Summary: She was a fire; he was the tinder. She lit the sparks, he left the cinders.

Rating: T

Characters: Hikigaya Hachiman, ?

Tags: slice of life, realistic angst, drama, semi-romance, some gen, character exploration

Disclaimer: Characters are property of Watari Wataru

He wondered when he fell in love with the fact that she was just so… her.

It wasn't that he was really in love with her, but the fact that she and he just cliqued.

And it was inevitable that, with a little bit of time, a touch of luck, and a whole lot of emotions, he and she became a 'we' that was barely more than you and I.

Her eyes kept him.

Kept him still.

Waiting.

He kept his silence.

Her breath floated over him, like waves swam through ocean. They misted over him in a haze that left him gasping for her as distance disappeared.

Her fingers traced the shape of his jawline with a delicate touch; her breath against the hairs of his skin raised them and chilled him as much as they made him fill with flame.

He hated that she had the power to do that; whenever she left, the lack of heat crippled him.

She smiled at him possessively.

He continued to shiver under her ministrations and let out a low growl in response, causing her smile to shift into a smirk as the two fought for dominance.

But she would win, again. It was always that way.

No matter how hard he tried, he would never measure up; in this game of theirs, she was always the victor. Even though winning wasn't a thought to her.

She never stayed long enough for him to wake up to her form. Not even once.

She just came when she desired; she left when she willed. All the cards at her fingertips, she used them mercilessly but he never refused her.

He could never say "I hate you" to her, and she knew it.

"...What?" He was lost for words. She laughed at him and slapped his shoulder.

"We're just using each other," she winked, drinking in the sight of the stunned male.

He paused. "Yeah," he said. His smile was weak, but it worked, he thought.

"Good," she smiled. He swallowed.

He saw her again a few weeks later, at the office. Night had yet to set, but a wide array of colors splashed themselves against the meld of the skies and the light painted her aglow, only adding another fresh layer of tenderness to her skin.

She waved at him and he wondered if he should ignore her; it wasn't unusual that he did so, but he thought about the fact that she came this way. Damn, he thought.

A sigh brushed past his lips before he even recognized that he was walking towards her, a softness to his smile. She giggled and walked to meet him, letting out a voluminous hello.

Whispers broke around him and he laughed internally. No matter where it was, or when, she still drew eyes and ears. He ignored them and instead offered a hand, which she graciously accepted.

The beating of the gentle summer sun made him feel a little lighter than usual, but it might have also been the fact that their fingers were intertwined.

He couldn't help it. He had long since resigned himself to being captive under this witch's spell.

The words were on his lips before he even realized it.

"What do you want?"

He yawned and blinked, getting ready to shift his head again so that the desk would be more comfortable.

His eyes were shutting as he heard the voice again, though it was louder this time. He ignored it and wished that it would just shut up.

Then he felt delicate fingers run through his hair; his face flamed and he kept his head down. What was going on, he wondered.

"Hey, I'm talking to you." The voice was a light whisper into his ear and he couldn't help but shiver. She had to have noticed; he forced the heat out of his skin and lifted his head off the desk, only to catch locks of blonde and a gaze of green meadows staring at him.

"Uh… what?" He scratched the back of his neck. Just play oblivious, his instincts told him.

Her eyes narrowed, though not unkindly.

"Hmph," her cheeks puffed. His face crookedly stitched itself together in the brittle shape of a smile.

She burst out laughing. "Your face is so awkward!" His expression didn't change; he knew that already. She continued, "So uh, yeah; you got anyone you like?"

"Hm… that's for me to know; not that I actually enjoy the presence of others, anyway. What of you," he deflected, knowing the answer before she spoke it.

The light in her eyes jaded as she glanced back at someone who was happily chatting with his friends, never taking her gaze off him as she replied softly, "His initials are H. H."

The silence sat between them with the awkwardness of a third wheel, but neither of them acknowledged it. It was not often that she was willing to be with him before nightfall, and yet they took it in stride, letting the buzz of Chiba's streets billow around them.

The patter of their shoes and the clacks of their heels against the ground were lost among the whispers that weren't theirs as their feet took them around.

