The World Ends With You was one of the best games I've played in a long time, so I decided to write a one-shot about it.

The story takes place after the game, the pairing is NekuXShiki.

Being There For You

It's been a year since Neku Sakuraba, and his three friends, Shiki, Beat and Rhyme returned from the UG to there normal lives. People were shocked at first, how could four dead kids who had never known each other before suddenly come back to life as good friends? And how could four kids suddenly come back to life anyway? The group had agreed not to tell anyone what really happened, but would tell everyone that they didn't understand either. There was a little press, a couple interviews, but nothing overwhelming. Neku believed that Joshua, his friend, and murderer, had something to do with how little questions were asked. It sent a shiver down his spine, thinking that he was still watching them, keeping tabs on them, and possibly meddling with all there lives, because he knew he might be. He got over it with time, so did the others.

Neku had actually just turned 16, Shiki and Beat had thrown him a party and Beat, out of embarrassment, said it was Rhyme. Of course, Rhyme and Shiki told Neku, causing him to get all embarrassed like when people called him by his real name. The party had actually been really fun. They had it at Shiki's house where she baked him a ridiculously delicious cake that he and Beat couldn't stop eating. Beat and Neku were the same age now, which was good, because Beat had gotten into this habit of getting them to do the things he wanted to do when they all decided to hang out, just because he turned 16 a month before him. Now Neku could tell him to shove it, since he didn't think playing tin pin slammer every day was the most fun thing in the world.

The party had been the day before, today Neku was just sitting around his empty house, listening to a little music, watching a little TV, but generally just laying around. He would usually call up Beat when he was bored since Beat was never at his house, but was always out and about with Rhyme, but they had all just had a huge party together, maybe spending a day apart would keep everyone fresh and relaxed. Neku plopped down on his couch that he had put in his room and stared at the ceiling. He heard a loud beep from his pocket that signified he had a text message. It was from Shiki. Neku smiled at her name on the screen before opening the message.

Come to the statue of Hachiko.

You've got 60 minutes.

Fail, and face having to buy me a hot bowl of Ramen.

-Shiki

Neku chuckled at this, 'Very funny...' He thought. Maybe being fresh and relaxed was overrated. Being with Shiki was more fun then anything else he could think of. He pulled himself off the couch and made for the door. He didn't have to tell his parents he was going out, because they weren't there. His parents were business people; they both worked for separate companies and were gone all the time. He had only seen them twice since he got back from the UG, when they came back to see him alive, and when they made there annual half year trip home to make sure he was still alive. No visits since then. It was fine though, between school classes, and hanging with Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme, he was never really lonely anymore. It was summer now, so Neku always had more time to go to Shibuya with the gang. He never went to Shibuya, or any place, alone with only Shiki though. He was afraid how she would see it. Not that he didn't want any personal time with her, he wished for it all the time, he just didn't want to do anything that could ruin there friendship.

Yeah, Yeah, Neku could admit it to himself now, he liked Shiki. Allot. When they were in the UG she took the appearance of her friend Eri during her time in the game, but Neku didn't look at her as an attractive girl, he saw her as a smart and kind person, and during that time, she became the most important thing to him. Unfortunately, this led to her becoming his entrance fee for his second time in the UG. Neku would still have nightmares about when she was taken away in the white room, only to find out she wouldn't go back to the RG because of him. When they got out, Shiki was released, and she regained her actual appearance. She was still around the same height as her friend Eri, a bit shorter then Neku, but she had short dark brown hair, wore glasses, and usually wore a simple outfit, like a normal skirt, a light blue shirt and her green jacket. She still carried that stuffed animal though, even after a year. Neku didn't mind it, he actually kind of liked the little pig-er...Cat. Whatever animal it was... When they all got together for the first time she seemed a bit nervous around him, she would fidget and blush like a tomato when he just brushed past her. Rhyme had called him later that day to tell him that she was nervous that he wouldn't like her appearance, since it was allot different then what she had looked like in the UG. Rhyme also mentioned that she was afraid that he might not want to be friends anymore. Neku had gaped at this; he didn't care about her appearance, he wasn't shallow like that! And why should she be nervous, she wasn't bad looking at all, Neku actually thought she was really cute. Rhyme had giggled really loud when he told her all that, and when he realized he had been talking out loud he blushed a dark red and had made Rhyme swear not to say anything.

