The song is Close, by Westlife. I don't own it! Hope you enjoy the story!
Across the miles
It's funny to me
How far you are but now
Near you seem to be
I could talk all night
Just to hear you breathe
I could spend my life
Just living this dream
You're all I'll ever need
You give me strength
You give me hope
You give me someone to love someone to hold
When I'm in your arms
I need you to know
I've never been
I've never been this close
He reached up and touched a single spot on his neck, where his jugular throbbed slow and steady. His fingers frequented this area often, be it consciously or subconsciously to the red-haired boy.
His memory returned him to a scene in the past, when a girl with laughing eyes and a warm smile had playfully written her name in ballpoint pen on that very spot. The ink had long since faded, but he still recalled the moment easily, the featherlight touch of the pen dancing across his skin, and the giggles that escaped her lips as she drew tiny circles for the twin i's in her name.
Koushiro had been unable to stop her. Engrossed in his research, he hadn't realised her mischief until she was already finished. It was then that she loped her slim arms around his neck and held him close. As always, Koushiro kept still. It wasn't that he disliked her embrace. It wasn't that at all. He liked it. He loved it. But most of all, he knew he loved her.
Why then? Why did he resist her embrace? He couldn't be sure of the answer himself. Koushiro had never been so close to anyone before. He closed his eyes. Unbidden, the flush of memories rushed back.
"Koushiro! Let's go playyyy!" she pouted. Her irresistible pout 'persuaded' most people, and usually Koushiro wasn't one to refuse. But currently, his weakness took a backseat to the important discussion flashing on his screen regarding the effects of a new software on the Digital World programmes. Without a conclusive end to the discussion, Koushiro was reluctant to leave his beloved computer. When he waved her off dismissively, she rolled her eyes in the I-knew-this-was-coming manner that she did so often. She coaxed him gently, tugging first at his sleeve, then his arm. When he didn't bulge, she dropped the gentleness that hid her steely will and forcibly pulled him out of his seat.
The present day Koushiro smiled. It wasn't everyday that a slender girl like her could manage the strength of an ox. He should've been annoyed, but he knew it was for his own good. She was simply worried for him. She was always nagging at him to get off the computer, pushing arguments like "It's straining your eyes!", "Your stomach has been rumbling for the last half an hour!" and his personal favourite, where she'd cross her arms over her chest and sigh; "Five hours at one go is quite enough, Koushiro." He leaned back in his computer chair, his growing smile touching his eyes as the warm everyday memories tugged at his heart.
"Smile!" Before Koushiro could even register her words, she'd pulled his face close to hers and snapped the picture with her cell phone. With her arm outstretched, she proceeded to snap even more photos of the two of them while Koushiro sat befuddled in his seat. The bright flash went off several times, leaving him dazed and seeing scattered lights of his own about the empty classroom. Finally, just before she announced the end of the impromptu photo shoot, Koushiro managed a small, hesitant smile.
She'd immediately set that photo of the two of them as the wallpaper on her phone. When she urged him to do the same, Koushiro had flatly refused. She'd been upset for a bit, but had eventually given in. She knew he wasn't one to flaunt their relationship. She had sent him the photo anyway, hoping he'd eventually come through.
She had understood his refusal to place their relationship out for the edification of the public, but what she didn't know was that he'd set it as the wallpaper on his laptop. There were several pluses to that. To him, it was more private than his phone. Truth be told, he spent more time on his computer, and it was infinitely more precious to him than his cell phone.
Koushiro reached to the flickering monitor in front of him, his fingers brushing lightly against the warm screen. The same brown hair, the same hazel eyes, yet something so distinctly different. She wasn't any thinner than in the previous photoshoot (honestly Koushiro couldn't imagine where else she would find any more to shed) but her eyes seemed more hollow somehow. The silvery-bronze eyeshadow put a false twinkle to her eyes, but if one looked closely enough, one would notice the bags under her eyes that makeup couldn't disguise fully.
Her latest photoshoot was an advertisement for some beach resort somewhere. She was clad lightly in an electric blue bikini that set off her fair skin and soft brown eyes. She was stunningly beautiful, but Koushiro felt the sinking jealousy brewing in the pit of his stomach that meant he was far from being over her. He hated that the photos would be everywhere; that that was their purpose in the first place – to flaunt not the beach in the backdrop, but her every curve. He hated the advertisers for that, and he hated her agency. He even hated society for their degrading view of women. But most of all, he hated that she wasn't by his side, where he could shield her from their prying eyes.
