You're going to leave today, early, as always. You haven't said anything, probably because you knew I would ask you to stay, but your belongings are packed in the corner of the room. These moments watching you sleep would be wasted, though, if I were to dwell on that. Instead, I allow myself the distraction of brushing your bangs away from the side of your face you keep hidden. You don't know how beautiful you are, Ginko, physically and otherwise. I like to think that the picture of you like this -- the fall of eyelashes on unguarded cheeks, the soft rhythm of your breathing -- is something reserved for me. You stir slightly in your sleep. You always do, a few minutes before you wake up. I bend down and brush my lips over yours, barely touching, but enough to dull the knowledge that I'm about to watch you leave again.

It's immature, but irrefutable to categorize myself as second best. There is something greater than I can be, something alluring and elusive that draws you away soon after you come here. This force holding you under its sway is the reason there are footsteps behind me, a hand on my shoulder and an indecipherable look, before you are gone again.

I spend most mornings like this, watching fog roll out of the sea. The gray light in the early hours is enough to keep one somewhere in between consciousness and sleep. It's a pleasant sensation. I used to take walks along the beach, but I've lost my taste for how cold it is by the water before the sun warms it. At least, that's what I'd rather tell myself, to avoid admitting that there's something haunting about looking across the ocean in the dark. In the daytime it's truly beautiful. At night, without the winging of seagulls or the shimmer of reflected light, it's a vast, ancient, amorphous creature that blends into the horizon.

There is a legend common to this village about why waves come up onto the shore. According to this story, the ocean 'misses its children, the clouds and rain, and the waves are a beckoning gesture so as to ask them to come back to it.' The first time I heard it told, the storyteller had demonstrated this with a rolling motion of his hand, like the lapping of waves, and spoken in time with it, "Come back, come back."

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Heheh ; this is my first attempt at romance, and I'm not happy with it, but I figured it was worth posting for concrit. Admittedly, I hate these 'I'm so sad I can never have you' fics, but here I am posting one 0.o ... I blame my lack of caffeine.