This is basically a grown-up story, with all the typical pairings- bear with me, it will be romance/humor! Please review if you liked!

Even the Stars Grow Older

Prologue: Ready, Set

To say that they had changed with age would be…well, a vast overstatement, at best, and an outright lie at its worst.

They had grown, yes—certainly physically, and in a very (very) literal sense of the word, emotionally as well. Literal in the most basic sense possible, because though it would be impossible to grow up without growing inside as well, they certainly were taking their time. To outsiders, of course, they were very different from the overeager middle school girls they all once were, but around each other, it was almost as if nothing had changed at all.

Almost.

Kyouko had grown taller than the rest of the upperclassmen, as had Himawari amongst the underclassmen (though not as much so, and with significantly more grace, as her curves had grown with her, much to Sakurako's despair and misplaced hatred), while Akari and Chinatsu had grown more out than up, the latter slightly more so than the former. The younger pair of friends had also changed their hairstyles—Chinatsu (the veritable queen of their very co-ed high school) now wore her pink locks in a side ponytail, while Akari's was looking more and more like her sister's every day as she grew it out.

Save for those differences, however, none of them had changed in a way that would make strangers gawk at their previous yearbook photos. They'd grown up, but they hadn't changed—not really.

Except, there were…things…here and there; things that hadn't been there before.

Like the way Sakurako and Himawari's arguing had escalated (which everybody had just assumed would stop once one of them finally admitted their feelings, except apparently that hadn't happened…), but so had the longing, sideways glances when they were sure the other wasn't looking, and the jealous huffing from both parties despite their fervent claims of indifference when the other started getting too close to anybody else.

Or like the way Akari's gaze sometimes accidentally settled on her vivacious and, quite frankly, slightly catty best friend and lingered there for just a second too long- just long enough to be meaningful, just short enough that even Akari didn't notice it (just yet). And like the way Chinatsu had mellowed just slightly and, though she kept her precious Yui-senpai in a very special place in her heart, was now the focus of many a hormonal teenage boys' fantasy, but always, for some reason unknown even to herself, always put her nondescript but steadfast best friend first in the end.

Ayano (who had ascended to the Student Council President throne not once, but twice, now that graduation for her and Chitose and all of their group, really, was just barely more than a year away) had gradually progressed through all the various phases of tsunderedom until now, the summer before her senior year of high school, she was all but dropping bread-crumbs for Toshino Kyouko (!) to find. Kyouko herself, while just as lazy as ever, seemed to be developing less and less futile schoolgirl crushes and a deepening interest in anything and everything to do with teasing Ayano (because Chinatsu was hardly any fun at all anymore now that she had so many boys to focus on, so many potential romances outside of her darling Yui-senpai) until the poor girl was a stuttering wreck.

But the outside, nothing much had changed and really, these other changes had happened so gradually that nobody had really noticed at all, as is the way with growing up. But ignorance rarely lasts forever, and though none of the girls could possibly have predicted it, life was about to set in motion a chain of events beginning with one fateful summer that would, for the first time, force them all to confront the feelings that had seemed so trivial back at Nanamori Middle School.

OKAY. So there's that—don't worry, I know it sounds dramatic but so do all my prologues! It'll probably turn out to be a romance/humor story, and make this prologue seem utterly pointless because that's just how my stories usually work out. The story will focus for the most part on the pairings implied in this chapter—I'm not much good at writing pairings that I don't really ship, sorry about that. Also, I know this chapter was kind of a bore—bear with me, I do better with a less serious writing style (this is just the prologue writing style :P).

Please review if you liked, and let me know if I should continue! I'm trying to get back into writing fanfiction like I once was, so any reviews would be great! They serve as great motivation, you have no idea…anyway, I hope you enjoyed!

A/N: There's a freaking SPIDER crawling around somewhere, I lost sight of it and now I can't touch my feet to the floor and I keep feeling something on my legs even though there's nothing there...somebody help D: