familiar with the pain.
Regret.
The bigger the regret, the greater the pain.
It just lives inside you, eats off your emotions, and grows with time.
Never goes away, even if you confront it, doesn't matter how many times.
I have so many regrets in my life, that I have lost count at this point.
Things I could have done better, but I didn't.
That's why I can understand why she has this deep regret inside her.
Yet, there is no solution to it.
How could I solve her problem, when I haven't even confronted my own regrets?
The only thing I can do for her is empathize.
Cause I have even greater regrets living inside me, that refuses to let go.
"In middle school, there was this girl I was friends with. Well, I doubt anyone was there in my class who wasn't friends with her. Energetic, friendly, caring. Yet she was bad with with her studies, so I used to teach her every once in a while. She wasn't perfect, which is the reason why she seemed so charming to everyone."
I paused and looked past Ichinose, outside the windows.
Beyond the night sky.
It was a true story, from my own experience.
And one of the many regrets I carry to this day.
"She trusted me," I said, the words tasting bitter as they left my mouth. "Because we spent so much time together during those tutoring sessions, she ended up confessing a secret to me. A mistake she had made that she was deeply ashamed of. It wasn't a crime or anything world-ending, but to a middle schooler, it was the kind of secret that could completely destroy your social standing."
I took a slow breath, watching Ichinose's silhouette against the glass.
"She had stolen a small amount of money from the class fund to buy a gift for her younger sibling's birthday, intending to put it back before anyone noticed. Her family was poor you see. But the class treasurer found out the numbers didn't match before she could. When the rumors started flying and the classroom turned into a witch hunt, she panicked and came to me. I promised her I'd keep it safe. I promised her we'd figure out a way to fix it together."
I paused, a wry, self-deprecating smile forming on my lips.
"But pressure is a funny thing. When the rest of the class started cornering me, suspecting that I was hiding something because we were close, I cracked. To protect my own reputation, to ensure I wouldn't become the next target of their isolation, I let it slip. I told them exactly what she did."
The silence in the room grew heavier, suffocatingly so.
"The next day, her world completely crumbled. The friendly, energetic girl who everyone loved became a pariah overnight. She stopped smiling, stopped talking, and eventually, she transferred schools entirely. I ruined her life just to protect my own comfortable peace. That's the kind of pathetic person I am."
I finally turned my gaze away from the night sky and locked my eyes onto her back.
"What have I done?, I thought to myself. I could have just kept quiet about it. But, the thought of myself getting cornered by the class, was too mortifying at that time. So, I...just let it go. Forgetting about her.....was harder than I thought, so thought my classmates too. After a few days she transferred,......."
"The realization of what they had done didn't take long to set in for the rest of the class. Once the initial heat of the witch hunt died down, a heavy guilt washed over the room. Everyone agreed it was simply too cruel to see her end up like that. She was someone who had done so much for everyone, always putting the class first. If she had just told them about her family's situation, they would have gladly pooled their own money to help her out."
"Regret turned into desperation. My classmates started searching frantically, trying to find out which school she had transferred to, wanting nothing more than to apologize and bring her back. But no matter how hard they looked, no one could ever find a trace of her."
""It's too late," they eventually whispered, one by one. And eventually, they gave up. They just let go... exactly like I did."
I took a long pause, deeply reminiscing on the weight of those days. When I think about it now, with a clearer head, the entire matter could have been handled so easily. It didn't have to end in tragedy. But due to my cowardice, the vibrant, smiling face of a girl was completely destroyed, and her spirit was utterly crushed. All because of me.
The silence returned, but this time, it was broken by a quiet, trembling voice.
"Did you... ever find out what happened to her after that?" Ichinose asked, still facing the window.
"Yeah," I replied softly.
In truth, I knew exactly what happened. I had run into her after graduating high school, finding ourselves at the exact same university. She was totally different from how she used to be in middle school—guarded, quiet, and distant—which was entirely understandable given what she went through. When I first spotted her on campus, my instinct was to panic. I tried my absolute best to avoid her, terrified of facing the ghost of my biggest mistake.
But she had confronted me herself.
Of course, I couldn't bring myself to confess that entire awkward reunion to Ichinose right now. Instead, I just summarized the part that still haunted me the most.
"She actually confronted me herself," I told Ichinose, staring at her back. "And strangely enough... she didn't curse me. She didn't show any type of hostility or anger at all. She just looked at me, offered a faint, polite smile, and told me it was nice to see me again."
I took a few steps forward, the distance between us shrinking, though I kept my voice low and steady.
"Her forgiveness didn't erase what I did. It didn't magically restore the middle school days she lost, nor did it cure my guilt. But it taught me something. Regrets, terrible mistakes, absolute mess-ups—they aren't anomalies, Ichinose. They are precisely what makes us human. We act out of fear, out of weakness, or sometimes out of a misguided sense of necessity. If we were perfect, we wouldn't have to grow. We wouldn't know the value of trying to do better the next day."
Ichinose's head lowered slightly, her reflection in the dark glass mirroring a profound, quiet conflict.
"I know whatever you're hiding carries a similar weight," I continued, linking my past to her present. "I see the exact same suffocating shadow over you that I carried for years. You think that by locking it away, by punishing yourself in silence, you're fixing things. But you're wrong. Running yourself into the ground doesn't rewrite the past. It just destroys your present."
I paused, waiting until she slowly turned her head to look at me, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
"You've been playing the role of everyone's flawless savior for so long that you've forgotten you're allowed to fall short. But from where I'm standing, Ichinose, you are easily one of the strongest people I have ever seen. Mentally, at least. To carry the burdens of an entire class, to smile through the pressure, and to still choose kindness every single day—that takes an unbelievable amount of fortitude. If anyone has the strength to face their past and move forward, it's you."
I looked directly into her pained, deadened eyes, refusing to let her look away.
"So stop treating yourself like a monster for being human. You made a mistake. Fine. But don't let it convince you that you're weak. Believe in the strength you've shown everyone else, and for once, use it to save yourself."
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A/N :
Sorry for the late update, I have been busy with something, and couldn't upload for days.
Am trying to be consistent from now on, with hopefully, a chapter every day.
Comment your thoughts below.
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