There was a light frost on the living room window. The curtains were open, but it was hard to see outside. Not that it mattered, since she had long since memorized everything she would want to see out there. In her chair, she stared out the window, the winter-dusted world coming to life in her mind.

In her hand, Nozomi held a fine-tipped black sharpie. Popping open the top, she held out her arm - the one without the tattoo sleeve on it - and begin to carefully draw a thick dot. Then she drew a line from it, quickly jutting up, then right, then up again. By the end, it was a strange design, one that only she would get. It was a map to her heart. Relatively speaking, of course.

Capping the sharpie again, she sighed deeply and stood up. Though it would've been nice to spend her Saturday being sad and lazy, there was something important she had to do. Grabbing the thick winter coat that was hanging off the back of her chair, she shrugged it on with an unconscious shiver and headed out into the cold.

She walked down the street with the intent on going to the closest thrift store. As she walked, she bundled herself up as best she could in the coat, pressing her nose against the material. "Ahh, the smell is gone..." She murmured to herself, but that was to be expected. The scent she had associated with the coat had vanished long ago.

At the thrift store, she took off the coat and handed it to the woman working at the counter, saying that she wished to give it away. The woman nodded and smiled, thanking her for the donation. Nozomi gave her a strained smile in return before turning around and heading for the door. That was it: the last item remaining in her care that belonged to the woman she once loved. The woman that she still loved.

She walked out the door and back into the cold, shivering and hugging herself for warmth as she went back home.

It probably wasn't on purpose. They had both been sure that she had gotten everything when she moved out, but only a few days later Nozomi discovered the coat hidden in her closet. She knew that she should've returned it, but at the time the thought of trying to talk to her ex-girlfriend again terrified her. Eventually, she just couldn't bring herself to let go of something that still tethered her to a time when she'd been so incredibly happy. She would just lay in bed and take in the scent that remained on the coat until it was no more.

She had hoped removing every trace of her ex from the house would help her finally get over what had happened after three long, painful years. Now that all the pictures had been trashed and the coat was gone from her possession, she didn't feel any better. If anything, the finality of what she had done made her feel worse.

Despite the cold, she didn't go inside. Instead she pressed her back against the door and looked down the street, at the line of houses that stretched on as far as she could see. On the other side was the marketplace, a decent stretch of businesses that was in a pretty convenient place for her.

It was what was beyond the marketplace that never failed to ruin her mood. Not far from the end of the marketplace, there was another line of houses not too dissimilar from hers. It was there, in an all-too-familiar location, where her former lover lived. There she lived, her life surely continuing on unabated after all these years. The person of her desire, her fixation, her love, and her devastation: she only lived eleven blocks away.

Biting her lip, Nozomi forced herself to turn away and headed back into her house.

The table she sat at was familiar, yet it felt so strange. Holding a hot coffee in her hands, Nozomi lifted it to her lips and took a sip. 'Still too hot.' It was just too weird sitting there by herself, but after all this time, she still went directly for that specific table on instinct. Lately she'd been doing a better job at not pretending her ex was sitting next to her like she used to.

Every so often they had stopped here specifically for coffee, and they'd sit at the same table and just talk about anything. It didn't take long for it to become 'their' table, and Nozomi just loved watching her talk. No matter what it was about, there was just something about her that made any subject interesting.

In the line of people waiting to order, she swore that she saw a familiar head of brunette hair. For a fleeting moment, hope welled up in her chest, but she forced it back down. There was no way she'd be here. She hadn't been in so long. Those pessimistic thoughts turned out to be true, as it was just a case of mistaken identity. Suddenly she didn't feel like drinking any more coffee.

Standing up, she headed straight for the trash can and dropped her barely-touched coffee in the trash. "Waste of three dollars..." She muttered as she left the coffee shop. There wasn't anywhere she was interested in going, but she really didn't want to go home. The indecisiveness just left her standing there with her hands in her pockets.

Eventually she just decided to go home and sleep for awhile.

The thing was, her sadness had a heaping helping of sarcasm and a dry wit... in the daytime. That's when her feelings were more manageable. As the years went on, they become more manageable, to the point where nobody would have any idea she was still harboring feelings for her ex.

At night though, things got bad. Not as bad as they did in the immediate aftermath of their breakup, but even now things still weren't that great. Approaching midnight, she laid in bed and hugged her legs to her chest, whimpering softly. Being all alone gave her no distractions, so her mind went straight to a familiar well: the Hanayo well.

It didn't matter if she rid her house of any proof of her existence: Hanayo still lived forever inside her brain. The bed they used to sleep in together felt so empty, and only at night would she allow herself to give into these feelings and cry like a lost child. Why couldn't it just be sunny forever?

That night felt worse than usual, and she didn't know why. Maybe it was because she didn't have that coat to cuddle with. Normally she would be against dragging a friend down into her pit of misery, but she needed to talk to someone. Not even about her unfortunate feelings: just about anything. So she grabbed her phone and called Maki.