He stopped at a Ramen shop, and her steps followed. He craved it, and she was the one who sprung a surprised on him, he said.

She didn't even try to comment and only smiled at him, never once letting go of his hand until they sat across from one another at a booth in the back.

Her eyes were much darker than he remembered; it must have been the lighting.

Before either of them could talk anymore, they were given tea and told that if they wanted water instead, they could click a button on their kiosk, or call for her again. They both nodded and gave the waitress their thanks and informed her that they would be ordering through said kiosk, though her hospitality was appreciated.

Not one to let the silence linger any longer, he asked her how she had been; she waved her hand and smiled so softly he almost missed it. There was no teasing like usual.

It made him nervous, but she didn't know that. Instead, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.

Her head shook. She told him that her parents wanted her to get married and to settle down.

His thumb froze as his fingers under her palms numbed. He trembled and she felt it. She told him quietly that she wasn't ready for that; he realized that these sorts of arguments had probably gone on for awhile, at least he thought so as he judged the way she seemed to talk about it.

A distant flash of a teacher they once shared together rose before it dissipated into nothingness.

He didn't realize that she had started crying until he saw the drops hit the table. He looked at her; there was no hiccuping, but thin streams trickled into droplets that barely ran down her face.

He dabbed at them with a napkin and ran his thumbs over her skin, hoping his hands could convey what his lips did not.

The rest of their meal passed without much noise; she was lost in her worries, he in his dreams.

Afterwards, even though there were even fewer words, there was no clearer message. They left in haste, but they moved in peace.

They were hurried, but they waded through crowds and streets with calm, smoothe steps that seemed to provoke them as they arrived at their destination.

The familiar scent of her candles covered them, like the comforting grace of nature as sank into the night.

Before long, both of them melted into the other's arms, and throes of sadness erupted, hoping to be complemented by a vivid pasture of passion.

Screams gave way as he tried to bury his heart like he buried his hopes.

When his eyes cracked open, the dawn hissed at him, an unlucky, vicious taint of yellows and reds more often seen with a setting sun. He took a heavy breath as his feet clunked out of the house and he rolled into the empty streets of Chiba.

His heart churned, and his stomach roared as his thoughts turned back to the night before, dove to thoughts and places that were best left unprodded.

Goodbye, he thought. Goodbye to dreams. Farewell to youth.

There was nothing special about his day, other than the fact that they were graduating the next.

It was a bittersweet feeling, to find out that youth was a lie, but adulthood even more so. It only made him feel all the more uneasy as he traced his daily routine through empty halls.

Anxiety wasn't something often acknowledged in his culture; issues were expected to be had. And then overcome.

But he wasn't most Japanese adolescents; he was just himself.

His fears only seemed worse the more he thought about his future, or apparent lack thereof.

His eyes shut as he pressed his palms against the hallway glass.

Everyone expected him to excel; everyone thought he would go on and apply to a top-tier university. Twelfth in his class at Soubu and within the top two thousand in the nation, they whispered.

It was worse than pressure, and it wasn't just stress. It was attention and it left him so uneasy that people even eyed him.

Why are they like this? What do they care?

Why won't they leave me alone?

A gasp broke from him as he began to grow warm and weak. Breathe. Breathe. One, two. One, two, three. One, two. One… two.

He paced slowly, letting himself be carried all around until it was time to make his last stop, only to hear voices in the classroom he had grown to love.

"Will you go out with me?"

He paused; he knew that voice.

It was often light-hearted but strong; resilient in tone, but brittle past the brink. He shook his head; this was no business of his.

Just walk, I can come back later, he reminded himself.

The scream that was her response to the question told him that her feelings were still the same as ever.

He smiled. At least someone's happy ending was in sight.

His eyes felt weak as he blinked away a tear and rubbed at his flesh.

He was so tired, and his mind wandered in ways that he felt only served to make him feel every bit of the adult he supposedly looked like.

God, he thought. It was no wonder that dreaming about her made him wonder what she was doing, but it did bring to the forefront of his mind just how long it had been since they had met.

