I Don’t Want This To End

This is the final entry in the Love Monster series.

What began as reflections on watching The Boyfriend slowly became something more personal: small notes on intimacy, distance, and the strange rituals that hold love together across oceans. Written across distance, between Chicago and Kobe, the series traces how love persists through fleeting encounters, small gestures, and the spaces between departures and returns.

Episode 10 felt like the right place to end, or maybe just pause.

All throughout this episode, all I could think about was our goodbyes, especially the one in the summer of 2024.

We had just finished tonkatsu at Katsukura Tonkatsu (Mint Kobe). At this point, tonkatsu might already be becoming our goodbye tradition. You walked me to the entrance of the Kobe Municipal Subway Kaigan Line. This was after I stole that kiss.

We stood there talking longer than we needed to. I think you knew I was stalling. I told you I didn’t want to leave. I don’t remember exactly how we got there, but you said something like, “I always want to see you . . . but my job.” Tears were already forming in your eyes. I knew that if we stayed any longer, we both would have been a crying mess.

Eventually, I paid my fare and walked through the gate.

I turned around to say goodbye one last time.

Once I rounded the corner, I started bawling. I tried to stay quiet because I never wanted our time together to end.

Last year was even harder because we barely got to see each other. At Sannomiya Station, this time at the JR entrance, I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want you to see the tears already running down my face. I did try to look for you one last time, but you had already disappeared.

I held everything in until I got close to the share house where I was staying in Shin-Nagata. I stopped there, almost kneeling on the ground, crying, praying, really, because I never want this to end.

At the end of the episode, when Shun and Dai leave together, I keep imagining—no, waiting, praying—for the day we can be like that: making a way for our future so that we don’t end.

But if there are more goodbyes, maybe we already know the ritual.

Tonkatsu first.
Then the walk to the station.

Then the gate—
the moment neither of us
really wants to go through.

Maybe one day
we’ll just keep walking past the gate,
and it won’t end.

Somewhere, the future begins