notes – Yukiatsu is an infinitely hard character to write. I really hope I managed to do him justice.

Telling Honest Lies

Tsuruko is always at the station fifteen minutes early.

They meet at seven-thirty, take the train for five stops, walk up the street beside the railroad, and reach school with time to spare. It's an unsaid ritual of sorts. Sometimes, they talk about the miniscule things like homework and the latest rumour about that girl and that guy and that third other person who everyone supports. Sometimes, they walk in established silence, and Yukiatsu overhears the students passing by whisper ridiculous things to each other. High school is dreadfully tragic.

"You expect me to go with you to the karaoke party?"

"We'd be social outcasts otherwise," he shrugs in reply. They aren't exactly chummy with the rest of the class, preferring to keep to themselves aside from the expectations of groupwork and pre-homeroom banter. Yukiatsu likes it this way, the distance and the one-word conversations with his classmates – it makes putting up the act easier for him, keeps the little girl with the long hair and the white dress in his head alive.

"I don't care." Tsuruko's indifferent voice brings him back to the street they are walking down.

"I don't want to go alone," Yukiatsu admits, "happy?"

"The guys will gripe if I skip the class party, and I'm sure the girls will whine like they usually do," the boy persuades, listing down the reasons. The last thing he needs is to go there by himself and be swarmed with enthusiastic faces and mouths moving. Tsuruko's presence is like a spiritual barrier of sorts. One deadpan from her sends them skirting away, and he appreciates her for it. He really does. "Let's just drop off for five minutes and pretend like we're having fun, and then we can get on with our lives."

"You're a pretender," the girl says, like it's the most appropriate response. The ends of her long hair twist together when a passing breeze blows along the roadside.

"Yes," Yukiatsu acknowledges with a nonchalant shake of the head. Life's about pretense, he'd learnt that when he'd been a child, wanting to trade all his rare Nokemon to Menma, but never getting around to. He'd thrown his gameboy away after the grey funeral, claiming he'd been 'sick of it'. "What does that matter?"

"Am I really your friend?" Tsuruko suddenly asks, her voice shrinking for a moment. The air is pulled taunt like a violin string, and he wonders what's this feeling he's getting from her. Yukiatsu has to pause and search for a reply because he's never even thought about this before.

"Tsurumi," he snickers, "you can be such a girl."

"And you're an immature boy."

They end up going to the party, but the moment the class asks Yukiatsu to go up on stage and sing, he grabs Tsuruko, flings a generic excuse to leave, and they bolt out of there.

He reaches over to her lunchbox and picks up an eggroll with his chopsticks. Tsuruko lets him, watching as he chews, as if waiting for a verdict.

"Hey, this is pretty good," Yukiatsu says after he swallows.

"Thank you," she replies, her expression somewhat pleased. When he looks at her again, he notices how her mouth is tight, and it's almost like she's trying notto look happy. His interest is piqued.

"You made this? Since when have you known how to cook?"

"I picked it up from my mother recently," she says, staring down at her food to avoid his eyes.

"These really are good." He smiles when he watches the corners of her lips lift a little.

"Alright, you can stop now." She refuses to raise her head, her tone turning sour as she catches on to his sugared words.

"My favourite food is yatsuhashi," he reveals, "just throwing it out there."

"I don't know how to cook that," Tsuruko replies coolly, placing a ball of rice into her mouth and biting down hard.

Summer is the season he hates to love.

The scent that sticks in the air on the way to school and back, the variety of cold, chilly ice cream and drinks the street-side stores set up on sale, all things Menma would have loved to try if she wasn't sleeping soundly six feet underneath the ground.

And of course, there just has to be swim class under the sweltering sun. The guys are ecstatic, and Yukiatsu thinks that maybe the girls might be even more excited to flaunt their dieting figures. He doesn't particularly care, if at most appreciative for jogging all this time. The boys in class look at him enviously when they change into their trunks, even though he's just skin and bone. The water of the school's pool is clean and calm and why does everything have to come back to Menma again? The trickling river, the abandoned slipper, and the hairclip he's never found.

