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It usually took An two-hundred and thirteen steps to get from the school gates to the spot by the outside stairs where she waited for Akito and Touya before their lessons for the day started. It was a proven fact, an experiment carried out time and time again during the two years she has been meeting the boys in the same place everyday. It’s a scientific fact. Two-hundred and thirteen steps to cover a distance of a hundred and forty-nine meters. An could walk that distance blind without stumbling on the marble steps.
Today it took her two-hundred and eighty-one, which was a weird thing, and while An was familiar with weird things, she was pretty sure the distance hasn’t stretched overnight, nor had she forgotten how to count.
She sat on the steps, realizing after a few seconds that her boyfriends weren’t there yet. Had they encountered some problems along the way? Was the road they usually took closed off? Did Touya oversleep once more? Had they been eaten alive by an overgrown sewer monster? An shook her head. No, it was impossible. Sewer monsters didn’t exist, for how much Mizuki tried to convince her otherwise. Nevertheless, it was weird that neither Touya nor Akito had contacted her to tell her they were running late.
An patted down her pockets, looking for her phone. Once she found it, she took it out and went straight to her contacts to text the group chat.
“What the hell…?” An mumbled, scrolling up and down, looking for the group chat. She knew they had been the last people she’d texted last night, but the group chat was nowhere to be found. She flicked her thumb up, up, up, down, down, down. Nothing. It looked like it had been canceled off of her texting app. “What the fuck, what the fuck. It’s almost the only chat I care about…”
She sighed, deciding to just ask her teammates later whether she appeared to be still in the group or not. She scrolled down to look for either Touya’s or Akito’s logs, but then again, she found nothing. She blinked in surprise. What was going on? She was sure those two vital logs weren’t there, but they should have been there. While the names looked too blurry to discern, she was certain she couldn’t see their profile pictures.
An grumbled. What was wrong with her phone? First it deleted the Vivid BAD SQUAD chat, now Akito and Touya’s too? “Whatever,” she huffed. “I’ll ask Kamishiro-senpai later…”
She resigned herself to just punch Akito’s number on her phone and call him, since she knew it by heart anyway. She brought her phone to her ear and waited for the boy to pick up. The phone rang once, twice, thrice, until a voice that definitely didn’t belong to Akito resounded in her ear: “who’s calling me right after my night shift?”
An was left speechless, one hand fiddling with the hem of her skirt from where she sat alone. “Uhm, who’s this?” she asked. “Why do you have Akito’s phone?”
“Akito?” said her interlocutor, a deep, grumbling male voice. “I don’t know no Akito. Is this a prank? Hell, I was sleeping, I have a shift in two hours…”
An’s brow furrowed as she grew angrier. What was wrong with the world today? “This isn’t a prank,” she seethed. “I need to talk to Akito”.
“Miss, there’s no Akito here,” said the now high-pitched and petulant voice. It sounded as if it belonged to a child. An blinked, surprised. Was she talking to someone else? “I fear you’ve got the wrong number”.
Maybe she had typed the wrong number indeed, An mused. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Sorry to disturb-”
The other person (people?) had already hung up on her.
“Rude,” she commented out loud, going to check the number. Again, the digits looked too blurry to make out, but she somehow got the feeling they were strung together in the right order.
Okay, what was going on today?
She was about to try and call Touya, but the bell rang inside, signaling that she had to get to her classroom. Begrudgingly, she stood up and dusted her lap, straightened the strap of her school bag, and marched towards her classroom.
It would usually take her fifty-two steps and an additional twenty-four as she climbed up the stairs to reach the right room. Today she needed to walk ninety-six plus seventy-two instead, which was impossible to say the least. Walking seventy-two steps up the stairs would have meant reaching the third floor, while her class was on the first floor: it was a direct attack to the unbreakable science and omniscient logic that rule over this world.
An wasn’t a genius when it came to science, but the fact still confused her to no end. She stood on the threshold of her classroom, staring down at her loafers. Had her legs shrunk overnight? Had her feet retired in half? No, it definitely didn’t look like the case. Her feet were the same as ever, size twenty-three and a half, her shoes fitting the same as ever.
“Shiraishi-san?” called a voice from behind her.
An whipped around, her hair almost slapping the other person in the face. Nene was standing still behind her, the school bag’s strap held in one of her hands, a defeated and confused expression etched into her raised brow and frowning mouth. “Kusanagi-san!” she exclaimed, happy to see a familiar face. “Good morning!”
