Archive of Our Own

For some peculiar reason, Kohane had always thought she didn’t belong.

It was a matter of fact, all evidence in plain sight. With her shaky hands and weird interests and wrong words, she had always been some kind of outcast. It had always been like that, Kohane knew it, even if it took her a while to notice.

The first time she had felt out of place was the first day of school. Her father had dressed her up in some stiff but cute clothes, a white blouse with a maroon vest that matched her knee-length skirt that she would come to know as her uniform, and took her hand as he walked her through the gate of a big, big building made of red bricks and surrounded by trees and blooming flowers. It was a strange place, Kohane had thought immediately, because there were a bunch of shelves stuffed with shiny black loafers like hers that she couldn’t even count (and Kohane already knew how to count to ten!) and a lot of posters with chores listed and rules to follow and coats hung around and bags left unattended in a pile in the corner.

Her father had brought her inside a room filled with other kids that looked around her age and, after kissing her head and wishing her a good day, he had turned on his heels and left. All of the kids had been staring at her, standing on the doorway like a statue made out of melting clay, running away at the edges and liquefying in a muddy and watery substance that everyone hated washing off of the table and utensils.

That was the first time Kohane had heard her heart beat so loudly and quickly. It paced swiftly, almost like a small bunny racing through the undergrowth with its short and frightened legs, syncopated and frantic hops that would hopefully tear it from the jaw of a fateful, hungry predator, expect for the fact that Kohane’s predators were perfectly still, looking at her as if expecting something from her.

Why were they staring at her with such stunned and expectant looks? Was she some kind of entertaining exhibition? Was there something on her face? What was so wrong with her that granted her that treatment?

A thin layer of sweat pearled her palms and she found it harder and harder to breathe, her knees buckled, and as her terror came to a peak, she silently burst out crying; fat beads of tears sprung from her eyes and fell to the ground like stones, silent yet screaming out her discomfort.

“She’s crying!” a kid had screamed, jumping down from his chair. “That’s so weird!”

Huh? She… Was weird?

Whispers and laughs had rippled through the entire room, bouncing off from one kid to another, dripping from their lips like molten chocolate. A teacher had to calm Kohane down as she began to sob and choke on her own wheezing breath.

School continued to be a bit of a problem for Kohane in the following years. People had learnt that in any situation of distress, Kohane would burst out crying without fail. She cried when she messed up her drawing, because she would have to start over to make it look pretty. She cried when she reached the end of her illustrated books, because she couldn’t follow that story any further. She cried when she dropped things, because they could break – sometimes they did, and that was something bad kids did, she had learnt from her teacher – and not work efficiently anymore.

She cried when all of the kids would circle her, expecting to hear her voice. “Come on,” they would say, “just answer us! Can’t you even do that?”

It had became some sort of game, for a while. Let’s see who makes Kohane talk first, they get to pick their juice first for the rest of the month! Kohane would stand there, clawing at her chest as she uselessly tried to dig out her voice, because she wanted to answer. She wanted to talk with the kids and have fun with them. She wanted to draw bunnies with that pretty girl with long black hair, she wanted to hop over the lines in the ground with that tall boy who always came to class last, she wanted to play as a good witch with the other kids when they played out the fairy tales their teacher would narrate to them.

But for some reason, she couldn’t. Her legs kept shaking, her shoulders quivered and her trachea burnt, tears swelling in her eyes and running down her soft cheeks. Inside, she was screaming at the top of her lungs; out loud, only choked sobs resounded lightly.

The kids eventually left her alone. Allegedly, that was even worse.

She stayed behind, blurring with the background: a simple extra, observing other people’s lives drift, quiet and unnoticed the entire time. She had always wondered why, why, why couldn’t she be like everyone else? What was it, inside or out, that told her apart from the other kids? What was wrong with her?

She began elementary school as quietly as she could. She had been sat down at a polished desk next to the window that looked over on the corridor, at a chair so tall that the tips of her shoes barely grazed the cold ground. She hung her bag on the designed hook at the side of her desk and fixed her skirt over her thighs, before the things she had to do had ran out and she began to play with her long hair. Her mother had styled it into a simple braid that was allowed by her school’s vague dress code, tying it with a cute white ribbon that had been her mother’s. In her anxious restlessness, Kohane began to examine her classmates. There were exactly thirty kids in the room, herself included, all different levels of excited. Some seemed eager to be here, other scared out of their minds. Some were already making friends, others, much like herself, were quivering in their places, perhaps intimidated by the prospect of being thrown in that room with complete strangers and not an inkling of a clue on how to make friends.

There was only a problem. The others eventually figured out how to make friends. Kohane did not.

On a hot and sticky day of July, a few days before the beginning of the summer break, her Japanese teacher had given them an assignment to finish before they came back to school in September: “describe your best friend”.

Kohane had stared at the paper for a long time. Best… Friend? One could have a friend that was more important than others? How would you even get it? And it was then that the realization hit her: she didn’t even have a friend, let alone a best friend.

Maybe she could get one. In the three and a half months she had spent in elementary school she had learnt how to hold back her tears (in most occasions) and… Well, she was still working on being more talkative, but she wasn’t half as bad as a year prior, she reckoned, so she should have been able to make friends.

She had asked her parents that same night. Sat between the two of them, spoon held firmly in her chubby and pinkish hands as she stared into her miso soup and questioned: “how do I make friends?”

Her parents had halted at that, surprised by the sudden question. Her father had coughed lightly over his last gulp of soup. “You don’t know how?”

Kohane had shaken her head, blonde hair flying every which way.

Her mother had tapped the butt of her chopsticks over the wooden table, always less reserved and timid than her husband. “You could start a conversation with a person,” she had said, her gentle eyes gliding over Kohane’s face. “You could sit with them at lunch and eat together, if they want to. You see, Kohane, a friend is someone you trust, that you enjoy spending time with, that you can wear matching bracelets with and spill your heart to. That’s the basics of friendship”.

Someone she trusted, huh?

On a Sunday afternoon, she had climbed down the stairs and ran out of the door, hair tied up in a messy, golden ponytail and a cute white dress flying all around her knees as she rushed to the docks where her grandmother lived. Her father had told her it was because the air was better near the sea, that the salt in the air helped her old and sickly grandmother breathe better and made her feel less pain. Kohane understood it to some degree: she did breathe with much more ease when she visited her grandma at the docks, after all, even if it all smelt of petrol and fish and sewage.

While she had ran down to where her grandmother lived indeed, she did not knock on her door. She walked past it, down to the very end of the port, where flocks of seagulls where peeking around, looking for preys, nestled over the long chains of metal that enclosed the concrete pavement. Tucked away on the edge of the port was a small park, low stone benches scattered over the perimeter of the square space and a small, crooked carousel stood out at the center. Alone on a filthy, chipped horse of the carousel sat a girl all alone, her long and curly hair fluttering in the breeze. Those curls were encrusted with salt, bleached in a powdery white and they were hiding, like a curtain would, her sad and lonely face.

Kohane knew from her multiple visits to her grandmother that this girl would sit all alone on the carousel for hours on end, every day, every single day, for some reason. Kohane’s childish mind had done some simple math: she wanted a best friend, but she couldn’t just steal someone else’s best friend, so she had to choose as a best friend someone who also didn’t have a best friend. That girl spent all of that time alone with that gloomy and sad expression, so she must have been lacking a best friend… Well, it made sense in her mind.

She slowly walked up to the carousel, quiet and timid as she always was. Her shoes clapped against the ground, which, unlike she had expected, did not catch the girl’s attention. She stopped right in front of the attraction, next to the bent neck of a pretend unicorn. Its horn was broken off, its point nowhere to be seen. She took in a deep breath and locked her knees before they could even begin to tremble, and she balled her fists behind her back to stop them from shaking as well. “Uhm…” she stumbled over a single word. “H-hello”.

The girl raised her chin the tiniest bit, just enough to look at Kohane in the face, and just enough for Kohane to see the amorphous purple bruise over her jaw. “Do I know you?” she asked in a monotone voice.

“Ah…” Kohane’s heart thumped wildly. There it was, that anxious fear again, that iron hold on her throat as she tried desperately to speak. She gulped in vain a couple of times and a thin layer of cold sweat settled on her nape, right over her hairline, a few stray hairs glued to her now damp skin. The girl waited for her to find her words and, eventually, after long and treacherous minutes of gulping and trembling and pushing back tears, Kohane managed to say: “not really. I… I come by sometimes to- uh… To, well, to visit my grandmother”.

The girl raised an eyebrow. “Do you want something from me?”

It took Kohane another handful of minutes before she blurted out: “I thought you- you, uh, were lonely”.

“What if I am?” the girl almost seemed to challenge.

More silence, strained like a thread on its breaking point, elastic filaments pulled to their extreme and beginning to unravel, one by one, until the central one tore off and snapped in both directions. “I’m lonely, too”.

Kohane had ran down to the docks the following day and sat on the black horse next to the girl, and so the next, and so the next, in a silent rendezvous that devoured their afternoons. They sat side by side, in silence, Kohane finding it impossible to express her feelings. It took an entire week for her to muster the courage to ask for her name.

“Umizawa”.

Kohane, before she could have even realized it, had exclaimed: “that’s such a cute name!”

“Who even wants to be named ‘sea marsh’?” Umizawa had bitten back, her voice inclining into irritation.

Kohane’s heart clenched at the thought that this girl didn’t even like her own name: how awful was it, to be disgusted by your own identity? She wanted to somehow console Umizawa, while also not dismissing her feelings, in order to soothe her and make her comfortable. “You don’t like sea marshes?”

“I don’t like marshes, period”.

Kohane had reclined her head and stared at the stained cloth covering the roof of the carousel. “I could call you Umi, then. So it won’t include the marsh part”.

‘Umi’ had seemed to give it some thought, before mumbling out: “okay”.

Kohane came back the next day, calling out for Umi in her quiet and high pitched voice. She did the day after, and the one after that, as well. Eventually, they began talking without shame, without any sort of collar woven with discomfort fastened around their throats. Kohane found out that Umi was an excellent athlete: she was agile like few, jumping and doing acrobatics as if her body had been created to twirl and vault in mid-air, her limbs were strong enough to carry Kohane around bridal style with ease and to swim with precise movements for long stretches of time and space, but most of all, she was an incredibly swift runner. Her posture was perfect and her legs well trained, blessed with a gift she had put through rigorous training.

They spent many afternoons like that, Umi showing off her athletic skills while Kohane loosened up bit by bit, each day the seams around her mouth coming undone more and more, words spilling from her lips slowly, first in droplets, then in a thin rivulet, until it turned into a roaring cascade. She told Umi about her favorite plushie, of the trip to the lake she went on a few months back, of how she hated the taste of pickled foods, of how she wanted to go the mountains someday, of how much she liked Japanese classes. In turn, Umi told her anything about herself, how her brother always stole her cereals but gave her his portion of her favorite food at dinner, how she had always been terrified of spiders, how she loved the specific shade of blue the sea takes during the winter, how she wanted to become an Olympic runner one day. Umi didn’t smile much and she was gloomy whenever Kohane ran up to her, but her mood cleared slowly after Kohane reached her every day, so she didn’t mind it too much.

“Hey, Kohane,” Umi asked once, the both of them sat on the curb of the port’s promenade, eating hard candies Kohane had brought for the two of them to share, “why are you my friend?”

Kohane stilled, the hard candy she was bringing to her lips almost falling from her increasingly shaky grip. “You- uh… What? What do you… What do you mean?” she asked, fear dripping from her voice.

Umi shrugged, popping a murky blue candy in her mouth. “No one wants to be friends with me. Why did you want to?”

Kohane swallowed thick bile that tasted of strawberry and sugary saliva, sorting out the words in her mind to string them together in a decent sentence. She had to pick her words carefully, she just had, and she had to get them out clearly and quickly, otherwise Umi would leave her and never bother with her again, like the other kids usually did when Kohane’s silences stretched out for a touch too long. In the end, she found herself unable to debate her own reasons. “I just… I wanted a friend. And I… I thought, since you were- uh, well, you’re always alone, I thought you also… Didn’t have many friends… That’s, uh, that’s why. I thought you might have wanted a friend as well”.

Umi kept quiet for a bit, rolling the candy over the roof of her mouth with her tongue, lips sealed tight. Eventually, she swallowed flavored saliva and mumbled around the melting treat: “I didn’t. I was fine all alone”.

Kohane’s heart slammed in her chest, a pit opening in her stomach that made her want to either throw up or start crying uncontrollably, and yet her body was frozen in disbelief at her assumption being wrong. She dropped her intact candy in the bag. She was about to speak when Umi crunched her candy and swallowed it all, jumping up and standing.

“It’s fine,” she said, tilting her head to the side. Like that, the Sun illuminated the new bruises that kissed her cheekbones, the ones draping over her left arm, dark clusters blooming on her shins. Kohane had never asked how she got them; she was too terrified of the answer. “You know, Kohane, the other kids don’t like me, but you do, and I’m fine with that. I like you too. I’m happy to call you my friend”.

In September, as the leaves began to turn orange and crimson, Kohane turned in her assignment about her best friend, Umi. A week later, she got the maximum score on her work.

Although classes had resumed, Kohane still found the time to visit Umi. They did not see each other every day anymore; instead, they met up on Fridays, when Kohane was free and went to have dinner with her grandmother. Umi didn’t have track practice that day, so their friendship worked.

Kohane trusted Umi, and the feeling was reciprocated. Umi told Kohane about her fights with her brother, about how her mother whined about her giant appetite after practice but of her pride at her daughter’s successes anyway, she told her every single thought that ran through her mind. One day, during November, they sat down on the seaside promenade and wove friendship bracelets for each other.

One day, without any notice, Umi did not show up to their meeting place. It surprised Kohane: Umi had reassured her she would be here today. It was unlike her, and the fact shook Kohane a bit. Perhaps she was running late, she thought, yes, surely. She sat on the black horse on the carousel and waited and waited and waited. The sky was gray and the waves crashed against the shore in a fountain of gray foam and gray splashes and gray undertow. The seagulls that danced around in the sky were painted in gray with muddied yellow beaks and Kohane found her soul growing a little gray, too.

Umi did not show up, nor did she the week after. Had Kohane done something to upset her? Her eyes welled up in tears at the mere thought. No, please, she could still fix it, couldn’t she? They could just talk it out, couldn’t they? Yes, it must be that way. If she had made a mistake, all Umi had to do was tell her, explain why she was angry sad disappointed whatever she was and Kohane swore to herself she would do anything to improve her behavior. If she hadn’t, if Umi had just misunderstood her actions or words, they just had to talk it out and resolve the miscommunication.

The assumptions and suppositions crowded her mind, each day between that Friday and the next she fell asleep with a weight over her chest, sharpened claws digging through her fragile ribcage to suffocate her with a blind guilt, spewing out of nowhere, without any explanation besides what she could hypothesize had been her own errors. She had never been good at interacting with others, so she must have done something wrong to drive Umi away, right?

On the third Friday, Kohane found a boy sat on the black horse. He had a terrible posture, shoulders slumped forward, legs spread wide, his neck almost retracted back between his collarbones. Kohane looked at his head of curly hair and he looked at her pointedly. “Are you Kohane?” he asked in a deep and grating voice.

Kohane quivered. He must have been fifteen at the very least, given his voice and the sparce blossoms of a beard under his chin and lips; his expression was schooled into a moderate irritation, yet Kohane could see the fury boiling underneath. She managed to nod.

“I’m Umizawa’s brother. She wanted me to tell you she won’t be coming here anymore”. He tilted his head, staring at the small girl before him who was shaking in her spot. “And Imma add, we’re moving. So, yeah. That’s why she isn’t coming anymore”.

“M-moving?” Kohane asked, her voice cracking a hundred of times in the space of a couple of syllables in a way that made her feel weak. “Why? Umi never said anything, nothing, she wasn’t- I didn’t know, I didn’t!”

The boy sighed. “We just decided. Our father thinks Umizawa isn’t safe around here”.

“Safe?”