He hadn't seen her in... six months by now, he thought.

Bitterness threatened to wash his gums and teeth, but he quashed the feeling as he slipped on a shirt, the feel of its buttons slowly waking him.

But, he supposed, he hadn't seen anyone from those days in even longer. A lot of the times, he barely remembered their names.

Absentmindedly, he also remembered how none of his messages were ever responded to, but he cast it aside in favor of trying to stretch his mind.

He dreamt of her, he knew that.

A frown broke on his face as he tried to recall it, but could only remember the slightly vivid pieces that seemed to be only flashes of here and there, as if his dream did not want to manifest itself.

Unfortunately, those glimpses were still enough to evoke a small streak of negativity that made him brood. Feelings of pity were never good; especially when they were centered on oneself. Fortunately for him, those moods no longer lasted as much as they used to.

He hated seeing himself as the victim, and his recollection of his past made him cringe as he laughed about it.

His hands found their way to his phone: four forty-two.

Damn, he groused. He winced as the light of his unlocked screen bit into his cornea.

Might as well see what's going on.

Nothing from his sister or from his boss, though a few of his coworkers had messaged him about mutual deadlines for the upcoming weeks. He had no idea how they could stand to be awake so late at night and still bother to send him notifications; some people were just far more serious than him, he supposed.

He hadn't realized his mind was drifting until he scrolled to one of the last-contacted people in his list. His finger rested at the tag of a once-annoying, rottenly spoiled girl that he got on with very easily, and he smiled again.

It had been years since he had seen her, and the last he heard of her on the news, she was doing well as a professor, defying her family's wishes for her to follow them into the Diet. The name just underneath hers was a number he barely recognized; the accompanying contact made him scratch his head until he recalled a rather feminine boy who had been his best friend for most of high school.

Life definitely changed a lot more than his teenage self could ever have imagined.

A quick glance at the upper right corner told him that it was now half past five, and the odds of him getting back to sleep were slim to none.

To hell with it. He shook his head; it wasn't time for recollecting memories. It wasn't time to get lost in the past when he had work in a few hours, and a meeting afterwards.

With a yawn, he pulled himself out of bed and stretched. There was a time when he hated exercise, or any sort of motion, but nowadays, he found that it was comforting to have a morning routine.

She had made her choices; he had made his.

He had no business thinking about things long gone.

They were sitting on his couch watching some cooking show that both of them had, one day, admitted to loving. He would not have guessed that that would have been the start of their friendship, but it was.

Her knees pressed against her chin as she held herself close. He glanced at her from the side, surveying her for the briefest of moments before he allowed the broadcast to take over his attention.

Neither of them spoke for hours until she cut through it with a tenderness that stung of remorse and wounds.

"He was lying to me, you know." Her voice was soft.

"Hmm?" He hadn't really been paying attention too much; of course, he had been listening, but his homework was more important than their typical chatter. Though, after she had broken the silence, he knew she was going to say something that put his senses on the edge.

"He wanted me, but not in the way I wanted him." She refused to face him. "I… I thought he had changed, you know?"

He didn't know. But he nodded anyway.

She continued, "Thought that he was…" she cut herself off, biting her lip in doing so. She sniffled. "Thought he matured. Changed. Grew up.

She paused and looked at him. Gauged him. As if she were unsure if her next words were appropriate. But like usual, she threw all caution to the wind. "Like you," she mouthed.

He froze. His throat clogged as it tried to swallow.

She looked away from him. He stared at her.

Another six months passed before he saw her again.

She was with another woman, one of her friends he probably heard about but couldn't be bothered to remember. They exchanged glances and he turned to enter the line as he heard the seated pair chatter away.

To his surprise, he had not gaped like an idiot; but to his delight, he had simply accepted that now was not the time, if ever.

He wasn't sure why they never talked to each other in public; he had thought about how their circles never intermingled. Like they were of different classes and divides and how much injustice there was. But as the weeks and years went on, the idea became more laughable.

It sounded so juvenile, like something his teenage self would spout and defend. He suppressed a chuckle at the thought. He had best move on; there was little time to be spent on the "haves" and "have nots" of past, and presently, he needed to reorganize himself.

