Alright, this took me forever. I sincerely apologize. But here's how it's gonna go from here on out:

1. I post one more chapter and an epilogue.

2. I re-post all the chapters at once in a MASS EDIT. Not like when they have you waiting months for one edited chapter. Actual chapters I can't promise to be quick on, though. Evidently.

I'd like to wrap this up by the end of the year. (My God... Is this story almost a year old? Damn.)

Well, that's enough of that. Hey ho let's go!

Misaki, 2015

The cake is four feet tall, four feet long, and sculpted into the shape of a cartoon brontosaurus. It waves its neck and tail in a way that's just slow enough to look possibly animatronic, but is in fact an artful side effect of an excellent cooking alice. Being able to move, however, doesn't mean that the thing has a brain, and, swinging its head just as I screech the truck to an abrupt halt when the light changes unexpectedly, it manages to decapitate itself.

I pull over with a sinking feeling and hop out to inspect the damage. When I push open the back, the dinosaur is lying on its side, head hanging off and tail still feebly stirring from side to side. Frustratedly, I fish out my phone from my pocket in order to call someone from the bakery for help. But before I can put in the right number, it vibrates startlingly in my hand.

"Anna!" I gasp in relief. "I was just about to call you. See, there's this thing with the dinosaur cake that I really need you to—"

She cuts me off. "Yeah, well, I need you to get here as soon as possible, hon."

"What? Why?"

"There's something here that you've got to see." Anna giggles, and I lean back against the side of the truck and sigh. "Get back here now, Misaki."

"Can't that wait? I've got a seven-year-old with rich parents who are going to be really disappointed if their birthday cake shows up headless, I've got to drive across town to get there, and you know I hate playing delivery girl." I pause and rest the phone against my shoulder to call the pushy person with the navy convertible a motherfucker. "Can you just come help me? I need some serious damage control."

"Road rage much?" She groans, and I can tell she's rolling her eyes. "Drive back and I'll get Miruku to help you."

"But who's going to deliver the—"

"Get a clone to do it. Several people, including you, are going to be really disappointed if you don't show up within the next ten minutes."

"For the last time, they're not called—"

Before I can finish my sentence, Anna hangs up. With a halfhearted sigh, I push the cake into a spot where it's not likely to come to any further harm and get back in the truck. She's not usually this persuasive.

oOoOo

I pull up to the back entrance in the alley and enlist the help of a few doppelgangers to lug the headless dinosaur back into the kitchen, where I'm met by Miruku and a couple more. Once I've got the cake up on the table, I push up my sleeves and grab my apron from the hook on the wall. "You got it from here?" I ask.

"It'll be fine," she assures me. "I'll call and tell the parents their cake's going to be a little late, and I'll get one of you to drive it over once I've fixed it. Meanwhile, I think you'd better get upstairs before Anna explodes."

"Yeah, yeah, I've heard. What's so important, anyway?"

Miruku looks up at me with an amused smile. "When you find out it's going to seem really obvious, but I don't think I'll spoil it for you."

"Misaki!" I jump about a foot and drop my apron when Anna yells from the doorway. "Get out here, you idiot! You're so slow!" She launches herself forwards and latches tightly onto my wrist, pulling me along back into the shop.

"Must really be something," I mutter under my breath to Miruku before I'm dragged out of the room. "It's got her calling me names."

Once I've been led into the shop and out from behind the counter, Anna beams at me expectantly. I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to be looking at, until I spot the tall, dark-haired man sitting at a table in the corner with last week's comics and half a slice of coconut cake.

I look around instinctively for somewhere to hide.

When Anna nudges me in the ribs and grins, I nearly slap myself in the forehead. I really should have known. "Are you crazy?" I whisper at her hysterically, glancing towards the man in the corner and praying he doesn't look up. "He probably hates me!"

She huffs at me frustratedly. "He just came to find you, didn't he?"

"To find… me?" I repeat, feeling a little stupid.

"Yes" Anna waves a finger at me threateningly. "Now go tell him something. You've been hiding long enough. I know you missed him and God knows what you put the poor man through."

I blink at her and tilt my head in confusion. "What's gotten into you? Someone would actually think you were angry for once in your life."

Anna heaves an impatient sigh. "Just go!"

I try and think of some other argument against it but before I can I look over and Tsubasa Andou is staring at me as if I'm some kind of miracle and I can't help but get the feeling I've just been majorly bitchslapped by fate.

We watch each other for a few seconds, and his eyes are so vibrant I can make out the color from across the room. In those long moments I fill in the gaps in my memory. It's hard to believe you can spend your whole life with a person, but when you close your eyes and try to think of them, the image you come up with is hardly more than a blur.