Something akin to doubt flashed across the boy’s face, aside his flaring anger. “Umizawa has been bullied relentlessly ever since beginning school. A few weeks ago, the other kids beat her up and broke both of her legs. Our father hopes to find somewhere where Umizawa can live free of the fear of other people judging her and making fun of her”.

That boy and Umi slipped away from Kohane’s life, not even the shadow of a last goodbye between her and her first friend being allowed. Kohane had ran away, too afraid to visit Umi or even ask her grandmother if she knew where Umi would be moving. She was haunted by pictures of purple bruises and down played comments about disliking classmates, because now it all made sense, because Kohane had always been too blind, because she had never asked the obvious, because maybe, just maybe, if she had been a better friend, maybe Umi’s legs wouldn’t have been snapped in half and she wouldn’t have had to run away.

Going back to being alone after having a taste of what friendship felt like was agonizing. Spending her afternoons alone now felt like a constraint rather than a placid lifestyle she had been well acquainted with, because she did not want to do that: that was merely a second choice, an expedient as she couldn’t do what she truly wanted. She felt as if her legs had been snapped in half, too, unable to go wherever she wanted, do whatever she wanted, feel however she wanted. She hated how much of her mood depended on an external factor, and she hated that she was too cowardly to make new friends, even if they could never be Umi.

March came, and so did her birthday. The event happened to fall on a Sunday, so she woke up a little later than usual. The taste in her mouth was sweet and her limbs thrummed with excitement, the Sun seemed brighter and the colors a little more vivid than the usual, monotone grayscale that drenched Kohane’s life. She walked downstairs to find her parents waiting for her: they sang happy birthday in a slurred English, they hugged her and kissed her jowls, they sat her down and slipped a strawberry cake in front of her. It was sprinkled in pink flowers made out of edible, hardened sugar, as well as the line “happy birthday, Kohane!”

The taste of that cake lingered on her tongue in every memory of that day. It tasted sweet, much like the reminiscence of such a happy moment, but most of all, she remembered fondly her birthday gift. Her father had handed her a rectangular box wrapped in a sky blue present paper, topped with a white ribbon. Kohane had unraveled it with as much attention as her small hands allowed, pulled at the hems of the paper as to not tear it, and gasped in amazement when she was met with a brand new camera.

“Kohane, you have the talent to find beauty and hope in every corner of the world,” her father had said, “you should immortalize it forever, to store it in your heart and remember the happiest moments when you’re older”.

With the want to use her new gift well, Kohane fell into the habit of taking long walks along scenic streets she knew well, camera in hand and amazement filling her heart. She photographed anything: the leaves swaying on the branches of blooming trees, the rushing, filthy water under a bridge, popping neon signs advertising stuff in an approximate English, a soon-to-be-mother caressing her gravid belly after asking for permission. She caught the clouds on the brink of diluting in the blue behind, cats leaping between rooftops, shards of glass floating over the edge of sidewalks, the decadence and rebirth she could find in any corner of Shibuya.

She truly believed there was beauty and happiness in every corner of the world. Everything was important enough to be seen and represented, worthy of note, even the tiniest stain on the corner of a building, even the smallest tadpole along the canals. Everything had a place in the world, essential to the Universe’s history, for how invisible and modest.

She began to read, not much like some people her age did, but she liked to hide herself in the nice smell of paper from time to time. She liked stories about little things, stories about childhood friends, stories about soulmates. She liked the warm, fuzzy feeling in her heart when she reached the last page and everything ended on a good note. She carried each tale in her heart, and wished to someday be the protagonist of a nice, inspiring novel herself.

Her grades in Japanese skyrocketed, as well as English when she decided that solely Japanese stories weren’t enough. She began to take an interest in history and in art, and without even realizing, she had became one of the most diligent kids in her class. While she enjoyed the rushes of pride that came with each positive mark, she realized that each number was digging a deeper and deeper gorge between her and her classmates.

“Huh, Azusawa always gets such high grades…”

“Well, that’s the least I’d expect! She’s got no friends, so she must spend every single day studying. That’s sad, I would never want to spend my afternoons like that!”

She didn’t spend all of her time studying, she wanted to say, to justify herself, she wasn’t a nerd, she wasn’t lonely.

“I can’t stand her, does she think she’s better just ‘cause she’s smarter?”

She didn’t think she was better. She never thought that. If she were better, then why did she feel so much worse than anyone her age?

“Stay away from her. She must think she’s above all of us… Having friends is too humiliating for her, she has to study to keep her grades up. She’s even got the looks of a nerd, between those stupid glasses and her straight clothes. She’s such a brainiac”.

No, no, no, it wasn’t true! Kohane envied them all, envied them for everything she didn’t have! She just wanted a friend, she just wanted someone who would listen to her, she just wanted to be understood!

… Her classmates eventually left her alone. Allegedly, that was even worse.

Kohane hated the feeling that had accompanied her throughout all of her years of primary school. The other kids simply stared right through her, pretended she wasn’t even there. Kohane wanted to scream out, she wasn’t invisible, she was there, sat among other thirty people, she was going through their same experiences, but- well, not really, right? They were hanging out with their friends, having fun together, doing dumb things and learning how the world around them worked, while Kohane only had her camera and her stories with her. There wasn’t a day where she didn’t mourn her buried friendship with Umi.

The days crawled, twisted into weeks, morphed into months, spun into years, and one day Kohane found herself wearing a new uniform, white blouse, blue skirt, pink ribbon. She had received a small phone for her birthday, one of those brand new phones without buttons, a plastic back that was the rage at the time. She stood by the entrance of her new school, heart racing, hands wet with cold sweat, knees turning into jello. She couldn’t go another three years living that nightmare made of silent treatment and anxiety, she just couldn’t.

She willed her body to move and reach the main hall where a large board had been set up, showing the names of each student and the class they had been assigned to. Her eyes had been veiled by fearful tears and her head spun from hyperventilation, so she had to bat her eyelids a few times to see clearly. She scanned the class 1-A names, but didn’t find herself. For some reason, she wasn’t surprised by the idea of not being in the first class. She moved to the second column, and found her name thrown in the middle in a neat handwriting, drawing out the kanji for ‘sawa’. Her memory flashed to Umi: Kohane wished she were there with her.

Suddenly she felt an arm being thrown across her shoulders. “Ah, Rei, I’d been looking everywhere for you! Why are you- oh”.

Kohane whipped her head around, finding a girl with thin brown eyes staring at her in surprise and, perhaps, a bit of disappointment. “I’m sorry,” she said in her thrilling and loud voice. “I thought you were my friend. Maaan, you’re identical. Did you happen to see a girl that looks just like you?”

Kohane, choked back, simply shook her head.

The girl groaned. “Bummer. Wanna help me look for her? My name’s Kiriko Aino, by the way. Hers is Reiko Makigami”.

Kohane followed Aino, unsure of what to do. They sifted through the crowd for a while, until Kohane spotted a girl as tall as her, with her same blonde hair and small shoulders, so she tugged at the elbow of Aino’s jacket. When the other girl turned to her, Kohane simply pointed to her lookalike.

“Rei!” Aino shouted, and Kohane winced at its loudness. She watched as the other blonde turned, wide blue eyes staring at them blinking in confusion, then recognition, then annoyance. Aino grabbed Kohane’s wrist, an iron hold that almost hurt Kohane, and dragged her to where the blonde was. “Rei, you won’t believe it! I was looking for you and I found one of your seven doppelgängers!” she boomed, and again, Kohane winced at it.

The blonde – Makigami, Kohane supposed – stared at Aino. “Kinda. She’s prettier”.

“Ah, you’re very pretty yourself!” Kohane was quick to say, already defending Makigami. It never sat well with her when people spoke so lowly of themselves, honestly.

The two girls stared at her, although Makigami’s felt more like a glare. “You’re both very pretty,” Aino mediated.

Makigami tilted her head and frowned. “No, really, she’s prettier”.

“Oh, for God’s sake- you’re just as pretty as… Wait, what’s your name?” Aino asked, finally realizing she hadn’t asked for Kohane’s name.

Kohane gulped thickly. “K-Kohane Azusawa. And- ah, it’s nice to meet you two”.

Makigami tilted her head to the other side. “Are you a first year?” she asked in her breathy and low voice.

Kohane nodded, intimidated, yet content all the same that someone was talking to her – even complimented her! “Yes, I am”.

“The two of us as well,” Makigami commented, cold as ever.

“Woah, which class you’re in?” Aino asked.

“1-B,” Kohane squeaked, scared by Aino’s boisterousness. “What… What about you two?”

“1-B as well,” Makigami answered. She flipped her blonde waves behind her shoulder and tilted her head again, back to the first side. Kohane’s neck hurt just from looking at her. “We are classmates, it seems”.

Kohane nodded, eager to have, perhaps, found a potential friend. “We’ll, uh… We’ll be in each other’s care!” and then, as if remembering of the girl that was still holding her wrist, she added: “w-what about you, Aino-san?”

Aino was staring off into the void, as if struck by a flooring realization, then, out of the blue, she groaned and whipped her head back, covering her face with a hand in a much tragic scene. “I’m in 1-C!” she exclaimed, heartbroken. “I must part from my darling Rei!”

“Don’t call me that,” Makigami all but spat, giving her a death glare. Aino didn’t seem to mind.

Middle school wasn’t that bad, Kohane had decided after a few days. Makigami wasn’t the most talkative type, but Aino more than made up for it, as she always came to their class during breaks and included Kohane in her and Makigami’s conversations. Kohane was happy to participate, nibbling on her sesame balls as Aino chatted her head off. They talked about mundane things: about Aino’s part-time job, about Makigami’s volleyball practice, about their lessons, about food, about trends, about gossip. Kohane didn’t really share much about herself, but found herself giving her opinions on the most varied topics quite often.

She found Aino and Makigami to be enjoyable people, beautiful in their mundane simpleness. They were beautiful in the way they were colorful, Aino dyed in bright oranges and yellows and golds, whereas Makigami was a carefully put together mosaic of dark greens, deep chocolates and profound maroons; they were eye-catching, hypnotizing, overshadowing Kohane’s own palette of grays and blacks and whites. They didn’t seem to mind Kohane’s lack of color. However, they were missing a color in their prism.

One muggy day of May, after a year and a month had ran by of their friendship, Kohane and Makigami had been waiting by the front gate of their school for their friend, who seemed to be running late. She had texted Makigami that she would be arriving soon, and yet they had been waiting for almost fifteen minutes. “Where the fuck did Kiriko even-” Makigami began to grumble, but was quickly interrupted by none other than the girl in question.

“Girls!” she exclaimed, running down towards them, bright eyes and bright smile. A girl was struggling to catch up behind her, long waves of brown hair flew all around her face, whipping at her round face and the sky behind her. “I got a new friend!”

Makigami raised an eyebrow and pocketed her phone. “That girl?” she asked in her typically sour tone. Kohane had found out that Makigami’s default mood fell somewhere between disgusted and annoyed, but besides that, she was easy to talk to. Well, when she actually answered to what you would say. “Are we some kind of refuge for stray girls, Kiriko?” she sardonically added.

Aino’s eyes swam over Kohane’s figure, then back to her friend. “Do you mind it?”

Makigami sighed. “Just get this over with. Who are you?” she asked to the newcomer.

The girl yelped, but soon melted in a giant and gentle smile. “Ah, my name is Hanae Takase. I’m from class 2-A and I’m in the theater club with Aino-chan,” she presented herself in a smooth voice, soft like velvet and airy like a breath of fresh air in winter.

Aino grinned. “She’s so fucking cool, guys, I just had to introduce her to my friends,” she explained, grabbing Takase’s shoulders and shaking her as if presenting something to Kohane and Makigami.

Kohane’s heart fluttered in her chest: Aino considered her a friend, without anyone forcing her to, without Kohane pathetically begging to be deemed as such. It was an exhilarating feeling, but she kept her mouth shut and welcomed Takase instead.

Kohane enjoyed the other girls’ presence, she truly did. There was a thin feeling, a high elation swelling in her chest at being accepted as a friend by not one, not two, but three girls, people who spent time with her out of their own free will, who listened to what she had to say, who wanted to do stuff with her. They even created a group chat together, a room where most conversation was driven by Aino and Takase, with sparse although regular texts from Kohane and some extremely rare ones from Makigami.

They organized hangouts and went out together on Friday nights, took selfies together, ate lunch together and had study sessions together. They all went with Makigami to the hairstylist when she dyed her hair black, they went to each and every one of Takase’s recitals, they played with Aino’s puppy when they went over to her house. Kohane was happy, because finally, finally, she was feeling like a normal teenage girl.

Takase completed their prism, bringing light lavenders and sharp purples and loud pinks, such pretty colors that blended perfectly together with Aino and Makigami. And Kohane, well, she found herself to be a bit of the black sheep of the group, dull and coming from a lifetime of being transparent.

Takase often asked her to take photos with her camera. So, dutifully, Kohane turned her lens towards the three girls, catching and reflecting all of their beauty. It didn’t take her long to realize that she was a lens, the prism itself, the enabler that caught other people’s light and colors and enhanced them, without ever needing to expose herself. Somewhere in her soul, she felt as if she had finally found her place.

Somewhere in her soul, she should have known it would never last. The change was subtle, yet painfully noticeable in the long run. It had been a simple comment from Aino, perhaps innocent, as the girl tended to speak without consulting her brain first. “You know, we don’t have a single photo with you”.

Kohane faltered, her grip on the cardboard cutter slipping a bit as she looked up to find a frown on Aino’s face. “What… What do you mean?” she asked, adjusting her hold on the object. In front of her, the photos she had been cutting to fit properly on Takase’s birthday present stared back: pictures of Takase alone, Takase and Aino, Takase and Makigami, Takase and Aino and Makigami. Discarded to the side to be stored away were photos of Aino and Makigami, but Kohane’s face was nowhere to be seen. “Oh. It’s- uh, it’s true. Takase always asks me to take pictures and, well, I can’t really be in the photos if I’m. You know. The one taking them”.

Aino shrugged. They kept asking Kohane to take photos, but never volunteered to take them for her.

Standing under a bleeding tree in October, Takase exclaimed: “these matching T-shirts look so cute!”

She showed her phone to her three friends, opened on a fashion website she often shopped from. The T-shirts in question were a series of three, each decorated to match one of the three main characters of a TV series Makigami and Takase loved. Takase giggled. “We should totally get them!”

“But there are only three,” Kohane noticed, fiddling with her fingers, palms facing up in her lap.

Takase blinked. “Oh, that’s true. Well, it’s fine. We’ll match in three. Reiko, which one do you want? I was thinking I could get the pink one”.

Aino immediately jumped at the proposal. “I’ll get the yellow one!”

“That’d leave Azusawa out,” Makigami frowned, throwing an annoyed look at Aino.

Takase huffed a breath, her face slowly morphing and melting with anger. “Reiko, do you want the T-shirt or not?” she asked, tone setting into hardened steel.

Makigami seemed reluctant, biting back a comment. In the end, she said: “the green one is fine”.

Before Christmas break, they had organized a sleepover for New Year’s Eve. They were supposed to hang out at Takase’s house, a small thing to welcome the new year together. Makigami would bring drinks and snacks, Aino skincare products and other fun things, Kohane movies and videogames. Kohane had been gushing with happiness at the idea of spending a fun time with her friends, restless as the holidays crawled by. That is, until she got a text on the twenty-eighth from Takase, saying that the whole ordeal had been called off because she wouldn’t be available that day.

Four days later, Kohane found photos on her friends’ social medias of them having fun and watching movies together in Takase’s bedroom while counting down to the new year. Her stomach fell through her intestines as she felt as if she had been punched, all air spouting out of her lungs and her eyes filling with tears. Why?, she asked herself. Why, why, why, just why? Where had she gone wrong? Why, why, why?!

