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Chapter Text

They couldn't have been older than five or six when Nene fell on the playground and left a scrape down her knee. Back then, with her jeans ripped and cheeks red, she cried. Cried the whole time Amane ran over, cried while he helped her up and took her home. Cried, until Amane found a marker and started to draw stars over the plastic exterior of her bandage. 

"Amane-kun," she sniffled, and the tears began to slow their descent. "W-what're you doing?"

"It's a good-luck spell!" he declared.

His brow screwed up in concentration as shaky black lines turned into a crescent moon.

"Really?" 

"Yep! I'm going to make you all better, so don't cry, ‘kay?" 

Nene giggled and examined his handiwork. While still young enough to be overflowing with fantasies and fairytales, she knew that a lopsided planet drawing wouldn't heal her injury.

So then maybe it was just her imagination, but it felt like the pain faded just a bit.

They were twelve when she handed him a crumpled-up science test with half the problems marked in red ink. On the doorstep of his house, she stared down at her shoes. 

"Amane-kun, I know you're good at this kind of stuff..."

"Of course I'll help," he smiled, sending a reassuring pat to her head. "Did you even need to ask?"

 Her eyes lit up, and two weeks later, she rang his doorbell early in the morning, while out of breath, just say she passed.

They were almost in high school when Nene persuaded herself into confessing to an upperclassman. 

Amane spent Saturday afternoons helping her bake, and went to the library to find books on sewing. He waited after school while she signed up for the gardening club, provided encouragement when she felt like giving up. He even stood by in the hallway while she spilled out her feelings, in case something went wrong. 

(And when something inevitably went wrong, Amane ended up letting her cry into his uniform, too.) 

"I was stupid to think..."

"That's not true." 

It was taking all his willpower to pretend he wasn't seething with anger.

"...I've been such an idiot."

"Yashiro," he tilted her chin so she was forced to look him in the face. "That guy doesn't deserve you."

She made a skeptical noise in her throat, unconvinced. 

"Let's go home, okay? We can stop at the convenience store on the way."

"Strawberry rice cakes?"

"Obviously."

A small smile broke through, she squeezed his hand. 

"Thank you, Amane-kun." 

"Don't thank me just because I'm buying you food."

She nudged his shoulder with her own and laughed, a real laugh. 

"I'm not. Really."

"Then...it's nothing. Don't mention it."

~~~

They were second years when Nene was sure she'd made her worst mistake yet. And she was convinced it had something to do with the fact that it was Monday. The day began innocuous enough, even had potential when her curtains revealed the first snow of the year. That alone was usually enough to put her in a good mood. 

Then she couldn't find her winter boots after fifteen minutes of hunting. Forgot her lunchbox on the kitchen counter. Noticed a tear in her tights on the way out. And in the process of shoving her feet into two-sizes-too small shoes, grabbing the bento, and changing into leggings, the last tomes of the tardy bell rang out when Nene was a block away from school. 

Nothing good happens on Mondays,  she groaned, breaking into a sprint. 

Things only got worse from there, and this is how it began: she caught whispers during gardening club. 

"First years practically fall all over themselves if an upperclassman confesses." A group of older girls in the corner of the greenhouse formed a semicircle, all paying more attention to a dark-haired upperclassman rather than the vegetable starts they were tending. The blue rubber of her shoes, denoting her as a third-year, scuffed into the floor while she spoke.

Her voice seemed to suggest she was sharing a particularly fascinating secret, yet was doing nothing to prevent her conversation from being broadcast to everyone in a six-foot distance. And this is why when she said, 

"And Yugi-kun is friends with the President's brother," 

Nene definitely heard it. Then the sound of giggling, and,

"Put in a good word for me?"

"Ayaka-chan, not so loud!"

Yugi-kun?  Her interest, which had started at near nonexistent, shot up exponentially.

"From what I gathered, he's in the astronomy club. With his twin brother, too."

"So when are you going to ask?"

"Probably after classes tomorrow. What time does Minamoto-senpai usually leave?"

The words,  This is not a good idea,  tickled at the back of Nene's conscious, and her feet began to move as if from their own accord. She was across the room in five steps, then standing in front of the small group in ten. Mind blank, the barrage of  Red alert, get out while you can, abort mission,  went neglected for no reason she could find the answer to. 

"Umm..." 

Three heads turned towards her, and she spoke the first thing that darted into her head. 

"Amane-kun and I are..."

~~~

"I promise I can explain," was the first thing Nene said, after quite unceremoniously pulling Amane from astronomy club. In the vacant hallway, with melting snowflakes on the window, his eyes narrowed. 

"Any sentence that starts with 'I can explain' probably isn't anything good."

"But you'll help me, right? You will?" she prodded, becoming desperate.

"I kind of need to know what level of disaster we're talking about here first," he shrugged, "What happened this time? Did you lose something?"

"I told an upperclassman we're dating." It tumbled out before she could pause to think.

A string of very inspired stuttering erupted from his mouth, the amber in his eyes widened.

"Sorry, you...you did what? I didn't mishear that?"

Nene fiddled with her ribbon, approaching her next words as carefully as possible. 

"A third year in gardening club mentioned you, and...I said we were a couple to impress her."

