Somehow, I still feel the urge to write these days, though I no longer know exactly what I am writing for, or what it is I am trying to say. I suppose I am at peace now, or at least that is what I tell myself.

In this modern world, there is always another possibility. Another person, another conversation, another door to open when one closes. We have access to so many people, yet somehow remain truly connected to so few, sometimes to no one at all.

Perhaps it really isn't that deep. You used to tell me that I could simply find someone else. Maybe I should. Maybe I have to. I don't know whether you will ever be part of my life again, and if I am being honest, I seriously doubt that you will.

Perhaps I will find someone. Perhaps I won't. No one knows.

But I do know that trusting someone with all of me again will not come easily. I cannot even imagine falling in love with someone who isn't you. It would almost feel unfair to them, assuming I ever allow myself to get close enough to someone again.

You are still alive somewhere in this world, living your life, breathing beneath the same sky. But in mine, you are gone. I lost you. Perhaps forever.

And I am so bored. So lonely. Somewhere along the way, I lost my passion for photography too. I don't feel like doing anything. Yet I desperately want to do something, simply because I am tired of doing nothing. Everything feels strangely colourless.

Perhaps you were right. Maybe when I lost you, I lost more than just a person. You left a space so enormous that I still don't know what could possibly fill it.

Days pass. No message. No news. No urgent work to pull me out of my head. Nothing.

I cannot see very far ahead anymore. Sometimes I look backwards, but even the past seems to lead back to you. The present is simply empty. I watch things on Netflix to distract myself. Sometimes it works. I am back on dating apps too. Nothing. It almost feels as though the universe itself is keeping everyone at a distance.

Sometimes I wonder whether everything would have ended differently if I had acted colder. If I had pretended not to care. If I had given you less of myself. Would you have liked me more? Would you still be here? But that isn't who I am. I could never pretend not to care when, in truth, I cared so much.

It is almost impossible for me to find someone I genuinely like who feels the same way about me. Then you appeared, and for a brief moment, I thought perhaps the search was finally over. And now you are gone, and somehow you managed to break the search engine along with my heart.

I don't know how to look anymore. I keep telling myself that I still want you because I haven't found someone better. But that isn't the truth. The truth is that, to me, there is no one better. At least, not yet.

I looked at your Instagram the other day. I saw the photographs you took. They were beautiful. And, embarrassingly, some foolish part of me still hoped I might find myself somewhere among them. What a ridiculous thought.

I sometimes imagine you reading all of this one day. All these pages, all these words, like some strange record of how deeply I once loved you. Perhaps you would be touched. Perhaps you would laugh. Perhaps, years from now, I will be the one laughing at myself for having written so much about someone who was only in my life for such a short time.

But I miss you. Your voice. Your smile. Your hands in mine. The warmth of your skin. Your hair. Your lips. The strange way sunlight seemed brighter whenever you were beside me.

I know I may have been imagining things, but sometimes I wonder whether you asked your friend to come along because you didn't want to be alone with me. I don't want that to be true. But perhaps reality is pointing in that direction. You were never a very convincing liar, you know. Maybe you simply wanted to avoid the difficult conversation. The confrontation. The weight of having to tell me something you knew would hurt.

What I don't understand is why. You knew how I felt about you from the beginning. If you didn't feel the same, you could have told me. There was no need to put yourself into a situation that made you uncomfortable.

I remember asking you, after that night at the club, to think about everything again when you were sober. To decide whether you genuinely wanted to see me again. I gave you time. I gave you an opportunity to stop everything before either of us became more involved. And you told me you didn't regret what you had said. You told me you wanted to see me again.

So I never really understood what getting to know each other as friends was supposed to mean. If we were friends, wouldn't we simply get to know each other naturally? I never hid what I felt for you. Perhaps that is why so many questions remain unanswered.

And strangely, I am not even sad anymore. Not angry. Not in pain. Just empty. A quiet black hole somewhere inside me, consuming whatever light remains.

I am tired. My heart is tired. My soul is tired. And no amount of sleep seems capable of repairing either.

Perhaps this is simply what remains when the storm has finally passed. Not devastation. Just silence.

There is only one thing I truly regret. That first long piece of writing I made for you at Ueno, when you asked me to show you what I had written. I wish I had shown it to you then. Perhaps it would not have changed anything. But at least, for one brief moment, you would have known exactly what you had already become to me.