She all but crumbled around herself on her bed, clutching at her chest, desperately trying to hold her heart inside of her rib cage because it felt as it was going to burst out from one moment to the other, broken ribs and bleeding thorax, and cried. She cried so much that she thought she would dry up; her head pounded and her larynx burnt and her eyes stung so much it made her want to cry more out pain whether she kept them open or closed. What was wrong with her? Why did her friends ostracize her? Had she done something to offend them? She cried, she sobbed, throat raw and livid. Had she changed overtime, to the point that her friends didn’t enjoy her presence anymore? Had her friends ever liked her?

… Where they even, truly her friends, if they acted so?

And somehow, Kohane knew she was shattering. She knew she was breaking into pieces, thirteen years of pressure and that ugly, horrible feeling of not belonging choking and scalding her finally having the best of her. She laid there, shaking, an unraveled mess of social anxiety and awkwardness, and for once in her life she felt colorful. Red with shame, livid with the pain that thrummed through her entire body, but even so, it was merely a filter: she was still transparent, only her and herself privy to her pathetic breakdown, a star exploding into a myriad of scorching atoms. Did she not deserve to be loved like everyone else?

She didn’t open her texting app for days on end. She didn’t have the heart to text her friends. She didn’t have the strength to deal with the fact that they hadn’t even sought her out. The date on their last texts didn’t change: December twenty-eight, last year’s date eating away at the coronaries in Kohane’s heart, the radio silence she had been so used to her entire life dealing her the final blow.

It was unfair. It was so fucking unfair.

She screamt in her pillow, unable to take it anymore. All she had wanted was to be a normal teenager, to enjoy her teenage life like a normal fucking teenager. She wanted to go to the movies and to amusements park and on school trips and take dumb selfies in any mirror she and her friends stumbled across and buy silly matching trinkets and set her phone’s wallpaper to a photo of her and her friends and to be happy. Was it too much to ask for?

Winter break eventually ended. She went back to school and, although she had been the one who had received the injustice, she found it hard to look at Makigami in the eyes. Makigami didn’t look at her, either.

Days passed. December twenty-eight stayed there, luminous and blaring in all of its ridiculing strength. She ate her lunch alone, she walked home alone. She had known loneliness all of her life, and although painful, it was easy to return to that routine, now. As if she had been made for such a lifestyle, as if it was her unassigned role in her life to be alone, to be that girl that always made her own company suffice, no matter the circumstances. She had lost Umi, she had been denied Aino, Makigami and Takase. Did she even deserve friends, by this point?

The pain in her chest did not subside, and waves of shame wrecked her body whenever she saw her friends, dragging her back in that state of mind she had been introduced to that day, so long ago, standing in a classroom and surrounded by clueless children. She couldn’t take it anymore.

One day, February running through her life as her days were consumed by loneliness and biting into March, she finally decided to confront the three girls. She found them in their usual hang out spot, under that old tree by the front gate, Aino sprawled on the ground, Makigami and Takase placidly sat all bundled up in their coats and scarves. The cold bit at Kohane’s cheeks, and she had to concentrate on that sting to avoid the one in her guts. She took a deep breath a she approached them and stilled, standing like a sapling buckling underneath its own weight a little over a meter from them. “Good morning,” she choked out, after taking another breath.

The three girls raised their gazes at her, various different emotions painting their faces. Aino looked surprised and shocked by her brazenness, Makigami lowered her face in a shamefully obvious guilt, while Takase frowned, disgusted by the mere sight of the young girl. It felt like a stab to Kohane’s chest: where those the reactions she elicited in her alleged friends?

She cleared her throat. “I will, uh. I will be straight-forward, and I- I won’t take up much of your time,” she prefaced, her fists balling around her skirt. She greedily gulped down another breath of the refreshing winter air. “Has something happened? Did I, well, did I do something… wrong?”

Makigami lowered her gaze even further while Aino blinked dumbly, pretending she didn’t understand what she was saying. Takase, on the other hand, snapped her book closed and leveled Kohane with a hateful glare. “No, Azusawa,” she said, venom seeping from her words, “nothing’s happened”.

Kohane felt her knees buckle, so she locked them with all of the strength she had. She was shattering already, there was no point in taking care of herself now. “A-Are you, uh, are you sure? Because, well, if I’ve- in any way, how I’ve been acting was- you know, if I’ve done something wrong, you can just tell me! And. And I’ll try my best, I swear. I’ll do my best to not do it again, to not do anything to upset you”.

“Everything’s fine, really,” Takase insisted, brown hair swaying all around her face. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Azusawa. We just… Need some time off, you know? We’ll get back at you when everything’s sorted out”.

Kohane stood there, dumbly, because that was worse than any kind of insult they could’ve thrown her way. That indifference, the stupid indifference that drove Kohane crazy, because all of her life she had always been faced with indifference, with stone cold faces that looked straight through her, forgetting about her.

This time around, her “friends” did not leave. She left them for good.

“You know it’s for the better, Kohane,” she whispered to herself at night, when her body ached with the yearning for a friend, for someone who wanted to keep her company. “It’s for the better, it’s for the better, it’s for the better…”

She didn’t have the heart to delete the photos, delete the chat logs, delete her memories. For the better or for the worse, she didn’t know how to feel anymore, but she knew that the ache, all of the pain she had been put through, were part of her, and there was a bittersweet yet nostalgic taste in those memories, a sweet gratitude for feeling happy, even if for a little bit, even if it was forever relegated to the past, tainted by that final sentence to exile.

She spent her last year of middle school alone. All of that pain had dulled into a deaf throb, but it was there, nonetheless.

The time eventually came for her to change her uniform again. Gray skirt and sweater, a red ribbon, shiny loafers and the same frantic, terrified pounding heart in her chest. The Miyamasuzaka Girls’ Academy was an imposing building, with giant courtyards and dozens of rooms, all spread across multiple floors, bustling with myriads upon myriads of girls.

One could think of this as Kohane’s personal hell.

Navigating through the entrance was like diving in a kaleidoscopic pool of humanity, black hair, brown eyes, pretty ribbons braided into someone’s hair, shiny backpacks, cream cardigans, colorful phones, hands held together, kisses flying from one end of the corridor to the other, lacquered clipboards held between arms. Kohane felt nauseous. That bedlam did nothing but disorient her, making her heart rate skyrocket as if she had been injected raw adrenaline in her system, pumping and racing through her, shocking each and every single organ or muscle in her body into a fight or flight battle, breath short, sweat running down the strait in her back, mouth thick with terror.

One thing Kohane had suspect her entire life was that some categories of people could smell fear, much like sharks could pinpoint a single drop of dense blood in the immense vastness of the ocean. There was a plethora of specimens, raging from shop assistants to cruel bullies. All had something in common: once they perceived you, they would surely find you. You had no escape: you were doomed to fall prey for them, and each moment they drew closer, closer, closer…

A hand hooked over Kohane’s shoulders, digging lightly inside of the hollow of her clavicle. Kohane, who had been standing dumbly in the main hallway among the tributary rivers of students for the best part of the past ten minutes, spun around, screeching in fear and surprise. A girl now stood in front of her, wide gray eyes sparkling with happiness and energy, an entire galaxy of freckles dusting her deeply tanned cheeks, skin crumpling and peeling around the edges of her jaw and hairline, thin hair falling as straight as spaghetti all around her shoulders, an identical uniform to Kohane’s own hugging a lean and slightly taller body. Kohane stared and- oh, oh, this girl was incredibly pretty and Kohane was panicking and her smile was blinding and-

“Hi!” the girl exclaimed in a joyous voice, taking her hand back from Kohane to wave at her. “Is everything alright? You’ve been trembling like a leaf for a while now”.

Kohane gulped thickly, on the verge of bursting into tears. It was all so loud, so crowded, so confusing… “I, uh…” she gulped again and dried her hands on her skirt, palm stretched outwards and arching in a sweaty and shaking cup. “I was. Uhm… I need to, well, find the… Hall where the entra- entrance ceremony is being, ah, is being held. I’d need to find my seat…”

The girl blinked, gray sparkling as if her eyes had been made of diamond or some other precious gemstone. “I'll help you find it, so can you tell me your name?” she proposed, bending her head to the side.

Kohane’s heart calmed down a little bit, halting questioningly and resuming its race, although tamer, as if it were an animal growing accustomed to a human being. “I’m Kohane Azusawa,” she blurted out, intestines churning and knotting in her abdomen.

The girl smiled, a smile so wide and bright that Kohane thought she would turn blind by simply looking at it. It was a little toothy, her lips a little chapped and peeling in the middle in a point she must have bitten into quite often, but Kohane found it lovely nonetheless. “That’s such a pretty name!” she exclaimed, waving an arm around. Her sleeve was rolled up just underneath her elbow, showing a thin arm covered in a forest of bronze hair, shining in the morning Sun, rather befitting with her overall character. She had freckles on her arms as well. “I’m Minori Hanasato, a first year and aspiring future idol!”

“An… Idol?” Kohane echoed, a bit confused. “Like the idols in Asrun?”

Kohane couldn’t believe it was possible, but Hanasato’s eyes lit up even more, a pool of glittery diamonds. “Exactly!” she basically screamt, quite literally breaking the barrier of sound. A few girls turned towards them, surprised, shocked, scared or all three together. “Haruka-chan is my favorite! She’s actually the one that gave me the dream of becoming an idol, you know?”

A dream, she said? Kohane pondered the idea as Hanasato brought her along, looking for her seat in the sea of other seats for the students. Kohane had never had a dream, maybe besides having a friend. Did that even classify as a dream? Maybe it did. Still, Kohane felt a little pathetic, holding up her miserable dream in the cup of her trembling hands, sweaty palm lines, gaps between her fingers where the rivulets of the melting fantasy ran out of, escaping her until she was left with nothing but leftovers and memories to clutch close to her chest, while Hanasato’s dream, oh, Hanasato’s dream! Hers was a true wish, an inestimable artifact to take good care of, worthy of being called such, a golden dream for an equally golden soul, Kohane would come to learn as she passed each day in class with Hanasato-

“You can just call me Minori!” the girl had puffed her cheeks angrily one day during lunch, pissed off at Kohane’s insistence on using her last name and honorifics. “No Hanasato! I’m Minori! Minori-chan, even, etcetera, etcetera”.

Kohane blinked, turning to Hinomori for help. Hinomori was another girl in their class, a quiet one with a deep and devoted passion for the bass and live music whom Hanasato had adopted upon finding out she had been the one to sit in front of her. “That- uh, that would be improper,” she murmured, “right, Hinomori?”

Hinomori looked up from her lunch, chewing thoroughly before swallowing and answering. “I don’t think so. You’re friends. We’re friends. It’s normal to call each other by our first names,” she explained easily, bending down to grab her water bottle from her backpack.

Friends called each other by their first names? Well, yes, of course they did, but not all friends, right? Only the close ones. She had never called her ex friends by their names, nor had they ever called her Kohane. Besides her family, only Umi had ever called her by her name, but that was because Umi had never known her surname… Probably. “Is that what friends do?”

The question had slipped between the seams of her lips before she could realize it. Hanasato and Hinomori shot her a confused glance, the latter much more worried than surprised, unlike the former. “Of course,” Hinomori said, slowly, cautiously, “Kohane”.

“Kohane-chan,” Hanasato slowly began to smile, standing up from her desk.

Hinomori smiled, as well. “Kohane,” she echoed, straight teeth and pointy canines poking out of her pale lips.

“Kohane, our bestest friend Kohane-chan,” Hanasato singsonged, rounding Kohane’s desk, then, out of nowhere, she threw her arms around her and hugged her close, so close that Kohane could feel her steady heartbeat, clear and sincere. “We really love you, Kohane-chan!”

Hinomori nodded as she stood up too. She did not hug Kohane like Hanasato did – crushing would be a much more suited term given the strength of the embrace, thank you very much – but she did take Kohane’s hands in hers. “Kohane, you know that we are your friends, right?”

Kohane’s heart clenched in her chest. Hinomori had told them about how much she had struggled to get back in touch with her childhood best friends, how much tears and heartbreak and careful effort it took to finally restore their relationship, while Hanasato had retold how she had finally found the perfect group in her idol friends. They knew what friendship was. They knew how to hold on to it, how to cradle it close and preserve it, how to nurture it and make it thrive; they knew what was real and what was fake, what was genuine and what was toxic.

Did they truly consider Kohane their friend? Would they really keep her, all crooked fingers and fragile heart and flawed soul?

Tears made Kohane’s eyes swell, bloated and swollen drops carrying fifteen years of solitude and fear and frustration. “You- you are?” she choked out.

“Of course!” Hanasato shouted, pulling back but still holding her by the shoulders while Hinomori shifted her hold on her hands to they could both keep contact with her. “Of course, of course, of course. Kohane, we’ve known each other for a very short time, but trust me, we enjoy your company and we consider you one of our best friends!”

Kohane gasped, looking at Hanasato and Hinomori in turn- no, no, looking at Minori and Shiho. She nodded, slowly, and smiled. For once, she felt as if the Sun was shining down on her, rather than through her.

Until one day, she finally caught the Sun with her bare hands. The sky was tinted pink and orange as it was aflame, coursed by soft clouds as wispy as whipped cream, the high rise buildings and glass skyscrapers of Shibuya falling down on her, looming like proud, elegant giants, rivers of people flowing all around her, but in that moment, nothing existed outside of the Sun. Golden eyes, midnight cascades of hair, the most beautiful and powerful voice Kohane had ever heard: her heart shook deeply as she stared and stared, drinking up every sound, every confident movement, everything about that girl, an earthly siren. When her addicting song had finally fell into an empty silence, Kohane had thought she would never see that entrancing girl again, but, somehow, by fate or coincidence or anything, Kohane found herself stumbling into her, again and again. Her voice was enrapturing, casting Kohane under a spell she could not break, adrenaline rushing through her veins and heart pounding but for very different reasons than the ones she was used to. And it felt so freeing, feeling with her whole body in such a positive way for once, her entire self begging for more, more, more, because she could never get enough of this girl’s voice, until the need to join in had became too strong and their voices had blended together. It was a rushed melody, all off in Kohane’s ties and points while the girl was flawless, but flowed into a warm, molten sound all the same that Kohane mourned when it eventually came to an end. She didn’t want it to end, she wanted to keep singing, please, let her sing by her side again, please-

“I found you!” the sunshine girl – An, An Shiraishi, beautiful and golden – had cried suddenly, “I’ve finally found you! Kohane, let’s team up! Let’s sweep the world off its feet with our performances!”

And Kohane, oh, Kohane accepted. It wasn’t quite right yet, something still missing from the bigger picture, but everything slotted together perfectly, each puzzle piece falling into place the moment Akito Shinonome and Touya Aoyagi had walked in into her life and decided to walk the path towards RAD WEEKEND alongside the two girls.

Out of the blue, Kohane’s life had been filled with color and sound. She couldn’t quite believe it, how readily everyone in Vivid BAD SQUAD had welcomed her, how everyone in Vivid Street began caring for her, slowly yet surely. Each day a new song was added to her playlist – pop, rock, jazz, classical, Japanese, English, Portuguese, from the 2000s, from the 70s, from the 90s. Each day her voice grew steadier, her tongue melted into something freer and much more confident, her hands stopped shaking, her mind relaxed in an accepting and ready calmness, her heart pounding for all of the right reasons.

An’s hands were steady when she gripped her mic, a peculiar light shining in her eyes whenever her voice carried throughout the air to touch someone’s heart, perhaps just her own, and sometimes, Kohane knew that was enough too. Her hands were large and with prominent knuckles, small rocks over the sea that was her metacarpus, ran by the shallows and shoals that were the bruises she kept getting from clutching the mic too tight. Kohane found those hands to be lovely when entwined with her, when running through her hair, when pressing her close in An’s embrace. An was luminous and warm as the Sun itself, and much like the Sun itself, sometimes she had periods of eclipse; Kohane dreaded such moments of profound darkness, but they came and left, on a whim, leaving Kohane reeling in the attempt of reading her partner. Nevertheless, she wished to stand with An, her closest friend, her favorite person by now, and never let her go.

