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Suo Hayato left Furin on a Tuesday.
There was nothing remarkable about the day itself. The sky was clear, the morning air warm enough that Sakura had complained about the heat before they had even reached school, and Nirei had nearly dropped his notebook into the gutter while trying to write down something Sugishita had muttered.
Suo had laughed as he had walked beside them with his hands tucked into his sleeves, smiling as Sakura argued that whatever Sugishita said could not possibly have been important enough to record.
He attended every class as expected, joined them as they ate lunch on the roof of the school, helped an elderly woman carry her groceries across the shopping district after school. Then, sometime between sunset and the streetlights flickering on, Suo disappeared.
At first, no one noticed……Suo had always been difficult to keep track of when he wanted to be. He came and went quietly, slipping out of conversations without anyone seeing him leave and appearing beside them just as soundlessly.
When he did not arrive at Café Pothos the next morning, Nirei sent him a message. When Suo did not answer, Sakura called and the call went directly to voicemail, prompting Sakura to visit his apartment.
The room was empty, but not abandoned.
Suo was too careful to leave the disorder of abandonment behind.
The bed had been made, the dishes had been washed and returned to their cupboards, there was no food in the refrigerator to spoil and no laundry forgotten in the machine.
His books were gone, so were his clothes, the chessboard from the small kitchen table, and the tin of tea Kiryu had brought him three months earlier.
His school uniform hung from a hook beside the door and folded over the desk was his Furin jacket.
Sakura stood in the middle of the room with his phone clenched in one hand.“He knew,” he said.
Nirei stopped in the doorway behind him, “What?”
“He knew he wasn’t coming back.”
The words left a bitter taste in Sakura’s mouth. He stared at the jacket. Suo had stood beside him less than twenty-four hours ago.
He had smiled and listened and laughed in all the right places. He had walked home with them until the road divided, lifting one hand in farewell as though they would see one another again the following morning.
Not once had his smile faltered and not once had he said goodbye.
The first letter arrived three days later.
It was addressed to Nirei.
Only Nirei’s name written across the front in Suo’s graceful handwriting, no return address, no stamp.
Nirei’s hands shook so badly Sakura had to open it for him and inside was one sheet of paper.
Dear Nirei,
I’m sorry.
You are likely making a list of all the reasons I may have left. Knowing you, it has already filled several pages.
Please don’t waste too much ink on me.
None of this is your fault.
You were the first person at Furin who looked at me as though knowing me was something you genuinely wanted, rather than a puzzle you intended to solve.
I’m afraid I never knew what to do with that kind of kindness.
I hope you never lose it. Please continue writing everything down.
One day, you’ll realize that you were never standing behind the rest of us. You were the one reminding us where we needed to go.
Take care of Sakura and please take care of yourself, too.
—Suo
Nirei read it three times and on the fourth, his tears struck the page and blurred the ink beneath the words your fault.
“He wrote this before he left,” Nirei whispered.
Sakura’s jaw tightened, “You don’t know that.”
“The paper smells like his apartment.”
Sakura hated that Nirei would notice something like that.
He hated the careful slant of Suo’s handwriting and the soft, patient voice he could hear behind every sentence.
Most of all, he hated that the letter sounded finished and final. It was as though Suo had already accepted that there would be no answer.
Sakura took out his phone and called him again, the same empty voice told him the number was no longer in service.
The second letter arrived the following morning.
Tsugeura found it tucked inside his shoe locker.
Dear Tsugeura,
I regret that I never discovered my virtue. You’ll have to forgive me. Thank you for asking anyway.
There are people in this world who make strength feel like something meant to protect rather than frighten. You are one of them.
Don’t allow anyone to convince you otherwise.
Keep everyone moving forward. —Suo
Tsugeura did not cry, he folded the letter along its original creases, placed it carefully in his pocket, and punched the concrete wall hard enough to split his knuckles.
The third was waiting beneath Sugishita’s desk after lunch, but no one saw who left it.
Dear Sugishita,
You and I never needed many words between us.
I hope you won’t mind if I keep this brief.
Umemiya-san will need you. So will Sakura, though I imagine he would rather fight both of us than admit it.
