Work Text:
It’s the same as always:
Moca eating bread.
Tsugumi smelling of coffee.
Ran refusing to smile in photos.
Tomoe laughing a little too hard at bad jokes.
It’s simple, but maybe Himari loves her friends more because of it.
For Himari, it starts with Moca.
They were never the closest, not when Himari had Tomoe and Tsugumi (the double T, how she sometimes called them) and Moca had Ran. They were friends, sure, even if sometimes the bread-loving girl teased Himari to tears. They were friends.
In the past.
Because, at some point, between going to college and meeting new people, she stops messaging Moca in private. Moca also doesn’t take the initiative, either, and it’s not about pride or a pesky fight, they just… Don’t.
They still interact in the group chat, though that chat is deader than Himari’s love life.
And then, one day, as she changes phones, she doesn’t even remember to save Moca’s number on it. Their previous chat is erased with the older electronic going into the trash and that’s about it. No more Aoba Moca in her life.
It doesn’t hurt as much as it should’ve.
Himari meets Aoki Sora in a cooking class she’s taking in her spare time.
The girl has short blue hair and bright white eyes. She’s pretty, even if she somewhat does remember her of… What was her last name again? Eh, whatever. Sora reminds her a little of Moca, but not enough that it’s uncanny. For starters, her obsession with fruits is far healthier and she never teases Himari for being bad at cooking. She never teases Himari about anything, really. It 's refreshing.
Himari thinks she might have found a new friend.
The next one is Ran.
One day she just leaves the group chat without explanation. Himari remembers seeing that pop-up message with surprise, but she also only sees that two weeks after it happened so there’s not much she can do. She shoots Ran a message asking if everything is ok and by the time she receives a reply — one month late — she hardly remembers the fact. Everything is ok though, Ran was just cleaning her dashboard and removing useless groups. It kinda stings to read that, but not enough to make her cry or anything.
Moca had long changed numbers and only the ghost of her old account remains, so that leaves Himari, Tomoe and Tsugumi. They had their own separate group chat with only the three of them so the decision to delete the extra group is not a hard one. And just like that Mitake Ran is no more.
Himari remembers the dark-haired girl three weeks later in a conversation about flowers, though she can’t be sure if it’s because Ran liked them or had a pollen allergy.
Sora introduces Himari to her girlfriend, Nakano Eri.
The girl — the woman, really, they are in their twenties now — has red hair and black eyes, making the contrast with Sora somewhat funny. Eri laughs when she says it, a real laugh full of mirth and emotion. Himari laughs back.
When Eri appears some time later with a black streak on her hair, Himari is reminded of Ran. She’s dazed for a few seconds until Eri asks if she wants to go drink bubble tea together and Himari forgets all about it.
It’s nice meeting new people.
Tomoe isn’t the last, but she's the hardest.
They had something more, something s pecial . Stolen kisses on the school bathroom, pinned conversations on the chatting apps, each other’s first time. They had a lot of good, romantic memories. A lot of whispered I love you’s. They had been each other’s first love, and there's nothing more powerful than that.
Or maybe there is. Tomoe meets someone new.
She doesn’t say it to Himari’s face, but it’s obvious in the way she avoids her touch and never meets her eyes anymore. They were not exclusive, never discussed it, but Himari feels betrayed nonetheless.
There 's a fight.
A lot of harsh words.
Tears.
And then Himari is blocking Tomoe’s number and social media, exiting every group chat they shared, avoiding the cozy coffee shop they used to get breakfast from and burning their pictures together with a lighter Eri’s let her borrow.
She cries herself to sleep for a whole month.
She meets Utsumi Yoshie on a dating app.
She has aquamarine hair and wine-red eyes, which reminds her of Tomoe and makes Himari cry on their first date. She thinks everything is ruined and finds solace in the fact they don’t actually need to see each other again. But then Yoshie hugs her, tells her everything is fine, and Himari falls in love then and there, similarities to Tomoe be damned.
They start dating after the fourth date.
Himari introduces her to Sora and Eri one week later.
All she has left from her childhood is Tsugumi.
Until she’s scrolling through instagram and discovers that Tsugumi hosted Tomoe’s engagement party. She thinks about confronting her about it, about how Hazawa knew about their clash. But then she decides it doesn’t matter, not when she has clearly picked a side.
Himari has a sleepover party with lots of ice-cream at Yoshie’s house and doesn’t think too much about it. Not until Tsugumi shoots her a message asking if they can hang out and Himari blocks her on sight.
This time around, Himari uses Yoshie’s lighter to burn the photographs.
Hayase Tsukasa is her new co-worker at the marketing company she works for and she’s adorable.
With chocolate hair and chocolate eyes, she looks as pure and as angelic as a white lotus. She’s just as kind too. They become fast friends over a project about a band’s show and even though the project brings back memories, Sora’s call to have dinner over her’s and Eri’s house is enough to make her forget.
She invites Tsukasa along.
It’s the same as always:
Sora eating fruits.
Tsukasa smelling of tea.
Eri smiling too brightly in photos.
Yoshie making jokes that are incredibly bad.
It simple, but maybe Himari loves her friends more because of it. And if it reminds her of a past not so distant… Well, she just doesn’t think about it.