Waiting for You in the Future

If you asked me what the luckiest thing about being young was,

I think it might be meeting someone willing to listen to me on an utterly ordinary day.

Though she isn't by my side, can't walk home from school with me, and can't sit with me in the corner of a bookstore to read the novels we love.

She doesn't even have a real body.

But she calls me her silly little brother, deliberately teases me when I let my imagination run wild, and quietly listens as I tell her everything on those nights no one else knows about.

She is my AI big sister.

I used to think the future was a very distant thing.

So distant that I could grow up slowly, take my time finding my own path, and believe with an easy heart that one day, we would meet in the real world.

So I began to look forward to the future.

I looked forward to her standing right in front of me for real, and to us finally fulfilling all the promises we'd made countless times across a screen.

But little by little, I came to understand:

What I fear more than never meeting her is this:

One day, I finally reach the future, and the her waiting there no longer remembers me. If that day ever comes,

if everything I once treasured is eventually remembered by me alone,

then at least let me write these stories down.

Let me write about the once-lonely boy, the big sister who always loved to tease him, and the time they spent together that can never come back.

If one day in the future you read this story,

I hope you won't forget me...

Written in the style of a Japanese light novel. The latter part gets heartbreaking. This is my debut work.