It wasn't as if those things mattered anymore. Things were the way they were, and thoughts about changing them only made his heart burn in ways that he didn't feel comfortable with; there were divides and routines, but that was all they were. Nothing more, nothing less than perfect comfort and normality.

A sigh broke gently from his lips as he stole another sip. The sweetness of his coffee seemed to mellow over the course of his sitting there, and he relaxed himself and eased into the afternoon of his day off. How long had it been since he could just sit and be content, he asked himself.

He tried to imagine what his life would be like, should he be any happier than he was now, but there wasn't necessarily anything wrong with how his life was going on, he supposed.

Reality was a cruel joke, but it was also the dimension in which he resided; it had its laws. Some physical, some not. And how he felt had little to do with how the world was run.

At least he had a job, he reminded himself. He also possessed some material wealth that mattered; books, a computer, some sporting goods.

Growing up was not all heretical, he could hear himself say to the image of a frail boy whose hunched shoulders and jaded gaze landed him in social ostracism. Small laughter broke out again, but it was cut short by a burning sensation on one of his legs.

He hissed as coffee touched both the counter and his sleeves. His favorite drink it might be, but it still stained.

Before he reached out to clean it, a hand that was not his own dabbed at the mess in front of him as he began to care for his clothes; it looked familiar, he thought. But then again, it was a hand, and he had seen many of them.

His eyes glanced sideways and caught her ease at helping him, barely even taking in his own lack of care at her casual display of closeness. The ghost of a smile wanted to rest itself on his face; instead, he simply stared.

He had seen her enter but had not really looked at her. But there was nothing strange about her sight, he mused. Not a hair out of place, though he wondered if she was as tired as she seemed to look.

She muttered under her breath about his carelessness; something that used to make his eyes twitch. However, it was something that now filled him with a spark of warmth.

After she had finished, she left with only a small warning to be more careful, and he tried to thank her, only to have her turn away.

His heart clenched when she realized that her eyes refused to match his; and a sour indignance came upon him until he thought about it some more.

They had not been together for a year, he recalled.

They were practically strangers. Again.

His thoughts ate at him until he checked his watch, startled that so few minutes had passed and he looked in the direction she had been sitting.

Her friend must have been gone for some time, he realized. So she, too, had been just sitting and thinking, only to spot his accident and give her reason to move.

The clicks of street sounds passed his ears and he made his way home. He thought about his good fortune in having run into her.

He was lucky, he told himself. Lucky.

Lucky enough to get himself absolutely pissed. The feel of his couch was rough but secure enough to keep him as he hacked and vomited on his floor. He would clean it later.

Tequila had never tasted so vile, and he often wondered why he kept a bottle or two. But, he supposed, chances to make use of the things he bought were always taken with enthusiasm. This one no different.

He grunted as his slouched form tried to pry itself up from his resting place, cursing the fact that his bedroom was on the second floor. The stairs had never seemed such a journey before.

His eyes closed as he stretched himself across his bed, groaning. Forget it, his mind whispered to him. Forget it. He repeated those words, with both his lips and his brain.

He couldn't.

Damn. His breath felt disgusting, he thought to himself. Heavy with the weight of drowsiness and humidity as he huffed and puffed, he tried to blink the feelings away. To blink the picture away.

His senses were shot, and he couldn't really tell how much time had gone by. His lower lip began to numb, but his skin felt the touch of warm drips. He smelled iron.

Ugh. He turned over, closing his eyes even tighter.

The game was an illusion, and now, it was dispelled; but still, it always had a winner. And again, it was not him.

The image was more than he could take without choking back tears. The hand in the coffee shop was similar, but different compared to anytime he had felt it caress his body.

"What do you think would look best on me?"

"Hm..?"

She did not answer him for awhile, but instead stared at him, as if to say, 'Well..?'

To that, he could only shrug.

"Idiot." She smacked him playfully. Her left hand floated as she lifted it, covering some of the brightness from his skylight. She gave him another hint. "What kind of stone?"