Protect them, I know I never needed to ask.
—Suo
Sugishita tore the letter in half, tossing the paper aside and watching as they fell to the floor littering the area with the words he could not bring himself to voice aloud.
By the time the fourth letter came, Sakura had stopped sleeping.
Every knock made him look toward the door, every unfamiliar face in the shopping district made his heart seize.
He began taking longer patrol routes, searching alleys that did not need to be searched and rooftops no one had reported trouble on.
Suo had to be somewhere…..people did not simply disappear. They left footprints and made mistakes…..tgey told someone.
Suo had told them nothing.
Kiryu received his letter five days after Suo vanished. It came in the mail like something ordinary.
There was a stamp in the upper corner and a black postal mark smeared across it. Kiryu stared at the envelope for a long time before turning it over.
A small red flower had been drawn beside the seal.
Kiryu opened the envelope, his letter contained two pages.
Dear Kiryu,
I imagine you’re angry.
You’ve always been frighteningly good at noticing when I’m lying, so I suspect you knew something was wrong long before I left.
Perhaps you’re angry with yourself for not stopping me. Don’t be.
You couldn’t have stopped me.
Kiryu’s fingers tightened around the page and Sakura watched the smile disappear from his face.
There are things I should have told you. I wanted to, more times than I can count. Sometimes I would sit across from you and think that if I opened my mouth, everything might come spilling out.
Then you would smile at me and I would decide I wanted to remain the person you believed I was for one more day. That was selfish of me.
There are old debts waiting for me, and I’m afraid they’ve begun collecting interest.
I'm sorry for not telling you in person and I know what you’ll do after reading this.
Please don’t.
Kiryu stopped and Sakura reached for the page,“What else does it say?”
Kiryu pulled it out of reach.
“Kiryu.”
“I’m reading.” His voice was quiet.
Do not follow me.
Whatever happens there belongs to the life I had before Furin,I won’t allow it to become yours.
I’m sorry I took the tea. It was too good to leave behind.
I’m sorry I left everything else. Most of all, I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye while looking at you.
I think you would have asked me to stay and I think I would have wanted to.
—Hayato
Silence filled Café Pothos. Kiryu stared at the final line until the letters lost their shape. Suo had signed every other letter simply as Suo, but he had signed Kiryu’s as Hayato.
“What does he mean by old debts?" Sakura asked.
Kiryu folded the letter carefully.,“Trouble.”
“What kind?”
“The kind Suo thinks he deserves.” Kiryu slipped the pages back into their envelope and stood.
“And where are you going?” Kotoha demanded.
“To pack.”
Sakura rose so quickly his chair scraped across the floor,“I’m coming.”
“No,” Kiryu’s smile returned, but there was no warmth in it, “You’re waiting for your letter.”
Sakura’s hands curled into fists, “I don’t want a damn letter.”
“I don’t think any of us did.”
Umemiya’s arrived the next day. It was left among the flowers on the rooftop.
Dear Umemiya-san,
Thank you for allowing me to stand beneath your sky.
Furin taught me that strength could be gentle.
It taught me that a town could become a home and that protecting people did not always have to mean destroying something first. I wish I had learned those lessons sooner.
Please forgive me for leaving without permission.
There is somewhere I need to return to and someone I need to become again. I don’t know whether that person can coexist with the one Furin knows. Perhaps it is better if you never have to find out.
Thank you for giving me a place here.
I’m sorry I couldn’t keep it.
—Suo
Umemiya sat between the garden beds with the letter resting against his knee. For once, he did not smile.
“He really is an idiot,” Hiragi muttered.
Umemiya looked toward the horizon.“No,” he said softly.
“He’s scared.”
"Of wherever he went?"
“No, of coming back from it.”
Sakura’s letter did not arrive. One week passed, then another.
Kaji found his beside an unopened pack of candy.
Hiragi’s arrived folded inside a new box of stomach medications delivered to his house.
Even Kotoha discovered a short note beneath a saucer at Café Pothos, thanking her for every meal and apologizing for the dishes he had not stayed to wash.
Nothing came for Sakura and the others stopped mentioning the letters around him. He grew meaner in Suo’s absence. He patrolled until his legs ached and trained until his knuckles opened.