Maki did most of the talking, which was a complete change of pace from how it used to be. She had a feeling that her friend knew something was going on, but didn't press the issue. Instead she just talked about how things were going at the hospital, which sufficiently distracted her.

At some point Nozomi fell asleep, the phone slipping out of her hand. She wasn't aware that Maki stayed on the line for a few more minutes, just to make sure that she had really fallen asleep. Then she hung up.

"Twelve... Thirteen... Fourteen." Nozomi counted the numbers in her head as she went, until she stopped in front of a specific house. One of her other friends, Kotori, was having a party, and after no small amount of deliberation, she'd agree to stop by. When she rang the doorbell, she was greeted with the smiling face of Kotori, who invited her in.

The house was pretty lively, with a mixture of familiar and unknown faces talking and hanging around. Nozomi walked in, but when Kotori left to go make sure the kitchen wasn't being ransacked by a certain ginger, she felt a sudden urge to leave. She had only just gotten there, but she no longer felt like she could be there: like she belonged there. What she needed was a smoke.

Nobody noticed that she went right back out onto the front porch to have a cigarette. Exhaling out a puff of smoke, Nozomi sighed as she held the small white stick between her fingers and looked down the street. She'd promised to quit the habit multiple times, and had even succeeded at some points, but something would always pull her back eventually.

Taking another puff, she reflected on how no matter where she went, she was still too close to Hanayo. Even Kotori was only fourteen blocks away. Just fourteen measly blocks. Only the greatest of self-control kept her from just running all the way to that house again, falling to her knees and begging for things to return to the way they used to be.

Eventually someone must've noticed she wasn't at the party anymore, as the door opened and out stepped Maki. Nozomi merely glanced to see who it was, then let her eyes fall back onto the street. She took another hit of her cigarette, but was careful not to blow any smoke in Maki's face.

"You're missing quite the party. Honoka started dropping rubber snakes on everyone from the second floor." Maki chuckled dryly, holding one of the snakes in her hand as proof.

"Sounds wild." There was no conviction in her voice as she kept staring down the street, a soft sigh escaping her lips. "Fourteen blocks."

"Hm?"

"She's only fourteen blocks away." She felt herself being transported back to the past, to a time when things seemed a lot simpler. Then, everything seemed like it would always go right. "And she's at home too, I know she is. It's Friday night, after all." She turned towards Maki, giving her a soft smile. "She's not the kind of person to be out on a Friday night."

Maki knew that, of course. It was something Nozomi had mentioned from time to time, and it was hard to forget. She may have tried to hide it, but Maki knew that Nozomi was still holding onto a lot of pain. If only she knew how to help get rid of it.

Tonight wasn't the night she figured it out, though. Instead, she just stood there in silent solidarity until Nozomi decided they should go back inside. With one final glance down the street, Nozomi stomped out her cigarette, and then they both went back to the party.

It felt like a dream, but she didn't have to pinch herself to know it was real. Bundled up in her coat, Nozomi gazed at the warm lights filtering through the frosted windows. These houses were not of importance, but they weren't that far from the one that was. She was well aware that this wasn't where she should be, and yet there she was, like she had been sleepwalking all the way there.

There were only two blocks between herself and Hanayo's house. This was not a place she should be. How did she even let herself get this far? She knew the best course of action was to be anywhere but where she was, yet when her feet started moving, it was in the wrong direction. Hell, she would've kept going that way too, if her phone hadn't started to ring.

Caught by surprise, she quickly fished her phone out of her pocket and answered it. "Hello?"

"Hi Nozomi. Sorry about calling after you already left, but do you think you can buy some ice cream at the store too?" That stopped Nozomi in her tracks, but it put a slight smile on her face.

"Alright. Your favorite, I'm guessing?"

"Yes please!"

"Alright then. I'll get that for ya. See you soon!" They hung up, and it was the excuse Nozomi needed to turn around and head for the store. She tried not to think about how close she had gotten.

Some time had passed since the party. She had met someone there, and shortly afterwards they started going out. Now they were dating and Nozomi finally felt herself having feelings for someone else. It felt... good. She really had been needing that.

Some things still hadn't changed, though. No matter how much time had passed, and no matter how much love she was feeling for her new partner, there were still those feelings for Hanayo that just refused to go away. Maybe they were stuck to her heart forever, and there was no way to truly remove them.

Standing in front of her door, a bag of groceries in her hands, she put on a smile and closed her eyes, breathing in and out slowly to try and clear her mind. She wanted it to be emptied when she got back in the house. This was the point of her meditation classes, anyway. Shifting the groceries so she could unlock the door, she opened it up and went inside.

A thought drifted into her mind though, one that wouldn't go away even as she greeted and kissed her partner. After all, it was yet another Friday night, and she would be home like always. She wasn't the type of person to go out on the weekends.

There was still only eleven blocks from her door to Hanayo's doorstep. Three years later and it still felt too close.