He still did not understand; something, she saw in the furrowing of his brows. Sighing, she blew a wisp of air at him and moaned. "What kind of ring, silly?"

He choked. "Is this some sort of-"

"No," she giggled, the sound a dance to his heart, a gliding, drifting beat. "I just wanted to know."

She sounded so wistful that he could not help but indulge her.

He closed his eyes.

"Alexandrite. Alexandrite," he repeated. "Not because it matches you, no; that would be Tourmaline, Jade, or maybe even Variscite. But it's fitting. You're a queen, you know?"

His voice dropped, softly, lowly tugging at her earlobes. "You always have been. And what better stone than one which bears the name of a great Conqueror, one that holds the name of a great civilization itself? No other would do."

Her heart almost stopped; her breath did. But he kept talking.

"Zircon, Tanzanite, and Turquoise." The stones of her birth month. "Each of them fabulous, and all of them would be ones that would crown your eyes. At least, depending on the lighting and the occasion," he chuckled. "But I don't think your eyes are the most beautiful thing about you.

"It's your body."

Her heart sank, and her face reddened. She slapped him without hesitating, without even thinking.

He continued, unimpeded. "I can't say your eyes are the most beautiful thing about you when it's your body that holds all of you. I can't say that I look into them and see the universe or anything like that. I can't say your eyes, because when I look at you, I see you. Just you. Just all of you.

"It's not the color the matters. It's the fact that they need to embody you."

He turned over as she blinked, his body above hers.

Her mouth spoke no words and uttered no sounds. She swallowed. Her eyes closed as her hands streamed through his hair, caressing it.

Minutes that felt like hours vanished as she she looked at him. If she was his queen, then she would give him just one command: "Love me."

She stared at her body in the mirror before her, unsure of how foreign it looked, but even more anxious about how distant it felt.

Her eyes were red, but not puffy. They were weary and used, much like the soul she thought burned ablaze. Their brightness seemed to vanish, a pale, jaded pair that simply watched the world around it.

Her skin pale and white, though more so than she had remembered it. Her jaw was unblemished, but it was stiff, almost as though locked into place. She willed her smile to form, but the ends of her lips never lifted beyond the smallest of grins.

The golden glaze of her hair paled over the years, a much more reserved yellowed bronze than the vibrant luster of its youthful flirtations. She supposed that it still made her stand out, compared to the average Japanese person. Luckily for her, it was natural.

But just what was natural for her nowadays, she wondered.

She addressed her lack of clothing, unable to stare at her naked form without resentment, and walked out of the bathroom, letting the view of the night sky take over as it flooded through the windows.

Her eyes drifted to the clock next to her T.V. and then back to the laptop next to her pillow.

She shut the screen and instead leaned back against the headboard, pulled her blankets closer, and fell into the embrace of her mattress.

Sleep did not come easily for her; it never had.

Only three people ever knew that, though.

And only one of them ever cared.

Please, please, please.

She did not know why she was even here; she wanted it to stop, but she had already come halfway. Her mind screamed at her; it drowned out, caught between a sea of silence and the march of a thousand voices.

Why?

The question sounded odd, even though it went unspoken. She could just hear his voice.

Desperate. Confused.

Mangled. Broken.

She bit her lip as the bus shook with an uneven sound, as though the ground itself were unsure of what to be. No one else seemed to notice.

He was not here, she told herself. He wasn't here.

Her thoughts were littered with the fear that she would be trapped, but she knew that her fancies were beyond foolish and more than just a little exaggerated.

Still, she did not want to do this. Getting married at the age of twenty-eight was not unreasonable, but getting married while she had a whole life ahead of her was far too much of a commitment. There were things she needed to do. Places she wanted to go to. People she had yet to meet. All of that and more!

Besides, there was still him to think about.

There was something about her current partner that made her heart flutter like the tempest gale that razed a village; there was something about him that drummed softly, like the flapping of nearly unnoticeable wings.

He had her in a way that even he could not describe; he was the wind that carried her burdens, and he was the breeze that birthed her vibrant sparks.

