SECRET

It's this moment you’ll remember.

This moment you'll always cherish, you'll keep in your hands for as long as you can.

The rush, the exhilaration, something that transforms a day into one that matters.

The first time you see Anna Tanaka's face.

It was—it was really nothing.

A daily ritual—what was once something you hardly ever did, you now found yourself not able to live without.

Reading, taking in each word like oxygen, glued to your phone, engrossed in words you could never quite grasp yourself.

And then, she was just there.

A glitch, an impossibility, an interruption into an otherwise unremarkable evening.

Like something your unconscious conjured, unlocked from somewhere you kept all your desires, the things you wanted but had long ago put away as never being a reality for someone like you.

But she was there.

Arriving in the way beautiful things in life usually do: without warning, without apology.

You stare. You can't help it. Who could?

Anna, straight away, as if you'd always known.

Oh.

This.

What all the stories were about, what every author meant when they introduced a character and simply called her pretty, and immediately gave up extrapolating.

Because how could they?

Anna, a girl that you only witness if you're lucky—and you've never, ever been lucky, not really, not in any way that has ever mattered.

Tall and luminous and symmetrical in that rare, otherworldly way of someone who has never been anything less than perfect. Looks that just stop you. Mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-breath.

She should be on the cover of something, or on a billboard somewhere, everywhere, and nowhere someone like you could ever reach.

You feel it deep in your chest.

It's embarrassing, and seismic, and genuinely sincere.

Everything about her. That's all you see, and that's all there is.

Serendipity, you think.

That's the only word there is for it.

And yet.

It makes you feel sick.

The thing is, you always knew.

Not right away.

At first you only knew Anna, knew she was beautiful, but you also knew that beauty is always its own particular kind of problem.

She stayed with you, through it all, through others that would pass, catch your eye, linger along the periphery whenever you were too engrossed in your fiction, your escapes.

And you could feel it. This nagging thing.

The longer you knew her, the more you understood.

There's a ceiling somewhere above you.

Something inevitable, present in the math, the calculations of every moment.

She was everything you should be content with.

That's exactly what was wrong.

It's your nature.

The part of you, the restless, ungovernable part of you that's always chasing something in the next story, a scroll away, the part that had done the arithmetic long before you were ready to admit.

Maybe you'd been doing it all along.

You know that now. You have known, probably, for a while.

The numbers don't lie.

They never do.

"The other girls told me," Anna says to you, and you can see it in slow-motion, something in her slowly breaking. Something in her eyes, fragile and complicated underneath that steadiness. "About your reputation. Your bad luck. The things you've done."

You say nothing. What is there to say to that?

"They told me that you're addicted to it. The chase. Fame. Fortune." She pauses. You think you can see it. Her jaw tightening, if just barely. "Something more beautiful."

She lets that sit between you.

"They said I'd be wasted on you."

"Anna—"

"I just didn't think they'd be right."

She's not crying. You wish she was.

"I just never thought you'd do it to me."

And you look at her face. She never changed. She's always been the same as the first time you saw her. Luminous, symmetrical, rare. Perfect.

Days, weeks you've spent with this face and you are no more immune to it now than you were that very first moment.

You fumble and find words that sound awful the second they come out. "It's not you."

"Then what is it?"

"It's like." You inhale. Exhale. "It's—there's a version of you I want. But—"

Her expression is cold. Unmoving. Precise. "What's wrong with this version of me?"

Nothing, you think.

That, is the entire problem.

"You treat me like I'm other girls."

"No," and this, at least, is completely true. "You're not at all. You're rare."

And maybe you see it, or maybe you imagine it but something flickers in her eyes. Hope? Or maybe just the thing that exists before hope hardens into something less forgiving.

Acceptance.

"Was I not enough for you?"

You smile. It's bitter. It's the only one you have left. "Unfortunately," you try, "you were exactly enough."

You wish she wouldn't stare like that.

"Can you at least tell me why?"

You try.

You genuinely try.

How do you explain something like this to someone like her? The architecture of this whole decision, the necessity of it. The way that sometimes the hard truth of numbers demands a cost that sentiment can't match.

She deserves the truth.

She deserves a lot of things you're never going to be able to give her.

You look at her face, and feel it. Distance. The specific cruelty of being the one that does this.

You know what others will say.

But you're the one that has to make this choice.

You've always known that.

"It's a secret," you say.

"Why can't you tell me?"

"No—" you open your mouth, but stop yourself. "It's literally—no, it doesn't matter."

Anna looks at you. "I hope you remember me."

It's quiet. It's final.

And you mean what you say next, in the imperfect and incomplete way you mean most things.

"I will. And maybe—maybe we'll find our way back to each other again."

You hold her in your hands, one last time.

"Goodbye, Anna."

You imagine forgiveness.

You hold the moment.

You let yourself feel the full weight of it—the bitterness, the particular grief of losing something you chose to lose, which is always so much worse than losing something you didn't.

She is rare, and beautiful, and in every meaningful sense, enough.

You know, with certainty, that you will think about this later and feel nothing useful.

You lift your thumb.

You scroll down.

You select Wisdom and make your offering.

THE SHRINE IS OVERWHELMED BY YOUR TRIBUTE…

MOTHER ****** **** THIS ********************* LITERALLY **** MEEEEEE