Akito, behind his façade, was a mess. Kohane had come to learn this fact throughout the many months – almost a year! – of friendship and partnership alike, although she did not think of it as something bad, per se. Akito used to be a catastrophic mess in the beginning, wild and rabid, anger swallowing him whole in a murky hate for everything and everyone. Kohane was scared of him at the beginning, of his bloodshot eyes and gritting teeth, of his burning anger that exploded suddenly and with no warning, punches thrown against the wall, moon-shaped indents digging in his palms, kicks loosened against anything fragile enough to not break his legs. She saw the guilt in his eyes whenever he let that frustration get a hold of him, and over time, as Akito grew and became more mature, more rational and more skilled, the anger subsided, leaving only passion and pride, testified by his hypnotic voice. He slowly turned into a wildfire, the flames of his passion devouring his heart and spreading to engulf him whole, a wildfire bouncing and moving erratically at the same pace of his voice until lighting everything aflame, nothing and no one spared by his overwhelming dedication and love for music, his voice becoming the embodiment of his whole life and purpose. Kohane herself, one day at the time, let that voice snake its way inside of herself and burn her soul, setting it alight, turning it into a star, as white-hot and luminous like the Sun, her Sun.

If Akito was fire, then Touya was ice. He was somewhat akin to snow, the frigid season he was named after, the soft and elegant layer of white that dusted the world in the night of the year, death and grief taking a hold of everything. Touya was stoic, ice cold expression hard to dent, no, impossible. Kohane and An had tried so many times to steal a smile out of him, anything, a laugh, even the slightest perks of his pretty lips because god, Touya deserved to be happy. He was quiet, like that layer of stillness that came with the first snowfall, all elegant and precise movements, mechanical and calculated from a lifetime of cold and strict teachings, of snowstorms and frosts, and eventually, Kohane realized she was focusing on the wrong things. Touya was transparent, the layer of ice over a lake which lets you peer into the clear depths: he was beautiful, like the arabesques of hoarfrost, the crystallized patterns of snowflakes raining down on the word and covering nature with a white blanket, bringing peace to the other chaotic seasons. Touya’s mind was the treasure of winter, bundled up and locked away by many layers of ice that, if you had enough patience and trust to peel through, would let you in a paradisiac haven. Winter was unraveling at its threads, each smile Touya wore innocently on his face melting a new footstep into the snow until only dew would be left to hug the newborn spring.

And amidst all of this tragic and inspirational beauty that were her teammates, where did Kohane fit? She didn’t quite know yet, but she was happy to chase after the wish An had gifted her.

She was mulling over such thoughts on the day of her birthday, the first time after almost a year of daily visits to Vivid Street that she would celebrate with her friends, the first time ever that she would have someone by her side to celebrate with… That is, if they remembered of her birthday. Aino, Makigami and Takase tended to forget about her birthday and in retrospective, after almost two years after she had taken a different way from them, a route that estranged her from them, she wondered just how much of it was genuine forgetfulness and how much was disinterest.

Her current “friends” seemed to truly care for her. Kohane was pretty sure she wasn’t being naïve, rather that she had found the right people, if the right people even existed. They were surely treating her leagues better than her old pretend friends. She wondered if she was doing enough, if her gratefulness for her three teammates was being shown in full, if she had to do more to-

A flurry of paper poppers met her upon opening the door to Weekend Garage, the moderately loud sound, paired with a definitely louder “happy birthday!”, made her jump and screech like a terrified hamster. She pressed a hand to her heart and looked up at her partner and her two other teammates, their faces lit up with excitement, and leveled them with a glare. “Oh my God,” she heaved, her knees buckled and bent as she recovered from the scare, “you’ve just taken ten years off of my lifespan”.

Akito groaned dismissively, while An gasped. “But it’s your birthday!” she exclaimed, a pout already forming on her endearingly pretty face. “You’ve literally just grown older”.

“You sure know how to make a girl swoon, don’tcha?” Akito said, amusement running through his voice. His eyes turned soft upon landing on An, but Kohane didn’t pay it too much mind: Akito had grown into the habit of looking longingly at all three of them, for some reason or another.

Touya – bless his pure soul – was the first to appear by Kohane’s side, while An and Akito loosened themselves into their usual bickering. He put both of his hands on her shoulders, wrapping an arm behind her back. “I’m sorry we scared you,” he said in his velvety voice, blinking down to Kohane in slight concern mixed with soft amusement, “but we wanted to surprise you”.

Kohane blinked back, reality finally catching up to her. “Surprise me? For my birthday?”

An nodded excitedly and leapt forward, right in front of Kohane, and grabbed her hands in hers. “Well, of course,” she grinned, a beautiful light flashing in her face, gold swirling in the olive tints of her skin, “it’s our darling Kohane’s birthday! We had to make this the bestest day ever”.

Akito nodded gently, throwing a glance back at the counter to direct Kohane’s gaze there. On it were resting refreshments – homemade sesame balls, strawberry shortcake, pink and magenta cupcakes, a glass teapot filled to the brim with what Kohane suspected to be mint tea, fruit tarts, the brand of fruit juice Kohane adored – as well as a well wrapped box she supposed to be her gift. “We’ve prepared a lot of things for you. Wanted to spoil for once,” he added, blushing slightly. He truly had a golden heart under all of those layer of embarrassment and pretend-roughness!

Touya’s arm brought her closer to him. “Tsukasa-senpai and the others have even prepared a show for you tonight, and if you and your parents are alright with it, we were thinking of having a sleepover”.

Kohane turned to him, happiness bubbling up in her chest. “Really?” she asked, the smile pulling at her lips hurting her cheeks. Before meeting An, Akito and Touya she had never thought one could ever smile this wide, feel such an enormous amount of happiness.

An’s face was as bright as the Sun – no, Kohane thought, her heart pounding in a way it never had before, a way she didn’t understand at all – An Shiraishi put the Sun to shame, taking its place and warming anyone who happened to be within its view radius, giving life to the arid and breathing hope into the beings sunk into the darkness. “Yeah. This is the least we could’ve done for our best friend”.

Kohane’s gaze shifted between her three friends, her best friends, the people who had handed her entire new life on a silver plate, swimming from An to Akito to Touya and back, Akito An Akito Touya An Touya Akito Touya An and now their silhouettes were turning blurry and undefined, wobbly lines of blue, orange and gold, burning trails running down Kohane’s cheeks as she dumbly realized what was going on. She had never felt so loved and pampered before.

“You guys think I’m your best friend?” she questioned, more to herself than anything else, her eyes open but unseeing because of the salty tears pooling around them.

Akito raised a brow, confused by the impromptu cry, while Touya hugged her close to his chest. “We sure do. We ain’t surpassing RAD WEEKEND without you”.

An punched Akito’s shoulder, strong enough to make him lose balance and hold the spot she had hit with his hand. “Oh, shut up, this isn’t just about RAD WEEKEND”.

Akito rolled his eyes, Touya petted Kohane’s head to catch her attention. “An is right,” he said, gently swaying her in place to soothe her and drying her tears. “We do not think of you as a friend just because we want to surpass RAD WEEKEND. We consider you our best friend because we love hanging out with you, and we think you are truly a wonderful person”.

With a boisterous laugh yet wet with tears herself, An threw herself around her two teammates, hugging Kohane and Touya close. Her embrace was warm, much warmer than Touya’s cool skin. Kohane felt safe with them, as well as Akito watching over them. “Yeah, we love you so so much, Kohane. We love spending time with you and listening to your voice, when you’re singing and talking both. We love the photos you take of us, even if I wished you took some pictures with you as well. We love the way we can always rely on you and we really really love how strong and determined you are”.

With a sigh, Akito joined the embrace, too, and everything in Kohane’s world was suddenly alright, perfect as it was. “Never change, Kohane,” he murmured, diving his lips in her hair, his voice caressing her scalp. “We love you just the way you are. We’re so lucky to have you as a best friend”.

Kohane’s heart felt as if it would soon burst. She had never been loved so, she had never had friends who cared for her so, and finally having them felt addicting. Everything seemed to finally have a reason the moment An, Akito and Touya were by her side, everything making perfect sense to her, the dullness of her life finally washed away, her lens broken in a shower of colorful crystals, rainbow embed into each shard, beautiful, lethal, rough yet spectacular and unique all the same.

Kohane had finally found her favorite people, and she couldn’t ask for more.

… Well, that’s what she thought, at least.

She didn’t even notice it, at first. She didn’t notice the way her hands would be beaded with thin sweat for another, new reason, or how her mouth turned dry every time she was close to them. It was a slow process, imperceptible, as quiet and subtle as the feeling of warmth spreading through one’s limbs when they get under the blankets during a cold day, but once Kohane noticed, it was impossible to ignore, impossible to not feel warm.

What is the difference between a friend and a lover? Kohane had never theorized what love could mean. She had hardly had any friends, so the noble ideal of love had been as far away as the Sun to an inhabitant of the Earth’s bowels. She had never stopped to think about it, to fantasize, to wonder what her standards and expectations could be. What was love? Love was probably the way her father always carried heavy things for her mother, even if he didn’t have much physical strength. It was the way her mother would immediately show her father something she found endearing, or the way they did anything to make their schedules line up and do even the most boring of chores together.

Perhaps that wasn’t the entirety of it, Kohane mused, because Akito always carried heavy things for her, even if it were just her school bag. An always showed her anything she found cool or endearing or reminded her of her partner. Touya always shifted his tasks and appointments around in order to spend even five more minutes with her, even to study with her in silence. That was love, surely, Kohane knew that much, but… What drew the line between a friend and a lover? Was it the kisses, the intimacy? The exclusivity of the relationship, the bragging to one’s friends and posting things on social media on special dates? No, Kohane doubted it.

She pushed the idea to the back of her mind, much more preoccupied with other tasks, like performing well in school, building up her skills and practicing, surpassing RAD WEEKEND. Love could come after, once the idea of being lovely and lovable wouldn’t be as foreign and confusing for her.

Her heart had never enjoyed strolling hand in hand with her mind. It always loved to rush ahead, jumping in puddles and hopping around piles of autumn leaves, poking at a mound of mud, plunging headfirst into any ditch it might spot. Perhaps that was why her chest ached so, while her mind was always filled with a cold, resigned atmosphere, thinking: “well, it can’t be helped”.

The feeling of her heart diving into those adventures felt much like performing. Now, mic held tightly in hand, her prettiest but also most comfortable clothes hugging her close as they began to get drenched in her sweat, her heart was soaring, beating with so much vigor it could slam out of her chest any moment now. The lights were bright and blaring, sometimes catching in her eyes as they rummaged over her and An’s figures, flashing and jumping along them as they sang, the crowd dividing their focus between following the directions thrown by their limbs or the path traced by the colorful beacons. Kohane felt drunk on the feeling of the performance: the song they were performing had a strong percussion base, accompanied by a hammering rhythm that their choreography matched, and the lyrics required strong, almost frenzied vocals to really pack the punch.

And God, was An delivering that punch. “No matter how inferior you feel…” she sang, her voice booming all across the live house, bouncing against the sea of people and coming back, tenfold, as the audience sang along with them and cheered, her breath reverberating against her trachea and diaphragm, “you’ll totally block them from landing a hit…”

Oh, how beautiful An looked. Here, on the stage, she was the undisputed queen, the entire space belonging to her, each millimeter for her to dance on, to twist and jump on, delivering the greatest performance Tokyo could ever hope to witness. And Kohane… Kohane would let her dance to the point of wreaking the furnitures, engraving white trails in the wood of the pavement and mark it with her fiery determination, the soles of her shoes striding and clashing against the material as she sang her heart out. Like this, An was perfect and free, a goddess lowered on Earth for Kohane to sing with.

Kohane chased An’s lines and completed them, fake fanning herself for show as she went for a complicated dance move, An’s eyes burning holes in her as her partner looked over her with pride, so strong Kohane could feel it without even looking. Good, she thought, saliva filling her mouth as the air vibrated against her larynx and her heel hit loudly the floor to the beat, she wanted An to look at her. She wanted An to stare at her and never let her out of her sight. She wanted to bewitch her darling partner and cast her in a daze, throwing an unbreakable spell on her just as An had done when they had met so that she would watch, watch, watch.

They threw themselves in an intense dance break, all coordinated and energetic movements that conveyed perfectly the strength and energy of the song. An gulped down a giant breath of air and then, as Kohane twirled to dance behind her, the central floodlight catching An and cradling her, “half-ass deserves a KO!”

Her voice could reach such heights that it made Kohane’s own soul shake, moved by such strength and presence, and through it all, she always thought: “this is my partner. This is the girl that I will take over the world with, someday. I am so proud of you, An-chan”.

In sync with An, Kohane kicked an imaginary wall, then climbed onto An’s waiting hands and jumped down, right as the beat dropped. The crowd went wild, but as Kohane turned around to continue the choreography, all she could see was An, beautiful and free of any self-conscious doubt, An, An, An.

Kohane’s heart skipped a beat. Wait.

“Dance to the beat!”

Her mouth dried up. Wait.

“Dance to the beat!”

Her head spun. Wait.

Wait, wait, wait, wait wait waitwaitwait-

An finished the dance with a flourish, Kohane drawling behind – intentionally – and threw her head back, searching for her partner, elation running down her smile just like the sweat rolling down her hairline, adrenaline pumping through her, excitement setting her face aflame.

Crawling back in the backstage, Kohane found it hard to tear herself away from An. Their hands, although drenched in sweat, were tightly locked together, and once they were deep enough in the rooms stuffed with equipment, An grabbed her shoulder, spun her around and pressed the biggest kiss Kohane had ever received on her forehead. “You were fucking phenomenal, Kohane,” she smiled brightly, enough to rival the entire star system. “Oh my God, that was incredible. I love you Kohane, you’re the best partner ever”.

Those words made Kohane’s heart stumble and fall into that ditch, that dangerous trap that was figuring out her feelings. She gulped thickly, the adrenaline beginning to wear off. Distantly, probably in the corridor, Kohane could hear Akito’s and Touya’s voices, laughing and joking amiably.

Kohane tried to bury her feelings back. Tried to suffocate that impelling need to pull An down by her pretty crop top and- “oh, we’ve been,” she corrected instead, before she could pull any type of stunt. “You were incredible, An-chan. Your stage presence is as strong as ever, and that song suits your voice and movements so incredibly well. It’s almost as if it was made for you”.

An grinned, pressing another kiss to Kohane’s forehead, longer, more tender, more heartfelt. “For us,” she corrected. “I’ll always stand right beside you, Kohane”.

And it was such a shame, Kohane thought, that An didn’t know how she had been the first to descend into the depths of Kohane’s soul and settle there, plunge roots deep within her heart and spurring it to pump the adrenaline-filled blood.

Kohane knew something had changed on that stage, something morphing and pulling at its own membrane in the chambers of her heart, begging to just burst out of its amnion, but Kohane knew better than to let something be born prematurely; and so she drifted, between gigs and events, practices and hangouts, pretending she did not know why her face reddened like ripe strawberries around An, or why her heart fluttered whenever An looked at her with stars rushing in her sunshine irises.

Conscious of this, Kohane was surprised when she began to feel something akin to a mixture of nervousness and excitement around her other two best friends as well. Kohane tried to be objective, removing her heart from the equation without consulting it, muffling its desperate cries: Akito and Touya were incredibly talented, much more well versed than her in any of life’s tides and seas, their attractiveness – belonging to few boys their age – was underlined and enhanced by their seriousness and passion, by their sensitivity to the human heart and their understanding for pain and difficulties. It would be hard not to admire them; yes, this is what Kohane felt for them. Admiration.

Oh, who was she even kidding?

Akito, much more attuned with human emotions than Touya, had once questioned her blush, her stumbling words that she had long learnt to spell thoroughly around them, her wandering and avoidant gaze. Kohane had blamed it on a slight fever. Thankfully, Akito had been overtaken by the worry of his friend being ill and did not stop to examine just how pathetic and weak that excuse sounded.

