No Distance

"I would've tried." Gene wrote from his kitchen table.
     The letter he sent arrived beneath Miya's pillow a few days later.
     "I believe you, but it's not like you can change the past." Miya replied as she sat on her bed.
      She sent her own letter in response.
      "If I could change the past, what would you want me to change?" He wrote.
      "I don't think you want to know the answer to that. I appreciate your concern, but it wouldn't do either of us any good to think about things that are impossible." She scribbled.
     "If me or Annabelle did that, then we wouldn't be talking. After all, isn't it 'impossible' to actually reach one of you K-Pop idols?" He yawned as he wrote the letter late in the night.
     "You're right. I just; I can't say I don't like talking about it, because I've never told anyone about it before. I'm nervous about how you'd respond." She confessed.
     "If you don't want to tell me or Annabelle, that's fine. I'm only asking because recently I've learned about how helpful it can be to tell people about what you're struggling with."
     "The thing is, who else could I tell? Mukashi is my manager, and things are already awkward between us. I asked him a kind of personal question, and he politely refused to go any further. I think he's doing his best to avoid getting too close to me." Miya wrote with a miniature frown.
     "I don't think you should bother with that fellow. If he doesn't want to do anything more than the bare minimum for his job, then let him. He'll get fired for incompetence eventually. My dad always told me that there were two kinds of bad workers: those who don't do what they're told, and those that only do what they're told. In my opinion, if he's not willing to learn about you or display any level of care beyond what's strictly required of him, then he's not a very good employee." Gene penned as he pulled a piece of lettuce from between his teeth. 
     "Mukashi is a good employee for Zygeist Media; he's always managing my schedule perfectly, and he makes sure I get the right nutrients and that my makeup is on point. He also manages my fan meet-ups and advertisement and a hundred other things that make my career what it is. I can't really blame him for not having the time to get to know me." Miya wrote, trying to defend her manager.
     "But you have time together, right? You've told me and Annabelle that the two of you have time where you're traveling with each other or just waiting for something to happen. When you say 'he doesn't have the time' you need to understand that he really does. I'm not saying you need to have deep conversations with the man, but the fact that he's there and it sounds like he actively doesn't want to get to know you better is what pisses me off." Gene grit his teeth slightly as he imagined Mukashi pushing Miya away for no good reason.
     Miya wasn't used to someone saying what they felt so bluntly. While she held Gene's latest letter in her hands, she thought about what he was saying and tried to come up with a response. In her mind, she tried to think about what would happen if Mukashi had more time he could spend with her. She tried to imagine him reaching out to her and attempting to make a connection.
     She couldn't do it.
     "You're very American." She wrote in her reply. "I don't know if I could write the way you write."
     "You don't need to. Please, tell me if I'm misjudging Mukashi. All I know is what you've told me, and sometimes I get a little carried away with my assumptions." 
     Miya sat on her bed with her blue pen in hand and thought for a long while about what to say to Gene. 
     "I think you're right about how he doesn't want to get to know me." She wrote slowly. "I already told you about how I saw him flinch, and recently I've caught him acting oddly twitchy. He's been on edge for a few weeks now, but when I asked him how he was doing he refused to give me any details that could help me out. But I don't think that makes him a bad person; I think he's just a very professional kind of man."
     Gene looked at the last line of Miya's letter and thought about what Miya had written. He breathed deeply and wrote back while pressing his pen against the paper firmly.
     "Miya, if there's anything you need to talk about, you have me and Annabelle." He put the words onto the page with a shaking hand. 
     As he was about to send Miya the letter with those words, he stopped. 
     Those words were true, but he couldn't get rid of a strange feeling nesting deep in his chest. He felt like he needed to write something else; he felt like the letter wasn't complete quite yet. 
     He took the letter out of the envelope and added another sentence. Before he could reconsider his decision, he stuffed the letter back into the envelope and put it into his mailbox. 
     "And if there are things that you think would be a little rough on my sister, you can always just send a letter to me." 
     Miya read the letter with the invitation and couldn't help smiling slightly. She didn't dislike Annabelle at all; as a matter of fact, she had been making sure to respond to the letters that were from 'both siblings' as well as the ones that were only from Gene. 
     Despite that, there was something very soothing about being able to write only to Gene. She thought his outrage at Mukashi was a little cute, and the way he seemed to be so protective of his sister was endearing. She put the following message in her letter that she sent confirming that she would take him up on his offer of continued one-on-one communication.
     "Gene, why are you being so nice to me?"
     "It's how I was raised." He wrote. "And there's the fact that you're a lot more genuine than I expected. I mean, when Annabelle showed me your music videos and recordings from your fan meet-ups, I really thought it was all a show; that you might just be pretending to be nice. But you sent us all these letters; you told us about your depression, and I realized that you're not a 'Miracle;' you're just Miya." 
     Miya's eyes widened as she read the next part of Gene's letter.
     "And I like Miya. She's a kind, interesting woman who has a great singing voice and shows a lot of concern for a guy that, in my opinion, isn't worth any of it." Gene blushed slightly as he wrote that part of his letter, but he justified it to himself as honesty.
     Miya, while reading Gene's letter, couldn't stop smiling. When she wrote back to him, she couldn't stop humming to herself.
     "Are all Americans as blunt as you?" She wrote with a smirk.
     "I think I'm a special kind of American Miss Miya."
     "My last name is Min-Hee; you shouldn't say 'Miss' and then use my first name. It's improper." She smiled teasingly as she put the letter under her pillow.
     "That's a nice last name; is it ok if I ask about where you got it?" 
     "My grandparents. They raised me after my parents left, so I took their last name."
     Gene, upon reading Miya's letter about what her parents had done, pounded his fist against his kitchen table.
     "I'm sorry about that; I can't imagine how hard that must have been for you."
     Miya smiled sadly when she read Gene's condolences.
     "It's not like you can do anything about it. Besides, they left right after I was born. It doesn't hurt anymore."
     "Don't lie. You're not the kind of woman who says 'it doesn't hurt anymore' and means it. You don't need to try and hide anything from me, understand?" Gene's pen felt heavy in his hand as the words fell onto the paper.
     "You say that, but is that really true? You can say anything you want in a letter, but if you saw me and heard me and knew what I was really like, then you might change your mind. If you saw what I was really like, you might not like me."
     Gene saw tearstains on the letter.
     "What could I do to prove that you can say anything you want to me?"
     Miya saw the jagged words on the letter. She thought, for an entire day, about what she could say in response to Gene's offer.
     One idea shone brightly in her mind.
     "What if you came to a meet-up?"