Tsubasa slowly gets to his feet and pushes between a couple of schoolgirls to cover the distance between us. "Long time, no see," he says for lack of anything better, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He can't take his eyes off me, and I notice with embarrassment that I'm wearing my old green sweater with the hole in the stomach where I'd picked at the threads this morning and I'd rubbed my eyes without thinking earlier and probably have big dark smudges under them. To be fair, he doesn't look that great either, but more in a sense that he looks more serious than I remember him. Sadder, somehow.

"Er… yeah," I respond quietly. I'd like to look down at my feet but find that it's somehow impossible.

"You're going on break now, sweetie," Anna commands.

I blink, suddenly aware I haven't been. "Sorry, what?"

Anna is leaning over the counter, ignoring her paying customers and practically oozing satisfaction. "Go right ahead, darling. While you're at it, have a cream puff." She hands Tsubasa and I each a pastry and almost shoves us out the door.

We stand there in suffocating silence. A car drives past and I follow it with my eyes, desperate for something to look at.

"Sorry," wonders Tsubasa confusedly, his mouth full of cream puff. "But did she just throw us out on the curb?"

"I guess so." Subtly, I gesture at his cheek and take a bite of my own puff. "You've got some…"

"Ah, damn." He flushes and rubs the cream from his face.

The conversation's eventually going to turn to more serious topics, and I figure I may as well start it along before he tells me what a nice day it is. "Why are you here?"

"Well." Tsubasa arches his eyebrows. "That's certainly more direct than you usually are."

I scoff in indignation. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, for one, instead of actually taking your relationship issues up with me, you storm out the door and leave me heartbroken," he mutters, forcing a sarcastic smile.

"So this is all my fault now?" I raise my voice slightly.

Any pretense of friendliness is gone from his expression. "I never knew what I did wrong. Never. Do you have any idea what that was like for me?"

I open my mouth but realize he's right, and it takes me a while to come up with a decent argument in my favor. "You… could've come after me if you felt so strongly about that," I manage.

He rolls his eyes. "God, why do girls always say that? It makes no sense."

"How many girls have said that to you, anyway?"

"Well… you know, on TV…" Tsubasa shakes his head and continues. "You can't just pin all our problems on me for not going after you. If it had been the other way around you wouldn't have run out after me. Don't you dare try to tell me different, because you know you wouldn't have. " He's almost shouting by now.

"They're watching us," I interject, trying to bring him back down to a sensible volume.

Tsubasa shuts up immediately. Anna waves from the window. Another car drives by.

He motions for me to follow him. "If we're going to yell at each other, it may as well not be in public."

I skip a few paces to keep up with him. "Where are we going then?"

"My place." He points over at a medium-sized reddish building. "Over there, in that one. About four blocks thataway."

"You can't just pick your ex-girlfriend up off the street and take her home with you, you know," I inform him, in case that's what he was going for.

Tsubasa scoffs. "I'm not going to try and sleep with you, if that's what you were thinking I was getting at. Why is everything always about sex with you?"

Alright, now I'm a little offended. "With me? Everything is not always about sex with me, thank you. I was the one who had to pretty much fight you off with a stick when we were kids!"

He stops, turning around. "When were you a kid? I distinctly remember you trying to—"

"So was that our problem?" I interrupt. "Sex? Because if it was, I don't see any point to arguing this further."

"I get the feeling we had a lot of problems," Tsubasa mutters quietly. "None of which I knew about. Care to enlighten me?"

"Really, Tsubasa." With a sigh, I glance around. "We broke up years ago. I've moved on, you've moved on. Does any of it really matter anymore?"

He grabs my shoulder, catching me by surprise. "It matters to me," he says firmly, his expression serious and his eyes blazing. "I loved you. Goddammit, I probably still love you. But if you don't care, I'll let you go and you can just go back and never see me again."

"So that's it, then?" I ask, my voice sounding thinner and less confident than I'd like. "I fall back in love with you at a moment's notice and we live happily ever after, or we cut off all contact? We were friends. Good friends." shaking off any hesitation, I look up and meet his eyes. "They always say relationships ruin everything. I figured we knew what we were doing."

"We were seventeen!" he exclaims. "Nobody knows what they're doing when they're seventeen! You do what feels right. You felt right." Tsubasa merely stares down at me faintly, his fingers idly stroking a stray lock of hair on my shoulder. He seems to have run out of words.

I open my mouth to reply and realize I have too.

After a moment of hesitation and a quick glance of silent comprehension, I reach my arms up around his neck and Tsubasa leans down and kisses me, deep, smooth, and slow.

