You spend the rest of the day helping him to pack his personal effects and empty out the company house. By late evening there's only one room left, the room you've both been quietly avoiding for the entire day.
But in the end there's no avoiding it...you both know what needs to be done and, without a word being spoken, you set off up the stairs together. When you push open the door to Megan's room you're surprised how serene it looks. You don't know what you'd been expecting but somehow it comes as a surprise to see everything laid out just the same as it was when you were last here. Being in this room again you can almost believe that you could turn around to see her coming through the door behind you, like nothing was wrong at all. But the only person beside you is her father.
"Ah, my poor Mei Gan" he whispers under his breath. He looks like he's only just holding back tears. "I'll do it" you say. He hesitates for a moment before nodding his approval and leaving the room. You feel like you could stand here forever, just staring back into the past. You felt like you loved her but you can hardly imagine how much worse it must be for her father. You decide that it's best just to bite the bullet, get this over with quickly.
Reluctantly you shuffle into the room, the empty cardboard box trailing from one hand. You gaze at the photos plastered on her wall, photos of her family which will never be whole again, photos of her with friends at the Southern Ridges and of course photos of the two of you together. You'd known she'd be going back home with her dad in a few months but the two of you had agreed that this was worth preserving. "We'll stay in touch" she'd said "there's the net, you can come visit me in Singapore once your year's over and, if you're feeling really romantic, you could even write me a letter!" she laughed. No letter will reach her where she is now though. You take down the photos one by one, trying not to examine them too closely.
You stack up all the papers scattered across her desk and drop them in the corner of the packing box. All the odds and ends go in there too, the accruements of a lifetime. A huge life crammed into this tiny box. Finally you go to the wardrobe and begin to load her clothes into the box, this at least, can be done quickly you think as you sweep them all up together. As you drop the bundle into the moving container you hear a dull thud as something falls out and strikes the floor.
Crouching down you realize it's a diary. Carefully opening the clasp you flick through the record of your girlfriends last year on this earth. A substantial mass of the journal is in dialect but there's some English in there too. You begin to read one of the entries made in her last few days before the accident.
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