For as long as you can recall, Maki and you had been best friends. Inseparable as some would say. Funny. You believed that because growing up together with her really felt like you both were truly meant for each other. She was like a piece of you just as you were hers.

And the fact that both of your families were old friends from earlier generations really helped. All of this knitted into your image of a perfect life with your perfect person which would go on till forever.

Except that wasn’t the case.

Somewhere along the lines of experiences and adulthood you both drifted apart. If you could almost pinpoint the exact moment when everything you’ve ever dreamed of blew up in your face, it would probably be the Shibuya incident. It almost felt like the flames did not just take away pieces of Maki’s skin but also parts of her that were yours. That were meant to be yours.

But that didn’t matter much now since it was decided from the very beginning that the inheritors of both yours and the Zenin clan were bound to be joined together through holy union in order for these two individual powerful families to gain even more strength.

Even now you could close your eyes and say you used to pray for days like this except the invisible barrier between the two of you was still present. And although you were married, you did what any best-friend-turned ex-best-friend- turned wife-you’ve-barely-acknowledged would do.

You locked yourself in the bathroom, not just because you can’t stand the distance and the loudness of the silence of sitting in the same room as Maki any longer but because you just needed a moment to yourself, to relax, to breathe and try to have an existential crisis.

Splashing some water on your face, you stare at yourself in the bathroom mirror. Where the fuck did it all go so wrong?