Delivery
I'm writing this in October 2025, rattling toward Shanghai on a train slicing through autumn's gold-dusted haze. Leaves flutter past the window like half-remembered dreams—always just out of reach. You'd understand. Trains were your first confession of love: motion as sanctuary, the hum of tracks a lullaby for souls stuck between before and after.
Today, I remembered you.
The girl clutching that ¥3,000 Osaka Amazing Pass, itinerary folded and refolded until the creases threatened to split. You counted yen like lifelines. Shed quiet tears over emergency expenditures. Memorized train schedules like scripture. Barely-N4 Japanese trembling on your tongue—every interaction a leap into the unknown. But you did it. You stepped into that trembling, electric fear—and unknowingly, you stepped into the prologue of everything.
Sweetie, you've gone further than geography.
Hiroshima's silent stones. Tohoku's wild, wind-whipped coasts. The frozen breath of eastern Hokkaido—Shiretoko. That myth you thought belonged only to seasoned wanderers. You arrived not as a tourist, but as a woman sent there—paid to be there—by the very world that once felt too vast to navigate. Every spreadsheet, every predawn panic attack, every konbini dinner huddled on a station bench… they were seeds. And now? You bloom in places that would've made past-you's knees buckle.
You—yes, you—indulge.
The girl who shared melon pan with pigeons outside Umeda Sky Building now sinks teeth into Saga beef so tender it dissolves like a sigh. Michelin stars. Ryokans where steam curls around your bare shoulders as you soak under constellations strangers named centuries ago. Hokkaido's honeydews, Onomichi's ramen, Aomori's sweetest apples, Iwate's wanko-soba and natto mochi, Sendai's zunda, Matsushima Kaigan's oysters. Luxury isn't luck. It's the interest accrued on every drop of sweat you sacrificed to the gods of "someday."
Your voice—oh, your voice.
Japanese wasn't a wall anymore. It became a bridge you built yourself, plank by aching plank. JLPT N1. Interpreting full events. Freelancing in travel—trusted to shape how others see this country you adore. Balancing it all with that full-time job? You dance between spreadsheets and interpretation notes like they're choreography. Life spills over—messy, glorious, wholly yours. You're still learning, and it's a lifelong journey, but you'll get there, eventually.
By the way, you met him.
Really met him. No, not your soulmate—not yet. I mean your favorite voice actor—not through a screen, not through books he wrote, nor the DVDs you purchased, but breathing the same air, in the same event hall. No trembling. No crumbling. Just quiet recognition: two artists still learning their own rhythms. You support him differently now—not with screams, but with the steady pulse of someone who understands how dreams unfold: slowly, stubbornly, in whispers.
But Jin—
Hold this close: Take care of yourself.
Your future isn't built on broken sleep and skipped meals. Stretch that spine. Steady your blood sugar—not for perfection, but for freedom. For steaming locomotives waiting on rural platforms. For impromptu sushi bar splurges. For decades more of trains carrying you toward horizons still unnamed. Don't bleed yourself dry just to prove you can endure the knife. You deserve warmth. Softness. Ease.
I saw you.
Working while the world slept. Smiling through the ache. Pretending you didn't need what everyone else took for granted. Every tear you swallowed in Osaka back in 2016? It watered the ground I now walk on. Your effort didn't just reward you—it rebuilt you.
Keep going.
You're already everything I ever hoped we'd be.
Future Jin
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