Tsuruko is sitting on the ground, leaning against the tall metal fence encircling the pool, her knees tucked under her chin. She looks skinny in the school swimsuit, and almost sad as she watches the ripples break across the water surface. Yukiatsu is almost tempted to join her, to just sit down and think quietly, but then he reminds himself that he needs to complete six horrendous laps. As he turns and walks off, he thinks Tsuruko's looking at him from the corner of her eyes.

Later, when they stroll past the train tracks, he makes the mistake of trying to close the space between their shoulders. "What were you thinking about at the pool just now?" he asks.

"Things," she mumbles back.

"You seemed deep in thought," Yukiatsu recalls offhand.

"How long have you known me?" Tsuruko poses the question out of the blue. At times, he has no idea what she thinks about in her head. It's strange because she usually makes pretty good guesses about what's going on in his.

"Never," Yukiatsu informs her, without hesitation and in a pointed tone. He gives as good as he gets.

He watches the shoulders of his friend stiffen and the heel of her right shoe grind into the pavement. A split second crack in her armour, and that's all he needs to prove that this girl isn't all she tries to be.

"Is that so?" she recovers, enough to punctuate this with a short, stale laugh.

"Yes." Yukiatsu says. Maybe he's lying, maybe he's not.

It's raining.

Tsuruko takes her green umbrella out of her bag. He casually ducks under it right after it's been opened. The girl doesn't object, but she exhales a short sigh to tell him that he should bring his own next time. There's still a ways to go before they reach the train station, and the raindrops fall heavier on the umbrella with every passing pavement. He takes the handle of the umbrella and raises it higher when they maneuver through a group of kids no older than twelve running for shelter. They complain about the dreary weather and cover their heads with their bags.

Yukiatsu remembers when he'd been ten. He'd hated getting wet too, but the others loved playing in the rain, smiling at the sight of grey clouds. The girls had sloshed around with their colourful umbrellas outside the old clubhouse, and Menma had adored jumping into puddles.

"Yukiatsu."

"What?"

"I'm getting wet."

The boy leans the umbrella over to her side, but the rain is pouring and his right sleeve is already soaked. Tsuruko's footsteps are slow, and that's when he remembers that she'd used to walking a second behind him. When he slows his pace, she ends up one step in front of him. She treads through little pools of water, drenching his socks and pant legs.

He can't keep up with her.

Their class decides to hold a haunted house for the annual school festival.

Boring, conventional, predictable, but Yukiatsu doesn't complain aloud. He tolerates it because he doesn't need to do anything troublesome.

Then, he learns that his classmates intend for him to dress up as a suave vampire and parade the hallways to advertise and draw in customers on the day of the festival. Yukiatsu gives them a blatant 'no'. The last thing he will ever do is to allow someone else to degrade him. He tosses a white sheet over his head and declares that he'll be a ghost. End of story.

Tsuruko is placed in charge of props and design, not because she's artsy or anything, but because it's the hardest job that no one wants. She's constantly stuck in these sorts of positions, not having her way but dealing with it because she's nice. She'd been born like that. She's got niceness all the way down to her toes, though she doesn't show it to everyone. She has the same brand of kindness Menma used to glow with. The only difference is that Menma had worn her kindness like a crown. Tsuruko wears it like a weakness.

Yukiatsu, in comparison, hadn't been born very nice at all. Well, at least he's handsome.

"It's fine," Tsuruko tells him. "It'll end up in my student report anyway. Being smart and getting good grades isn't the only thing the university will consider, Yukiatsu."

He kind of just lets her ramble on in her explanations. The truth is, she takes the bullet of bad luck like a challenge. Yukiatsu admires that little thing about her, just a bit.

He grins when she has to wear a black shirt and pants to blend in with the darkness of the classroom. It suits her perfectly.

Her hip bones are sharp.

Even through the fabric of her uniform, he can feel them underneath his hands.

