By just living one's life, sadness accumulates here and there. Be it in the sheets hung out in the sun to dry, the toothbrushes in the bathroom, and the history logs of a mobile phone.
'I still like you, even now,' so wrote the girl I had dated three years ago in her email. 'But, even if we were to exchange a thousand emails, our hearts would probably not move even one centimeter closer together.'
In the last several years, I have forged ahead without any regard, just to touch what I cannot reach. That email was a definite indicator of that fact. Without understanding the sources from which this menacing thought surged forth from, I continued working. When I at last noticed, my heart had already become hard from the gradual loss of its youthful vitality. And on a certain morning, when I at last came to an earnest realization that I had lost everything that was beautiful, I knew I was at my limits.
Tohno Takaki, from 5 Centimeters per Second