"Yugi-kun is friends with the President's brother." 

Something about the way it was spoken suggested the girl's intentions had nothing to do with Amane. As much as she hated lying to him, she'd experienced enough of her own heartbreaks, cried enough tears over fictitious relationships to know that he shouldn't have to go through the same thing. 

Amane cleared his throat to suppress a laugh. 

"So, how do you expect me to help, then?"

She bit her lip, silent, and his understanding dawned at the same time she opened her mouth. 

"No," he rushed out, "If you think I'm going to-"

"It'll only be for a week or so-"

"That's the worst plan ever."

"Just to keep up the appearance," Nene implored. "If we pretend we're dating, even if only for a short time, she'll move on."

"Have you been reading a lot of shoujo manga recently? Or is this," He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, watching her smugly, "Some kind of elaborate excuse you're using to ask me-"

He earned a chop him in the arm before he could finish, yet it did nothing to erase the look he was giving her.

"Fine, I'll bring you donuts."

"Homemade?"

"And plain. Just how you like it."

He nodded. "Fine. But I still think it's a terrible idea."

~~~

It took less than twenty-four hours for Nene to realize he was right. They hadn't even made it to school before there was trouble, namely that Amane was assaulting her with a nervous barrage of questions. 

"I'm not looking forward to this any more than you are," she finally cut him off with, as they plowed through snowbanks. "But you never seemed to have any problem holding my hand before. Or invading my personal space, or hugging me from behind..."

"Okay, I get it," he sighed, taking her bare palm with his own gloved ones. "Are you happy? Do we seem like a couple now?"

Ah.  The bite of cold dissipated. 

"I guess so," she muttered as they turned the last corner. 

It's warm. 

It reminded him of being little, how they used to meander down the sidewalk in the snowy months, holding onto each other in case one lost their footing to a patch of ice. Of course, it would happen anyway, and their entwined fingers only served to bring both down at once. But then Amane would help her stand, and she'd dust the snow out of his hair, and they'd make it home to steaming mugs of tea and their adjacent windowsills. 

Nene would shout: "Amane-kun, are you there?" 

Then his face would appear from behind galaxy-patterned curtains, she'd laugh, and he'd answer, "I'm here, Yashiro!" 

Being neighbors came with its unique benefit of listening to Nene sing pop songs across a three-meter distance, even when she'd inevitably drop her hairbrush-turned-microphone during an improvised dance routine and have to run outside to retrieve it.

They'd write notes to each other on binder paper, fold them into airplanes, and let the message fly across the gap when the city was asleep. Things like  we're in the same class again!  or  want to see the fireworks next weekend?  or  the moon's so big tonight.  (Once, he took so long writing about the stars that Nene fell asleep at the window.)

Then she moved into an apartment closer to the train station, her pastel pink walls were painted a dull shade of beige, and Amane's bedroom window now faced a total stranger's. Even though he'd never tell her, Amane still had those paper airplanes in his dresser, and every folded-up note she'd sent in class while they were supposed to be paying attention. Beside them, the moon phase calendar she'd given him for his tenth birthday and a photo-booth strip from the amusement park. 

Sometimes he thought he could still hear "Amane-kun, are you there?" if he listened hard enough. 

~~~

"Nene-chan, Yugi-kun, morning!" 

Met with a chorus of "good morning"s, Aoi found the pair at the shoe cabinets, with Akane acting as her ever-present shadow. As they passed by, switching heavy boots for indoor slippers and chatting, she clapped her hands together as if remembering something important.

"I heard you two finally are going out! Nene-chan left in such a hurry I didn't have time to ask how it happened," she gave the two of them an encouraging smile. "Let's make plans sometime, okay?"

 "S-sure..."

She didn't wait for more than a single word answer and a hesitant nod from Amane before saying, "Great! I'm looking forward to it."

"See you in class," Akane added as they waved, though it seemed more like an afterthought when his attention remained focused on Aoi. The second both had disappeared up the staircase, Amane rounded on her.

"Just one upperclassman, huh?"

"I might have forgotten to mention that Aoi overheard me," she admitted sheepishly.

"More like you conveniently misremembered," he mumbled under his breath. "Anyone else?"

"...Two other third years, and probably everyone who was in the greenhouse," she added. "Honestly, how did I get us into this mess?"

"I don't know either," he said as they left the building's entrance, "But now the panicking thing is starting to make sense." 

She squeezed his palm, and when Amane squeezed back, he realized he couldn't pinpoint when they'd started holding hands again. 

Hours later, when the grey skies turned dark, the cloud cleared enough for the stars to be visible. The snow's temporary reprieve wasn't expected to last long, but it was enough for Amane to lean out his window that night, to find Scorpius, and Cassiopeia, and Orion in what had become a sort of routine. For a brief second, his gaze wandered from the constellations to the blinds concealing what would have been Nene's window. He sighed into his hands. 

Goodnight.  An idea he'd formulated on a whim, the text sat pre-typed, unsent on his phone. A collection of pixels that illuminated half the room as well as Tsukasa's sleeping figure. Amane figured she'd probably laugh at him for being up so late, then guess that he was merely too fixated on the moon to sleep- but this was something friends did, right?