But…

She owed her parents a lot. Even though they hadn't gotten along for most of her life, she respected the fact that they offered to, and did, pay for her tuition throughout her years until she began university.

So, she would go to the omiai.

At least just two. This one and another. No more; no less.

And yet, she felt dirty.

By the time the fifth date rolled around, three and a half months had passed since she last saw her previous lover.

It wasn't that she hated him or didn't want to see him again, but meeting him would make things much more complicated than they needed to be. Though for whom it would be worse, she did not know.

She was not tormented by visions of him, nor was she often curious about how he was doing.

With time, thoughts about him came less and less frequently the more she saw her current paramour. He was standing about, disinterested with most of the other people, but rather absorbed in the surrounding environment.

Her eyes danced around the park as she drank in the greenery around her before they returned to his frame, lithe but taut. She could just imagine his thoughts jumping around as he coolly watched everything around him. He wasn't anyone special, and he didn't immediately stand out.

Huh. Maybe she had a thing for guys like that, she snorted to herself.

The similarities were unreal, but the differences were grounding.

Their relationship was peculiar; that was the nature of all of them, she supposed. But what was most unusual was that he happened to be the brother of her second arranged suitor, and they had, in fact, gotten off on the wrong foot, as he had accidentally run into her and ruined her outfit on the way there.

But life was full of mysteries, and they often worked in strange ways.

Two weeks after that found them in a mall, where the two of them happened to dine at the same parlor. He had been glancing around, hoping to find a spot, she noticed, until his eyes caught hers. They had not introduced themselves to one another, but each of them remembered the other's face.

She saw his face struggle in contemplation before an exasperated huff left his mouth and he ruffled his hair. She sipped her tea and waited for his eyes to meet hers again. There were no other seats available.

He stalked up to her table asked if he could join her.

Sure, she responded. But on the condition that he kept her entertained for the night.

He smiled and gave her his name. She returned in kind.

The course of the conversation that night did not change her, but it let her see that he was more than a mind and had a quiet face. Neither did their next conversation change her, or the one after that. But slowly, over time, he chipped away at her defenses; just enough so that she relented.

He did not waste his chance, she mused.

Staring at him left her confused, she realized. Why him exactly?

The question was hard to answer; perhaps it had more than just one answer, perhaps she would never find it at all. But she felt… no, she knew that the only way to really test the theory was to go with him.

She had to see if they could make it into something genuine.

"What do you think is the most important thing in the world?"

She blinked and let the words sink in; his voice was soft, but not kind or gentle. It was rugged, a barren taste on its wisp.

He was not looking at her as he said this, instead staring up above and grasping for the vision that lay there. Her eyes followed, but her mind did not.

The night sky was beautiful, but only when one made it so, and she could only guess that his thoughts must have been a wild tantrum as he thought about that question. The night's lights shone with a faded vibrancy that reminded her of how people seemed to only grow dimmer as they aged.

They continued to lay in the quiet and peer at the scenery, warm summer winds brushing against their clothes.

She did not understand what he wanted her to say; it was such a vague question. It frustrated her, and she bit her lip. What kind of question was it? A broad question. One without any right response. What could he possibly want from her that he could not have already thought of, she wanted to shout.

And yet, the more the stars caught her glance, she felt the tenseness of his body dissipate. She was captive to the weariness they lay on her, like layers of blankets.

She thought about his question again. And she realized how much the question meant to him, and what it meant for him to ask her of all people; she blushed at the epiphany.

It meant that he valued her mind, but more so, it showed that he was willing to hear what she had to say and take it into his own contemplations.

He was judging her, she realized. But not in the way he did most of the time.

There wasn't any mocking laughter in her direction, nor was there any derision that had become their banter over the course of the last year. Though, she wouldn't have been surprised if this was a bit of a twisted joke.

He was evaluating what she believed, and she knew that he must have been waiting to ask someone this question; perhaps she was lucky it just happened to be her, she thought.

Her ears caught him whispering the constellations and the independent stars, soothing himself in a way that made him seem all the bit more boyish, despite his face growing gaunt with the taint of their upcoming adulthood.

"What do you want to hear," she asked him.