Snapping back to reality, Neku realized he had spent over 10 minutes reflecting. He was going to be late if he didn't hurry! He quickly snagged his wallet from his kitchen counter and ran from his house toward the bust stop. He had to snag a bus to get to Shibuya, even though he, Shiki, Beat and Rhyme didn't live that far away from each other, they loved meeting up in Shibuya near the statue of Hachiko. The bus rides to Shibuya were long but Neku tried to make the best of them, he would usually text Shiki or Beat, but today he felt like just looking out the window. Looking through the window out at the world and seeing all the lively people, made him feel relaxed.

When he reached the bus station just south of Statue he stepped out with everyone else then made for Hachiko. When he got there he saw Shiki there waiting for him. "Hey!" Shiki yelled and waved to him. Neku quickly ran up to her.

"Been waiting long?" He asked.

"Nope, I just got here actually!" She answered.

"Then what was that text message about? What if I had gotten here before you?" He grumbled at her sarcastically.

She giggled a bit before replying. "Then I guess I would have still made you buy me ramen!"

He smiled at her. "You know I would have bought it for you anyway..." He said. This caused her to glance to the side for a second in embarrassment. She loved it when Neku did things for her. Whether it was paying that last few yen for her when getting on the bus, or buying her food when the group went out to eat, Neku always seemed to go out of his way for her. She knew though that if Beat teased him about it or made a comment, he would revert back to a stubborn grump and pretend like he was never being nice to her at all. She just couldnt figure out how he actually felt about her, Shiki wasnt even sure how she felt about Neku. She knew she liked him more then a friend, but it was a confusing subject to her. Shiki then noticed that she had been thinking for to long and Neku was staring at her. This of course, caused her to blush and jerk her head further to the side almost causing her glasses to fall off. She hated her glasses, and she thought Neku would hate them too, she even thought he might think she was ugly. But when they all met at the statue for the first time, he didn't seem to care. Shiki quickly pushed her glasses back on and tried to force the blush off her face.

He grinned at her, "Now that you're done thinking, are you ready to go? I'll still buy for us!"

"Y-yes, let's go I'm starving!" She stammered.

Neku laughed a bit and started walking towards the Scramble Crossing, with Shiki trailing right behind him. The chatted a bit on the way to the Ramen shop, like how Rhyme had told the pair about a crush she had on a boy at her school, and later about how she found Beat beating him up. They both happily talked about how Beat had finally started using Deodorant everyday, but mostly they talked about each others lives. Shiki had parents similar to Neku's, almost always gone, but they visited Shiki more then Neku's parents visited him. The situation with there parents was common ground for them, so it had become an annual thing to talk about. Today though, Shiki had a strange urge to talk about clothes, 104's new brands to be exact. Neku moaned and groaned while she tried to fill his brain with boring stuff about tight ass pants and polo's. He listened though, because even when he didn't like what they talked about, hearing her voice was enough for him.

They came to the road where across the street, was Neku, Shiki, Beat and Rhyme's favorite ramen shop. There were a few cars passing at high speeds so they pressed the button by the crosswalk and waited for the cars to stop so they could walk. As they began walking across the street when the car's stopped, Shiki skipped ahead of him slightly. Neku could have never have expected what happened next. He didn't know why it had had to happen, he would never know why it had to happen, but it did, and it happened fast. Neku saw it before anyone else did. At first a dot on the road, quickly became a car heading straight for Shiki at a high speed!

Neku only had a few seconds to react, to do something before she was hit by the speeding car. He couldn't move at first, fear had taken him over as a thought crossed his mind, 'What if it hits Shiki? What if I lose her?' He wouldn't let that happen, he would never lose her. Control returned to Neku's body as he jumped at Shiki, pushing her as hard as he could towards the other side of the road. He saw her fall to the side walk, safe. He didn't get the time to feel relieved before the car hit him. He felt it instantly, like a jolt. He felt himself in the air, flying trough the air at a high speed, then falling, and hitting something metal, really hard. He felt his head splitting, both one of his arms and one of his legs breaking, and his blood spilling. Yet he felt no pain. He slid off the metal, which he guessed was another car and fell to the road. That hurt, just falling to the road, and like another even bigger jolt the rest pain arrived. So much pain was upon him that he screamed and yelled. He could feel tears run down his face. He could feel shards of glass from the other cars window shoved in his arm. Then, he felt something else; a pair of soft hands on his face, caressing and stroking him. The sunlight had been blocked from someone standing over him. 'Shiki…' He thought. Neku could hear her voice yelling and sobbing his name. He felt her tears fall on his face before it all went black.

