Like we never knew each other.

~*~

For the past hour or so, I’ve been dumbfoundedly staring at my phone, feeling the weight of a text message that I did not expect to receive ever in my life. I kept reading it and rereading it, as if the meaning or the words would change every time I did.

This evening as I unwinded from another long day of working like a sweatshop slave, I checked my phone. An unsaved number had talked to me. I only recognized the person in the image.

Nanashi Mumei. The girl that used to live next door.

My first friend.

Our friendship goes back to my mother babysitting for her and me, and us growing together going to the same school, sharing the same friends, seeing each other on our birthdays. All my life, I’ve known this girl. After our paths diverged as high school ended, we stopped seeing each other as much. I haven’t heard a word of her for years, and yet, it feels like I could remind her who she was in case she forgot.

The message itself was no more than just a friendly greeting, and I replied by stating the obvious.

“Moom?”

“Yup :P”

“Holy shti how are you”

Back and forth with the formalities. How’s your mother, how’s life, how’s university, how’s everything, what have you been up to, have you seen X…

I told her I was working retail, she told me she was doing streaming.

Eventually the motive for her to text came to light. A little get-together between our old class. Only a handful of them, however.

And just as my fingers were excitedly typing ‘Yes’ I stopped, and I stared at our conversation. Something beckoned me. A trip down memory lane, a bus ride with a sickeningly damp air inside, as I stare out the window at a nostalgic scenery.

Mumei.

Like I said, we’ve known each other for most of our lives. From before kindergarten to high school. I can vividly recall so much from this person it feels like a mirror into my own soul. Remembering what we shared brings memories back to life, both happy and bitter ones alike.

I remember watching anime with her growing up, a rarity that broadcasted in certain channels my parents had in their TV plan. I remember sleepovers in which we’d sneak into the living room and watch horror movies that messed up my sleep for the night while she rooted for the killers. I remember her getting mad at how she would forget something as simple as where she left her yogurt. I remember playing mechas with her using cardboard boxes and making up super powers on the go. Those are the only things I like to remember, at least.

My memory is perhaps stronger than hers.

Being the first friend I had ever made, I had an early crush on Moom, as I liked to call her. Like kids do, we promised to marry each other when we were all grown up, and as silly as it is to hold onto an infantile dream, I don’t think I ever gave up on that idea.

That was until middle school came.

All I had to show for my dream of marrying my childhood friend was a rejected confession, with the compromise that we could still be friends. Mumei herself, had her own childhood crush that went to our school, and he was the one that became her boyfriend. As bitter as the mess of hormones pubescent me was, I didn’t want to do something stupid like cutting them off my life in a dramatic cry for attention. They were still my friends.

And as all people who partake in love before they can understand it, Mumei and her boyfriend were a swinging pendulum.

Mumei was incredibly needy, as I remember. When we had moments to talk she’d vent about how her boyfriend was ignoring her or how he chose volleyball practice over her. Petty little things that only tweens can consider a personal attack, an offense worthy of never speaking to that person again.

And I’d be there, holding her head on my shoulder as she bawled her eyes out, cursing him alongside her. Like a vulture looking for scraps, I thought my chance had come at last. I was such a selfish little prick.

A week later, they were back in each other's arms, and having at each other's lips. The same paradigm repeated itself over and over. On and off they went. Every time was the last time.

Puberty came and went, highschool took the stage, and they were still together, and they were still my friends.

Mutual interests and hobbies kept us in a tightly knit basket, geeking out about Hunter x Hunter or playing emulators on our phones. If her boyfriend was around, I’d see them cuddle up on each other, but I had managed to ground my own feelings by this point. I felt that I was letting go.

Perhaps now that they were just a bit more mature, things would be different, but no.

Her boyfriend had the bad habit of bringing things to an end for no reason. Breaking up with her with excuses that probably only made sense to him. So the pattern repeated itself. Ad infinitum. And of course, there I was, listening to her bawl her eyes out, listening to her cries and handing her wipes to clean her eyes and her nose.

Then they got back together, again. And to no one’s surprise, almost as if it was set on a timer or a schedule, they had another falling out. At this point I didn’t even have the energy to comfort her about the emotionally insufficient man she had chosen to love, but I still put myself through the grueling task of listening to a woman speak about problems she brought upon herself, because I was her friend. I had known her all my life. What kind of person would I be if I denied her her comfort then? I had to, I was her best friend, after all.

When they fought she’d call me over to her house, still located where it always was, right across the street. I’d see her open the door in what I assume was an outfit she picked to go out or -very well- to wait for him to come over. All the same I held her in my arms, I’d hear my phone blasting with messages, sometimes deep into the night, as she vented and asked me to come see her.

By a miracle of chance, I had had my first girlfriend. I believed that maybe now I would get a chance at burying what I once felt for Mumei, if any of it was even left. Anyways, it lasted only a month, and I spent the rest of high school in a self-imposed but bitter solitude.

Before we knew it we were graduating, and still friends. Talking everyday, sending each other dumb memes, talking about what would be of our lives, hear her fangirling over Kamina from Gurren Lagann or whatever we were watching at the time.

Then, one day, she spoke to me as usual, excited to tell me that she had given her virginity to her crush, not sparing any details.

And without me realizing it, I crumbled.

I had no right to be bitter over it but I was. Emotions that I thought long dead and left behind, had been crawling out of their grave for who knows how long, and steadily, they were catching up to me. This walking corpse had overtaken my rationality with its rotten stench and sunk me into a deep depression that lasted a couple of hours, as if I was just coming to terms with the fact that the woman that had rejected me almost 6 years ago wasn’t mine, and that she would never be.

Still, I was her friend. I remained so for years.

‘Friend.’ Such a funny word.

After we didn’t have the excuse of school projects, we had no reason to see each other, and bit by bit, we stopped talking. She didn’t need her emotional support friend after she learned to manage herself.

This is the last bus stop of this nostalgic trip, and as I step down to it, a realization hits me.

Perhaps, we were never friends. Not in the way that I thought, at least.

School gave us an excuse to see each other, her emotional instability gave us an excuse to be ‘close’, but after those two were over, there was nothing to hold us together. The Mumei I had known was all grown up, and there was nothing in her for me, romantically or not.

I never replied. There’s no point to hold onto such dusty emotions, lest you inhale their intoxicatingly bitter aroma and find yourself building sand castles with dry dirt that won't hold itself together.

And at last, I closed a chapter of my life, like we never knew each other.