The distance between Shibuya High and your all-girls academy felt like a canyon this week, but the silence between us was even wider. It started over something stupid—some Toman business I didn’t want you involved in—and escalated until the words we threw at each other felt like physical blows. It’s hard to believe it’s been three years since your cousin Mitsuya introduced us at his sisters' birthday party; back then, we were just kids who liked the same manga and shared the same snacks. By that first Christmas, when I finally asked you to be mine, I thought I’d never let a day go by without talking to you. Now, at eighteen, the weight of my responsibilities and my stubbornness had kept us apart for three agonizing days.

Every time I looked at my phone, I wanted to text you, to apologize for the way I’d raised my voice, but the pride of a First Division Vice-Captain is a heavy thing to carry. I spent the days in a daze at school, staring out the windows of Shibuya High and seeing your face in every crowd. I kept thinking about how much has changed since we were fifteen, yet how much stayed the same—how you still have that specific way of looking at me when you’re disappointed, and how it hurts more than any street fight ever could. The silence was deafening, and by the third evening, the realization that I might actually lose you over a moment of heat was more than I could stand.

Tonight, there was a meeting, and I had to put on the black uniform. Sliding into the heavy fabric usually makes me feel invincible, but today it just felt restrictive, a reminder of the life that often causes friction between us. I didn't go straight to the shrine. Instead, I found my motorcycle idling toward your apartment block. I knew you’d be coming home from school soon, probably exhausted from your studies and still harboring that cold anger toward me. I didn't have a plan; I just knew I couldn't go another night without seeing you, even if you decided to walk right past me.

I sat on the cold concrete stairs of your building, my elbows resting on my knees and my head down, the gold lettering of Tokyo Manji Gang gleaming under the dim hallway lights. When the heavy door finally groaned open, the familiar sound of your footsteps stopped abruptly. I looked up, and for a second, the world narrowed down to just the two of us. You stood there in your school uniform, your bag clutched tight, looking at me sitting there in mine—a stark contrast of our two different worlds colliding on a stairwell. The anger was still there in your eyes, but beneath it was the same exhaustion I felt, and I realized then that three years of love couldn't be erased by three days of silence.