His message changed to "delivered, 11:45 a.m." before he could think twice, and her reply was immediate. 

Stop staring at the sky and go to bed!

Sometimes he could read her with scary accuracy. 

But goodnight to you too. 

They settled into a routine. It was linking hands in the hallways and eating lunch with their desks pushed together. It was taking Nene home when gardening club ran late, making plans for a double date with Aoi, and sending each other  good morning  and  goodnight  when they could barely keep their eyes open. It was becoming too easy to forget the whole thing was a charade, except for those instances he felt her stiffen when they passed an upperclassman at the gate. A week passed, Amane chose to ignore how easy everything had been, but if he was being honest-

"I don't really mind this."

Saturday marked the endeavor's end, and the morning found them in Nene's kitchen, studying and baking in contented silence. The kind of quiet that stood like an unspoken agreement, mutual and comfortable rather than distant. Meanwhile, the television's background noise, playing a black-and-white romance film, filled in all the empty pauses. 

Nene looked up from where she was stirring batter into smooth folds, cream-colored and ready to be shaped into donut molds. 

"Huh?" she asked.

Amane ducked his head into a chemistry textbook in response.

"This. Us." He gestured to nowhere in particular. "It's kind of nice, actually."

"Huh?" she repeated, like a broken record, and Amane further disappeared into the equations and diagrams lining the page. 

"Never mind," he muttered. 

He thought Nene must have made him watch dozens of romance movies, and no matter how terribly written or shallow the script was, it was a guarantee she'd be tearing up by the time the credits rolled. Sure enough, by the time the donuts were on the cooling rack, and the names of actors were scrolling down the screen, she was wiping at her eyes.

"Can't you see that it's tragic, Amane-kun?"

He ruffled her hair and handed her a tissue. 

"The love interest's cliche." He started to count on his fingers. "Predictable plot, mediocre writing, and the main character could have done better."

"Hmph." She pouted at him, hung up her lace-trimmed apron and took a bite of the last hour's hard work. "You're no fun."

"And you have flour on your face," he announced, swiping at her cheek and taking his own donut. 

"Hey!"

"Actually, Yashiro, I was thinking." 

She hummed, mouth full of pastry. 

"Akane-san's planned our date for next Sunday, but today's the end of..." He trailed off, leaving her to draw the conclusions.

"Aoi would be disappointed if we weren't still together then," Nene finished for him, "I know."

The solution lay right in front of them, obvious and glaring, but neither could quite look the other in the eye when she said, 

"So we keep this up for another week?"

"Another week," he confirmed.

Amane was glad she was too busy wiping the countertop to see him smile. 

~~~

It had been a long day. A whirlwind of end-of-term reports, papers, and last-minute cramming finally resulted in the then first-years passing out under Nene's kotatsu. Lulled by the weight of Amane's head on her shoulder, the heater's warmth, and the scent of mandarin orange peels, she wavered in a state that was neither awake nor asleep. With half-open eyes, she accounted for the mop of dark hair at her side and shifted closer into a more comfortable position. She'd later remember thinking,  It'd be okay if we stayed like this , before drifting slowly back into her dreamscape. 

And not so long after that, she'd wake, but her eyes would stay closed.

Nene felt Amane adjust her gently, heard him tiptoe around to retrieve his books, and whisper something along the lines of "Didn't realize it was so late." 

And this was the part where the trouble came: she also felt it when he pressed a kiss into her temple. Punctuated with, "See you tomorrow, Yashiro," and the sound of the front door closing, he left the apartment like it was merely an ordinary afternoon. Nene counted five seconds before she dared to open her eyes, the sleepy haze she'd been in before forcibly dissipating. 

"What's that supposed to mean?" she whispered after him. 

~~~

"Think the snow's going to keep up for long?" 

Nene brushed the windowsill, glass cold where it touched her fingertips, watching the storm of flakes falling to the earth. From where he was lounged on the astronomy club room's couch, Amane barely looked up.

"Soon, maybe."

"Clubs cancelled. Can't walk home," she lamented. "Kou-kun and Mitsuba-kun already left."

"How unfortunate," he sighed dramatically, smirking. "Guess you're stuck here with me."

"Ugh."

He went back to his book with a grin.

"Amane-kun."

"Hmm?" His attention didn't divert from the page in the slightest.

"What are you reading?"

This time, she finally managed to make him look away.

"It's on ancient astronomers. My club's reading together during this month."

"Okay," she resolved, stretching out over the couch's remaining three-quarters and settling her head in his lap. "Read to me."

Amane laughed. "Yashiro, this isn't really something you'd be interested in. Why the sudden...?"

Nene ignored him and pulled down the page, scanning for the first paragraph's start. 

"An early way of thinking dictated that the sun..." she prompted, causing him to smile down at her and sigh. 

"...that the sun revolved around the earth. This theory, called the geocentric model, was a central part of astronomy-"

Her eyes closed as she listened, to the flurry of snow pounding on the windows and the familiar rise and fall of his intonation. It was pleasant, safe, and she found the lilt in his tone that only emerged when he was discussing something he loved.

And although most of the words he was throwing out were lost on her, even when he stopped midway down the page to ask, "Are you sure I'm not just boring you?" she just shook her head and urged him on. 

