There comes a certain point in your life when you are no longer a child. When your old friends, the games you played together, and the many experiences you had with them, that had once seemed to mean everything in the world to you, become merely a thing of yesterday.
Sora Takenouchi's days of childhood are long over.
She is working at the Hanekawa and Associates Law Firm in Shinjuku as a legal secretary. Her days are filled with the sound of keys clicking and creaking computer chairs. But sometimes, like anybody at her age would; at the nexus of childhood and adulthood, she reminisces about the days of her youth.
She glances at a photo on top of her desk, beside the computer. It was of her and two boys she thinks she knew in High School. They are laughing together with their arms wrapped around each other, dressed in the bland green uniforms of the school but still managing to look as fresh and vibrant as ever. One had a head of tannish, spiky hair, and the other had bushier, dark brown hair.
What were their names again, anyway...?
For some odd reason, she could not remember their names. It had been bugging her lately, how foggy her memories of all her old school friends had become.
"Sora, are you going to be staying in late today?" Somebody asks. Sora knew who it was, even before she looked up. How could she not recognize the distinct lisp and hiss of spit on dry, chaffed lips.
"No, mister Hanekawa. Is it five'o'clock already?" She says quickly.
"Yep, your time with me today is done." He leans over the wall of her cubicle, looking down at her through a pair of squarish spectacles. The scent of his cologne enough to make Sora feel slightly nauseous. "So come now, young women like you shouldn't be working late. Hit a club with your boyfriend, grab a couple of drinks, why don't you?"
"Mister Hanekawa, I believe I may have told you before, but I do not have a boyfriend." Sora says, maintaining a pleasant tone. "Besides, I don't drink."
Hanekawa seems disappointed, as Sora rises from her chair and pulls her purse's strap over her shoulder.
"I'll see you on Monday then, Sora?"
She nods in response and then makes her way down the hallway, the fake smile on her face fading as she enters the elevator.
...
"You should listen to your creepy boss this time, Sora!" Mimi says to her over the phone, after Sora had explained the entire ordeal to her. "You've been single for way too long. It's time you got that sweet ass of yours back on the market!"
The young legal secretary is walking toward her car parked in the underground parking lot, holding her cell phone against her ear in the grip of a shoulder and the side of her face.
"Oh stop it, you know how embarrassed I get when you carry on like that."
"I'm serious, though! Hit a club like he said, any club - might I recommend the La Blue downtown - and guys will be all over you I swear."
Grinning secretly as she listens to Mimi's rant, Sora plugs her keys into the door of her shining new, bright red Toyeta Halberd and crawls inside, locking all of the doors by instinct. She takes a deep breath, feeling cozy in the warm car following a long day in a cold office.
"Tell you what, it's Friday, so we're going to the La Blue together, tonight." Mimi adds, adamantly.
"The La Blue? That edgy, new night club everybody's been talking about? The one with the blue neon flamingos at the entrance?"
"That's the one."
Mimi, I don't even have any good casuals to wear." Sora says, while she fondles the little tree hanging from the rearview mirror. "Definitely nothing sexy. Unless those tanktops you bought me for Christmas last year count."
"Tanktops should be fine. It's all about leaving a little to the imagination, you know? Show off some shoulder and let them do the rest."
Sora is about to start her car when she catches something moving in the rearview mirror, and she pauses midway.
"Sora...?"
With a loud thunk a face suddenly appears, pressed against the driver seat window. A man's face. Startled, Sora squeals and leans away from the window, listening with a fast-beating heart to the sounds of this person pulling and punching at the door, trying to open it.
"Go away!" Sora shouts at him, and kicks at the door. He looks up from his hands, at her, and they lock eyes.
She recognized him from somewhere, from his eyes alone - a bold and intense stare with brown-red colored pupils; as if there were a fire burning just beneath his gaze.
"Sora...Sora?" She can hear Mimi calling out from over the phone, but she ignores her friend's frantic pleas.
Feeling the fear within her slowly melting away, Sora places a hand onto the window and strokes along its surface with a pronounced tenderness, as if she were petting a child's face. The man on the other side of the window merely stares, unmoving; whatever mission he had come here to fulfill apparently no longer a priority.
This was one of the boys she had known in High School. One of the two boys she had a photo of on her desk, laughing and smiling with her, in the office. Every fiber of her being was certain of it.
Before Sora can successfully put two and two together, her car's alarm goes off. Reacting quickly, she leans over to try her hand at the complicated control panel but by the time she finds the button to turn off the alarm, the curious man has disappeared.