"Are you done (making a fool of me)?" Tsuruko asks. He sees the words she's restraining in her eyes.

"They're still here. Deal with it for now." He nods to the gaggle of girls watching patiently on the sidelines of trackfield, waiting for their turn to dance with him around the post-fest bonfire. The last thing he wants to do is entertain them, even briefly, and Tsuruko had been the only form of escape he could manage on such short notice. She doesn't look too happy, but she'll forgive him later. She always does.

"Why don't you just dance with them (why must you do this to me)?" the girl mutters though allows him to lead, one hand holding her cold fingers and the other on her hip.

"Just, because."

"Because?"

"I would rather dance with you than any other person here," he explains with that uncaring tone of his voice he always uses when it comes to the things that don't particularly matter.

Her mouth twitches, with insult or agitation he isn't sure. It's definitely not happiness or flattery, that's all he's certain of. "Every girl wants to be in your place now, you know?" he chuckles as he says this, turning his head to watch the fire burning in the middle of all the dancing couples. The flames flicker under the night, and just when he thinks they are going to roar out, they fall back down over the wood.

"Not every girl."

"Ouch."

She steps on his left foot, but doesn't apologise.

It's eight am when Tsuruko reaches the train station. The face that she makes when she sees that he's waiting at their usual spot beside the map of the city is priceless.

"I thought I told you I was going to be late," she wheezes, catching her breath. Yukiatsu takes a moment to just bask in the elusive situation of Chiriko Tsurumi making a mistake. This hardly happens, and he should treasure the opportunity while he has the chance.

"Yes, I got your message." He waves the cellphone in his hand to illustrate.

"Why are you still here, then? You'll be late too," Tsuruko asks, her voice lowering to a hiss, like she's desperately trying to understand what is going on. They walk side by side to the platform. Or rather, Yukiatsu walks and Tsuruko scrambles, one hand in her bag, the other gripping onto her train card. It's amazing how she crumbles apart when she can't understand him, maybe it's because she's the only person who knows him so well.

"It's because I was waiting for you," Yukiatsu says.

"I know that," she sighs a heavy, flustered sigh. "Why did you wait?"

Yukiatsu doesn't reply. As they descend down the elevator, the train doors start to close, and they break out into a dash, barely making it through.

They might not be late for school after all.

Valentine's Day is another horrible square on his calendar. If Menma were alive, she'd be the only reason he'd have to look forward to February 14th. But she isn't – so.

"Those chocolates Tsurumi gave you, are they friendship ones or…?" the girl with the green scrunchie and yellow headband asks. She's the one that sits in the front of class but makes a habit of looking over her shoulder and giggling hysterically when he happens to gaze in her general direction when he wants to copy notes off the whiteboard.

"Does that matter?" is the boy's reply. The hallway is empty, but he's looking at everything except her.

"Yes! I think so!" the girl replies, voice stern and anxious. "I mean, Tsurumi's so boring and quiet and uptight, she doesn't deserve to be your close friend," she reasons it out for herself. Yukiatsu's fingers clench around bag of chocolates she'd given him just a few minutes ago. They'll find the trash can once this is over.

"I think I could be a better friend, you know? Haven't you noticed?" the girl with the irritating voice and the messy hair concludes.

Yukiatsu steps back.

"Don't talk about Tsurumi that way," is all he says. There's neither anger nor hurt in his voice, it comes out sounding like a plain, modest statement.

When he strides down the corridors, he finds Tsuruko standing behind a line of shoe lockers, her nose in a book and her bag waiting in one hand. Yukiatsu stops in his tracks.

"I was waiting for you to go home," Tsuruko clarifies, never looking up from the words.

He makes a dismissive noise, entering into the class across the hall to retrieve his belongings.

"… Thank you."

"Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"You aren't." Her gaze doesn't leave the ground, but he knows that she knows his eyes are still red.