Shiki had just skipped ahead of Neku for a moment when it happened. He pushed her out of the way of a speeding car, as Beat had done for Rhyme before they both died, that was how they got in the game in the first place. Shiki was at the hospital, she was waiting in a strangely white room for Beat and Rhyme to get there. She had called them and tearfully told them what had happened. She needed support, she needed to talk to someone about this, and she needed to stop crying, for at least a little while, but she couldn't. She broke down again in another fit of tears.

Shiki had turned around fast enough to see it happen. The car had hit Neku, hard. He had flown through the air before crashing into the car in front of the car that had hit him. She was upon him trying to comfort him as soon as he hit the ground. The ambulance came soon after he had blacked out to take him to the hospital. Shiki had to be dragged away from Neku's body when they couldn't get her to let go of him. She was driven to the hospital in a separate ambulance vehicle so that the medics could help him without disturbance. They told her when they got to the hospital that he was in a critical condition, and needed to be taken to surgery right away to get the glass and small metal shards out of him and stitch up all the wounds, most importantly the blow to his head. So she waited, in the waiting room, with the blinking fluorescent lights, for Neku to get out of surgery, for the word that he was going to be okay.

At a point she was approached by a sort of, secretary lady who asked her who my boyfriends name was. Shiki stared at her awkwardly, before wiping the tears out of her eyes and asking her why she thought they were a couple. The older lady simply said "I can tell love when I see It." Shiki blushed before smiling and saying her boyfriends name was Neku, and then wiping away more tears, she fell asleep.

A couple hours later, after Shiki had woken up, Beat and Rhyme showed up. Beat bombarded her with question's the minute he got to her. Rhyme, seeing Shiki was about to start crying again, lightly punched Beat in the stumping to silently tell him to shut it. Shiki couldn't answer questions; she was still traumatized by what had happened. Rhyme merely sat down beside her and tried to comfort her as well she could, while trying to hold back her own tears. Beat couldn't sit still and needed to be up pacing around the room and occasionally banging his fist against the wall in frustration.

Finally, after another hour of waiting, a doctor came out of the two white doors where they had taken Neku. Rhyme was asleep with her head on Beat's shoulder, while Beat was asleep as well, he was snoring very loudly, and Shiki was already half-way to the doctor. "Are you Shiki Misaki?" He asked.

"Y-yes" She said.

"Neku Sakuraba is doing better, he's been stitched up, we've put cast's on him, and all the glass and metal has been taken out." Shiki smiled at the encouraging words.

Shiki put her hands together. "So he's going to be ok?"

The doctor closed his eyes for a second, before quickly reviewing his chart. "His head injury was particularly bad, and although there's no brain damage, he is going to need time to heal, a few weeks in the hospital will help him get better."

Shiki let out a sigh before letting herself slump to the floor. Neku was okay, he was going to be okay. With that clear revelation in her head, she quickly fell asleep on the hospital floor, much to the suprise of the doctor she had been talking too.

She woke up not long later; she was in a hospital room, Neku's room. She quickly got up and paced over to the bed to see him. He looked terrible. His casts were all put together fine, they were tight and in order, but he had stitches on his face and on the top of his head where they had had to shave away some of his hair. He also had a severe black eye on his right eye. Below she could see more stitches on the top of his chest, but nothing else, the rest of his injuries and wounds were all covered by his hospital gown. She blushed as she realized he was naked under it, and she quickly pushed all perverted thoughts and urges out of her head. 'How can I think about stuff like that at a time like this?' She blushed some more before regaining her composure and continuing to look at his many wounds.

He moved a bit in his sleep, and smiling she grasped his hand with one of hers, and with the other she slowly caressed and stroked his cheeks and forehead, making sure not to touch his black-eye. She could hear him sigh a bit and she swore she saw his head move into her touch, but she couldn't think about it for long before he slowly opened his eyes. Shiki's eye's opened wide to look into his, they seemed to glimmer in the darkness of the hospital room. It must have been night out by now; she could slowly feel her sense of time returning to her. He was the first to try to speak, Neku slowly opened his mouth to try to speak, but it was hard, his voice just wouldn't come out. Shiki, seeing this placed a finger on his lips and slowly said, "Its okay Neku, you don't have to speak, I'm here." She lifted her finger from his mouth as he slowly nodded. Shiki felt herself tearing up again, out of pure joy that he was okay, and not wanting him to see her cry, she turned away from him.