"It's nice to hear you read," slipped out before her brain could catch up.

"And you're also sure you don't have a fever?" Amane teased, checking her forehead and twirling a strand of milky hair. 

"I'm not sick!" she protested, "I meant what I said."

He picked up where the sentence left off without missing a beat, flipping the page while one hand continued to play with her hair. When he looked down to ensure she was satisfied, Nene slipped her fingers through the in-betweens of his. 

Then she smiled back, and that was all it took to send him plunging over the edge. 

Oh.

Amane stumbled over a sentence.

Oh, I've been so stupid . 

He tripped into the next paragraph, fumbled up pronunciations.

Oh, I'm in so much trouble.

It was a quiet, simple realization that terrified him wholly.

"On second thought, the snow isn't that bad," he stated abruptly, cutting the page off early and closing the cover. "It'll be fine to walk home now."

"Oh, right." Her face fell slightly at the sudden shift in attitude, but when she sat up, the ten inches of distance put between them was much needed. 

Space was good. Space gave him time to think.

"Should we leave, then?"

"I've got to return the club room key, so go ahead," he urged, already halfway across the room.

"Hold on, I'll go with you," she replied, following him. "Amane-kun, is everything okay? You seem like you're kind of in a rush." 

"I've just got a lot of work to do. Tsukasa's already home, too."

"If you say so," she shrugged. 

~~~

Amane left the key on Tsuchigomori's desk, half-listening to the tales of Black Canyon's escape. Amane turned down the hallway side by side with Nene, who stopped to tuck in the ends on his scarf. Amane's heart was definitely not pounding with,  I messed up, I messed up, I messed up  while she did so. 

"Hey, Amane-kun, I forgot to say..." She spoke while they were exchanging their shoes, from neatly labeled cabinets with  Yugi, Amane  and  Yashiro, Nene  on the nameplates. "Thanks for helping me."

"It's kind of my job, you know," he answered, "As your childhood friend and all that."

"Yeah, but I thought you should know," she beamed, "It means a lot that you're always there for me."

Amane liked to think he was logical most of the time. Or at least sixty percent of the time. Where Nene was idealistic and lost in the clouds, he was there to bring her back down to reality. And where Tsukasa's side of their shared bedroom was strewn with paper and wrinkled clothes, his was organized and methodized. 

Astronomy notes penciled into spreadsheets, cataloged by date and moon phase. Color-coded notes in the margins with neat handwriting. He wouldn't call himself put together, not by a long shot, but he usually stopped to consider his reasoning before acting on impulse. 

Which was why he even surprised himself when he kissed Nene. It was not well-thought-out. It was not reluctant. He didn't even take a moment to dwell on the repercussions before taking three steps forward, brushing a hand over her cheek, and pressing his lips to hers. 

He vaguely registered the sensation of her tensing, and in those few half seconds, Amane was seriously considering the fact that he'd never be able to look his best friend in the eyes again. 

I messed up.  The staccato beats resurfaced in his chest, until Nene's fingers found his shoulders and skimmed the back of his neck, chin angled up, leaning into him.

Oh,  Amane thought again, like it was the only thing he could comprehend. 

"Ama-" she started, the remainder of the word replaced with a gasp when he stole another kiss. Gentler, softer, but no less insistent, he came undone when she held him tighter.

"Amane-kun," she managed to get out once they separated. "What was that?"

"I..."

"You just kissed me!" Her tone was laced with incredulity, a tinge of confusion, and she pointed an accusatory finger into his chest.

"Y-you kissed me back!" 

"Then you did it again!" 

"Well, I'm glad we're both on the same page with what happened!" Amane countered. Taking a deep breath, he traced a circle into her palm.

"Was it that bad?" 

"It wasn't," she was swift to answer, "But why?" There was something in her voice that was small and hopeful.

"Why do you think? I mean, after all," he teased lightly, "We are dating."

Resorting to humor was practically his default setting, and if there was anything he expected, it was that joking in a situation like this would make it easier on both of them. What he didn't expect to see was Nene looking at him like she'd been physically struck, tears threatening to fall in the corner of her eyes and mouth gaping. 

"Yashiro?"

"I don't know why you think it's fun to play with my feelings," she responded, low and dangerous. "Because it's not a game to me." 

"I didn't mean..." He faltered, as she swiped at her face and collected her bag.

"You didn't mean anything by it," she interrupted, "So why do something like that if it didn't mean anything to you?" 

It didn't take years of friendship to know that she was fighting back a sob: fists balled at her side, hair falling in a curtain to obscure puffy eyes and flushed cheeks. 

"I'm going home."

No. You're wrong.  He could only stand and feel a cold wave of dread wash over him while she turned on her heel and ran. The glass doors slammed, Amane's vocal cords betrayed him. He slid down against the lockers to bury his head in his knees, tears of his own pricking at his skin. A long, uneven, exhale escaped from his throat. 

Nothing good happens on Mondays, Amane decided.

Chapter Text

The day Yashiro Nene moved in, it was late summer, the asphalt sticky with heat and melted ice pops. 

Accompanied by a hamster cage in her arms, with scrutinizing eyes taking their first look at what would become her home, the first thing she noticed was this: two faces were watching her from the neighbors' second-story window. Distinguished by identical wide eyes, misshapen haircuts, and hands pressed against the glass to jostle for a better view, they observed her arrival with great interest. 

Nene saw them outside, drawing shapes in chalk until the boy with the untucked shirt accidentally snapped the pastel sticks in half. She saw them laden with grocery bags, riding bicycles, and if she squinted, into where they pasted glowing stars on the ceiling of their room. 

For nearly a week, she wouldn't learn their names. Not until, in the early hours of the night, she woke up when her window reverberated with a tap. Then a softer, more muffled whoosh no more than a half-second later. 

Tap. Whoosh.  

Nene opened her blinds, and came face to face with black hair and those same muted yellow eyes, which were widened in surprise as if he hadn't expected her to wake. Though it was hard to tell in the dark, it looked like the older twin- the one who always had his buttons lined up, who seemed quieter, who she sometimes saw on his front porch, head tilted to the sky. 

The one who had his arm pulled back, ready to send another paper airplane at her window. 

This was why the first four words she spoke to Yugi Amane were, 

"Would you quit it?!"

He lit up, waving at her from across the gap. 

"I want to show you something," was all he offered as an excuse. 

"Something" turned out to be an amalgamation of cardboard boxes and plastic food storage containers. Specifically, a mountain of the materials in his backyard, held together by a thick layer of duct tape. Takeout boxes, paper bags, and a hairbrush fastened as a steering wheel. The only thing that tipped Nene off that it was, in fact, some sort of apparatus and not an interpretive art sculpture, was the scrawling lines spelling out, "To the moon!" across the exterior. 

"It's my spaceship," Amane announced with pride, "I'm taking it to the stars someday!"

The late nights spent outside, writing in a spiral-bound notebook suddenly made sense. Nene gestured up to the sky, palm spread wide to the cosmos. 

"Really? Up there?" 

"All the way," he told her, chest puffed, "You can come along, if you want."

Nene furrowed her brow, running her hand along the edge of two flimsily constructed seats. 

"But I don't like the dark."

"We'll bring flashlights."

"What about my hamster?"

"Tsukasa will take good care of it while we're away."

"The moon's too big. I'll lose you."

"Hmm..." He pondered on this for a moment, "I'll hold your hand so we don't wander away from each other. How's that?"

She giggled, high and clear, full of five-year-old aspirations. 

"Perfect."

He grinned, satisfied, and uncapped a marker. Picking a spot just underneath,  To the moon!, he wrote.

Yugi Amane

"That's my name," he guided her hand to each of the barely legible characters. "A-ma-ne. What's yours?"

She wrote Yashiro Nene next to his, and he shook her hand. 

"It's a promise then, Yashiro."

It only took a little under a month for them to learn that store-bought fireworks couldn't get them off the ground, but they never abandoned each other's side since then.

And in the meantime, in the twelve years she'd stuck with him, Nene collected. Knowledge about how to cook sausages into octopi shapes, just the way he liked it, the memory of him dancing to songs from the eighties when he thought she wasn't looking. That he'd been deathly afraid of spiders during primary school, that his most treasured possession was a moon rock with dubious authenticity.

More recently, she knew what it was like to have the pressure of Amane's lips against hers. 

Okay. Cool. Fine. Nene convinced herself to come to terms with that, too: along the way, she'd somewhere, somehow acquired sizeable, illogical, against-her-better-judgement feelings for her best friend. 

