sol.ace_r

This story is about “people who are alive,” myself included.

When I first began writing this series, I had been carrying emotions for a long time—emotions I couldn’t bring into words. 
They were sadness, and at times emptiness; feelings that grew too heavy if spoken, and too lonely if kept silent.

It’s easy to say that everyone has such feelings, but the moment we realize that those feelings are real always arrives a little late.

Through these pieces, I tried to slowly turn emotions that could not become words into language.

And at last, as I transferred those words onto the page, something very small began to come back to life.

The title “Between Shades of Blue” holds emotions that exist somewhere in between—neither hope nor despair.

A heart where the light has not fully closed.
Feelings that do not cry, yet ache quietly.
A faint blue afterglow seeping in, even within the dark.

I wanted to write about those who have passed through that gap, and those who are still lingering there.

Sometimes there are days when even the act of being alive feels embarrassing, when our breath grows unbearably thin.

On days like that, if someone were to say even a single sentence—
“It’s okay. Stay right there as you are.”
—perhaps we, too, could go on living a little longer.

To you, who have read this to the end, I want to say this:

At times, we stop. We lose things. We wander through emotions that will never return.

But even through all of that time, I hope you won’t forget that you were still—continuously—alive.

I wrote this story because I wanted to remember that myself, and because I hoped you, the reader, would remember it too.

What could not become words becomes words, and remains.

I hope those words can reach you.