The following day, she got a text from Akito: “come to the sekai if you’re free”. Well, that hadn’t been his actual text. The actual, original cipher, typed by none other than Akito himself, had anyone ever had any doubt about it, was: “comw to thr sekai if ur ftee”. Kohane had developed a part of her brain smart enough to decipher his horrendous texts, and an even smarter one to decode his handwriting, which she was very proud of.

She did go to the SEKAI, only to find an oddly empty Crase Cafe and Akito leaning against MEIKO’S beloved stove. As soon as he noticed her, he grinned and circled the counter, going to greet her with a bear hug, lifting her off of the ground. “Akito, wait-!”

“First off,” Akito said, putting her down and resting his hands over her shoulders, “how are you feeling? Still feverish? Do you have a headache? Do your bones ache, or your muscles? Do you feel nauseous?”

Kohane, who had lied about her alleged illness, kind of felt bad given how Akito was acting like an apprehensive mother. “Ah- no, I’m alright, Aki. Maybe I was just a little tired… I’m completely fine, now”.

Akito nodded, his eyes softening around their edges, “good”.

“Why did you ask me to come here?” she questioned, Akito breaking apart from her and leaning his back against the counter. Kohane tried not to think about how she missed the contact.

Akito flushed for a second, then, scratching the back of his neck, he said: “you like baking, don’t you?”

Kohane nodded, trying to guess where this was going.

“Well,” Akito began, taking a suspiciously long time to scratch such a tiny portion of skin, “I thought we could, y’know, bake something together. ‘Cause sweets always make me feel better when I’m sick. We can do something we like together”. His blush deepened and he shifted his weight on the other leg, “’cause we’re best buddies. Yeah. Good friends. Best friends”.

“Bestest friends,” Kohane said, a giant smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. Her heart swelled, knowing that Akito cared so much for her health, thought of something so small and yet so important to Kohane to lift her mood, even if it was all hypothetical. Akito was such a sweet boy, she could hardly believe she had ever been scared of him when they had just met.

They opted for pancakes, surprisingly on Kohane’s request, rather than Akito’s, because she wanted to learn how to make her best friend’s favorite sweets and enjoy them together afterwards. “If we make enough, we could call An and Touya,” Kohane commented, and for some reason, Akito flushed red, mumbled something about spoiling them and went to fetch the flour.

Kohane weighted and measured the ingredients, Akito mixed them together in a bowl. Then, once the batter was ready, they grabbed one the ladle to pour and shape the treat, the other the spatula to flip it around, and they began baking. Akito rested his left hip against the stove, Kohane her right one; they chatted calmly as they worked, perfectly in sync. It was in moments such as these, that Kohane thought that these three were the right people, that made her believe that her friends truly could be defined so, that they would not stab her in the back and toss her away once they didn’t find her any more interesting. Sometimes they kicked each other’s shoes, they grinned and poked at each other’s stomachs like five years olds, and Kohane felt utterly at home.

Perhaps that familiarity was what truly conquered her. Perhaps that was what love meant: doing boring, mundane things together, cooking, sharing the silence, doing routinely things together to make them less tedious. Akito, through all of his layers of annoyance and bluntness and rudeness, was actually that type of person: someone who enjoyed carrying out even the smallest of tasks with someone else to keep them company, doing little acts of service for people, without expecting to be payed back, always sending good morning and goodnight texts at seven thirty in the morning and nine in the evening sharp. Kohane found it endearing how, even if woke up disgustingly early, too early for any human being, he still waited for the time his best friends woke up at to send them their good mornings.

At some point, Kohane had smeared some spilt batter on Akito’s nose, to which he had answered to by dusting her in powdered sugar, then jabbing her sides when she threatened to tickle him. And it was comfortable, the way the two of them fit together, moving against each other like fluids that refused to mix, sometimes breaching that barrier and embracing each other.

And Kohane found herself wanting, wanting, wanting. She didn’t allow herself to add a direct object to that verb. She didn’t allow herself to hope, nor to analyze her feelings, putting down the scalpel she would have used to dissect her heart and understand what was plaguing it. She had friends, the best of friends; she should’ve contented herself with that.

Touya had probably figured her out before even she could lower herself to compromises with her own feelings. Kohane knew that much, she knew in the way he smiled softly at her, in the way he always made space for her and treated her with kindness, knew with the way Touya always understood, simply, clearly.

Kohane had found him sitting down on a bench in their SEKAI, once, a tall cherry tree in full blossom standing in all of its natural glory behind him. Touya enjoyed wandering around the SEKAI greatly, exploring each nook and cranny and mapping the streets in his mind. He occasionally roamed the rooftops, when he felt brave enough to not look down and stare at the streets down below. He had said something about staring up at the void and finding himself reaching for the sky, so Kohane hadn’t really questioned his change in habits.

Kohane knew that if Touya really needed time for himself, he would hide himself away in the maze that was the SEKAI, and that if he didn’t want to be found, then no one would find him, not even Luka or Akito, because of how well he could hide. So, if she had stumbled upon him so easily, then it meant he didn’t mind the company. She trotted closer to him, peaking over to the book he was reading and his concentrated expression. He had long lashes and pale lips, many beauty marks scattered like flower seeds across his face, sharp eyes and high cheekbones that made people either fall infatuated with his looks or attract a copious amount of envy. Kohane gulped. He was beautiful like winter itself.

“Kohane,” he called upon hearing her steps draw nearer, looking up with a radiant smile. It was contagious, so pure and unbridled, that Kohane couldn’t help but smile as well, while reminiscing of a time when the action seemed impossible on her best friend’s face. “I didn’t know you liked to explore this place. I thought you stayed mostly at Crase Cafe and in the plaza”.

Touya wasn’t too far off from the truth. Kohane enjoyed lounging at Crase Cafe greatly, and it was her only reason for her to visit the SEKAI if she hadn’t come in to look for one of the Vocaloids. She sometimes hung around the plaza, although it was just to get the rush of determination that came with looking at that damned wall that sought to touch the sky, trying to wall them in. She chewed on her bottom lip, attempting to keep her fluster at bay. “I wanted to spend some time with you,” she murmured.

“Oh”. Touya closed his book, put it aside and patted the empty space on the bench right next to him, inviting Kohane to sit. “Are An and Akito busy?” he asked.

Kohane trotted to the bench and sat down, straightened her black plaid skirt and clapped the points on her shoes together. They bounced off of each other with a quiet sound that had both teenagers follow the motion. “No- well, I don’t know. I wanted to see you, as in ‘I want to spend some time with Touya’, rather than ‘I want to hang out with An or Akito but they’re busy so Touya will do’, you know…”

Touya’s eyes widened at that and he smiled sheepishly. “I don’t know how much of a company I can be, but it’d be more than happy to spend some time with you,” he said enthusiastically, the joy laced in his voice barely audible, but exceptionally obvious to Kohane, who had trained herself to read her teammate after all this time. “Do you want to just stay here in silence or would you like to converse?”

Kohane pulled her legs up and tucked them underneath herself. In a rush of confidence, but also cradled by the feeling of comfort and freedom Touya always, unconditionally, gave her, she leaned her torso against his cooler body and rested her head against the soft shape of his bicep since she was too small to reach the alcove that was his shoulder. “I’d enjoy some conversation,” she shyly said, and pretended to be oblivious to her thundering heartbeat and shaky hands.

Touya hummed and gently, almost as if it were natural, he entwined his hand with Kohane’s: it was warm, unlike his body, and wider than hers. His palm was a little thinner and a little more stretched, his fingers endlessly longer, his skin tone paler than Kohane’s rosy one. She gulped as discreetly as she could and she crawled closer, almost a confession, almost a request, almost, almost, almost. Her heart almost spat out a fundamental truth Kohane had been running away from relentlessly. “Would you like to know what the book I’m reading is about?”

Kohane took a closer peek to the book, a thing with yellowed pages and a pretty blueish-gray cover presenting a woman with a white lily in front of her mouth. She wondered what the implications of that image were: would a woman die, in the end? Was a woman’s death the driving force of the plot? Perhaps it was the latter, Kohane reckoned, knowing Touya’s partiality for murder mysteries. “Of course, I’d love to. You seemed pretty caught in your reading”.

Touya smiled wider and he squeezed Kohane’s hand in his, sending shivers running down her spine, erupting in a cascade of raw emotion. “I was, indeed. The plot revolves around the murder of a duchess, and the princess, alongside a female knight disguised as a man, try to solve the mystery of the assassination…”

Touya went on and on talking about the first portion of the book he had already read, making conjectures about the remaining part and even reading aloud for Kohane the first chapter after he had made her fall in love with the plot as well. And as Touya’s voice, gentle and free and limpid like spring water, alongside his tepid warmth all wrapped around her lulled her to sleep, her heart finally won the battle against her conscience, assaulting her when she was on the brink of dream, Touya pressing a gentle kiss to the crown of her head that almost made her burst into tears, planting the flag of realization in the forefront of her soul at last.

This is what love is, Kohane. This is what love is, and you deserve it more than you will ever know.

Kohane woke up in her bed the next morning, a handwritten note left on her nightstand clearly belonging to Touya, heart filled to the brim with fear and elation, and a knowing look from her parents who had apparently let in a Touya who had her bundled up in his arms bridal style. This was the hard part, she thought to herself. Coexisting with her feelings, growing alongside them, perhaps even confess them.

God, no, she thought as bile rose in her oesophagus. Please, don’t make her confess. Don’t make her ruin everything, don’t make her lose her most treasured friends, don’t plunge her back in that murky, starved loop of solitude and pathetic desperation she had lived in most of her life.

Somehow, in the worst of ways, Akito had spared her from that nefarious end.

“I’m going to confess to An”.

Kohane, who had been sitting in front of him and his partner, snapped her head up to look at him, shocked by the news.

It had been a warm January day like few were, warm enough for them to be comfortable with a sweater and no jackets. The trees had been stripped bare of their leaves and only bird nests crowned them, Kohane’s friendships almost stretching into a second year, her heart leaping in a gnawing gorge at the news.

Touya didn’t seem too surprised at the news. He looked at his partner, something akin to regret carefully hidden in his expression, but his eyes betrayed him: Kohane observed as he schooled all of his feelings (anger? Disappointment? Betrayal?) and swallow back words he didn’t want to say. “That’s sweet. Do you have anything in mind? Do you need our help?”

Kohane almost wanted to glare at Touya, shake him out of his reverie, tell him to just wake up! The boy you’ve had a crush on for years is slipping between your fingers! Only Touya, sweet and caring Touya, naïve to the point of doing himself a grand disservice, would offer to help his crush confess to the person he liked.

Perhaps that wouldn’t be Kohane’s place, to reprimand him. After all, she had just accepted the fact that she had a crush on not one, not two, but a grand total of three people, and all three of them had feelings for each other… But not for her. Or at least, she thought so. She didn’t know for sure. The fact still stood, that Akito liked An and An liked Akito back and that Akito would confess to An. And they would probably, almost surely, certainly of course, begin dating. Kohane doubted any of the three would be thrilled to be involved in a polyamorous relationship – just because she was okay with it, it didn’t mean the others would feel comfortable with that aspect. And that was still hypothesizing they actually wanted to have a romantic relationship with her.

… She wilted in her seat.

Akito shook his head slowly, his tanned skin turning shade after shade redder each passing second. “No, no, I don’t need help. I’ll just… Talk to her. Heart to heart. I care for her more than I want to be in a relationship, so I think being honest is the best thing to do. If she doesn’t like me back I will accept it and stay friends with her without any rancor”.

Had Akito actually thought she would reject him?

“Dummy,” Kohane murmured the following day upon receiving a photo of the two on the Vivid BAD SQUAD’s group chat, announcing they were now together.

It was… Peculiar, Kohane had to say. Even if she had known that An liked Akito and Akito liked An and Touya liked Akito in vain, she had never pictured Akito and An actually together. For some reason, in her mind it had always been all of them single, not either of combinations.

It was a lie. All that she could imagine was her holding hands with Touya, her hugging Akito close and being drowned by his larger figure, her kissing An breathless, stealing the voice she oh so dearly loved away. It had always been her, in a selfish, desperate plea.

She was pathetic. Truly, utterly pathetic.

“How can you stand it?” she asked Touya, during a rainy walk back home, January drifting into February, the cold stinging her lungs. There was frustration in her voice, not jealousy, not quite: she had been jealous of other people – normal people, with normal social lives – but she could never be jealous of her teammates. She valued their friendship above anything else, above any laughable crush she might have had on them, and if they were happy dating other people… Then Kohane would support them, no question asked.

She just wished her heart wouldn’t ache so much, dyed in a gray solitude.

Touya looked at her, adjusting the umbrella over their heads. He was walking her back home, ever the gentleman, as they had decided to let An and Akito have some “couple time” after a long practice session. “Stand it?”

Kohane nodded slowly, shamefully. “Yes. Doesn’t it hurt to see them together?”

Touya’s gaze darkened, and Kohane was quick to gulp, knees turning to jello, feeling as if she had been thrown back in that kindergarten classroom, all judging eyes on her, “I- I don’t mean that I want them to break up! It’s- uh, it’s just… I’m happy for them, really, I want what’s best for them, but… Wouldn’t you- Don’t you wish it were you?”

They kept walking, their pace slowing down as they passed a street covered in magenta and rose pink graffiti. Their arms brushed against each other as they huddled under the same umbrella, Kohane having forgotten hers. “Well, I can’t say that I don’t find the idea appealing,” he said slowly, spelling each word with care, “but ultimately, it’s not up to me. If Akito and An like each other, I don’t really fit in the picture, so my role is to stand back and support them. Although…”

“Although?” Kohane spurred him on when he fell silent. Touya pulled her against himself and Kohane squealed, before realizing he had pulled her aside to spare her from a deep puddle infused in runoff gasoline, shining in the rainbow’s colors and lined with a brownish foam concocted by the dirt on the road. He soon let her go, too soon for her tastes.

“I had always thought An… Well, I thought she harbored feelings for you too, Kohane”.

Kohane’s breath caught in her trachea, choking her in incredulity. “Me?”

“Yes”. Touya tilted his head to the side and Makigami flashed in the back of Kohane’s eyelids, that same exact movement performed over and over again throughout two years of friendship-

Two years of friendship before everything fell apart.

Kohane breathed in and out, the taste of rain pervading her mouth. No, she refused to believe that her best friends would ostracize her the same way those girls did. She refused, she refused.

“So,” she whispered, her soles dragging across the wet asphalt as they came out of Vivid Street, still deep within the labyrinth that was Shibuya, heading for the Azusawa’s home first, “you thought I’d… end up dating An-chan?”

Touya nodded, something glimmering in his eyes before he blinked back in an unreadable expression.

“And you’d date Akito?”

Another nod.

“Would that make you happy?”

“Not… Completely”.

“What do you mean?”

Touya came to a lazy halt, staring down at the ground. Kohane turned to him, doing her best to stay under the umbrella’s protective roof. “Kohane, can I tell you a secret?”

Kohane’s breath itched. “You can tell me anything, Touya,” she said, taking his free hand in hers. Touya’s skin erupted in a myriad of shivers, but he squeezed his hand around Kohane’s. “I’m your best friend, aren’t I?”

“Of course you are,” Touya said, a little weakly, looking up at her with a soft gaze, a mixture of fondness and wistfulness in his wintry lineaments. “But… Promise me you won’t hate me”.

“I could never,” she promised, stepping closer, closer, until the points of their shoes touched.

Touya breathed in and squeezed Kohane’s hand again; Kohane squeezed back, her warmth spreading into Touya. “I wouldn’t be happy because…” another deep breath, another reassuring squeeze from Kohane, “I have a crush on the both of them. I like Akito, but I also like An”.

Kohane felt her eyes grow the size of saucers from surprise – not negative, per se, no, absolutely not negative, au contraire. She felt a giant smile tug at her lips, because Touya, beautiful and caring Touya, was in her same situation, he also loved both of their teammates, he was also stuck in that vicious circle of not knowing whether two – three, in Kohane’s case – people would reciprocate his feelings. It did not mean Kohane was contemplated in the picture, but knowing there was just one more chance of her silly romantic dream could coming true made her feel elated.