“Good morning?” Nene echoed, tilting her head and giving her an even more confused smile. “Why are you standing here?”
“Ah!” An gasped, realizing how she had been zoning out for a while now. “Yeah- no, I got stuck in my own mind”.
Nene shook her head benevolently and passed by An’s side, headed towards her seat. An followed close behind, noticing how Akito’s desk next to hers was empty. Curious, she asked: “Kusanagi-san, have you seen Akito?”
Nene hung her bag on the hook by the side of her desk and, still stooped, she turned her head to An. “Akito? Who are you talking about?” she asked.
An stared at her, incredulity taking over her mind. Was she kidding her, pretending she didn’t know who Akito was? Ah- of course she was, there was no way she didn’t remember Akito… Somehow. “What do you mean?” she asked. “My boyfriend Akito. Our classmate Akito”.
“Uh…” Nene stood back upright and scratched her elbow over her cardigan. “Shiraishi-san, there’s no Akito in this class. Plus, you’re single, from what I know”. She furrowed her brow and gave An a concerned glance. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“Eh? No- of course it’s not!” An exclaimed. “Come on, Kusanagi-san. You’re the one pulling a prank on me now. You’ve known Akito for two years now. You used to call him split personality guy”.
Nene stepped towards An, concern mounting in her purple eyes. “Shiraishi-san, I truly have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you that good of an actress?”
“I’m not joking!” An almost shouted, feeling a knot tightening in her throat. “I can’t reach Akito in any way, where’s- I just want to know where he is!”
Nene shook her head again, this time with worry written all over her face. “Are you alright?” she then asked. “Did you hit your head? Do you have a fever? Are you delirious?”
“I’m not!” An gasped. “I can’t get in touch with Akito- Touya as well, their numbers disappeared from my phone, and now you’re saying you don’t know Akito-”
“Shiraishi and Kusanagi,” came a voice from the door on the other side of the room. Nene turned around while An raised her gaze, finding at its end their teacher, hands on his hips, a look of growing impatience on his wrinkly face. “Could you please sit? The lesson is starting”.
Nene threw one last look of worry at An, then turned back around, bending down her head. “Of course, we’re sorry,” she mumbled.
An stayed still for a few seconds, dumbfounded, before an angry look from her teacher made her sit down. She tuned out most of the lesson, wondering what might have happened to Akito. Touya, too: he would have texted her already by this point of the day, especially if something had happened to Akito, no doubt. Hours flew by in a blink of an eye, and after a few deep breaths, An heard the bell signaling lunch break.
Nene was turning towards her, but An was already running out and towards Touya’s classroom. Out of breath, she poked her head inside, looking for a tall boy with two-toned hair: nothing, nothing, nothing. A few students lingered inside, eating and laughing, and at the teacher’s desk sat none other than Mizuki, legs crossed and hands on their knees, eyes closed and eyebrows furrowed as if they were meditating aggressively. If that was even possible, An reckoned.
Still, that was weird. First, Mizuki actually going to school was a rare occurrence, so rare that they even texted An when they did, in fact, show up (which they hadn’t done). Second, they usually bolted out and to a lonely place, or to hang out with Kamishiro-senpai or, more recently, dragging Touya away (and Akito by proxy) to the emergency stairs to chat with An. Them being in the room with their classmates by their own free choice? Even rarer of an occurrence. And why in Miku’s name were they meditating aggressively on the teacher’s desk?
An shook her head as if to rid it of unnecessary thoughts and walked up to Mizuki. “Heya, troublemaker,” she smiled, even if her insides were twisting with worry.
Mizuki opened their eyes and looked straight at An. “An!” they grinned. “Watcha doing here?”
An blushed a bit from the shame of admitting she was looking for Touya rather than her friend. “Ah- well, I was wondering if you’d seen Touya today,” she explained. “There’s so much weird shit happening to me, I’ve lost his contact, I’ve lost the Vivid BAD SQUAD chat, Kusanagi-san is pretending she doesn’t know Akito, and-”
“Woah, slow down,” Mizuki said, putting their hands on An’s shoulders. “Touya? Vivid BAD SQUAD? Akito? An, what are you talking about?”
An felt as if the world was crashing on her shoulders. “What do you mean?” she asked in a whisper. “Come on, Mizu, be serious”.