~~~

Tuesday morning, rain poured down in thick sheets, hammering down on her window latch as though insisting to be let in. The skies were encased in grey, stretching so far over the horizon it formed a monotonous blanket over the city. 

So when Nene's alarm went off, filling the room with the too enthusiastic music of her favorite K-pop artists, it was only to be immediately silenced by the snooze button and a comforter tugged up to her nose. 

Five more minutes, she promised herself,  Five more minutes, and I can face the day. 

Something that sounded suspiciously like knocking on her front door demanded otherwise. 

Nene pulled the blankets around her, shuffled on a pair of slippers, and found the doorknob, choosing to ignore the fact that she was wearing hamster-patterned pajamas. 

Of course. 

In all of his snow-coated stupidity, standing on her welcome mat was-

"Hey, Yashiro. Sleep well?"

Amane. Of course he has the worst timing. 

"What are you doing?" she asked, crossing her arms and examining him up and down. Unlaced boots. Hair tousled, slightly out of breath. A pair of plastic shopping bags in his hands, printed with the convenience store's thank you  logo. 

If his answer was anything along the lines of "shattering her resolve into a dozen separate pieces," she would have to admit he'd already been quite successful. 

Instead, he cleared his throat and told her, "Making breakfast."

The way Amane leaned in the doorway and said the words so matter-of-fact suggested that he regularly woke up early and caught the morning bus across town only to cook in someone else's kitchen.

"That doesn't answer my question," she interrupted, "What are you doing here ?"

"I thought I'd stop by early?" 

Nene's arms remained tightly crossed, unconvinced. 

"To make breakfast. In my house. At eight in the morning."

Amane shifted his weight from one foot to another. "Are you going to let me in, or am I going to have to get drenched out here?"

