It was difficult to comprehend at first. We spoke about it at length, and I could not deny how poorly Taisho had treated her, how we had done so little to accommodate her while expecting her to accept all of our idiosyncrasies. Of course, it did hurt... and I felt like I had no one else to blame but myself for a while.

And so I decided that I needed to do better--for Taisho, for myself, and for my teammates. In a way, her leaving was like a wake-up call we all sorely needed. While we still struggle and fight sometimes, Taisho feels more close-knit now than we did before. To understand one another, to compromise and have faith in each other... we all try to do that as much as we can, I think.