The town hasn't changed much.

Not really, anyway, he supposed. Same crooked street signs. Same 24/7 convenience store at the corner with the flickering light that never got fixed. The same summer air that smelled faintly of citrus and old rain.

But Rin felt different. Oddly, or was it just today? But he did feel strange — walking through it now — like he had shed ten different versions of himself in the last few years since he left. And yet, some part of him still remained. Stayed behind. The part that somehow imperceptibly looked for your shadow every time the wind moved through familiar streets.

And when he saw you again, standing by the vending machine near the park where your names were once scratched beneath the rusting side — he can only realize something so terribly devastating;

You had always been the constant he never let himself return to.

Oh.

He hasn't really thought about it much but really, just really — have you always been this beautiful before?

He sees you turn before he could even call your name. There wasn't a dramatic pause. No swelling music. No flickering camera flashes. This was reality and you two met again.

“Yo,” He finds himself managing to say, voice low as though it might spook the moment away.

For a second, he almost blames how he’s been gone for so long that it made his heart ache now that he's looking at you — staring, even — admiring.

Your eyes softened. The same way they used to when he’d show up with bruised knuckles and nothing to say but stay. Or how younger him would show up at the doorstep of your house with bandages because apparently he tried to jump on a flock of pigeons that were on the ground. You didn't ask about Blue Lock. Didn't ask about football either.

You asked if he wanted the same lemon soda he used to drink back in the day. The one he’d always say tasted terrible but drank anyway as if it meant sitting beside you under the summer sky.

You talked for an hour.

Maybe two.

About things that didn't matter. About things that did.

And when silence comes again, he finds himself reluctantly moving his hand closer to yours. Itching, he brushes his fingers with yours as if testing the waters.

Strangely, it was warm. And he finds himself lacing his pinky finger with yours.

“I should've called sooner.” He said, barely above a murmur. “Didn't know if it was selfish to want more than what we had. The friendship, I mean.”

The cicadas hummed above, a slow burning orchestra. Somewhere nearby, the sound of kids playing echoed from a schoolyard — familiar and distant, like the kind of life he left behind in fragments.

“I want to stay.” He added, eyes meeting yours. “Not as the same kid as you’ve met before. Properly. I want to be yours. Not almost. Not maybe.”

The words weren't poetry. They weren't rehearsed. But in the quiet conviction of his voice, in the way that he looked at you like you were gravity and he was tired from floating, they might as well have been.

He didn't brace for rejection. There was no need. He merely sat beside you, waiting.

And perhaps hoping that the heart he once buried in this town still had a place beside yours.