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It hurts. The past hurts, so Ann was morphed into being blissfully unaware of it.
She held onto Shiho’s hand with a loose grip as they spent their winter break together because there was no way they would be separated again. She was moving back, after all, and they would be going back to school together. Shiho was excelling in volleyball and was as happy as she was about it. Everything was perfect.
And yet there was an empty feeling in the back of Ann’s mind. A piece of her memory, a piece of her was gone. She could never put a finger on what it was, but tossed and turned every night trying to recall everything. Waking up from a nightmare and sweating because it felt too real. In each one, someone was hurt. It was Ryuji, or Ren, or may the gods above forbid it was Shiho. In a lot of them, she was wearing a red suit with a pair of pink gloves and feeling the heat of flames close to her face. When Shiho was hurt though, she was always dressed normally.
It started to make her skin crawl every time she saw her friends, when she saw Shiho, all because her mind couldn’t let go of a dream. She dug her nails into her palms and tried to bury everything deep. But then Ren asked her that question, that little cryptic question—do you prefer things this way?
She couldn’t bury it. The filter on her mind broke. A wave of grief washed over her, but she felt whole again.