"An-chan, if one day I stopped singing, how would you feel?"
It was during sunset, when the orange hue had painted the entire town, and their shadows stretched long across the ground, that Kohane asked An.
"…I think I'd be really sad." An took a moment to think before giving a faint, melancholic smile. "And probably... I'd feel guilty too."
"Guilty?" Kohane asked in surprise.
"Yeah. If you ever stopped singing, it’d be because something made you really sad or scared, right? And I couldn't do anything to ease that pain for you."
As she spoke, An lowered her gaze. She gently reached out and took Kohane’s hand, lacing their fingers together.
"I’d feel ashamed… maybe so much that I wouldn’t even have the courage to face you."
Her voice was light—so light it could’ve been carried away by the wind. But no breeze could lift the heaviness in her heart.
"I’d miss you so much. I’d want to see you, to be near you, to beg you to sing again."
She was still smiling, yet the corners of her eyes scrunched slightly, as though holding back tears.
"But if singing brought you pain… how could I force you?"
An drew in a deep breath and looked up at Kohane again.
"So in the end, I would let you go."
The words pierced her chest as she spoke them, but she knew she loved Kohane enough to bear it.
"But if that day comes, I know I’ll have lost a part of myself."
Just because she could endure it… doesn’t mean she’d be okay.
She would simply keep living.
"Without you, I’ll move forward carrying this incomplete heart of mine. Alone. Because no one could ever take your place."
And so An would have to learn to accept a world without Kohane in it....
A world lonelier than even the twilight draping across her back.