Getting to Know the Real You
New Year’s Day
I think I know what you want. You told me the first time I said I liked you, a lot. Since then, I’ve been trying to show you what that means to me by coming to see you every year. To know you more. To spend more time with you. To see if this could be something real.
The first time we had dinner together in Sannomiya, at that seafood restaurant on Ikuta Road, all I could think about was how attentive you were. The way you cut the fish and served it to me. The softness of your voice when you said I should try this. The small, easy laugh when I found one of the dishes disagreeable. In that moment, you felt like them, like someone I could choose. It was more pronounced that evening, even though I’ve always felt it.
I want to live in Kobe or Osaka to be closer to you and to know the real you. Though somehow I already feel the real you when I’m with you. Words aren’t enough, and they never will be. Today, I made cornbread to go with the chicken soup I cooked a few days ago, but I poured too much batter into the pan, and it splattered into the grease. It overflowed. The oven started smoking. The smoke alarms went off. I don’t know why I’m telling you this now, except that I want to be someone in your life who gives an overflowing amount of warmth and love, wherever we are. And let it burn throughout the night, until forever makes us still.
Wherever we are: your place, my place, outside on a long walk, in a restaurant, a café, or on a plane. I just want you by my side. I want to show you that it’s me. I know you feel it, I see it in your eyes: that soft glimmer of hope, that soft glimmer of worry. Just know that I’m ready. Tell me. Tell me, J’Sun, please move here so we can be together. I can’t wait any longer. I want you. And I want you to show me, too, that it has to be you for me.
There have been so many moments where we were close to kissing, maybe a hundred times, but a hundred times isn’t enough. I want it a million times over. Each kiss, another way of learning the real you. Two summers ago, I stole a kiss before saying goodbye at the Kaigen Line entrance at Sannomiya Station. Later, over DM, I apologized because it was in public, and I didn’t know how you felt. I was relieved, charmed—so happy!—when you said you’re happy to kiss me. Unlike Shun, I’m not afraid. I’m ready.
I don’t have poetry to prove that what I’m saying is real. Yes, the moon is beautiful! Yes, being quiet together, just being, looking out over the Pacific Ocean, is beautiful. The quick touches, the glances, getting closer to each other. The way we linger instead of saying goodbye, wanting to hold on a little longer. Those things are real. They will always be real. Always.