We've always climbed this mountain to get away from the noise of the city below. We walk through our well-trodden path towards this open ground of just grass and flowers, overlooking the concrete roads and the skyscrapers. It all look like a jumbled mess of man-made lights but we don't mind sitting there watching the lights of cars move along the roads like a troupe of fireflies or when the lights on the windows blink on and off as the sun sets and night comes.

In fact, you like it most when the day ends and there's nothing to stop us from leaving. It's when the last bell rings that you'd watch everybody else leave, waiting until you hear my voice say hi, then you'd turn to me with that pretty little smile of yours not minding if you'd have to stay out so late into the night just so you could watch the stars fall on the ground.

"I wish it's always like this," you've said once, lying on the grass with your head on your jacket as you watched the clouds over the crimson sky move until the red turns violet and until the stars start to wink, greeting us with their most beautiful hello. We wait until the moon replaces the sun and we'd take our cue to leave. Hard as it is leaving such a place, we always find ourselves looking back to that spot until we can no longer see it. Then, we'd turn to the last corner and say our goodbyes.

I told you how it can. You just have to wait for me by the doors at sunset. I'd come and tell you how nice the weather is that day. I'd hold your hand as we leave. Then even if we walk in silence or if we talk so loudly it's like nothing else matters anymore, we'd make that day ours and ours alone.

I keep on telling you that. There's nothing wrong about thinking of yourself every once in awhile. You don't always have to listen to the rest of world when all it's doing is bringing you down with it. Isn't that how I convinced you to take that long walk away from all that? Until we found ourselves standing far from everything else?

I remember. You were so mesmerized by how beautiful the city is from so high up. Your eyes lit up and you smiled for the first time in days since I started meeting with you. And I realized then how much better it is seeing that smile, much better even from the view laid out in front of us. You wished that it would always be like this. I wished you could always be like this despite all the things you carry on those scrawny shoulders of yours.

I know I tease you a lot. I can wrap my arms around you and still be able to hug myself. Almost. Your voice changes and I can see your cheeks turn pink. You laugh so nervously, frozen where you stand, because you know how much trouble we're both in if someone sees us. And at least once, you're right. Someone in the hall would catch us and angrily shoo us away. I'd let you go then and sheepishly stand a few paces from you. But at least, I see you ease up even a little every time I do, which is to say, so many times.

Although the worst trouble we've had comes - not with a mad face or a fearsome voice - but with a sly smile and a lot more teasing. Honestly, they are such a handful to hang around with. The two of them are always so lively and loud. They laugh like it’s the last the thing they will be able to do. They talk as if we’ve been gone in a million years, even though it only has been few hours since the last time we’ve seen each other. They can do things in front of people and not feel one bit self-conscious about it. I've always seen them as paragons of living - the two people I've met who can live life the way they want to.

I try to make you see them the way I do. Perhaps, you'd realize that you can live your life the way you want to, like them who absolutely don't care about what the rest of the world thinks and couldn't be bothered about the things that try to break them. Maybe you wouldn't have to shut down so much and miss the little things - our lunch table, the project we worked on together, the stargazing - that can make you smile like the stars at midnight. Because, there's always going to be more.

Now, you wouldn’t be able to see the way the wind blows through my hair and the way sunlight reflects on my eyes. They are seeing you like you’ve always had been - quiet and simple. Only they are all memories of the time when you’ve come with me to sit on the grass and watch everything at the distance. You can’t hear me say how beautiful some things are from the distance, seeing them with the bigger picture rather than agonizing over the sharp little pieces, like the place you’ve wanted to escape from.

I stay sitting there alone, listening to the trees sing with the wind, and watching the clouds float overhead like you used to as you waited until the city lights up like a christmas tree. I lie there with the jacket you left me with and times I’ve had with you as I keep on replaying them in my head. In them, you are nothing but whole and breathing and everything that you’ve always wanted, the way I’ve often seen you as, the way you often forget you are.

I hear the others come as the night falls and the only thing lighting up our well-trodden path is moonlight. I only see them vaguely, but they never fail to be those lively pair we’ve known them by. I doubt anyone could miss them even in the darkest nights with how fluid and alive their gestures are. I just wish you could see them again, even just once like a little parting gift. And I just wish, most of all, that you’re still with us to sit around a candle as we light up this lantern, as we are doing now for you.

Finally, we hold its rim between our fingers as we say a solemn prayer. “Can you see this?” I want to ask you. I want you to see it fly and glow in the sky like the stars you adored so much. And I hope that with this, wherever you are now, you realize that you’re never really alone.