“I am?” Mizuki said rhetorically. Their face, much like Nene’s, twisted into concern. “An, what are you on about? I know no Touya or Akito and I have no idea what… Vivid BAD SQUAD is”.
An let out a humorless laugh and stepped away. “Okay, this is definitely a prank,” she said, feeling tears brimming in her eyes. This couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t- there was no way everyone had forgotten about her best friends. “Very funny. Ah-ah. You and Kusanagi-san are both on the case, I bet”.
“An. There’s no prank,” Mizuki said slowly, “and I have no idea who you’re talking about”.
It was all a blur from there. An was pretty sure she’d ran out of the room, of the building, of the school entirely, even if the lessons hadn’t ended yet. She ran, and yet she felt like as if she were immersed in molasses, each step taking an entire life time: if someone had been chasing after her, she would have long since reached. It was agonizing, she ran as fast as she could, pushed her legs to their limit, and yet it would take her so much more than her average steps to get to her destination.
She trafficked with her phone as she ran. Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly at this point, she realized that Kohane’s chat log had disappeared as well. She gulped thickly, pushing down her terror. What was happening? Why had her best friends seemingly disappeared into thin air? Why did the world seem to have stretched to twice or thrice its size? Why did no one remember her lovers? It was as if they had never existed at all.
That got An to pull a full stop. They… Had never existed at all? No, no, that was impossible. An couldn’t have hallucinated the last three years of her life, almost if not all her happy memories of these few years. She shook her head and began to run again, towards Akito’s house, the closest to their school besides An’s own. It took her exactly three-thousand-seven-hundred and fifty-one strides to get to his house, her breath thick and heavy, cold sweat running down her boiling back.
She slammed her fist against the doorbell and waited, hoping, praying that Akito would appear at the doorstep and laugh at her state. “You idiot,” he would say, giving her a giant smile and pulling her inside by her hand. “I’m not going anywhere”.
A bob of brown hair and wide, downturned eyes met her instead. Ena-nee stared at her, surprise and disgust written all over her pretty face. “Uhm… Hello?” she hesitantly greeted.
“Ena-nee,” An heaved. “Is Akito home?”
Ena’s eyes widened to the point An thought they would fall out of their orbits. Morbid, she judged. “Nee?” she echoed, horror flashing through her expression. “Akito? I don’t know anyone named Akito. What- who even are you, miss?”
“Not you too,” An pleaded. “Akito. Your brother. My boyfriend. Where is he? I’m fucking tired of this joke, just end it already!”
Ena-nee’s face morphed, overtaken by anger. “I don’t have any siblings,” she all but spat. “Get out of my house before I call the cops on you, alright?”
“Ena-nee, please! Just tell me-”
“Leave, I said!” Ena-nee shouted, slamming the door in her face.
An stood there, speechless. If this were a prank, it was far too cruel. She sat on the curb, swiping through her contact list. Kohane, Akito and Touya were all gone, just like their group chat. Kohane’s parents’ numbers, Saki-chan’s and Ena-nee’s too, as if An had never met her lovers’ relatives and therefore never needed their numbers to contact them if anything happened to her precious teammates.
“Where are you?” she murmured, sinuses burning, throat tightening to the point of making her unable to breathe. “Where are you?”
How could this be possible? How could her best friends have disappeared overnight? It was impossible, it was, it had to, everyone was pulling a giant prank on her, what other explanation could there be?
… An didn’t want to live in a world where her best friends didn’t exist. Oh, how could she? She might have known a world without them, once, might have known happiness without them, but with how her life had developed, how could she ever dream of giving them up? She didn’t want to be left behind, she didn’t want to be abandoned and forgotten.
Kohane, Akito, Touya: they meant everything to her. It was all there, the big and small things, the slow moments and the bouts of adrenaline, the lazy afternoons and the frantic nights. It was the way she always sat cuddled around Kohane’s side wherever they were, the way Akito would carry things for her and hand her whatever she needed, the way she could spend a lifetime listening to Touya talk about any given topic without ever feeling bored or awkward. All the sleepovers spent in Akito’s warm embrace, all the walks hand in hand with Kohane, all the slow dances in her room with Touya, Kohane’s countless photos, Akito’s handmade midnight meals, Touya’s endless gifts. All the tears Kohane had dried, all the tips and cathartic talks Akito had shared with her, all the breakdowns and panic attacks Touya had helped her through, all the reassuring that she was enough, that they loved her, that she was important to the team and their friendship, that they’d never leave her behind.