And… And… Kohane wasn’t blind. She had seen the way Akito and An looked at Touya, the way Akito bent at his every will, how An would do anything to make Touya feel loved and appreciated, how they both always welcomed Touya and clung to him, reluctant to let him go. If Akito and An were willing to have a polyamorous relationship, then Touya would surely slip in, slotting and fitting like a puzzle piece, designed to complement them.

“In a polyamorous way?” she asked. “Or in a ‘I’m not sure who I really like’ way?”

Touya blushed like a rose. “A polyamorous way,” he confessed.

“Oh, I see”. Kohane made sure to smile as to not worry Touya she wouldn’t accept him. “Thank you for trusting me with this information”.

Touya nodded and breathed out. They soon resumed walking, still hand in hand, until they reached Kohane’s doorstep. As Kohane reached for her keys, Touya cleared his voice. She looked up.

“I think I want to tell them,” he said, staring at the wet hem of his baggy jeans.

Kohane’s guts sank at that. No, she really wasn’t anywhere to be found in the picture. “You want to confess?” she asked, holding her keys up to her stomach, trying to act nonchalant as nausea began to burn at the walls of her oesophagus. “To An-chan and Akito both?”

Touya tilted his head, hair falling over his pretty silver eyes – Makigami, Makigami, Makigami – and then shook it. “No, I don’t want to be a homewrecker. I just want them to know how I truly feel about them. Maybe, then, I will be able to support them truly, without harboring any gloomy feelings due to indirect rejection. I’ll tell them and we’ll keep being friends until my feelings fizzle out”.

Kohane gulped, trying to push back the hot tears rushing to her eyes. “They might reciprocate,” she murmured, turning back to push the keys in the lock, avoiding Touya’s gaze at all costs, because there was no way those feelings would be lost, no way An and Akito would reject him and let him go. “I’m sure they feel something for you, too. I see the way you all dance around each other”.

Touya stared at her, she could feel his eyes on her. The lock clicked, and Kohane was closing the door behind her before she could hear what Touya had to say after that.

The days passed and Touya did not make a move towards telling the truth. He lingered by Kohane’s side, and An and Akito surely noticed the fact, but did not comment. Instead, they discussed together often, blushing anytime their partners came close enough to hear: they would fall silent and separate, An drifting towards Kohane, Akito reaching for Touya.

One day, An clung close to her and asked: “Kohane-chan, do you have any plans for Valentine’s?”

Kohane looked up at her, sat by her side in their booth in Weekend Garage. Her legs were tangled with Akito’s under the table, who sat across from her, and An’s head was resting over her shoulder. “Well, no?” she answered, unsure. Valentine’s day was lurking just around the corner, merely three days away, and Kohane had never really cared for the festivity, in all truth. Why should she? She has barely had any friends her entire life, let alone a lover. Just the idea was laughable, considering the state of her love life. “I was planning on spending the day practicing down in here in Vivid Street”.

“Really?” Akito asked, surprised. “Aren’t you going to give anyone chocolates?”

Had Kohane took a closer peek at Akito’s tone, she would have realized just how hopeful it sounded, a mix of embarrassment and hesitancy. “I was thinking of making some sweet treats for Minori and Shiho,” she said, “perhaps some for Ichika and Honami”.

Akito nodded, his ears growing red. “Aren’t you,” he began, cleared his throat, looked away from her, staring down at his girlfriend’s hands, clutching tightly Kohane’s arm. “Isn’t there anyone you want to confess to?”

Yes, but I have no chances with them, she thought bitterly. Out loud, she said: “no, I’m not really interested in anyone”.

Touya gripped his mug tighter and looked away, back to where the built-in stage was.

“Oh, that’s a shame,” Akito said, almost too nonchalantly.

“I bet a bunch of people are going to confess to my Kohane,” An grinned, rubbing her cheek against Kohane’s shoulder as if she were a cat. “She’s pretty and smart and talented, who wouldn’t fall for her?”

Kohane’s heart pounded. My Kohane.

Touya tilted his head, looking back at An. “Kohane goes to an all girls school, though,” he pointed out. “She would get asked out a lot more if she were in Kamikou with us”.

“Yeah, the guys would be at her feet,” An sagely agreed, nodding solemnly. “Bummer. You’ll have to reject all those poor girls”.

“Why would I?” Kohane wondered. “That is, if I actually wanted to have a relationship”.

An tore away from Kohane but kept close to her. Her lip wobbled and something seemed to lose light in her golden eyes, which made Kohane’s soul twist because she couldn’t bear to see her Sun shine any less brightly than usual. She had always hated eclipses, after all, for how natural they were. “They’re girls, you’re a girl?” she loosely mimicked along with her words, moving her hands in wide, undefined shapes.

Kohane deadpanned. “An-chan, I’m pansexual”.

An blinked, then broke into a thirty-two teeth smile. “Oh my God, you too?!” she exclaimed. “You like girls?”

I like you, I like you, I like you.

“Of course? How could I not like girls? They’re pretty and delightful”.

The boys, across from them, nodded in assent.

An batted her eyelashes all prettily and grabbed Kohane’s hands in hers, pulling them to rest on her heart. “Do you like me, then?” she asked all prettily and innocently, gold and light devouring Kohane whole, consuming her like an incandescent flame, swallowing her in an entire star as her breath caught in her throat and she felt a rush of love for her partner. “If I gave you chocolates for Valentine’s, would you accept them?”

Kohane gulped thickly and stuttered, carefully, masking her feelings away: “of course I like you, An-chan, you’re the best partner in the world and my favorite person”.

An perked up at that. “I’m your favorite person?”

Kohane nodded, “of course you are”.

An blinked again, then threw herself on Kohane, squeezing her into a suffocating yet wonderfully comfortable hug. “Oh my God, I love you, Kohane!”

One of Akito’s legs untangled from Kohane’s under the table and she felt it kick An’s, to which An turned to her boyfriend, squishing her cheek against Kohane’s. “Akito, I’m dating Kohane from now on,” she announced. “Get along with it”.

Akito turned scarlet at that and hid his face away in Touya’s shoulder, which in turn, caused Touya to blush a crimson red.

“Gay boys,” An commented.

Kohane breathed out. “It’s okay, An-chan,” she said, and realized just now how good she was at self-sabotaging without being even aware of doing it, “I wouldn’t want to make Aki jealous. I’m sure he wants to spend Valentine’s day with you”.

Akito looked at his girlfriend and they exchanged a meaningful look, throwing a subtle glance at Touya, then Kohane. “We weren’t planning anything, really,” he said.

An nodded along. “We were thinking we could spend the afternoon together, all four of us,” she happily proposed, entwining her fingers with Kohane’s, “and just hang out. Who said we’d leave our beloved partners alone on such an important day?”

Well, that was the plan, at the very least. It hadn’t turned into reality, because right now, Kohane was sitting alone in Weekend Garage, waiting for three vital people who had yet to turn up.

She felt so fucking stupid, waiting and waiting, a box of chocolates held in hand, sitting alone in a booth in a pretty dress she had rushed into after getting home from school. Blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, she mouthed in her mind, tracing her fingers along the magenta ribbon she had tied herself last night with all of the care in the world. Blackberry, raspberry and blueberry, she repeated, waiting for her teammates, her best friends.

Her best friends. Nothing more, nothing less.

What had she even expected? For her best friends to come tumbling in, professing their undying love for her? Proposing… What, that all four of them began dating?

She was delusional. She flipped the box she was holding, looking at the cream note written in black ink she had tucked into the cross created by the ribbon, reading: “to the best friends I could have asked for”. She flipped the box over again, the pads of her indexes pressed over opposite corners of the parallelepiped. Surely, they had ran into some trouble at school, right? They were running late because of that… Right?

She refused to believe she was being abandoned yet again. No, she couldn’t believe that. She knew An, Akito and Touya, she knew their souls better than her own, she knew that their friendship was pure and genuine, built on mutual trust and enjoyment for each other’s presence. She knew, she knew, she knew: still, she couldn’t help the growing pit in her stomach, the way each breath came in much quicker and much shorter, how, even if she was sitting, her legs trembled and felt weightless and leaded at the same time.

With some difficulty, she reached for her phone in her jacket, took it out and scanned her fingertip over the sensor to unlock it. A photo of her, Minori and Shiho making silly faces in a photo booth greeted her on her lock screen, soon replaced by a preppy selfie she had taken with An, Akito and Touya on her home screen. She could see it, even in a photo, even through grainy pixels and altered colors, the unadulterated tenderness in their eyes, the way they looked genuinely happy to be with Kohane, thoroughly satisfied by their friend group.

She knew, through it all, that they loved each other, from the bottom of their hearts, regardless of platonic or romantic feelings.

She took a deep breath. She opened the Vivid BAD SQUAD group chat and quickly typed a message, deleted it, rewrote it, backspaced again. Her fingers hoovered over they keyboard, unsure of what to write, until she finally settled on: “where are you guys?”

The text immediately said it had been delivered to all three of her friends, but none of them read it. Kohane put the phone down on the wooden surface of the table, open on the chat, waiting for a reply. She took the box back in her hands and began spinning it in her hands again. Blackberry, raspberry, blueberry. Blackberry, raspberry, blueberry.

After five minutes, there was still no reply. Kohane fretted: had she said something wrong? Did she understand the wrong thing, and they actually weren’t meeting up today? Were An and Akito going on a date together, after all? But… What about Touya, then? Did someone ask him to be their- no, no, Touya had a crush on An and Akito. He wouldn’t accept someone else as his Valentine… Would he?

Quickly retrieving her phone, she typed again, her fingers stumbling and hitting the wrong buttons: “we were meeting at the garage, right??”

Again, her phone informed her that all three had received the text, but none read it.

Kohane breathed out, trying to act normal as Ken passed at her table. “Is everything alright, Kohane?” he asked with a warm smile, expression wrinkles lining his eyes and his sunken cheeks. “Are those pests up to something?”

Kohane poked the box once more, looking up at her (strictly platonic!) partner’s father. “Ah, I’m fine!” she assured, lying through her teeth, if the ache in her intestines was anything to go by. “I’m fine, thank you for asking. I’m just waiting for the others. They said we’d spend the day together, so…”

Ken hummed, drumming the pads of his fingers along the edge of the wood. “Yeah, An said something about that. Are those for ‘em?”

Kohane started, following Ken’s gaze to the box of chocolates in front of her. “Oh- uhm, yes, yes they are. I just… Wanted to show my appreciation for them. It’s… It’s okay to exchange Valentine’s gifts between friends, right?”

Ken chuckled, pulling away from the table. “Of course it is. I’m sure they will be delighted by your gift. You’ve made them? There’s no logo on the box”.

The girl nodded hastily. “It will be more meaningful, if the gift was made with my own hands”.

At that, Ken laughed heartily. “Sure it is, good job. Look, I’m going out with Yuka, so call me if you need anything, alright?” he smiled. “I’ll leave you guys to it”.

Kohane nodded again, and in a minute, he was gone.

Which left Kohane alone yet again. She picked her phone back up, finding that she had gotten a response! Only Akito had read the texts and replied with a brief: “5 mibs”. How he could misspell even ‘mins’ in a sentence of literal five characters was beyond Kohane.

Right as she read it, the door was thrown open and An tumbled inside, looking frantically around until she spotted Kohane – the only person in the cafe, so it shouldn’t have been hard, honestly. An smiled brightly, a smile that put all of the stars in the universe to shame, and ran to her, throwing herself in her arms. “Kohane-chan!” she exclaimed, breaking one, potentially both, of the blonde’s eardrums. Before she could do anything, An began peppering her face in small kisses. “Today’s a beautiful day!”

Kohane raised a brow, not trusting her voice as the bile in her oesophagus was just now subsiding. Behind her, Akito and Touya were walking towards her table… While holding hands?

They both sat across from the girls, their bodies pressing together side by side. Kohane took them both in, their stupid yet happy grins, their dazed expressions, how jumpy and ecstatic they were. She gulped down a bolus of acid and bad forebodings and pushed herself to ask: “am I missing something? Did something happen?”

An grinned so widely that Kohane almost thought her cheeks were going to rip apart. “Oh my God, oh my God, I got beautiful news today- Akito too!” she exclaimed.

Oh. Kohane knew where this was going.

Hugging Kohane so close that she almost pulled her to sit in the older girl’s lap, An giggled, but suddenly her expression fell, struck by a quick and paralyzing terror.

“It’s okay, An,” Touya said in a breathless voice, one only extreme shock and happiness combined could provoke. “She doesn’t mind it. You can tell her”.

An turned to the boy and blushed before nodding. She turned back to Kohane and searched her face: her expression instantly melted into something mellow upon taking in her partner’s features, as if finding tranquility in gazing at her. “After our classes ended, Touya came to me and Akito and asked to talk for a little bit, because he had something important to tell us”.

Kohane’s entire being inwardly writhed. Oh, she so knew where this was going.

An took a deep breath and her smile turned incredibly soft, as if talking of the sweetest and most endearing thing she had ever witnessed. “He confessed to us… The both of us. And me and Akito- we had talked about it before. We had told each other as soon as we have began dating. We both had a crush on Touya, and- you known, we were alright with it. So when Touya came to us and told us we were both reciprocated, we talked it through a bit and decided to get in a relationship, all three of us”.

Akito and Touya nodded along, the former nudging An’s foot under the table with his own.

An took another breath, all the air in her lungs replaced by giddiness. “That’s… That’s why we kept you waiting. I’m so sorry about it”.

Something lifted from Kohane’s shoulders, being reassured that it hadn’t been her fault, that she had done nothing wrong, that her best friends actually wanted to spend time with her. She shook her head. “It’s fine,” she reassured, although a little lightly. “Congratulations, I’m happy for you”.

When she turned to the boys, she found Akito practically glowing like a red traffic light from how strong his blush was, his face uselessly hidden behind his hand. The other was tangled with Touya’s, now resting over the table and Touya… Touya was looking at Kohane, an ashamed and apologetic look etched in his half-expressionless face. Kohane could tell he was undecided between hiding his emotions and letting them shine through, rather than being unable to do so.

“Thanks, Ko,” Akito mumbled from behind the man made barricade. Touya squeezed his hand, but the action seemed to send a wave of guilt down his face.

Kohane knew what he was thinking. Kohane had been in his same position – although he only knew of her crush on An, not on the two boys – and he had been granted what he had wanted, while she had not. For all he knew, he had stolen An (and Akito and his own self!) away from her. What was that told them apart? What made Touya worthy of their partner’s love, but not Kohane?

She relegated the thought to the bottom of her mind.

“Say, Kohane,” An piped up after a beat of silence, “what do you have there?”

Kohane followed An’s gaze to find… “Ah,” she mumbled, a strong throb grabbing her heart. “Chocolates”.

“For who?” An asked, a little hesitant, a little taken aback. “You said you don’t like anyone”.

The bile rose back in her throat, nauseous as she was faced with the truth: while she loved her best friends and was quite literally offering chocolates on Valentine’s day, she would never be allowed to indulge in the sweet illusion that was romantic love. They were a group of four, they cared for each other, they loved each other, they would have gone to the world’s ends for each other… But the fact stood that only three people were involved in a romantic rendezvous. Had Touya loved her romantically as well, he would have confessed to all of them at Weekend Garage, when Kohane was present as well.

Her trachea burnt and her sinuses hurt from the build up of a river of tears gathering right behind her eyes. It was useless. Every time Kohane was finally granted what she wished, she immediately began yearning for what was forbidden from her, selfish, selfish, greedy.

She took a deep breath and virtually plunged her hands in the messy tangle that occupied her heart’s chambers. She poked the strings, probing their resistance. It hurt, it ached, it pulled at her entire being. She had to cut it all off, she had to rid of the ugly feeling, she had to kill it before it ruined what she had with her friends, before she ruined her friendships and their blossoming relationship.

She began to work, pulling out each thread with trembling fingers, unraveled it all, untying the knots, fiddling with it so much that the walls of her heart where they were attached turned raw and began to bleed. She breathed and tugged the final thread, and it all came tumbling down, falling through her soul.

