'If I'd known you would leave, that I would make you leave, I would've never done it,' he says, and he looks up at her, at his sister and his lady love, at this one little child who's shared so much of his life and his joys.
The man hasn't felt joy in a really long time, kinda since when she left. And he doesn't know why he did it, there's no lying about that, why he made her leave. And he wishes – he really does, with all his heart and all his soul – that he could go back in time and take back what he did because he sees now standing before him a grown young woman, of whose life he's missed so much. He thinks, in vain, of all the joys, of all the happiness they could have shared, of how he'd always thought she'd end up being his youth's sweetheart... And now, his youth has come and gone, without her.
The girl stares at him in silence, her cold eyes that were once warm measure him, his stance, his everything and she sees so much of the boy she once loved.
'I'm so sorry for your loss,' she says, but her words are coated in ice because she's grown cold. Cold from all the waiting, cold from waking up every morning only to realize that her childhood dream had died. He would never be hers and those unreal, blissful afternoons they would spend in each other's arms were just that – unreal.
She waited for a long time, but the dream in her head never seemed to break – and he never turned out to be the man she thought he was. He only ended up being the man who hurt her in the end, when perhaps he shouldn't have.
'Your father was a good man, he was like a father to me,' she says, looking at him, and yet not looking at him, because her eyes have glossed over and all she sees are stars.
'Yes, he was, thank you,' the words stumble out of his mouth. 'I'm sorry,' he whispers, taking a step closer to her. His father's death – the event that brought them back together at long last suddenly vanished from his mind.
'It doesn't matter,' she says, passing him by and heading for the next room. The room where his father – who was once her father, too – is laid out, all in black, in his best clothes, waiting. For what? She doesn't know, maybe he's waiting for his own summery perfect afternoons that would never come.
And as she passes him by, the love of his life that will never be, the man is tickled by the faint scent of mango, drifting from her long, curled locks.
It's the smell of childhood, it's the smell of his lifelong dreams, and worst of all, it's the smell of that one afternoon, when she saw him walk out of that other girl's room. He never knew why he did it, he just knew he wanted to get caught. By this child that invaded his dreams, this young girl that filled his nostrils with perfume and maddened him with her presence. That afternoon, he would've done anything to stop her from loving him, he would've anything to hurt her. And I suppose it doesn't really matter if he came to regret it afterward, does it?
Because in his sixteen year old mind, it made sense.
As the scent of mango curls into his flesh, his mind wonders what would've happened if he'd known to stop himself then, if he hadn't hurt her, after all. And he screams, in the silence of his head, for her to forgive him, he tells her that he was just a stupid boy, but it doesn't matter because she doesn't hear. She never will hear his excuses, his stupid justifications, because he was careless then.
He was just a child, a foolish boy, scared of something deep within, but she? She was just a child, too. And he'd broken something in that child, he'd wrapped his hands around a string inside of her soul and tore it apart, so that now, she was deaf to what could've been, because in her head, it was now what it never was.
