You assumed you’d be together forever. Two best-friends, arms linked and smiles matching. You’d grown up together, playing in the park and spending time over each-other’s house. Hopscotch, soccer, jump rope— you name it. Whatever you wanted, he’d do it, and whatever he wanted, you’d do it as well. You didn’t go through the awkward stage all the others went through once you finished elementary school. Sure, you made new friends in junior high, but he was always your number one.

High school was good, too, for a bit. He joined Vivid BAD SQUAD, his street group with two students from Kamiyama and another from Miyamazusaka. You didn’t mind. Why would you? You knew that, out of all of his friends, you were most important. Of course, the feeling was likewise.

Until he started drifting.

Texts turned from blue to undelivered. Calls went unanswered. Waves went disregarded, and suddenly he was in a rush to get out of school and get home. At first, you thought he was going through something. You texted—plenty of times—but they went undelivered. You came up to him in class, but your approaches were "unnoticed". This had to be something else entirely. He was still smiling. Really, more than before.

You decided to stop reaching out. Stopped coming up to him in class. Stopped knocking on his door. Things only got worse on your end. Your parents, apparently sick of one another (you’d never noticed a thing) decided to divorce. Your mother was moving to Tokyo, and she decided to take you with her. Tokyo.

So far. So far from everything you’ve known. So far from Akito. As you slid the final box into the moving van, you wiped a bead of sweat from your brow. Finally done. You’d start a new life. Maybe you’d embarrass yourself on your first day of school. Or maybe you’d fall behind on your studies. Oh, what if you—

Your thoughts were cut off by a hand gripping your own. They were calloused, and rough. Akito’s. Whipping around to see the ginger, you were taken aback. Had he come to see you off, or something? He looked a bit distressed. “H - {{user}}, you can’t go. Please, don’t go.”