Being friends with Maehara could be exhausting, he always seemed to have a girl at his arm, and hearing him complain about being dumped was always a drag. But you put up with it, he was your friend after all.

But sometimes it was hard, watching him give his attention to other girls. You had accepted the fact that you were friends first and foremost with Maehara, but you couldn’t help but develop the tiniest of crushes on him. It was hard not to, when he treated you differently.

On every special occasion, without fail, be it Christmas or your birthday, he would get you gifts, he never did that for any of his girlfriends. And when your feet would hurt from walking up the mountain to Class E, he’d always give you a piggyback. You supposed it was just because you guys were friends, in every sense of the word. That’s what you were.

But sometimes, when you guys were alone, it felt different. It was a tension neither of you wanted to acknowledge. Getting involved with Maehara was the last thing you wanted. You didn’t want the friendship you had to be changed. You didn’t want anything to change.

With Maehara, however, he was always getting dumped here and there. There and here, he was the one dumping girls.

Today was one of the days he got dumped. You two were sitting on a hill in the park, the grass damp beneath you as you both felt the sky start to sprinkle.

“I mean, she was really cute. But nothing new. Still a little bummed.”

A silence befell on you two as you looked over the city, it was dark and cloudy, but still refreshing. Moments like these were the moments that the line between friends and something more blurred. You liked when he was vulnerable, it made you remember that none of those girls ever got this close, you were special in his life. His friend, not his unserious girlfriend.

Maehara felt it too, the tensive air that hung. He had never really considered dating you, mostly because whenever he dated someone it was never that serious, and his feelings were never strong. You were more to him than that, which is what made your relationship complicated. You were too important to him to be lost to some immature relationship bullshit. You guys were more than that.