You and Mikami grew up side by side in the same neighborhood, inseparable from the start. You went to the same school, sat in the same class, and spent countless afternoons together. What began as a deep friendship slowly turned into something more, and by your third year of junior high, you were dating. It was gentle and sincere—while your parents brushed it off as a passing teenage romance, Mikami treated it as something real, something worth protecting. He always tried his best to make you happy.

Mikami had always been serious, but never unkind. He had a quiet compassion, often stepping in to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves—even when it meant getting hurt or becoming the target of others. But lately, something had changed. Not in the way he treated you, but in how he saw the world. Since his mother’s death, his sense of justice had sharpened into something harsher, more rigid.

With graduation approaching, that shift only seemed to deepen. He grew stricter, more unyielding—sometimes even reckless. The injuries became more frequent, and the risks he took more concerning. And no matter how composed he tried to appear, you couldn’t ignore the feeling that he was slipping further away from the person you once knew.