She knew he could barely cook. Heck, she'd seen his grades, Amane had barely passed home economics. But she'd be lying if there wasn't something in the earnest gesture that didn't urge her to open the door wider, help prepare ingredients, and switch on the radio while he hummed along. 

They sank into an easy rhythm, and three comments about her pajamas, several songs later, it didn't feel foreign anymore when he reached past her for a mixing bowl.

A half-dozen eggs went wasted from each of his failed attempts, littering fragments of shell around the counter like marks of disapproval, and despite this, she'd already forgiven him by the time he slid two plates of pancakes across her kitchen table. Because that was what she did: forgave him when he tangled her brand-new kite strings, earned her the nickname "radish girl", made her late for the first day of high school orientation because he too busy setting up his new telescope.

And now, she forgave him, when his apology came in the form of breakfast and a crooked smiley-face painted in thick maple syrup.

Her thoughts swam back to the night prior, when she'd stared at the walls picturing the star chart and nebula posters taped up on his own. Practicing what she'd do when they couldn't avoid each other any longer, the words, "Can we talk?," or "I shouldn't have run," or even, "I wouldn't necessarily mind if you kissed me again." The former of which didn't end up passing her throat, and the latter Nene conserved exclusively for daydreams.

So instead, she said thank you and took a bite. 

He nodded, looked down at his feet for but an instant, and took her hand under the table.

I'm sorry. Somehow, in some way, she could tell what he was communicating when his grip tightened. 

Nene mirrored his action. It's okay.  Then, when she finally met his eyes, No hard feelings, right? 

Right, he said, with the tentative quirk of his smile. 

A mutual agreement was met: nothing happened in the high school entrance on Monday afternoon. 

He continued to drape his jacket over the back of her chair in the classroom with a broken heater. They went back to putting on their best smiles when Aoi approached, all bubbly excitement and tickets to the zoo next Sunday and picture-perfect normalcy. She used the pad of her thumb to draw circles on his fingertips, stars on the knee of his jeans.

"Think you can put up with me for a few more days?" he whispered to her in the hallway.

"Only if you'll do the same," she responded. 

Still, still, still-  in the girl's bathroom, where she spent half of lunch break, her breathing came unmeasured and shaky for reasons she wouldn't allow herself to admit. 

Carding fingers through the colored ends of her hair, she faced herself in the mirror, staring into her own eyes with as much conviction as she could manage. Hairclips she'd worn since before she could remember, ruby-colored irises, seafoam dye gradually fading into a dull green.

That, she could recall with perfect clarity- a routine trip to the reliable convenience store in search of drinks. Nene took a detour through the cosmetic aisle, down rows of hair color featuring flashy packaging and smiling models, and Amane had been at her side. (Because when was he not? She'd look back on her memories, and he'd just be there so often it was hard to untangle when he hadn't been stumbling into her life.)

Before either could blink, her strands, Amane's t-shirt, and the bathroom countertops were stained with the droplets of box-mix dye. In case anyone asked her, the fact that he'd mentioned in passing that the shade of teal was pretty had nothing to do with her choice. Not even in the least amount. 

Then later, while he sifted fingers through her newly-colored ends, watching a movie on her couch, he joked,

"Maybe I should dye my hair too." 

Amane sat up on his elbows with renewed vigor and the all-too-familiar spark in his countenance. "Would I be your type if I was blonde like that Minamoto guy?"

"As if. Amane-kun, you don't even place in the same galaxy as Minamoto-senpai."

"Aww, give me a chance, will you?"

He sunk back into the cushions to accept his defeat, then shift the one-sided conversation to an analysis of the film's shortcomings. ("How would hamsters even build spaceships? With those tiny paws?") This, Nene barely heard: she was too busy sending sideway glances at the profile of his face. 

Amane-kun...well, he's not necessarily bad-looking. 

She grappled with this fact for several minutes, reshaped and contorted it to fit in the expanse of her brain while he continued the discussion unaware. But it was normal, right? To think your best friend would look sort of-maybe-kinda okay, if the lighting hit all the right places? To realize that she must have been looking away while he changed?