She searched for Shiho’s number, relieved to find it there, still, where it should have been. She clicked on the call option, brought the phone to her ear and waited, hoping to hear what she needed to hear.
It only took two rings before Shiho answered. “An?” she called. “Is everything alright?”
“Ah- not really,” An mumbled. “Look, have you seen Kohane today? I might or might not have lost her number. Akito’s and Touya’s, as well. I can’t contact them in any way, so if you can…”
There was a beat of silence, then Shiho asked: “Kohane? Who is she?”
An pressed her forehead against her knees and grunted in exasperation. “For fuck’s sake- your best friend, Shiho. Kohane Azusawa”.
“You must be mixing her up with someone else,” Shiho patiently said. “I don’t have a best friend named Kohane Azusawa. Are you thinking of Minori Hanasato? Or-”
“No, Shiho, I’m not mistaken,” An almost pleaded. “Kohane Azusawa, your best friend. Blonde, with big and sweet brown eyes, the most endearing smile in the world and the most determined girl I know. She sat right behind you last year, on Minori’s right side, you went with Phoenix Wonderland with her, and now she’s in the same class as Ichika and Honami. Please, Shiho. You can’t have forgotten her”.
“An,” Shiho said in a serious voice. “I have no idea who you are talking about. Are you alright? You’re crying, are you in pain? Do you need any help?”
An sighed. It was useless, so fucking useless. “No, no, I’m… I’m fine, Shiho. I’m sorry I bothered you. Well… Bye”. Before Shiho could say anything, An hung up on her.
Perfect. Nene and Ena had forgotten Akito, Mizuki had forgotten Touya, and now Shiho had forgotten Kohane. Fucking perfect, An thought, wasn’t it?
Defeated, she stood up and began walking again, purposely ignoring how many steps she took towards her new location, to the only person she knew would never partake in any kind of prank. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Ah, if only she could remember Kohane’s father’s number!
The skyscrapers and the giant billboards high in the sky seemed to all sway with her as she began to cry. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she told herself: keep walking, An. Keep walking, keep walking. The trees lining the streets seemed to buckle under their own weight, the streetlights bending in half, the celestial vault and the entire world snapping in half to fall over An. Everything was crumbling all around her, trying to suffocate her, but she told herself: keep walking, An. Keep walking, keep walking. She pressed the heels of her palms against her cheeks and eyes in hope to dry them, but the tears just kept on coming, choking her, burning her face and mind in a liquid mess of longing and desperation.
As she came out of the block Akito lived in, everything righted itself and the began to fall to its foundation again. An ignored this cycle of destruction and rebirth, and instead kept walking. Eventually, the tall building shifted to rich houses with vast front gardens and high front gates, golden plaques bearing the owner’s names and advanced security systems. Well, it’s not like the cameras were exactly visible, but An knew from one too many stealthy visits in the middle of the night.
Nine-thousand-six-hundred and sixteen steps. That was how much An had to walk before she found the black gate before herself, a silver intercom with a tiny, bulbous camera at its top and the plaque reading “Aoyagi” in equally silver letters standing proudly by the side of the entrance.
An breathed in and out. Her mouth had grown dry from the tireless crying, her eyes swollen and irritated beyond belief, and she could feel her lips beginning to crack. It wasn’t the best of looks she could don, but, honestly, who even cared about it? She pressed the button on the intercom and waited.
A short sound told her someone on the other side had picked up her ringing. “Who is this?” said Harumichi Aoyagi over the microphone. An had to take another breath as memories of Touya flooded her mind: Touya upset over a fight with his father, Touya locked in a hopeless silence over one of his father’s countless remarks, Touya crying over his father’s disapproval. An had never wanted to punch anyone more than Harumichi Aoyagi.
She swallowed all of her resentment down and answered instead: “ah, I’m Shiraishi, I’m a friend of your son. I- uh… I came to ask for those piano lessons he’d promised me”.
“Lessons?” Harumichi echoed. “I knew nothing of it”.
“Ah, uh… Touya must have forgotten to tell you, sir,” she improvised. Why had she spewed out such an unlikely thing? Yes, Touya still loved the piano and wished to find the courage to play it again, but in which kind of universe would he promise An lessons? “Is he home? He isn’t answering his phone”.
