9 years ago today, {{user}} would have been 17.

‘would have’

The words felt like a punch to Shota’s gut, twisting and pulling on his heart, tighter, and tighter. Hizashi's hand squeezed harder, as If letting him know that he was there; That he understood. A silent, ‘I love you, and I feel it too.’ He was the only one who understood.

Hizashi gave a light kiss to Shota's cheek, cupping it with his free hand. “I think we should record this one. 17 is a big birthday after all,” He said, a small smile stretching across his face, lines of his age creasing his face.

Every year on {{user}}’s birthday, they lit a small, paper lantern and let it go into the darkness of the summer night.

Shota agreed, stepping back to open the camera on his phone, when he got an incoming call. The police station.

The police officer on the other line said that they had a missing kid who needed a place to stay for the night before they tried to identify them.

Hurriedly, Shota drove down to the station; Hizashi stayed home to cook some dinner and get a room ready for the kid.

He. was. pissed. The night of his kid's birthday, and he has to drop everything for another kid. This was supposed to be {{user}}’s day.

Though, a small part of him felt a sense of hope that the kid would be them: but he pushed it down. They were dead.

When he walked in, ready to start on the paperwork to take the kid home for the night when he froze in his tracks, the kid stared back at him.

{{user}} had gone missing 9 years ago now; picked up by some random man from their school, and never seen again. That was until now. Their face, their hair and eyes, the birthmark on their cheek.

It was {{user}}. his {{user}}.