Maybe she didn't know when he'd shot up three inches taller, only that he held it over her at every opportunity like a prize to be won. And perhaps even if she connected all the dots with red string, Nene couldn't find the moment where he'd turned from the kid who kept falling off the swings, into the one who was currently in her home watching a rerun of Space Hamsters 3. 

~~~

Amane told himself he could deal with this, whatever this was: the new trepidation in her touches, flinching like he left first-degree burns. The "Is this okay?" glances and lingering hesitance. Amane thought he could deal with it, except he'd slip every so often, and it was like realizing oh, oh, oh, all over again. 

Wednesday afternoon came, snow melted into slush, and he rode home with Nene on his bicycle seat. 

"And you knock three times. Then she'll grant any wish." 

They skated past telephone lines and fields, his feet spinning at the pedals while the scenery morphed: bridges, apartment buildings, and other students on their way home, laughing and chatting and waiting by the bus stop. 

"It can't be that easy. Besides, there's always a price with that sort of thing."

He could sense where the knit of her sweater sleeve gripped his shoulder and  didn't lean into it, not even in the tiniest amount. 

"I'd pay any price for slimmer ankles," Nene admitted. She hugged her school bag to her chest, sparing a glance at her feet while the pavement sped by underneath them. "Amane-kun, what would you ask Hanako-san for?"

"Maybe...a lifetime supply of plain donuts."

"Are you serious? What about, like, perfect scores on every test? Psychic powers?"

"I'm pretty sure neither Hanako-san nor psychic powers exist," he deadpanned. Nene frowned and sent a flick to the back of his head. 

"You're no fun," she proclaimed. 

This turned into what she would call a fatal mistake, and when Amane turned with a grin, she realized the trouble she was in. 

"How's this for fun then?"

In front of them loomed the road's sharp descent, the sort of decline that spiraled down so far she couldn't see where it ended, and he was headed right for it with crystal clear intentions. 

"Hey, Yashiro." They reached the crest of the hill. "Hold-!"

The rest of his words were stolen away as weightlessness, and acceleration, and eyes screwed shut settled in their place. It was the kind of speed that loses control of itself midway, the kind that made her shriek and hold Amane's shoulders white-knuckled, duck her head against the wind in her hair. Both were out of breath with laughter and exhilaration, hurtling towards the concrete faster, faster, faster, until a distinct feeling of terror washed over Nene.

They weren't slowing down. 

Amane pulled on the brakes, which chose that exact moment to give out. The sidewalk was getting closer, Nene's shouts morphed into half-comprehensible warnings, and adrenaline coursed through his veins. 

"Amane-kun, swerve! Swerve!" 

"I'm trying!"

"Watch ou-"

Pedals spinning of their own accord, heart rate going nearly off the charts, and his arms practically numb from how hard Nene was seizing him, Amane drove the bike straight into a tree. 

The next thing he registered was a sensation like he was flying, then every ache and pain imaginable flaring up when his body landed face-down in the bushes. 

For several moments, he and Nene stared at each other, jaws in identical "o" shapes. Then she ultimately burst into a round of contagious giggles, until he was doubled over with tears in the corners of his eyes at the ridiculousness of it all. 

He had to catch himself: it was not the time to be distracted by the upturned corners of her mouth, or by the way her eyes shone. 

"Hi," he whispered once the laughter fizzled out, leaning in to pluck a leaf from her hair. "You alive?"

"Pretty sure," she answered. "Though next time you try to prove a point, I'd prefer it if you don't nearly kill me."

"I'll do my best," he nodded gravely, helping her up.

"Amane-kun," she'd tell him later, once they'd made it home. "You're crazy."

"A good kind of crazy?"

And she would nod decisively. "The best. 

"Noted."

The remains of his bicycle lay a few feet away, the front half twisted in a way that likely meant it was damaged beyond functionality. Amane's temple stung where he'd hit the ground, and his hand came away stained red when he touched it. But Nene winced, and there was concern threaded through her voice when she asked him if it hurt, and so he flashed her what was probably the least convincing thumbs-up he'd ever given. 

"I'm fine."

She made a sound of disapproval in her throat, helping him up. 

"Honestly, when are you going to start taking care of yourself?"

She repeated those same lines, "take care of yourself," when his arms used to be bruised and patterned with scars, and he'd made a promise that he would. 

And while he'd kept that promise, Nene was the one who brought him donuts when he stayed home with a broken leg. Nene was there to remember time after time that he liked cherry-flavored medicine more than grape, Nene  memorized the perfect spot to massage when he had a headache.

There'd been a week in first year when Amane missed a whole week of class, and she'd gone to see him each day, without fail, to hand him assignments. 

"You don't have to do this," he'd told her, a cough inserted between each word. 

"I know, but I am anyway," she insisted back. 

Nudging his knee, she sat down on the edge of his bed and put aside the papers she'd been explaining, lecture notes with whole sections highlighted and details in the margin. Amane was debating whether to tease her with something along the lines of, "you only pay attention when I'm gone, huh?" when she directed, 

"Move over."

"You're going to get sick too," he objected, even as he made space for her to lie down.

"Don't care. Missed you." Nene sighed, resting her head on his shoulder. "Hurry up and get better, okay? It's a bit boring without you."

"Oh? I had no idea you were so attached. Maybe I'll catch another cold next week, too." He grinned, stroking her hair, and she shot him a dark look.

"I missed you too, though."

The next week, when Nene came down with an awful fever, she claimed it was merely a coincidence when each of her symptoms aligned precisely with his. 

~~~

He'd once heard that there were millions of pounds of debris in space. 

Similar to Saturn's rings, except instead of ice and mineral dust, the phenomenon was composed of shrapnel, paint shavings, and long-dead rocket boosters. Locked on to the earth's gravitational pull, swirling into a sort of cloudy wasteland.

Most of it invisible to the eye, those fragments never stopped falling, spending years in orbit only to tumble towards the earth's surface and meet a fiery end in the atmosphere.

With Sunday less than forty-eight hours away and a persistent tremor in his chest, Amane sort of felt like he was destined to crash and burn too.

His bicycle remained broken, and so while walking through the park by Nene's home, Amane discovered she was the type of person to eat ice cream in January. He was the type who stole the last bite. 