Neku used his good arm to grab her shirt slowly turning her around to face him. He pulled her close to the bed and tried to wipe her tears away. Shiki looked at him with grateful eyes before she noticed he was moving over to the side of his hospital bed, making room for her to lie down next to him. He mouth opened slightly before she slowly crawled in next to him. Neku instantly took off her glasses, put them on the stand next to is hospital bed, and put his good arm around her waist once she got comfortable, and Shiki laid her head against his chest. Shiki had never felt so warm, so comfortable, and so safe. It was a feeling she never felt, every feeling since Neku had gotten hit was new to her. She had never felt so scared, so frightened. Now, knowing that he was alright, she was feeling something even more new to her, love. She loved Neku more then anything. With the new courage this knowledge brought, she looked up into his eyes to see him staring back at her.

She slowly opened her mouth and spoke the words she never thought she would say to him. "I love you, Neku." Neku's eyes opened wider then she had ever seen them go, he didn't look as much surprised as he did overjoyed. Neku wanted more then anything in the world to be able to tell her that he loved her too, more than anything, but he couldn't, he just couldn't speak. So, he found another way of expressing himself. He inched as close to Shiki as he could, before slowly pressing his lips against hers. Shiki didn't expect this, but knew this was his way of saying that he loved her as well. The kiss between the two was small at first, but then Neku moved Shiki on top of him and pressed his tongue into her surprised open mouth. Shiki didn't respond at first, but soon she felt overwhelmed by his hot breath and she soon felt her self wanting more. Shiki soon pressed back with as much force against Neku, and there tongues danced and flared. It was a first for both of them it seemed because although it felt passionate and wonderful, she could feel the awkwardness in the way they both kissed, not wanting to touch more then there backs and head's afraid it would immaturely ruin the moment. They both seemed to get over the awkwardness, as soon there hands roamed everywhere. She felt Neku grab her lower back tightly and used his cast arm to slowly pull her head deeper into the kiss. After a few more minutes of there passionate kissing, they broke apart, each taking deep breaths to recover. Shiki flopped down beside him and laid her head against his chest once again. She soon spoke, not wanting it to be to quiet in the room. "That was great Neku…" He smiled before finding the strength to utter one word to her, "Yes."

Over the next few weeks Shiki came to visit Neku everyday, sometimes bringing Beat, sometimes she brought Rhyme, sometimes they all came together. For Neku it wasn't the best of weeks, his injuries kept him from doing anything but lay around, but seeing Shiki got him through it. They hadn't kissed after the first time, not for awhile anyway, once while she was pushing him in a wheelchair back from the hospital cafeteria Neku worked up the guts to ask why they hadn't for while, and Shiki simply said, "I was going to ask you that same thing once we got back to your room..." They didn't talk for the rest of that day, not because they didn't want to, they were just a little to busy, as Beat would call it, sucking face again on Neku's hospital bed.

On the day Neku got out of the hospital he asked Shiki out on an "official" date. They simply went back to the Ramen shop and Neku bought them lunch. They had a good time until they ran in to Beat on the way back, while they were holding hands. Beat simply looked at them with a huge smile, winked at Neku, and walked off. Surprised and slightly confused that they didn't have to deal with any of Beat's blabbering they walked off towards the bus stop where they could travel back to Shiki's house, to go and relax there until Shiki furiously sowed up the buttons on Neku's shredded pants, much to his protest. Hey, at least they were together now, as a couple, and that was the most important thing.

After the situation with Neku's pants they laid on the couch together watcing a bit of TV, he still had to rest and heal, and that was perfectly fine with Shiki. Neku smiled as he laid on Shiki's couch with her sleeping right next to him, he saw that her glasses had fallen off on to the floor so he picked them up and laid them on the coffetable between them an the television. He then wrapped his arms around her and she snuggled up to his body. Neku knew that this was the happiest he had felt in a long time. Sighing in content he moved his head next to her ear and whispered, "I'll always be here for you Shiki." She smiled in her sleep before pushing up to his chest even more. Neku knew now that he would be happy for a long time, because no matter what happened he knew he always had Shiki.

The End

Wow, that took awhile to write!! I highly enjoyed writing this story so if you liked it review! This is only my second fic, so I'm not expecting high praise. Thanks for reading!