Hinata sat in the center of her room, surrounded by a stack of cardboard boxes.
“Once I finish packing all of these, I won’t be coming back here…”
She was moving away from this town after getting married. In this tight apartment, she’d lived for over ten years; every corner held fragments of her youth and life.
Peeling off tape, she opened each box one by one. Inside the graduation album from elementary school, she flipped through photos of familiar, lovable faces—lunch memories, sports day mishaps—and found herself smiling through tears.
Next came a letter from her first crush—neatly folded, with the handwriting that had once made her heart flutter in middle school. She never confessed, but she kept that letter safe all this time.
Then, with trembling fingers, she lifted her late grandfather’s old pocket watch.
“Hinata, remember: the things that matter are always in your heart.”
His voice reverberated in her memory. The watch had stopped ticking, but it remained one of her most precious keepsakes. She placed these items in a box labeled “Memories.”
Moving day arrived.
Hinata looked up at the truck loaded with her belongings and sighed deeply. A mix of sadness about leaving and anticipation of a new chapter filled her as she climbed into her husband’s car.
Upon reaching their new apartment, she helped unload—and then realized something was wrong.
“…The ‘Memories’ box—it’s missing?”
Her heart raced. Her husband denied leaving it behind. She called the moving company, and the driver apologized:
“Maybe it fell off around a service area… I checked at the stop, but it wasn’t there.”
Frenzied, Hinata retraced their route. At the service area’s office, she asked, but there was no sign of the box. She searched the parking lot and even emptied dumpsters. Nothing.
That evening, she returned to their new home, sorrow heavy in her chest. Her memories lay packed in that missing box—a box that may never be recovered.
“What should I do?”
Her grandfather’s words drifted into her mind:
“The things you cherish are always within your heart.”
She closed her eyes. Yes—the contents were precious. But the memories themselves weren’t lost:
The nostalgic warmth she felt flipping through the graduation album.
The flutter in her chest reading that love letter again.
The comforting warmth when holding her grandfather’s watch.
All of it still lived inside her. It wasn’t the physical box but her memories that truly mattered.
A gentle calm swept over her.
“Goodbye, my precious box… and thank you.”
With a soft smile, Hinata took her first step into her new life.
