sunsetz
(a kenmei bittersweet / angst oneshot )
The strange thing about losing Mei was that Kenma never stopped seeing her.
Not in the way people sometimes described seeing ghosts, and not because he genuinely believed she was somewhere nearby.
It was different from that.
She existed in the small distortions of ordinary life, in the moments when memory became so vivid that the present seemed to thin around it. He would catch the sunset reflected against a passing car and remember her sitting beside him. He would hear the ocean from somewhere beyond the road and remember the way she used to watch it, her expression distant and thoughtful as though she were listening to something beneath the waves.
And when you go away, I still see you.
He understood those words differently now.
He still saw her in the rearview mirror sometimes, especially when the sun was low enough to turn the glass gold. For a fleeting second, the empty seat behind him would become occupied by the shape of her, her face turned toward the window, her hair illuminated by the last light of evening. He knew it wasn’t real. He knew memory was simply doing what it had always done, returning the things he had loved in whatever form it could find.
Still, he never looked away immediately.
There was no point in pretending he didn’t want those seconds.
Once, he had thought that seeing Mei everywhere meant he wasn’t healing properly. He wondered if he was supposed to become accustomed to the absence until her face stopped appearing in his thoughts, until the sound of her name became ordinary, until the sunset could simply be a sunset again.
But time never really made her disappear completely, it only taught him how to carry her.
He carried her in the photographs she had taken and the ones he had taken of her without her knowing. He carried her in the sea, in the old playground near the coast, in the roads they used to walk after school.
He carried her in the way he still noticed little things she would have liked, sometimes instinctively turning his head as though he could tell her about them before remembering that there was no longer anyone beside him.
One late afternoon, on the day after her 1st death anniversary, Kenma stopped by the shore just before sunset.
“It’s been a year, huh? Time flies.”
The tide was coming in slowly, and the water reflected the sky in muted shades of orange and pink. He sat on the sand and watched the horizon until the colors began to fade.
He remembered Mei beside him.
“You know,” she had once said, “I think sunsets are somewhat sad.”
Kenma had looked at her. “You like them.”
“I know.”
“Then why are they sad?”
She had thought for a while before answering.
“Because you know they’re ending while they’re still beautiful.”
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He hadn’t understood then.
But he did now.
Kenma looked toward the sea, letting the silence settle around him.
“I finally get it,” he murmured.
The waves reached the shore and withdrew.
“You were always talking about things ending.”
He smiled faintly.
“You just never told me why.”
For a moment, he could almost imagine her beside him, shoulder brushing his, eyes fixed on the horizon.
Then the light shifted, and he was alone again.
He had finally realized that remembering Mei did not mean he was refusing to let her go.
It meant that there were pieces of her that had become inseparable from the way he experienced the world. The sunset was beautiful because he remembered that she loved it. The sea was familiar because she had once sat beside him there. Certain evenings felt softer because, somewhere in his memory, she was still turning toward him with that soft smile of hers.
The past could not be returned to, he knew that.
But sometimes, when the sunset stretched itself across the water and the world became silent enough, Kenma could look toward the horizon and feel as though the distance between then and now had briefly disappeared.
He would see her again, only for a moment. Only in memory.
And perhaps that was enough.
Because she had gone away, but she had never completely vanished.
She remained in every sunset he stopped to notice, every wave that returned to the shore, every photograph he could not bring himself to delete, and every quiet evening when the world became golden and he remembered what it was like to have her beside him.
Kenma watched the final light disappear.
Then, almost too softly for even the sea to hear, he said,
“I still see you, Mei.”
And this time, the memory didn’t hurt.
It simply stayed.
And when you go away, I still see you.
hey so um excuse my dialogue, I’m not so good when it comes to writing dialogue and I’m still practicing because I’ve only ever done narrations..
