Never Alone

Epilogue

Epilogue

I thought about them often, but she occupied my mind the most. The day I met my roommate in my dorm, her dark black hair and love for obscure literature made me think of Shima with such clarity I found myself looking over my shoulder to see if she was there. I felt her everywhere that week. I waited for her emails and texted her about all the little details, not for one second forgetting that each of those was a mark on a map I had once tried to erase before it was ever complete.

I held onto each of her replies like a lifeline. The picture of Japanese soda she sent from the airport, her father's hometown at night from the back window of a car, taken on the way to her hotel. Each time my phone notified me of her messages I heard it in my mind like an affirmation: "We made it."

When her father passed, she was finally free. Although the five of us were still afraid for her, because we knew her road to recovery would always wind along a ledge, sometimes flirting with the most delicate terrain near the cliff before moving back to solid ground again. We had learned the most we could ever do was walk alongside each other for a while so we wouldn't have to walk alone. When Shima left for Tokyo with her father's ashes, I made a promise to myself to walk beside her, and I kept that promise every day even though we were almost seven thousand miles apart.

The last picture she sent me was of Mt. Fuji. It was stunning. The sky was the clearest, cloudless blue, and Mt. Fuji rested profoundly against it, peaked in a proud white as if it knew how poignant it looked in contrast with the warm, clear color behind it. Sitting at its base was the tangled, lush green forest that had captured Shima's fascination from the time she'd first entered it with her father.

I'd been walking to class when the message came through and it stopped me in my tracks.

It's perfect.

Two words. They captioned the picture, but I knew she wasn't talking about the snow-capped peak. No, to her the perfection was in the crooked trunks of the trees that spoke to her like long-lost family members and old distant relatives she'd never even met. Perfect, to her, was finally reaching the end of a path she had exhaustedly struggled to walk upon. Perfect, to my friend—the girl who would forever have a small piece of my heart, was the way she had finally made it home and could rest. And I knew that the phrase that had run through my mind, "We made it," meant different things to the two of us.

Four months later I received a letter in the mail. A note accompanied it, informing me that it had been found with her body in Aokigahara. I remembered everything she had told us about the forest and the people who wandered in there never to come out, so while my grieving heart wanted pages and pages of her words so I could spend just a few more minutes with her, the few short lines inside gave me more peace than any lengthy message could have.

We all stay in touch. I don't think that will ever change. It took us four years to make the trip. We talked about it many times, but life was busy and to be honest, the grief was still so heavy that I worried my path was always a little too close to the ledge when it came to her for me to be safe. But then one year things changed. There were warnings that Mt. Fuji was finally going to erupt, and the possibility of never seeing Aokigahara made our trip come to fruition.

The entrance to Aokigahara was exactly like all the pictures we'd seen. We stayed together as we walked the trail, our steps the only sounds as we traveled deeper into the forest. I thought of her there; it was impossible not to. I remembered her beautiful eyes and the way she'd been so quick to volunteer to help Aideen. I wondered if she was afraid as she walked the trail alone. Had she had any second thoughts? Had she thought about us?