I think it all started when I was ten. Him and I were playing while she sat down carving in the background. The heat cast a wavy shimmer over us all, so all I could see was the blurred sweat dripping down her face, everything from her eyebrows to her body pointing down in stubborn insistence.

"I think it would just be fun to make a sandcastle. You can play with Riku if you want, I won't mind."

I kept pushing because I knew she was lying, despite the concern in her ever-kind eyes. She kept refusing and I kept trying because I never understood why she wouldn't want to have fun. Why did she look at me as if I was the one to worry about? What did she know that I didn't? What was the point in sitting alone to make a sandcastle, one that she wouldn't even let us play with?

She never answers, not clearly. She avoids the answers and is never good at it. Not even now. She's even gotten worse ever since she started hanging out with Riku more, the irritating maester of avoidance. I don't remember Riku much, mostly because half the time he was too busy finding ways to be aloof and condescending. I don't remember why we became best friends or even what he did that wasn't antagonizing. But I remember why we met and why I cared so much.

But I don't think it was until I was ten that I really started to question this. I was annoyed and hot, and he was both more intensely so, pummeling a ball into my nose. I can't even remember his face, he was hidden beneath the heat waves so that he was only an unreasonably (I think) angry spiky silver and yellow bob, wrapped in it as if he was radiating them. When I look back his face is always the fuzziest but I will never forget his emotions. They were so strong in that moment, I felt attacked from all over. He was so angry over something stupid, I know it was because I never do anything to him but be nice. Riku had hit me with a low-rate foam ball that had been chewed up by the waves we found one stormy day. He had picked it up from our play pile that used to be fun and innocent until he turned eleven and decided it would be a great place to play war.

I think I had said something 'immature' and that's what triggered him. It was fine before, I think. I might have said something stupid and oblivious to offend him, but what I will never know because then it seemed like everything.

"Hey Riku, why do you think Kairi is sitting by herself?"

An ugly grunt. I think he looked at me too, with his eyebrows digging in to the tip of his nose in a hilariously rude manner.

"You don't have to be like that, I just don't want her to be lonely." I said, my face now matching his, but now facing the midday sun. "Isn't that what you said, to be nice to her? That we should be friends?"

"No. I never said that. And even if I did you would have completely misunderstood what I was saying." I like to imagine that he said that part in the deepest baritone that has ever existed.

"No I wouldn't!" I stuttered, trying desperately trying to find all of the words in my meek ten-year old vocabulary to convey my pent up anger. I didn't get it and in a way I still don't get it. Why we had immediately jumped at each other's throats, what went wrong in our friendship that we now constantly assumed the roles of enemies.

"You-you're just mean and rude! I was just trying to help and-and you're just being so- so bad!"

I expected him to laugh because I knew it sounded stupid. He usually did, using his extra inches to scoff right over my face. But I was helplessly confused and annoyed so I didn't care that much.

Except he didn't. Instead, he threw a stupid foam ball with all the force he had, in a burst of anger I don't even think he understood. It was weird, we both just stood there afterwards, in shock.

The moment was so idiotic and strange for both of us, that it seemed to create an understanding. We didn't speak at all afterwards. I think Riku nodded curtly before he walked silently off in his own direction, as I walked back to Kairi. I wasn't in pain but my heart oddly was, as if it was stuffed with a thousand of those stupid foam balls.

It was ten that I finally started thinking that I hate Riku and that I never want to be understood by him.

an/ This is my first fanfiction and I don't write that much so please excuse me for writing something so bad. Constructive and really any type of criticism is highly welcome.