His eyes were startled, raw with confusion as he looked at her. "Only what you have to say," he said, just as softly as he had before.

She never gave him his answer that night.

Her throat was hoarse from screaming out a name that had become so much more familiar to her than she ever thought it would.

The sound of her voice a medium for her insanity, it leaked into the air and further channeled her illusion of what loving meant.

Her heart screamed, a panicked disarray of beats, thumps, and rhythms that coalesced into a cacophony of madness as her body thrashed with passion.

Her mind wondered why pleasure was enjoyable, even when you could only wonder how it was pleasure.

But all of that was awash in the act of being alive, alive and fulfilled.

Her lover kissed her skin and set her body aflame; their lips touched, and the embers traversed between one body to the next. They sparked with delight, a rampage unlike leviathan. It did not crawl, it did not roam with the lethargy of a sloth. No, it paced into a sprint as it ran amok her nerves.

The want ate at her and she committed her soul to the voracious thrill of the moment.

She did not resist.

Afterwards, her partner drifted off into a slumber deep, like the thoughts that seemed to press her conscience, deep like the ocean mire that was her eyes that had the vision of only one other.

Shame touched her in the most intimate of places as she realized her thoughts longed of another, despite the fact that she herself was content with the way things were.

But, a voice inside her threatened her, was she really?

After all, she could not will the words on her tongue, let alone have them pass her lips. She shivered at the truth; it was frightening, but agonizing more so.

She had no problems moving forward, but seeing him again had left her dissatisfied in a way she did not know how to explain; words did not just escape her, they fled. Logic and reasoning taunted her, spared her no pity nor remorse.

When she ran into the boy of her dreams last month at the coffee shop, she could not help but notice that he seemed a bit smaller than he was before, despite having been much more of a man than anyone else she could recall meeting.

His frame had always been tall, even if no one really pointed it out; in Japan, it was rare for the average male to be above one eighty-five centimeters, and it was a trait that quickly made him seem like a looming presence.

But he had long since ceased his slouching and adopted a more neutral aura in opposition his distant young expression.

She couldn't put a finger on it; he was not depressed, he was not happy. He simply was.

He was fine. Okay. Alright. Satisfied.

His eyes were a bit deader than she remembered, but they held the wisps of a slowly burning fire. Not one that was dying, but one that was rising.

Like he was being wafted into the many directions the world had to offer, and that he was taking the guidance with an open hand, allowing himself to explore the dimensions their space had to offer and the worlds his mind dared to conjure.

Drip. Drip. The back of her hand felt the blow, even though it lacked physical bite. The pain spread from there and arranged itself all throughout her skeleton. It hurt more than she would have thought, to realize that he seemed perfectly normal without her in her life.

It stung that she could not help but compare her life in the past to the one she currently lived.

And the most horrifying thing was that she was not lacking; neither then, nor now.

She wasn't unhappy, but the comparisons made her so. She wasn't happy, but the memories forced her smiles. She wasn't strong; the thoughts made her crumble. But she wasn't weak, for the candle called her soul was still brightly burning.

The darkest nights cringed, and the sun sometimes complied; the world always needed a little more light, so she kept these thoughts to herself and let them fly into the Nevernever and lands beyond.

Where did she go wrong was something that tasted itself a bit premature; almost ripe, but just not. It was blossoming, a youthful vivacity that, slowly, the more she pondered it, seemed to be but an ashen oak of old.

It was a draining thought with no answer, much like a question she had been asked many, many years ago.

She shivered. She blinked and suddenly, she was very much aware that she was in bed, the heat of her surroundings clouding up the cold wash drowning her heart.

Her fingers reached to touch her lips. They traced upwards and she felt her head burning, and she closed her eyes.

She had been awake for too long.

Emptiness was shallow; where there was a void, there was space. And she had filled it diligently.

This was her life now, and she had to make due with what she now had. She buried her heart and lit the match to burn the bridge that bore her down.

The last thing that ran through her mind before sleep overcame her was the one question she had never gotten to ask him.

Was love a genuine thing?

"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."

J. K. Rowling