Rejection and Looking at My Heart

“I have my sights set on someone else,” I told Yui. “At this time, I wouldn’t be able to honestly reciprocate your emotions. I won’t take you unless I can do it right. All the way, and clean. So please trust me when I say your feelings come across,” I continued. “I’m grateful. I love that you stayed true to yourself. I feel deeply for you, Yui. That’s exactly why I’m doing this now, instead of later.”

“So, it’s more waiting?”

“No.” The disagreement left my mouth impeccable. “I release you from waiting.”

“You found someone else to protect?”

“I found someone I’m choosing,” I corrected, because the distinction mattered. “There’s more I want to do for her; She was closing the future the way I was. We spun and spun together, but like a merry-go-round, we ended where we started. Though we progressed, no progress with the outside world was made that way. You taught me how to step off and face the monsters that reality brings. It’s fantastic that you imparted how to show up when it hurts. But I won’t use what you gave me as an excuse to keep you close while my heart is aimed elsewhere.”

“So… I’ve been important forever. And this other girl is now.”

“You aren’t ‘less-than.’ You’re Yui.”

“What am I supposed to do with my feelings?”

“Whatever you wish. Keep them. Burn them. Hate me. I don’t get to decide.” I paused to make the next line even richer, even harder, because I wouldn’t leave her a loophole to cling to. “I won’t make you carry false hope. I still want you in my life, but not as something romantic I can’t give you. Not as a promise I can’t keep.”

“And what will you do?”

“I’ve stepped off the ride with you. We’ve been each other’s since before the world knew us. You came when I was bruised and ugly. Now I’m neither. I’m done avoiding choosing just because choosing hurts.”

“…I hate this. We’re this close. I mean, you’re Rintarō.”

“I know,” I replied smoothly. “That’s why I won’t do the easier, dirtier thing. I’d rather hate this moment than turn you into someone I slowly ruin.”

Her eyes glistened, furious at herself for it.

“I won’t let time choose for me again,” I added. “Neither my fear. Or your tears. Or the past.”

“Okay. Okay. Then what… what am I supposed to do with this?” Her hand moved before she seemed to decide, to her pocket, like she was afraid if she didn’t touch it right now, it would vanish and take the last proof with it. For a second, it was a dull glint in her trembling palm, until she opened her fingers.

A golden ring. The ring. The one I’d given her when we were kids, when I didn’t have money, but I had certainty, when I had nothing to offer but my hands and my words and my presence.

Too small to fit her now, its surface was softened by time, a circle that had survived slums and hunger and had the pride to return.

She held it up between us like evidence.

“Do I throw this away?” she asked, to be sharp, to be valiant, to be funny, and failed into truthful nakedness. “Do I put it back in my pocket and pretend I didn’t carry it through everything? Do I keep it like a pathetic shrine to a man who just told me he can’t be mine?”

I didn’t reach out. Every muscle in my arm was coiled, bellowing at me to bridge the gap and pull her into my chest, to tell her I remembered too, and to let her rest against my shirt until the world made sense again. But I stood my ground. Touching her now would be another kind of theft.

I looked at the girl I had loved since we were kids, and I let her see the fire in me. The world, my decision, made absolute sense.

“Yui,” I started.

She flinched at her name and did the cruelest thing she could have done to herself, the bravest thing too. She slid the little ring onto the tip of her finger.

“Look,” she whispered. “It still exists.”

“That ring was never a chain. It doesn’t owe us anything.”

“That’s not what I asked. I asked what I’m supposed to do with this when I still feel it means everything.”

“It did mean everything. It meant I was yours. It meant you were mine. And it meant we were stupid enough to think the world couldn’t touch us. But it doesn’t get to decide your future.”

“Then, who does?”

“You,” I ruled. “The present you standing here right now, looking at the horizon.” My gaze locked onto hers, refusing to dawdle. “Keep it if it symbolizes your happiness. Discard it if it’s hurting you. But avoid making it a padlock you place upon yourself because of me.”

Her fingers curled protectively around it. “And if I keep it anyway?” she whispered. “Not as a padlock. Just… as proof I wasn’t crazy to love you?”

My throat tightened. “Keep it. And don’t let it make you small. I kept mine too. It’s safekept in the Damascus of my favorite knife. Yui–”

Her eyes flooded so fast it looked like her body had been waiting for permission. She pressed the heel of her palm to her mouth, like she could keep herself from crying. “Don’t,” she choked. “Don’t say my name like that. That’s the worst part. You’re kind enough to make it feel like you’re holding me, and you still let go.”

“I’m not letting go of what you meant, I’m letting go of the right to pretend I can be yours.”

“I know,” she snapped, louder than she meant to, then crumpled under her own volume. “I know. That’s why I can’t even hate you properly.”

The silence that followed was filled with everything we’d carried for years, all at once. She took a stumbling step back.

“Yui…”

Yui wiped her face, messy and frantic, as though scrubbing could erase the evidence. She turned sharply, shoulders hunched, like she was bracing against the wind.

“Yui, wait–”

“Don’t follow me. If you follow me, I’ll think it means something else. You can’t be stupid and brave at the same time.”

Anything else I said would become another rope.

So, I stayed where I was, and watched her run with what remained of her sun-bright dignity, forced to face the one thing reality never spared anyone from: hurting someone else, with words or not, even though you never wanted to.