Suo had asked Nirei to take care of him.He had asked Sugishita to protect him, had told Kiryu that he'd wanted to stay, but to Sakura, he had said nothing.
As though Sakura had not mattered enough to leave behind a few lines of ink. On the seventeenth day, Sakura returned to his room and found an envelope lying on his pillow.
The window was open and he crossed the room in three steps and leaned outside, searching the dark street below, but there was no one there.
His name was written on the front.
Just Sakura, no greeting, no honorific. He ripped the envelope open and there were four pages inside.
The first contained only one sentence.
I don’t know how to say goodbye to you.
Sakura sat heavily on the edge of his bed as he turned the page.
I wrote everyone else’s letters before I left. I have written yours eleven times.
Rakta has started threatening to burn my stationery. Bacchus has offered increasingly terrible suggestions.
Neither of them understands that there are no words I can give you that won’t sound like an excuse.
You will think I left because I didn’t trust you.
That isn’t true…I left because I do.
Sakura swallowed and is vision blurred, but he scrubbed angrily at his eyes.
I trust you to protect Furin. I trust you to stand beside Nirei and the others.
I trust you to become the person everyone already knows you can be, but if I had told you the truth, you would have followed me.
You would have looked at where I'm going….all its violence, all its ugliness, every terrible thing waiting for me there…and decided it was worth facing simply because I was facing it.
I couldn’t let you do that. You once told me you hated people who decided things for others. I suppose you can add it to the list of reasons to hit me when we meet again.
Sakura’s breath caught. He'd said when, not if.
He clutched the page hard enough to crumple it as he continued to read.
I wish I could tell you why I had to return., but explanations can be followed.
You have never possessed enough self-preservation to leave a dangerous thing alone, so I will only tell you this: I did not leave because Furin meant nothing to me. I left because it meant too much.
Before Furin, I believed there were some places people like me could never belong, but you made leaving difficult.
I don’t expect you to forgive me. I only need you to wait. If I can return, I will.
And if I can’t
That sentence had been struck through so violently the paper had torn and beneath it, Suo had started again.
When I return, you can yell at me. You can hit me once, provided you don’t aim for my face and you can tell me that I’m an idiot.
Then, if you are still willing, I would like to walk home with you again.
Until then, please don’t mistake my absence for a lack of love. There are people who leave because they feel nothing, but I left because I felt too much to ask you to come with me.
—Suo
Below his name, squeezed into the bottom corner as though added at the last possible moment, was one more line.
P.S. I’m sorry, Sakura.
Please don’t come looking for me.
Sakura read the letter twice, then he stood, grabbed his jacket, and marched toward the door.
Nirei was waiting outside,so were Sugishita, Tsugeura, Umemiya, Hiragi, and Kiryu.
Kiryu had a travel bag slung over one shoulder.
For the first time in seventeen days, Sakura smiled,“He told me not to look for him.”
Kiryu hummed, “He told me the same.”
“He should know us better than that.” Sakura looked down at the final page in his hand and Suo’s apology stared back at him.
All that distance placed between them one envelope at a time. Suo had known exactly what they would do.
Perhaps that was why Sakura’s letter had come last, not because he mattered least, but because Suo had needed him to understand most.
Sakura folded the pages and tucked them safely inside his jacket,“Let’s go get our idiot back.”
Far away, beneath the blood-red lanterns of Bankoku-gai, Suo stood at the mouth of a narrow alley with Rakta on one side and Bacchus on the other.
Someone shouted behind them and glass shattered.
Rakta wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and glared at Suo,“You know they’re going to come.”
Suo adjusted the knot of his eyepatch with one bloodied hand,“I told them not to.”
“No,” Rakta said, taking a stance as footsteps thundered toward them, “You wrote twelve separate invitations and disguised them as farewell letters.”
For one fleeting second, Suo thought of green uniforms and of Nirei’s earnest voice, Sakura’s scowl and of Kiryu's sharp tongue. His smile softened, behind it, something fragile continued to hope.
“Well,” Suo murmured as the first attacker rounded the corner, “perhaps I wanted to be found.”