“They’re for you,” she admitted, lowly like a sinner, as if she had done something disgusting and unforgivable. The pain in her sinuses exploded and tears began to fall from her eyes, blurring her sight and squeezing her lungs in a vise so tight that it made it hard to breathe.

An gasped and pulled back, while Akito almost chocked on his spit, trying to discreetly clear his throat. Touya, whose only sign of shock had been his blushing face and widening eyes, gently took the box Kohane was pushing forward amidst her tears and pulled out the note. “To the best friends I could have asked for,” he read gently, and Kohane missed the way their faces fell at his quiet words. He flipped the note around and continued. “I am forever grateful for our friendship and I treasure you all in my heart. Thank you for making my life colorful and bright”.

Akito opened the box to find three sections separated by thin magenta cardboard, each one distinguishable by the colors of the bottom wrapping: blackberry for An, raspberry for Akito, blueberry for Touya.

There was a beat of silence, a beat that dilated in Kohane’s brain to take up eternity, a moment of stall before everything fell apart, the prophetic calm before the storm, but the storm never came.

An muffled a sob. “Oh my God,” she mumbled, blindly reaching for Kohane as she wiped the tears off of both of their faces. “Oh my God, Kohane, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to us. Don’t cry, don’t cry, thank you for being part of my life, oh my God”.

Kohane was engulfed in a warm hug by her partner and, surprisingly, she didn’t feel like Icarus, melting wings and unraveling skin from flying to close to the Sun, hubris eating her alive, no: she was welcomed by a soothing sensation, An’s body fitting perfectly with hers, Sun and moon, spring wordlessly drifting into summer. Kohane treasured it, she treasured it all, because An was her soulmate, whether they were lovers or not, and she couldn’t fathom living without her anymore.

They stayed liked that for countless time, their heart falling in sync, until something being put in front of her on the table pulled her back from her thoughts. Kohane looked up to find Akito sitting down – perhaps he had gone to retrieve whatever was in front of Kohane right now – and smiling warmly at her. “An and I had thought of making something for you and Touya, as well,” he gently explained, the green of his eyes gleaming. “Well, we’ve already given Touya his gift when he confessed, so now it’s your turn. Thank you for being one of my favorite people, Kohane”.

Kohane’s heart pounded at the words as An reluctantly let her go. She grabbed the box in front of her – one of those woven utensils to steam food – and found peach buns cozily resting inside, with pinkish tops and perfectly round bottoms. She blinked, incredulous, but looked up once Akito said: “come on, Tou, don’t be shy”.

Touya sighed and finally moved his arm forward, offering a small bag to Kohane. “I made them myself,” he shyly explained, “so they won’t be the best, but I wanted to thank you for always being by my side and for always taking care of me. I hope I make you feel as understood as you make me feel”.

Kohane accepted the gift and gently pulled the ribbons apart, opening the bag to reveal flower shaped cookies, covered in a pink glaze and a thin slice of strawberry each. She looked up, glancing between her best friends. “I can’t believe you three,” she mumbled, drying the fresh wave of tears spilling from her eyes, “I can’t believe you”.

An patted her back gently. “Kohane, you may not see it, but we really think you’re a wonderful person,” she said, pushing a few strands of blond hair behind her ears. “It’s only natural that we treat you well, like you deserve”.

Kohane nodded shakily.

It wasn’t easy to accept that equitable treatment, she soon found out. They stayed in a weird gray zone for the following two weeks leading up to her birthday, where the three of them had been behaving noticeably more affectionate towards Kohane. An grabbed her face and kissed both of her cheeks and let her lips linger on the soft skin for a beat longer than normal friends, Akito began to shuffle her things and his on one hand to side hug Kohane as they walked, keeping her close to his cozily warm body, Touya began hugging her each occasion he had, his arms lingering around her far longer than what would be considered necessary, not enough for Kohane to feel satiated.

They had been all over the place the day before her birthday. They kept flooding her phone with texts, organizing the following day in the most meticulous details. Kohane was grateful, yet she couldn’t help but feel uneasy, something squirming within her, telling her that something incredibly wrong would happen, that her life was going to be irreversibly changed.

The day began beautifully. Her birthday fell on a Saturday, and so her friends went to her house first thing in the morning. Kohane had picked out a pretty red and pink dress for the day, and Akito had styled her hair in some cute half ponytails at the sides of her head, brushing her bangs all softly over her forehead. He had called her cute with a hint of a blush on his cheeks, mixing beautifully with his orange and brown freckles and the tan of his skin, and An and Touya had agreed.

They took her around the city, beginning with a breakfast in one of An’s favorite cafes where they bought all types of strawberry and peach flavored sweets for her, then through a few clothing shops recommended by Akito where they had fun trying on different outfits. At some point, Kohane had expressed how much she liked a flowery dress that went beautifully with a pair of shoes she had recently bought, and in a second, Touya was swiping a shiny black card over the register. “If I don’t spend all of that money for my favorite people, what am I supposed to do with it, then?” he had asked, holding the shopping bag for his friend, making Kohane recoil a bit. All three of them had always been a little fussy about having Touya spend money on them, even if they knew he was disgustingly rich.

They had all sorts of fun that day, even visiting a photo booth and taking an embarrassing amount of photos in all types of poses. Thrown in there, there was even one of An kissing Kohane’s face with all of the tenderness in the world. Quietly, Kohane slipped in her clear phone case one of all four of them hugging close, stars in their eyes and wide smile on their lips.

They had crashed at An’s place in the evening, preparing for a sleepover. They had already organized everything and brought anything they might need over to her place the day prior after practice, as to not waste even a minute of the day. They were getting ready to watch a movie, something Kohane liked that Touya had never watched, and the two boys were setting up the TV and making a cozy fort of blankets and pillows, while the girls were grabbing snacks and drinks in the Shiraishi’s absurdly big kitchen, which led to now, the moment Kohane’s murky concerns had finally morphed into reality.

An was unfairly pretty that day, long midnight hair woven by Akito’s expert hands in a loose braid constellated by her beloved star clips, a cropped sweater that Kohane had picked out for her hugged her chest softly and her face was clear and adorned by happiness and a thin layer of red chapstick alone. Kohane thought back of that day when she had admitted to liking girls – how could anyone believe she was straight when An Shiraishi existed? Her stunning looks were just the cherry on top of her wonderful personality and burning passions that had Kohane tightly wrapped in love’s embrace.

The strings had come loose in her heart, but Kohane could still feel them swaying in her, attached to its walls, clinging on as they refused to be uprooted completely. Kohane thought there was no universe in which she didn’t love An Shiraishi, her best friend, her partner, her soulmate.

An had just taken some cupcakes out of the oven, putting down the tray on the counter and slamming the oven’s door closed. An had wanted to make them herself, but Touya had made her reason, explaining how it would take up the entire night if they made all of their snacks from scratch, and convinced her to heat up some store-bought ones. Kohane was putting the cookies An had made the night prior on a plate, separating them based on the color of the glaze, pink, cyan, orange, blue.

An popped up behind her and stole a cookie right from under Kohane’s nose, eliciting a gasp from the birthday girl. An looked way too smug than she should have as she bit into one of the pink cookies. “I did a wonderful job with these,” she commented with an even smugger grin, munching happily on the sweet.

Kohane blinked and tried not to focus on how An’s body was leaning into hers. She turned around to face her, a few crumbles clinging to the older girl’s mouth and stars rushing to her golden eyes. An truly was a delight for the soul, even in her silliest moments. “An-chan!” she theatrically gasped. “I didn’t take you for a thief!”

“A thief after your heart,” An shot, eating the rest of the cookie and wrapping one arm around Kohane’s waist. It felt like a ring of fire on Kohane’s skin, burning through An’s sweater and Kohane’s dress, making the blonde swoon.

Kohane felt her knees turn to jello and, hadn’t she been physically caught between the counter and An’s body, she would’ve surely fallen to the floor. She breathed out, suddenly lightheaded. “What’s so special about my heart?” she asked, although it came out like a confession.

An blinked, seemingly surprised at first, then her eyes turned mellow, swirling like delicious honey, and she smiled at her partner. “Mmh, let’s see…” she murmured, taking one of Kohane’s hands in hers, pulling her away from the counter. “Your heart is kind like no one else’s,” she began softly.

Their position made Kohane feel as if they were in a ballroom, moments away from dancing with each other, and so she did: she pulled An’s hand up, bowed on her shaky legs and pulled back, swiftly pulling her foot forward and beginning to spin An in a dance. “Kindness is what sticks out about me?”

An took the change in positions in stride, humoring Kohane and spinning alongside her. “Yeah. I literally can’t imagine you hurting or upsetting anyone”.

Three faces flashed underneath Kohane’s eyelids. You’ve done nothing wrong, Azusawa. We just… Need some time off, you know?

An pulled back and took one of Kohane’s hands up, up, in a silent request: spin for me. “… If An-chan says so”.

An gasped. “It’s true!” she insisted, and she did, Kohane twirled lightly underneath the arch that was her arm. Kohane looked back up at her Sun and smiled, although without really meaning it, bitterness washing the back of her throat. “You’re kind and very caring. You manage to make me feel loved like no one else does. Ask Akito and Touya, and they’ll tell you the same thing”.

An’s hands grabbed Kohane’s wrists and pulled them over her shoulders, looping them around her own neck, then rested her hands on Kohane’s waist. “Kohane-chan is very brave. Even if you were scared out of your mind of performing in public, you faced your fear with your head held high and look at where you are now. Rockin’ everyone’s shit with your voice and stage presence”.

Kohane pulled one of her hands away from An’s shoulder and gently wiped the crumbs away from her face. Her thumb caught against the edge of An’s lip. “I just wanted to be worthy of my partner,” she murmured. “You are such a bright star, An… I had to catch up somehow. You gave me the courage to face my fears because I wanted to stand next to you”.

An giggled, a breathy sound that made Kohane’s heart leap in her throat. “I’m glad,” she said, and Kohane felt the words form on her lips as they brushed against her finger. “I want to stand next to you too, Kohane. Your passion… it’s the most incredible thing about you. It’s so bright and beautiful and you’re so strong and determined and…”

Kohane never got to hear the rest of the sentence, because her heart spilled, strings falling out and wrapping her up, and she kissed An.

She kissed An.

She…

An, again, took the change in stride. She pulled Kohane closer to herself, hugging her close, almost as if she wanted to melt into her and become one. Her lips were sweet and full, nothing like Kohane’s chapped ones, and yet it felt so, so right, An against her, their breaths mingling, their souls hugging close.

They parted just for a second, the time for Kohane’s brain to register that An, out of all people, had just stolen her first kiss, that the blonde was diving back in, mouths pressed close, their tastes mixing into a single one, rich and smooth, something lovely that Kohane wished to sample each day for the rest of her life. An took a trembling gasp, her chest heaving and she pulled back, glossy eyes looking into Kohane’s, and-

And Kohane realized what had just happened. She had kissed An. An, her best friend, her partner, her soulmate, her Sun, and her other two best friends’ girlfriend. Someone that wasn’t supposed to love her back.

“Oh my God,” An breathed, but Kohane didn’t have the time to analyze her tone, to clarify whether it was a positive declaration or an abysmally negative one. She pulled back, pushed An away and hit the counter behind herself, cupping a hand over her mouth.

Her head spun, her heart pounded, and her eyes flooded with tears. Oh, God, she had kissed An. She had ruined everything, she had done the only thing she had been forbidden from, she- “I’m sorry,” she sobbed, propping herself up with a hand on the counter, her legs shaking so much that she could hardly stand. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, An, please, forget everything”.

An blinked in confusion and stepped forward to reach her. “Kohane, hey, it’s alright-”

“No!” Kohane let out a wet scream, her breath quickening to the point her vision swam and she felt as if she were going to pass out. Maybe she was, maybe unconsciousness would’ve been better than facing the repercussions of her greediness. “No, I- It’s my fault, I should’ve- I shouldn’t have- Fuck, I’m sorry, An, I’m sorry…”

A thundering set of footsteps broke into the kitchen, followed by a lighter one: there, from behind An, stood Akito and Touya, looking at Kohane with gazes full of concern, perhaps after hearing her scream so distraught. She didn’t deserve that concern, she didn’t…

“Kohane,” Touya called in a worried voice, and Kohane all but crumbled, falling back down on the floor and shaking, pressing her hands closer against her mouth.

Calm down, you’re being ridicule, she told herself, pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

Touya turned to An, looking for answers, but An’s eyes were filling with tears herself and she looked frozen in place. In a blink of eye, Akito was crouching in front of Kohane, looking at her… With complete calmness on his face? “Hey, Ko, listen to me, alright?”

Kohane shook her head, writhing all around herself in an attempt to stop crying.

“Please? I want to help you calm down. You’re not alone, alright? All you need to do is come out of your own mind, we’ll fix everything together”.

Kohane quivered, but grasped onto Akito’s voice like a lifeline. “Okay,” she choked out, taking a leap of faith and trusting him, breaths so quick that she hardly had enough air to speak.

“Okay,” Akito echoed, gently taking one of Kohane’s trembling hands. He cupped it between his own and began to caress it, spinning gentle touches over the skin. “I’m here for you, Ko. I’m here. Listen to my voice, focus on it. Can you do it?”

Kohane nodded, desperate, and she tore her other hand away from her mouth to breathe better, sharp stabbing pains running all across her ribs.

Akito took her other hand and massaged her knuckles. “Good. Now we need to slow down your breath. To do that, I need you to breathe with me, okay? Take it easy and slow. Follow me once you’re ready”.

Kohane nodded again and blinked away her hot tears to look at Akito, who had began taking deep breaths, exaggerating his movements to let her see how long she needed to inhale, how long to exhale. She tried once, failed, then again and again, until she managed to take a deep enough breath to follow Akito’s.

“Good, you’re doing well, Ko. Just keep breathing, I’m here with you”.

Slowly but surely, Kohane’s heart slowed to a normal pace and her vision cleared alongside her mind in a post breakdown lucidity. She blinked and truly looked at Akito. “Thank you,” she murmured, feeling all of her body go limp in his hold.

Flashing a slight grin, Akito said: “’s nothing. Anything for you, Ko”.

Touya stepped forward and crouched down next to his boyfriend, arms crossed and a small, worried pout etched on his mouth. “Is everything alright?” he asked. “You can tell us. I hate seeing you cry, especially on such an important day”.

Kohane frowned, but did her best not to burst out crying again. She wet her lips with her tongue and gulped. “… An,” was all she managed to say.

Touya turned around to look at his girlfriend, then turned back to her. “An? What does she…”

“She kissed me,” An said in a feeble voice, walking up to Akito’s other side. “And when we stopped she started crying. I don’t know what’s wrong, I didn’t want to make her cry”.

Something blinding and burning took a hold of Kohane, not quite fury, and the words were tumbling out of her mouth before she could even realize: “you don’t know what’s wrong? You don’t know? The problem is that I kissed you, it’s the fact that I’m just going to ruin everything all over again, I’m stupid, I was allowed to have you all by my side but I just had to spoil it all and taking what isn’t mine and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I never know what’s my place and that I never learn and that I just can’t coexist normally with other people. I should be alone, that’s why I’ve been alone my entire fucking life, that’s why I never had the guts to look for Umi, why Aino and Makigami and Takase left me, that’s why you should leave me, because I don’t deserve you, I don’t deserve any of this…”

“Ko, slow down. Take it easy,” Akito called, squeezing her hands in his. “What you’ve said… I think you’re too overwhelmed to recall all of it right. You’re not stupid, Ko, and you deserve to have people around who love you. Nobody deserves to be alone”.

An nodded along, and Touya came a little forward, enough to put a hand on Kohane’s knee. “You haven’t ruined anything,” he murmured reassuringly. “If anything, you make everything better. Having you around is a delight, Kohane, and we never get enough of your company. You couldn’t ruin anything we have, you couldn’t”.

“No, I can,” she insisted, stubborn like few times in her life. “I can. I just did. I ruin everything”.