He felt like some crazed stalker-fan. Only she could invoke such feelings in the normally-stoic Izumi Koushiro.
Her sweet, warm smile, so very familiar, was but a distant memory.
"Um... I'd like some flowers please. For a seventeen year old girl." "For Valentine's Day," he added lamely. The upcoming occasion had sent most of his class into a flurry of activity and excitement. Though Koushiro himself would usually count himself out of the 'festivities', it was their first Valentine's Day as a couple. Koushiro thought it was a good opportunity to simply do something for her, since she's always been the giving one in their relationship. Plus, he reasoned, it was sort of a special occasion; it was a good excuse to leave some of the shyness behind.
"First time, dear?" The old lady behind the counter smiled kindly.
"Huh?" Koushiro startled. How did she know? The old lady nodded knowingly, and said, "I see a lot of youngsters like you in my shop. A lot of them get nervous like you and they're uncertain enough that they don't even know what kind of flowers they want to get for their beau.
"But don't worry, dear. Would you like some help?" She continued gently. When Koushiro nodded, the old lady got up creakily from a chair behind the counter and moved towards a chart on the far side of the wall. Koushiro felt a twinge when he saw how much effort it took for her to take the few steps; he almost stopped her, wanting to get her back into her comfortable chair. She saw his concern and smiled reassuringly, the wrinkles at the edges of her eyes crinkling. She gestured to him to join her.
As he came closer to the chart, he realised that it was full of flower names, both familiar and foreign, and was listed next to a list of human characteristics.
"I made this list myself," said the old lady in her warm wrinkled voice. "I felt that the lists out there weren't adequate. They're mostly about the giver's intention you know. I thought to myself, 'Shouldn't gifts be about the receiver?'"
Koushiro nodded. He'd cowled through list after list of webpages, even dropping by the library in an attempt to find what he wanted just before he found the shop, but could not find exactly what he wanted.
He wanted to find something most suited to her, and her alone.
"So tell me about your special lady; is she... Especially partial to any colour or does she have a favourite flower?"
"Pink," said Koushiro, almost automatically. No surprise there; she hardly kept that fact a secret. Koushiro smiled, thinking of how the colour took up permanent residence somewhere on her, be it her clothes or in her hair. The florist caught his smile, and returned it with another knowing one of her own.
He peered down the list. Roses, in anyone's book, would stand for love and romance. The old lady's was no exception. It was an age-old definition.
"Now I know what you're thinking. Love isn't really a clear-cut virtue on the receiver's part. But it is, in a way, at least to me. A person with love in her heart is wholly different from one without, wouldn't you say?"
Koushiro nodded again. He was starting to enjoy the company of the sweet little old lady whose sentiments matched his almost exactly, and as a bonus, was gifted with knowledge of putting it to action through the medium he had decided upon.
Flowers had always been the obvious choice. Mimi was a hopeless romantic, and flowers were almost synonymous with romantic love. He'd pushed his brain through various different mediums in a bid to be creative, but each had sounded more ridiculous than the next.
So he'd crumpled up the paper with the results of an afternoon of brainstorming into an useless ball and lobbed it into the wastepaper basket, and set off for a flower shop; an idea that had sounded so cliche it hadn't even made it into the now-disposed-of list.
He studied the chart on the wall, eyes wandering past the impressive variety of roses until it fell on the word 'purity'. He stopped. Purity of heart, the pure intentions with which she treated her friends and sometimes even strangers, was the embodiment of her Crest. The flower that the old lady had penned in to match the virtue was the white lily.
White lilies, white lilies. What did they even look like? Koushiro decided that his best bet would be to ask the old lady, since he was in a position of complete cluelessness. "Would you happen to have white lilies in stock ma'am? May I have a look please?" He said, a little hesitantly.
She gestured to a bunch of pristine white blossoms, their ends soaking in water. Their petals struck out proudly, making them look strong and independent. But something about them gave off a delicate, yet elegant air.
They fit perfectly.
With the old lady's direction, he managed to pick out a few other varieties of flowers to match the lilies and pull the whole ensemble together into a meaningful bouquet. Not forgetting Mimi's passion for pink, the old lady found some tiny pink rosebuds to circle the white lilies, and added a few purple-blue flowers she called viscaria. She didn't let him pay for those. She simply gave him a secret smile and pushed him out of the shop without allowing him to check its meaning.
