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Another smile, another half-hearted chuckle. This has gone on for the past hour or so, he wasn’t entirely sure, it had all been a blur.
They were celebrating his homecoming. His return brought with him a renewed hope and promise, a chance at actually surviving this miserable war.
In the face of all the bloodshed and horrors, the return of the strongest sorcerer of their era had everyone feeling chuffed, laughing over spilled drinks and breathing easy again.
All of them. His students, his friends, co-workers, the higher-ups, the clans. All of them.
Except for her. She wasn’t there. The building was crowded with hundreds, but it wouldn’t matter because he would know.
He never had trouble spotting her, the way his eyes always found her was instinctual. It helped that her bows were like exclamation marks, pointing her out for him in the busiest of crowds.
Yet she wasn’t there, in that hall, with the rest of them. Did she know? Was she still even—
No. He had heard they had lost lives in his absence, but they would’ve mentioned if she… They would have told him. Not for his sake considering they didn’t know about them.
They would have told him because while he is the strongest sorcerer, she is the most protected. Her abilities and her mastery of them made her valuable to them. He accepted it solely for the fact that it meant other lives would be laid down for the sake of hers.
No one would ever know, of course. They’d abhor him for it. He’d feel the same if it were anyone else. Only it wasn’t. It was her. And he would support anything that kept her alive.
Behind his blindfold, his eyes searched the crowd again, flicking to every entrance, for a glimpse of her and his favorite little hair bows.
He was growing impatient, tired of all the commemoration and merriment around him. The only thing he wanted to do was bend time and warp space to wherever she was.
His mind drifted, to the day her bows had become their own discrete, private form of communication.
When he had the dark blue baseball uniforms made following the annual intermural Goodwill event, he had paid special attention to hers. He’d even taken a chance and made a matching bow.
To his disappointment, she hadn’t worn it. She kept her usual white bow and though she looked as beautiful as ever, a part of him had hoped she’d wear the one he had given her.
If she had worn it, he would have taken it as a sign and run the risk of asking her out.
Imagine his surprise when she showed up at his door, still wearing her baseball uniform. Only in the place of her white bow, she now donned a dark blue bow — the one he had gifted her.
Since that day, every time she wore one it was his own personal little love notes, especially when it was one he gifted her. It became their method of silently corresponding when contact was otherwise out of the question.
They had agreed to keep their relationship a secret. He for her sake, and she for his.
Precisely as he was thinking he would give anything to merely have her in his sights, the door at the far-side of the hall opened.
And just like that, there she was. Her fist clenched against her chest, her glistening eyes searching for him, and her hair pulled back with a certain dark blue hair bow.
In the next moment, their eyes met. There she finally was.
Suddenly, the pointless clamor morphed into joy and optimism. It happened each time he laid eyes on her in those enchanting bows. She made everything more. His Utahime.