“Touya?” Harumichi asked, surprise filling his usually emotionless tone. “Shiraishi-san, you must have gotten the wrong address. Neither of my sons are called Touya, and after all, they are both overseas at the moment”.
“My boy- best friend is Touya Aoyagi,” she said, tears already pooling her eyes again. “Sir, there has to be someone named Touya in your house. Your son, Touya- where is he?”
“I will repeat myself only once more: no one named Touya lives in this house,” Harumichi said slowly. “I wish you a nice day, Shiraishi-san”.
“No, wait-”
Another high-pitched sound from the intercom notified An that Harumichi had interrupted the connection. Frustrated, she let out a sharp noise, slamming her forehead right underneath the intercom. “What the fuck is going on?!” she shouted. “Where are you? Where did you go?”
She pulled away and sunk her face in her hands. She began to sob, disconsolate, digging her fingernails into her cheekbones and forehead. Each sound climbed up the walls of her throat and wrecked her, shaking her to her core, stabbing pain flashing in her abdomen with each shallow breath. She fell on her knees as they gave out, all strength leaving her. “I can’t live without you!” she wept. “Come back! Don’t leave me alone! Don’t leave me!”
Something incredibly painful wrapped around her heart, squeezing it, tighter, tighter, until An thought it would burst. She clawed at her chest, wheezing, wishing the pain would just stop, wishing the world would just give her her best friends back. She pressed her head to the ground as she cried, sobbing, babbling and screaming to the sky, asking for her teammates back until eventually, she lost all strength in her body and passed out on the sidewalk.
-
An woke up in a frenzy, kicking away the light bed sheet she had been sleeping on. She sat up, gasping for air, reaching a hand up to her face: her cheeks were drenched in tears, wet and scorching trails lining her skin and dripping along her chin. She turned back to her pillow, finding it all stained by her tears. The bed was a mess, all of her pillows thrown about and the bed sheet tangled at her feet.
Her teammates, was her first thought. She had to find them.
She stood up and tumbled out of her room, holding her head with one hand as it pulsed with a subsiding migraine, probably born out of her cries. The air in the corridor was warm, sultry and sticky like the usual July air was, but it was also filled by the smell of something sweet, perhaps a baked treat. Was her father cooking breakfast…?
“Dad!” she screamt, an half choked sob still lodged in her throat, panic and fear evident in her voice. She stumbled to the stairs and ran down as fast as her legs allowed, “dad! Mom!”
Her foot caught against the second to last step and she ruinously fell to the floor, her shoulder slamming into the wooden planks and soon followed by her arm, which she had moved fast enough to protect her head. “Fuck…” she mumbled.
Footsteps hammered against the floor, drawing closer and closer to her. She was slowly sitting up when someone shouted: “An-chan!”
An looked up and found Kohane staring at her in horror, soon followed by Touya and Akito. All three of them were still in their pajamas: they had probably slept over last night, as they do almost every other day. “You…” she mumbled, fresh tears filling her eyes, “you are…”
“An, are you alright?” Akito asked, fear evident in his face as Kohane knelt next to An.
“You came back!” An wheezed, tears breaking out in relief. “Oh my God, you’re here, you came back…”
“What are you talking about?” Touya asked, bending down to see her closely, checking for any bodily injury.
Kohane’s hands cupped An’s face and she began to wipe away her tears. “An-chan, did you hurt yourself?” she asked, her sweet voice worried beyond belief. “That was quite the fall…”
“’m fine, I’m fine,” she mumbled. “God fucking hell, it was horrible. Everyone forgot about you and I lost your numbers and I thought I hallucinated you all…”
“Does she have a concussion?” Akito asked Touya. “What is she even talking about?”
Touya shook his head, clueless.
“… Ah, I know,” Kohane said, her thumbs trailing oh so gently over An’s skin. An stared at her girlfriend through her swimming vision: she was so incredibly pretty, soft and bright like no one else was, understanding and loving beyond belief. An was truly lucky to have her. “An-chan had a nightmare, didn’t she?”
“A nightmare?” An dumbly asked. It had all been a dream? It all surely made sense, then. Her inability to read words or numbers, the unlike morphing of distances, all the weird actions carried out by her friends, the seeming disappearance of her darling partners. How had she not realized that sooner? “Yeah, it was a nightmare”.
