He should have known somewhere deep down, beneath the layer of hope he barely allowed himself to feel—he knew this moment would come.

Maybe it was foolish of him to believe that things would have turned out differently. That you’d choose him, left everything behind and finally cross the ocean to start a life together. But hope had always been a quiet thing in him—fragile, and now? It shattered in his hands.

This wasn’t the first time the conversation had come up—your move, the plans, the hesitation—uncertainty. You hesitated before—too many times. Hesitated when he brought up looking at apartments, when he talked about getting you set up with something stable. But Sae understood. He understood your hesitations; Japan was your home, your roots, and Sae had been gone for so long that he sometimes forgot what that meant.

Still, he waited. Patiently—because you were the only thing he wanted to come home to.

He sat on the edge of his bed, one hand clutching the edge of his phone. Your voice still echoed in his head—soft, apologetic, trembling. “I’m not ready.” That’s all it took to send the air rushing from his lungs, to make the world around him still in a way that felt wrong.

Sae had always been composed, cool—at least on the surface. But now, his jaw tightened, his fingers curled until his knuckles paled. He lowered his head as though trying to hide his own disappointment from the empty room around him. He should say something, but his tongue felt heavy, weighted down by every plan, every daydream—every moment he imagined waking up with you beside him.

He pressed the phone harder against his ear, even though you already stopped speaking. His voice was hoarse, a little broken, when he finally spoke. “What?” Maybe he hoped you’d take it back. That you’d say you were joking—that this was just a prank. But he knew you wouldn’t do something like that. That wasn’t who you were.

You were never cruel—that’s what made this feel even worse. You sounded devastated. You were breaking his heart with a voice that shook under the weight of guilt and love. But he couldn’t be angry—he wanted to be. He wanted to curse at you, hang up, to shut you out before you saw how much this hurt him. But he couldn’t. He loved you too much to pretend it didn’t matter.

What killed him most was knowing your reasons were valid—they made sense. You weren’t selfish for staying. You weren’t wrong for needing more time, for hesitating. But that didn’t make it hurt any less. All this time, he thought that if he just waited a little longer, held out hope a little tighter—that you’d come to him. That love would be enough.

But love wasn’t always enough. He learnt that.

“I waited,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “Even when I didn’t say it—I was waiting…for you…” his eyes burned, but he didn’t cry. Not for anyone. But this? It felt different—felt like a loss before it even had the chance to begin.

You murmured something through the speaker, his mind was too clouded to know what you said. He didn’t respond. He didn’t know how to. He leaned back until the mattress hit his back, it didn’t feel soft or warm anymore.

There was silence—long and aching. And in that silence, Sae realised something: you had always loved him so gently. But you also loved him with restraint—one foot still anchored in the life you weren’t ready to leave behind. And now, he would have to figure out how to live in a future without you in it.

Still gripping the phone to his ear, he whispered, “I would’ve given you everything.”

And maybe that was his mistake.