It's surprisingly easy to fall back into old patterns, to pick up more or less where you left off, as if four years was nothing at all. He still knows how to kiss me in that certain way I used to love, and I consider wildly whether I ought to go home with him after all, just to see if he remembers.

A car honks at us. Tsubasa gives them the finger and holds me closer.

oOoOo

I slump forwards, groaning, and rest my head in my hands. "So let me get this straight," Anna says, for what seems like the millionth time. "You ran?"

"I ran," I confirm reluctantly. "Kill me now."

She pats me on the back. "Sorry, but why?"

"Picture this, Anna." I heave a sigh. "You pull away from this mind-blowing kiss, and your ex-boyfriend is looking at you like you've just fallen from heaven or something, and you don't really know how you got into this but you know you don't want to reject him outright. What would you do? Just stand there like an idiot?"

"No matter how hard you try, Misaki, I'm not going to see the logic behind running away from guys who're in love with you." Anna stares vaguely out the window. "Maybe you've got enough of them to do what you want, but I think he's the real deal."

I prop my chin up in my hand and blow the bangs from my face. "Why does everyone say that? I mean, we were kids. That shouldn't even count. Just another aimless teenage thing, isn't it?"

"Honey…" She laughs lightly. "There's a reason your second boyfriend ever was when you were twenty-three."

"So what should I do?"

Anna smiles, smoothing back my hair. "Find him, love him, get married, make me maid of honor. That's what you do."

oOoOo

The next morning, it took me a while to find the building Tsubasa had mentioned. It had been real nondescript, and I'd forgotten it almost immediately. However, using common sense and process of elimination once I'd racked my brains and remembered the color, I ended up in what I hoped was the right place. Even harder proved finding someone who could tell me which actual apartment he was in. Eventually, I just took the advice of a passing girl who looked nice enough.

I knock apprehensively, and he opens the door in sweats and a stupid earflap hat. Tsubasa notices it's me mid-yawn, and straightens in surprise. "Er… Good morning?"

"Look, I'm sorry about yesterday." I do my best not to heave a sigh. "I was just a little bit freaked out."

"Okay." He raises his eyebrows. "Is that all?"

Silently, I invite myself in. "No, that's not all. I…" I find myself staring up at him, a little bit spellbound. "…I want to give this another shot."

Tsubasa takes off his hat, running a hand up through his hair. It's shorter now, but a tuft still sticks up on the left side. My hand reaches up almost magnetically to flatten it. He blinks in surprise, but doesn't argue. "So." He leans casually against the doorframe with a faint trace of a smile. "What changed your mind?"

I figure he'll be a little insulted if I say "Anna." But honestly, I don't know what else to say.

"Does it matter what changed my mind?" I ask, dodging the question. "As long as my mind's changed, I mean."

If he was sort of smiling before, he isn't now. "Just like it doesn't matter why you left."

I scoff. "God, can't you just let it go?"

"You know what our problem is?" Tsubasa replies. "Our problem is that we have too many problems. We just need to put everything behind us and start over. Clean slate, you know?" His serious expression turns slowly into an amused one, and I stare back at him in confusion.

"What?"

"Hi," he says, extending a hand. "My name is Tsubasa. Nice to meet you."

"This is stupid," I reply without missing a beat.

"Oh, come on, play along." He stares at me expectantly.

"Hey," I groan, giving his hand a firm shake. "I'm Misaki."

"So, then, Misaki…" Tsubasa asks, putting on a bit of an accent. "Would you be interested in joining me for dinner this coming Friday?"

I start to go along with it. "Friday?" I reply emphatically. "Why not make it Thursday?"

He shakes his head. "Then at least make it tomorrow."

"Tonight."

"Now."

I glance at the clock on the microwave. "It's ten forty-two."

"Screw that, then." He grins lightly. "So, tonight?"

"You were serious?"

"Naturally." With a particularly charming smile, he drops my hand and hooks his thumbs in his pockets. "I'll see you at six. Come to think of it, where do you live?"

"I'm rooming with Anna," I admit. "In the flat above the bakery. Cheap rent."

Tsubasa nods. "Got it. Excellent."

"Please, please don't make me regret this," I beg of him.

He shakes his head. "I can't promise that. But I can do my best."

TBC

Next chapter will pick up right (more or less) where we left off, in Tsubasa's point of view.

Please forget the seemingly random appearance of Anna. I did say she'd be back... Like, a year ago, in another story. Minor details, minor details...

Don't forget to review. Your comments are much appreciated. Like, actually. Nothing makes me happier than someone who likes what I've done. I run around and giggle and stuff. It's real weird.

-TCATB