Kohane giggled at that. “Of course it was, silly,” she murmured, pulling her closer to press a small kiss to her lips. She tasted like her strawberry flavored chapstick, of happiness and promises kept to the end. “There’s no universe where I would leave you”.
An’s heart slammed against her ribcage at that affirmation. Kohane… Kohane wanted to stay by her side. She wanted to be with her. Ah, of course: they had all promised each other, hadn’t they? They would never leave each other, not when happiness came so naturally when they were together.
Touya put his hand over An’s head and began to caress her hair, so softly that An almost wanted to burst out crying all over again. “Let’s get you up and in the kitchen, okay?” he said with his adoring smile, reserved to the three of them alone. “Akito has made pancakes and we bought some home-made rum raisin ice cream just for you”.
At that, An all but sprung up, although having to lean on Touya as her head spun from the effort. “I love you all,” she smiled, even if she was seeing six of her lovers instead of three.
Kohane stood up and Akito walked closer to her, gifting her a fond smile before opening his arms: a clear invitation. Although An immediately sunk in his embrace, Kohane and Touya soon followed, until they all melted into each other’s arms. “We love you too, An,” Akito chuckled.
She sighed, content with the situation.
“Oh, actually,” Touya chimed as they pulled apart. He threw Kohane and Akito a quick glance, then they said, all together: “happy birthday, An!”
An stared back at them, surprised. “Ah, I’d forgotten,” she said honestly.
Akito grunted, unamused. “How did you forget your own birthday?” he grumbled.
“Aki, you forget your own birthday, too,” Kohane pointed out.
Akito’s ears turned red at that. “That’s bullshit,” he said. He turned back to An. “We have the whole day planned out, so get ready, birthday girl,” he grinned, cupping her cheek and kissing her. It was probably meant to be a mere peck, but she grabbed him by his collar and pulled him back in, savoring his lips against hers.
Laughing, he pulled back. “Hey, if you want to make out, turn to Touya. He’s waiting for his kiss, too”.
An turned to the boy in question, and found somewhat of a kicked puppy instead. She laughed and grabbed his hand, following Kohane and Akito in the kitchen.
Touya leaned against the kitchen counter and An easily slotted herself in his arms as Akito began to plate and garnish the pancakes and Kohane took the ice cream from the fridge and spooned it into four bowls. With a giggle, Touya bopped her nose. “Hey there, pretty,” he said, kissing her forehead.
“Hey there, handsome,” she smiled back, kissing his chin. He was too tall for her to reach his face properly, but she didn’t really mind as it meant he was the perfect height for her to cuddle on his chest even when standing upright. “I really don’t know how I could give this all up,” she mumbled as she did, in fact, cuddle to his chest. Touya’s pulse was steady and strong: it reassured her he was still with her, that he was real.
Kohane threw her a curious glance. “What do you mean?”
“In my dream,” she began, “you had just… Disappeared. It was like you had never existed in the first place. Your phone numbers didn’t exist, no one knew of you, everyone thought I was crazy when I asked where you were. It was… Scary. I don’t want to live without you three”.
There was a beat of silence before Touya’s fingers tilted her chin up. She looked at him, gray eyes saddened and his face determined. “You won’t have to,” he said, leaning down to leave a small peck on her mouth. “We will always be here, right beside you, because there is nowhere else we would rather be”.
“Yeah,” Akito agreed, laying the plates on the counter and leaning by Touya’s right side and therefore, An’s left. Kohane soon joined them, her shoulder brushing Akito’s. “We always face everything together, don’t we? We’re all here because of each other”.
Kohane nodded, smiling so widely that she her dimples turned into two black holes. “We are who we are because you’re our girlfriend and best friend, An,” she said. “You’ve changed us, we’ve changed you. That’s how it works: we push each other forward and forward, to become the best versions of ourselves. There’s no one else I’d rather stand with than you three”.
An’s gaze flowed between the three of them, Touya, Kohane, Akito, Akito, Kohane, Touya. Oh, she truly loved them from the bottom of her heart. “Yes,” she slowly smiled. “There’s no one I’d rather stand with, either. Thank you for being in my life and for making it better”.
They nodded, and An couldn’t help but think: this is the best birthday present ever. My favorite people in the world by my side, and the promise to never fall apart.