Today is the day I am leaving my old life behind, and once again I think it is you, Tohru, who would best understand how I felt as I stood in my empty room looking back at all the memories we made together. The past is no longer a tiny airless cell with the dark pressing down around me. When you opened the door to my prison, you showed me what a wide, wide world was out there waiting for me. Someone stronger might have been able to venture outside by himself, but I don’t think I could have found that courage without you to tell me that my weaknesses don’t make me a person to be despised, that it was okay to cry when the sun dazzled my eyes.

I am still learning to see my strengths. Sometimes it takes a little nudge from Machi, but she reminds me every day that I need to be patient with myself. We still forget sometimes that we are free—that we are not victims of our bonds, because we have a choice in how we shape them, even when they are as seemingly set in stone as the ones between the Zodiac and our god and between us and our parents. Perhaps one day I will be able to meet Machi’s parents and invite her to meet mine. It may be a long way in the future, with many winter days of making footprints in the snow in between, but I have hope. When I think of the way Machi saying my name for the first time touched my heart—not quite in the empty places the curse had left behind but a small miracle all the same—I have hope. She needs me as I am, and we will grow together. That is miracle enough for me.

I wonder how we will all have changed when we see each other again? I look forward to finding out. Until then, keep smiling, laughing, crying, loving. We are thinking of you.

P. S. Tell that orange-haired idiot I will knock him out the dojo in front of all his students if he does make you cry.

P. P. S. Yes, you stupid cat, you’d better believe I would.