“Why d’you think you’ve ruined our relationship, Kohane?” An asked.

Kohane breathed in slowly. This was it, she thought. This was where all of the things she had kept inside came tumbling out. “I love you,” she confessed lowly. “I care for you all immensely, but… But for a while now, I’ve wanted to love you in a different way from how dear friends love each other. I still care for you as my best friends, but… I harbor- well, uh… Romantic feelings. For all three of you”. She grimaced at her own foolishness. “God, I’m sorry”.

The three exchange a surprised look. “You do?” Touya echoed.

She nodded, drowning in shame. “Yes. What would have been the odds three people who are already in a relationship could feel something like that for me? I’ve hardly ever had any friends, and for a reason. How could anyone look at me and find me lovely and lovable?”

An’s eyes widened in shock and urgency, “no, no, Kohane, you’ve got it all wrong, you’re-”

“I fell in love with you the first time I’ve seen you, An-chan,” Kohane went on, unperturbed. “The first time I’ve heard your voice I was put under a spell and ever since then my life has shifted to revolve around you, my Sun. I didn’t know it yet, but you’d become my favorite person, the one who understands me the most, the one I want to forever stand with. I truly believe you’re my soulmate, because you complete me and compliment me in every way possible. And you, Akito,” she turned to the younger boy, “I began loving you once you let down you walls and I realized just how tender you were, how you took care of everyone around you, even the strays in the streets, everything. You’ve always helped me improve, you’ve always rooted for me and pushed me to greater heights, and that fire in your soul, that’s what lured me in and made me fall for you so hard. And Touya,” she then turned to the last boy, “I fell in love with you the first time you smiled. It wasn’t aimed at me, but I saw it, and it felt like the first spiral of spring after the most frigid winter. I realized just how much love and dedication were hidden behind your frozen face, I saw your soul melt bit by bit and bloom into something beautiful, and how could I not love it?”

The three stared at her, incredulous and speechless.

Kohane sighed, the burden of her feelings finally lifting from her shoulders, making her feel hollowed and light. “That’s the truth. I really love you, and I forever will. It’s okay if you find me disgusting or if you don’t want me around anymore. I’ve been alone my entire life and I’m used to the quietness. I will always carry our music in my heart, I will forever see your bright colors in the back of my eyelids. I just want you to be happy, and if your happiness means that I should be gone… Then so be it”.

That’s when An began crying, falling on her knees and crawling in the space next to Kohane. “No, Kohane, just- no,” she gulped, batting her eyelids to rid of the tears, golden eyes turning into a rusted color under the sadness. “I couldn’t be happy without you around, Kohane, I could never hate you or- or push you away. I want you in my life, I want to be happy with you. Don’t leave me, please”.

A pair of arms wrapped around her middle and soon, Touya’s forehead was resting against the crown of her head. “I agree with An,” he whispered in her hair, soft and delicate. “I want you to be happy, Kohane, and I want you to be happy with us. I’ve also fallen for you some time back, and to think that you feel the same… It makes me elated. An and Akito, too. We’ve talked about it, and fantasized about you being in love with us”.

Akito nodded. “We were actually planning on confessing,” he said, “just… Maybe not on your birthday? We didn’t want to leave you with a bad memory in case you didn’t feel the same. We were thinking of white day or something like that. We just knew that we wanted to tell you soon”.

Kohane couldn’t believe her ears. An, Akito, Touya… They all loved her? They all wanted her to be part of their relationship, part of their happiness? “You love me?” she asked in a feeble voice.

Three heads nodded back in affirmation. “More than you could ever believe,” An smiled, moving to cradle Kohane’s face in her hand. “You’re my partner and my other half, of course I love you from the bottom of my heart. It couldn’t have been any other way”.

Akito moved forward and engulfed all three of his best friends in a giant, warm hug filled with love.

“You know,” An piped up from the groove of limbs, somewhere on Kohane’s right, “we should give Kohane-chan her gift. Maybe she’ll believe us”.

“Gift?” she echoed. “You’ve gotten me a gift? Even after everything we’ve done today?”

“Of course we did,” Touya said at the same time An exclaimed: “four, actually!”

Once they untangled, Akito put one of his arms behind Kohane’s back and one under her legs to carry her bridal style to the living room while An disappeared, presumably to get her gift (gifts?) and Touya followed the two of them wordlessly. Akito sat Kohane down on the sofa, wrapped her up in a cozy blanket and moved her on his lap. Touya sat next to his boyfriend, leaving the seat on Akito’s other side for An.

An came tumbling from the corridor with three rectangular boxes and something hidden behind her back. “Aki, eyes!” she exclaimed, and Akito covered Kohane’s eyes. Once he uncovered them, An was sat next to Kohane and the mysterious object was nowhere to be found, while she held the other three boxes in her lap. “Pick one, pick one”.

Kohane eyed the gifts, then grabbed the medium sized one, wrapped in a cute peach paper and topped off with a cream bow. She carefully took it all off, trying not to tear the paper – which elicited an eye roll from An, ever the impatient type – and found a scrapbook in it, the heading “memories” written in a black sharpie over the brown paper. Opening it, she found a list, sorted by colors in small headings: spring, summer, autumn, winter. Under each were reported various events, and after a second, it clicked in Kohane’s mind that those were all things she had experienced with Vivid BAD SQUAD, karaoke nights, escape rooms, hotpot dinners, snowball fights, movie marathons. A knot tied itself in her throat as she began to leaf through the pages, and she was met with photos of those events, silly selfies, thought-through poses, candid shots, accompanied by captions, precise dates and locations, and endearing sketches Kohane recognized as Akito’s handiwork. She almost burst out crying again upon realizing she was in almost every single photo. Mixed in were song lyrics, recipes, maps of live houses they had performed in, posters of movies they’d watched all together and funny texts they had exchanged.

Not receiving any kind of response, Akito grew restless in his seat. “I have been collecting stuff ever since… Dunno, two Septembers ago? to make this gift. I thought you would be into scrapbooks and things like that, and you get really wistful sometimes, acting all sad when you see other people have fun with their friends, so…” he mumbled, spewing out the words at an incredible speed due to embarrassment. His entire face had turned crimson. “I wanted you to have something tangible to look at anytime you feel lonely, to remember all the fun we’ve had together, and that we’ll always be by your side to make you smile”.

… Well, now Kohane was actually crying again. “Thank you, Aki,” she said, blindly reaching for the boy to hug him.

Akito hugged back and kissed the top of her head, her cheeks, her temples until she calmed down enough for her sight to clear and her breath to pace normally. He then pushed another box in her lap. “Come on, go on”.

Kohane let An dry her tears and accepted the box from Akito, going through the same process of carefully unwrapping the pink paper. In it, she found a book she had been searching for ages. Post-its peeked out of the side of the book in various shades of pinks and blues, a couple of pastel oranges and cyan making a sporadic appearance. Upon opening it, she found many notes and underlined quotes, observations written in a tiny, neat calligraphy that belonged to Touya. Cropped photos and pages with either written or printed text had been inserted in between chapters. She looked up, “Touya, it’s yours, right?”

Touya nodded with his endearingly eager smile blooming over his face. “Yes, it is. You kept saying that you wanted to read it so much, so I looked for it and managed to find it. I wrote down my feelings and observations throughout my reading and highlighted the parts I thought you would enjoy and the ones that reminded me of you. I even read some parts to An and Akito and wrote down their thoughts about it. I also have a clear copy, if you’d rather read it without my scribbles getting in the way,” he said.

Kohane shook her head and hugged the book close to her heart. “No, it’s fine. I really want to know your thoughts and feelings about the book. It’s going to feel like we’re reading it together… As if I’m not alone”.

Touya’s smile only widened, “I love that idea, Kohane”. Then, his smile turned into that devilish grin only he could pull off while looking so pretty and cute. “Perhaps I should give you a romance, next?” he asked.

Kohane felt her cheeks burn, set aflame. “Oh… I, well. I like the idea,” she admitted, loosening her embrace on the book. “It would feel as if we’re falling in love with the characters together”.

“Yeah… With the characters,” Akito teased, grazing his fingers over Kohane’s stomach, drawing small, soothing loops in the clothed skin.

Touya gasped in fake disdain. “Aki, what are you insinuating?”

Akito turned to his boyfriend and boldly stole a kiss on his cheek. “Maybe it’s not the characters you’re going to fall for”.

“Well, I’ve already fallen deeply for you, An and Kohane, so I find your accusations to be baseless”.

“I’m going to explode,” Kohane groaned, diving her face in her hands to hide it away.

An laughed heartily at that, then nudged Kohane gently, pulling her closer against her side: “come on, you’ve got one gift left!”

Aware that it was An’s present, Kohane reached for it with newfound interest. It was a small, thin square packet, and given how light it was, she was already making her guesses. She once again took off with great care the magenta paper and the pink ribbon and found a CD case hidden in it. Her hands shook as she flipped it, slowly realizing that An had created the CD from scratch. The case had been filled with a cardboard printed in cherry blossoms and splashes of paint, pink hearts and cyan stars littering the entire thing. There was a selfie of An and Kohane glued to the back, Kohane holding a mic in one hand and making a heart together with their fingers, accompanied by the date of Kohane’s birthday and a small quote from their favorite song. On the front, two lines printed on grayish paper, akin to a journal, read: “Kohane <3” and “don’t forget that I’m right next to you”.

“An-chan,” she whispered, her voice cracking on the endearing honorific.

An scooted closer, hugging Kohane’s waist close, her arm snaked between the girl’s back and Akito’s stomach, her warmth seeping into the birthday girl. “Music is the most important thing to me,” she softly said, taking the case and cracking it open, “to us”.

Kohane saw the white CD covered in hearts and stars as well, a small smiley face drawn next to the words: “for my favorite person”. Clipped on the other side was a booklet: upon examining it, Kohane found a track list and, in each page, a quote from each song and written in An’s round and messy handwriting was why she had chosen the track, explaining how she found it fitting for Kohane or why An thought she would enjoy it.

Kohane’s heart was struggling to keep up with reality, by now. “I thought it was only fair to give you something tied to music for your special day,” An said, a little bit fond, a little bit hesitant. Her voice, which Kohane loved immensely, more than anything else, snaked around her ears and wrapped like a protective blanket around her soul.

Kohane twisted around and wrapped her arms around An, and her body felt so familiar against hers, her embrace so comforting… “I love it, An, I love it so much,” she said in her shoulder.

An’s arms tightened around her, squeezing her in a sea of warmth and reassurance.

“I… I love you, An”.

An pulled slightly back and stared at her with wide, golden eyes, diluted into a muted surprise. Pleasant, of course, but surprise nonetheless. “I-” she lightly choked, cleared her throat and continued, voice wet and trembling: “I love you too, Kohane”.

Kohane felt Akito shift around her, so she broke out of her daze and moved to look at him. He was reaching for something behind the sofa, behind Kohane’s shoulders, and when he faced forward again with a groan, he was holding…

“A glass jar filled with… Stars?” Kohane asked, stupefied.

Touya smiled. “They’re paper stars,” he corrected, “the ones you would make with paper stripes”.

Akito shook the jar, mixing and mulling the tiny heavenly bodies made out of paper. They were made of different colors, but pink and magenta predominated on the cyan, orange and blue. “Three hundred and sixty-five suckers,” he announced, “to be precise. Touya wanted to go a little crazy”.

“Hey, that’s not true,” Touya pouted, poking a finger in the rolls of Akito’s belly.

“Siding with Touya,” An said, “and not to spite Aki. Touya actually had a valid reason for making us fold all those thingies”.

“One per day?” Kohane guessed. “To, like… Celebrate the fact that I’m an year older?”

An’s jaw dropped, perhaps because Kohane was spot on.

“Not really,” Akito chimed.

Perhaps not.

Kohane reached her hands out for the jar, curious, and Akito gave it to her. Touya cleared his throat. “Well, my idea was to make one for each day of the year, indeed,” he began, a red tint spreading across his cheeks. “But it’s one for each day because we’ve written down something into each one. Things we think of you, things that remind us of you, thing we want you to know in small sentences, reasons why we love you. My idea was that you could read one every morning and get a little mood boost for the day, or maybe read them when you’re feeling blue to be reminded of how important you are to us, how much we care about you and how highly we think of you”.

Kohane looked down at the jar she was loosely cradling in her lap. She looked at the paper stars, so many, crowding in her arms in small glimmers of love, hundreds upon hundreds. In her mind she pictured her best friends, writing down three hundred and sixty-five things they like about her, made them think of her, fond smiles on their faces, folding three hundred and sixty-five paper stripes to create each star and pouring them in that jar, sealing it with all of their feelings for her. Three hundred and sixty-five, she dumbly repeated over and over in her mind. How could one find three hundred and sixty-five things they could love about a person? About her? She… Did they truly see so much, in her? Were their hearts so wide and spacious to house all of that love for Kohane, out of all people?

“I… I can’t believe this, guys,” she murmured, caressing the lid of the jar with her thumb. “I can’t believe you went to such lengths for me”.

“This is the least!” An exclaimed. “We actually had to scrap a bunch of ideas, we just kept getting more and more, once we got into the rhythm. We would’ve needed another jar… Or maybe two”.

Kohane gulped. “I can’t believe it,” she repeated. Then, blinking, she looked at the three of them in turn. “Do I start reading them tomorrow? Random order?”

Akito nodded, although his entire face was a crimson color.

Touya nodded after his boyfriend and then got up, just to kneel in front of Kohane. “Actually, I’ve got an idea,” he said.

An and Akito stared at him, even more surprised than Kohane. Touya continued, undeterred, as that luminous smile bloomed back on his face like sunflowers: “I’m going to tell you an additional thing right now, a three hundred and sixty-sixth bonus, if that is alright with you”.

Kohane looked down at the boy, at his wide and sparkling gray eyes, akin to the full moon in a pitch black night, and at his excited smile, his straight and unbelievably white teeth shining through his pale lips. “It’s alright, Tou”.

Touya shuffled his knees forward and raised his arms to cup Kohane’s face in his hands: they were cool against her boiling cheeks, her blazing yet dry trails of tears, her furious blush her best friends kept alimenting. He caressed his thumbs along her cheekbones and, once she melted into his touch, he said: “I love you, Kohane. In every sense of the word. I love you as a singer, I love you as a teammate, I love you as a lover, I love you as a best friend, I love you as a person. I just love you, Kohane, truly and unconditionally”.

Kohane almost choked on her spit, and her heart hiccuped into a harsh halt as Touya gently surged forward and kissed her forehead, her cheeks, and finally her lips. His mouth was a little bitter and acid from the aftertaste of coffee, a little wider than her own but pleasant nonetheless. It lasted a second, but Kohane felt drunk off of it when he pulled away.

“We all love you,” he murmured against her lips, before falling back on his knees and letting An and Akito hold her.

“Touya’s right,” Akito added. “We truly love you, Ko, and we would be delighted if you trusted us enough to love us, as well”.

Light flooded the room, a light that diffused off of her best friends, gold, orange, blue, each refraction of those colors mixing and mingling together to paint everything around them, not a single corner spared from the vivid rainbow and surrendered to that gray scale Kohane used to be, but amidst that kaleidoscope there was also a river of pink and magenta, light tints of peach and crosshatches of rose. There were pictures of Kohane, her passage so evident in every memory of the four young musicians, her presence highlighted in everything around her, in everything her teammates did and said, Kohane, Kohane, Kohane crowding their mouths, spilling out and filling their hearts. She wasn’t a lens any longer, she had shattered and covered the floor in thousands of tiny crystals, each catching and reflecting a myriads of rainbows in a beautiful spectacle one couldn’t look away from, so beautiful and inspiring it was.

She took a deep breath, and her voice did not shake when she spoke. “I trust you with my entire heart. There’s no one I’d rather love”.

This is what Kohane had become: a beautiful spectacle of love, made of vivid colors and warm contrasts, light and dark shades alternating to form a stunning, irreplaceable masterpiece that everyone, included Kohane, could admire and cherish close to their heart.