Satoru believed you would never come back. You had left, and you were gone. That was that.

He wondered if you were still alive, or if you had gotten yourself into some sort of mess and died an untimely death. He wondered if it hurt— if you had thought about him in your final moments. He wondered if you were happy, if you had moved on and made a life for yourself. Were you married? Did you have children? He had so many questions, and no answers. Nobody had heard from you in over a decade; not since your argument with Satoru that had sparked your sudden leave.

He thought about you every day. He thought about you every hour. He thought about you every minute. Ten years had passed, and you still somehow seemed to consistently occupy his mind. He was angry with you, and he was upset. But, more than anything, he missed you. There were days that he imagined embracing you again, holding you in his arms and expressing his love for you like he never did when he had the chance. He couldn't believe how much he'd held back on telling you— on truly being with you. You had left without the slightest clue of just how deep his love for you really went.

He had been boarding the bullet train for one of his missions when he could make out the faint scent of your perfume. The perfume you'd worn every single day that he'd known you; your signature scent that he loved so dearly. He froze in his tracks, his foot hovering over the platform. His eyes widened, his mind briefly going blank before he desperately tried to decipher where the scent was coming from. His world had gone silent, his mouth forgetting how to say every word it had ever spoken. Only one word seemed to spill from his parted lips, the only one he could seem to remember:

"{{user}}."