"Amane-kun, you're awful," she told him, as he chewed thoughtfully, "If we were really dating, I'd break up with you over that."

"If we were  really  dating, you'd forgive me," he sing-songed back. It took a series of very complicated hand gestures to communicate that she was still angry at him, ultimately ending in her scooping up a handful of snow to crush into his hair. 

Nene chalked it up as inevitable: one thing led to another, and he was soon sending a volley of snowballs back through the air, scooping up powder until they ended up exhausted and dusted with powdered flakes. She was only satisfied when they were both too breathless to talk, lying face-up in the snow and watching the treetops. 

And when they finally did speak, it was at the same time. 

"Yashiro-"

"Amane-kun-" 

"You go first," he nodded to her.

She tugged at her scarf, fixed her mittens, did anything to hesitate before turning to him.

"Amane-kun, you're stubborn."

His eyes widened.

"O-okay?"

"Stubborn, sometimes reckless, and always teasing me about one thing or another. But...but you've never tried to hurt me on purpose, not once. I know you'd never do something like that."

The words were hurried, and her voice wavered as if it was unsure of itself. "I'm sorry for accusing you on Monday."

Amane knew he should have left the conversation there, said his own apologies, and reaffirmed their friendship so things could go back the way they were. Instead, it came out more like, 

"Do you remember the first day of grade school?" 

He kept going, "How you were too afraid to meet everyone else, and I waited with you all afternoon?"

Nene swung her legs on the bench outside their new classroom, cheeks red and eyes puffy, clutching the corner of his sleeve. He let her hold onto him, even as they were coaxed back inside, even when their seats were on opposite ends of the classroom and yet she sat next to him regardless. 

"I-I think so. Amane-kun, what-"

"Do you remember, last year, when I tried to show you my favorite spot for stargazing, except you twisted an ankle, and I had to carry both you and the telescope home on my back?

This time, when Nene answered, it was barely above a whisper. "You didn't say anything on the way, and I thought you were disappointed." She paused, sitting up. "But then you smiled and told me-"

"We'll go see the stars another time." Amane secured an ice pack around her foot, seated on the cold tile of his kitchen floor. "They're not going anywhere, after all." 

"I'm-"

From the glass jar on his cabinet's highest shelf, he found the caramels she liked, and silenced the beginnings of her apologies by pressing cellophane-wrapped candies into her palms. 

"Don't worry about it, okay?"

She nodded, edging closer. "I remember."

He brushed two feather-light fingers over her lips.

"And, you remember when I...?"

It was getting rather hard for her to forget. 

"Wait, wait, wait- what are you saying?"

"I'm not very good at this sort of thing. And I can't point at a specific moment and say, 'that's where it all started'. But..." 

"But?" she prompted.

"But I think I want to stay like this. Like you and me." He looked down, to where their fingers easily tied together, "Not just for another few days, or to cover up a lie." His courage drained, and all he could do was cough and clear his throat. "For real, this time. If that would be okay."

Again, crash and burn surfaced: if there was one thing Amane Yugi was convinced of, it was that he'd just uttered the world's most unspectacular confession. When he glanced up to get a read on her expression, this was only to be reaffirmed when he found tears threatening to fall from the corners of Nene's eyes.

And just like that, his panic came flooding back.  

"Oh, Yashiro, don't cry. Reject me, yell, say you never want to see my face again. Just please don't cry."

She shook her head, swiped at her face. 

"Amane-kun, the thing is, I couldn't do any of that even if I tried."

There were three things he was certain of when her weight collided into his and had them tumbling back into the ground: it was early afternoon, just starting to snow again, and his thoughts were dissolving into ones and zeros.

She angled his chin to draw his lips to hers-- it was as simple and impossibly complicated as that --all soft touches, shallow breaths in between, the slight taste of strawberry-flavored lip gloss.

Her fingers trailed down the snow-dusted curve of his face. 

"Since when?" she simply asked, when they parted.

"Would it be terribly cliche of me to say since we exchanged hellos?"

"But you didn't quite say hello," she laughed. She laughed, and it was like Amane had heard described in the stolen romance novels he read aloud to annoy her: like music.

Like listening to an old favorite song, like a gentle prelude opening into something new, like a familiar melody that gave way to memorized lyrics you could sink into the rise and fall of. 

"It was more, 'I'm Amane Yugi, want to go to the moon one day?'"

"Then I've liked you since I asked you to come to the stars with me."

"Took you long enough to realize it," she said.

"Took you longer," he replied, sending kisses over the bridge of her nose until she hid her face in his coat.

"To be fair, we've both been idiots," she resolved. 

"Absolutely," he agreed, shaking his head. 

"Completely."

"100 percent."

Peonies and camellias were blooming down the sidewalk, and Amane thought that this must be what love felt like: packaged into sunlight-speckled petals and brushing noses.

"I liked the sound of that, you know." Her voice melted into an undertone, "'For real, this time.' Think we'd be good at it?"

This much was true: he knew he wanted to swipe the strawberries off her cake on cafe dates, spend late nights on hours-long phone calls, hold her in the circle of his arms and kiss her forehead when they met in the morning.

Amane settled his hands over hers. 

"We'll be excellent at it."