Yukiatsu rubs his arm across his face once more as they walk away from the parking lot and Menma's father, scraping off the emotion like a scab. He's been off his game recently, it's been harder to keep everything bottled inside and Tsuruko isn't helping one bit. If anything, the way she's been acting recently just makes him feel so unsettled.

She's been moody and adverse to him getting too close, and he's pretty sure she's not on her period because he knowshow she can get when that particular hurricane lands. Tsuruko is different, and he can't resolve the thing that's bugging her if he doesn't know what it is. His only problems are that he's looking at a girl (dead, for seven years by the way) who's looking at another guy. He can't possibly relate to Tsuruko.

He'll ask Anjou about it later when they meet up.

"Do you think I'm weird?" he poses the question thoughtfully.

"Without a doubt (but I don't mind)," is Tsuruko's reply, sharp and true.

Yukiatsu chuckles even though his heart still aches for a girl who'll never look at him the way he looks at her. "Yeah," he says, because he knows he can't help it.

Long after the train has sped off somewhere, he stops kicking the fence. He stops because his foot is sore and his still feels mostly the same. Nothing's different. Jintan is still this big damn hero, and he's relegated to the role of the sore loser. When he turns around, Tsuruko is still standing there, waiting for him. She's holding his bag, which he'd tossed aside at one point.

In her eyes, he doesn't find pity or secondhand embarrassment or any readable emotion. He can't tell what the eyes behind those glasses mean. Maybe it's because the evening is dim and the autumn air is turning cold. The only thing he knows is that Tsuruko's still standing here, waiting for him, like she always has. He remembers the little actions, like her sharing her lunch, the harsh words she says while being a loyal friend, dancing with him when he could have easily picked anyone else. She's called him names before, but she's never called him something he isn't. She's the most honest person he knows.

"I saw you spacing out in class today," the girl clears her throat. She fishes around the file in her bag, pulling out a piece of paper with mathematical symbols scrawled all over. "Here. Just in case you didn't manage to copy the last four questions we went through today."

"Thank you."

He's pretty sure he's not referring to the math notes.

"Here."

"Why are you giving… this…" Tsuruko's eyes widen.

"I don't need it anymore." He crosses his arms, content with his explanation.

The wig and dress aren't hanging in his closet now. He's folded them up and placed them in the lowest drawer, guarded by Menma's letter.

When she doesn't react, he gets up and moves two train seats down so that there's only one gap between them now. He presses his thumb down and unclips it and tries to slot it against the bangs of her hair, but it's so short and it's hard, he almost pokes an eye out. "Stop. Stop. Stop!" The girl slaps his wrist away. Yukiatsu edges off, remaining still to show that he means no harm. He needs to be careful with Tsuruko, he remembers. Underneath all her hardness, her control over her emotions is no better than Anaru's.

Girls.

She looks at him, almost like she's trying to see if he's joking. He frowns, indignant at her suspicion.

She reaches out, pull backs, reaches out, hesitates, before opening her palm. He places the flower hairclip in the center of her hand. Somewhere above, in between the cracks of the clouds, maybe Menma is smiling for Tsuruko, who can't seem to summon her own feelings. Her face is blank, framed by her short hair.

Yukiatsu looks at her feet, crossed at the ankles and fidgeting against each other, very unlike the Tsuruko he's known for seven years. He doesn't quite mean it in a bad way.

"… Alright," the girl in front of him decides, her lips almost curving as she closes her fingers, like a flower around its heart. That one word, and the way her eyes open when she looks straight at him, makes him think that he doesn't need to say anything else right now. Tsuruko knows everything, what he wants to say and what he can't say, just by touching the tip of the hairclip and glancing at him.

Here it is again, this unworded understanding, this weird telepathy thing they have going on, he's not sure when it'd started. He looks at her for a second longer than usual, and it's almost like she's smiling with a frown. The train emerges from the underground tunnel, and he can see the sun setting in between the buildings of the city. It warms his face and casts a certain kind of light on Tsuruko.

Yukiatsu is finally starting to have a clearer picture of her.