Some research later, Koushiro found out that the viscaria stood for young love.
He opened a drawer and pulled out a square box. From its assorted contents, he took out a pink leather-bound notebook. She'd forgotten it one rainy afternoon and he hadn't quite had the chance to return it.
He flipped it open to page one, where her name was written in florid script across the very center of the page. From there, her penmanship went downhill. He laughed softly at the pages of scrawled algebraic equations and various lists of homework, and he'd leafed through it enough to know that there was even a shopping list in there somewhere. Milk, green tea, maple syrup, eggs... He felt warm and buzzing just to be let in on these small intimacies of her life.
The pages were vaguely scented, imbued with fragrance from something else it had been kept with. Reaching into the square box again, he pulled out a tiny drawstring bag, easily identifiable as the culprit. He inhaled deeply, and let it fill him with the faint leftover scent of dried white lilies, roses, and viscaria.
She'd split the bouquet he'd given her when they dried, placing them into two small homesewn drawstring pouches. It became a kind of token between them, Koushiro thought, feeling slightly sheepish at his old-fashioned thought.
The notebook had fallen open to a page where a single crisp, brown leaf lay protected in a small ziplocked bag. It was Koushiro's only modification to the notebook.
His fingertips brushed the leaf very lightly, yet the memory of their first kiss sprang to mind with electric heat.
He remembered. He hadn't been feeling well that day. His head pounded and his eyes were glassy. He felt like he had trudged through the full school day through a hazy veil.
A single autumn leaf from an overhanging tree swayed gently through the chilling breeze and caught in her caramel curls. He'd stopped in his tracks just watching the leaf fall. To his feverish mind, it was more than worthy of his undivided attention. He watched its graceful dance until it tangled into her hair. Pretty, silky hair in a simple, natural brown, waving gently down her back. The jealous wind only managed to tease it into windblown mass that was more attractive than ever.
He longed to touch it, to feel if it was as soft as it looked. For once, Koushiro ignored Mimi's concerned eyes and questions and reached out to twine his fingers in the long strands. Absently, he noted that she'd stopped talking, and was standing stock-still and staring at him with eyes wide open.
He trailed his fingers through the strands, until it ended at the small of her back. He rested his hand there, feeling her warmth seep into his cold hand.
Even through the fog in his head, he became acutely aware of how much he wanted to kiss her.
So he did.
Jumping in on an unknown impulse, he leaned in. In the moment that his fever-burnt lips met her cool ones, his hand on her back instinctively inched inward to hold her closer. After her initial surprise melted away, she leaned into him on her own accord. Somehow, moving in perfect synchronization, they deepened the kiss.
Koushiro smiled ruefully, tracing the delicate veins of the leaf. It was strange that it was only when his mind was most bogged down with illness that he felt most liberated. He remembered the moment down to every detail, down to the nagging voice in his head that told him that there was no chance that she'd return his love, that he was ruining their friendship forever.
The voice of reason.
When she kissed him back, it was like a miracle. The voice of reason was so rarely wrong. Her arms slipped around his neck, and he tightened his hold around her waist in response. It was exhilarating; the sensation of falling into her warmth. Falling forever, but he didn't mind.
The hole she'd left in his chest had projected itself into his life. He saw her stark absence everywhere now.
At his doorstep, looking fresh and sweet, waiting for him to go to school together. Gone.
At the corner cafe, where he'd tried the lemon sponge at her recommendation but had found it much too sweet for his liking. Under her hopeful gaze, he'd done his best to finish the cake without a single grimace. But she wasn't there.
At her house, flour on her nose, waiting for him to try the cake she'd made specially for him. Her flushed cheeks and red fingers told of endless hours of practice and experimentation with the hot oven. The finished product? A perfectly balanced, definitely not-too-sweet, lemon sponge. She'd noticed. The moment dissolved like spun sugar.
At the library, where they had spent countless summer hours rushing through their holiday assignments. Yes, both of them. Contrary to popular belief, Koushiro wasn't any more inclined to homework than the average kid. Sure, he had a thirst for knowledge, but the domains he was interested in were beyond what school had to offer. Schoolwork-wise, where he would normally have consulted Google, he found that she was just as dependable, if not more so. There was no sight of her now.
At the school computer lab, where she would go to look for him whenever he disappeared without a word. She didn't come to find him.
The ink might have faded, but the memories remained forever imprinted on his heart.
Only then, did Koushiro realise that his face was wet with tears.