You know, it was complacency that was the problem. I can blame everybody around me, even the people who weren't at fault, even my friends, even.. no, especially the people who really were at fault. But there was nobody to blame except for myself. I shouldn't be blaming people at all, but I can't help it. What else am I supposed to do?

I'm not even sure at this point. It seems like I have a habit of overthinking things. If I were to put all my thoughts into words, it should only really total up to a couple lines of text. But I have a habit of going on and on, losing myself in my own thoughts. I guess it makes up for all the things that I want to say but don't, instead I fill my speech with whatever comes to mind- usually just a bunch of things related to my lifestyle and interests. It's funny, because when I think about it, these are all things that an introvert would empathize with. If you've ever met me in person, you know why this is ironic. On the outside, I'm anything but an introvert. Oh.. Do you see what I mean when I say that I go on and on?

Anyways, I never saw it coming. I guess I had just assumed that we would always be together. The four of us, we should have shared a bond that was adamantine. Unbreakable. Nothing would ever come between us. Not even when high school ended, and we were all destined to go separate ways. It was that complacency that led me astray. I had forgotten that time was the one thing that always had its way. It was the assumption, that we would always be together, that blinded me to the thing that had the potential to pull us apart.

Insignificant

The bell rang. It wasn't impressive, nor was it interesting in any way. But I had always liked the bell, and not just because it signaled the end of the class period.

One reason I liked the bell was because it was always on time. I thought of it as dependable, consistent, like that one person who's always there, whether they're important or not. The character who may not have an extremely involving role, but they're just there all the time. They don't need to be heroic, or brave, or even interesting. It's enough that you can always depend on them to be in the right spot at the right time. That's how I feel about the bell. It's always going to ring at the exact same time each day. Not a minute earlier, not a minute later. You can feel when its going to ring, and you watch the clock, and you wait.. and there it is.

Of course, the other reason I liked the bell was because it meant the period was over. That was a given. In particular, the bell I liked the most was the lunch bell.

"Hey guys!" There she was. Kagami always came over at lunch to sit with us. It was pretty lame that she was in the other class, but it's practically next door so it isn't that bad.

"Ka-ga-miiiiii!" I drawled, stressing each syllable of her name but dragging out the last one as I draped by arms over the desk's surface. Tsukasa and Miyuki greeted her, and Kagami returned their acknowledgements, but I could tell she was focused on me.

"Hmm? What is it this time, Konata?" She asked me in a brusque tone, but she wore an accommodating smile that gave it all away.

"You know what to do. Pet me!" I joked and grinned at her reaction, which was to turn her head and snort derisively. I quickly covered up with a pout when she turned her shining violet eyes on me once again.

"What are you, a cat? You know, people only like cats if they're cute. If you were actually one, you wouldn't get so much as a glance." Kagami retorted as she sat down in the seat between me and Tsukasa, the girl she was related to by blood. It was amazing- the scientific or genetic or whatever process that gave birth to these two gave them startling similarities, but the difference in personality was almost literally written on their faces.

"Hmm.." The younger twin tilted her head back a little bit to look upwards at a nearly flat angle. She drew her lips into a line, pursing them ever-so-slightly. I knew that this was her thinking expression, and what made it obvious was the thoughtful humming that came from her general direction.
"I think Kona-chan would be really cute if she were a kitty!" After a couple moments Tsukasa reached her conclusion, surprising all of us with a rather nice mental picture of myself in feline form. It wasn't that strange, since I practically shared the same facial expression with most cats.

"Yeah, I guess that cat Konata would be cute." I feigned reluctance as I admitted this, already planning out my next words.
"But I think we can all agree that I'm sexier if I dressed up as a cat! Right, Kagamin?"

"Eh? What the heck kind of question is that? And why are you directing it at me?!" She was startled but recovered quickly and came back with a vengeance. I met her glare with a sleazy smirk.

"Hey, don't worry Kagamin. I.. we'll just have to be careful when I do my cosplay, or else some of my neko costumes might get torn up."

"Hey, leave me out of your dirty fantasies!" Kagami complained, and I saw that her cheeks were starting develop a pink tint. Sure, she blushed like any other girl, but she rarely did so and only when something embarrassing came to mind, but that required her to be thinking.. about.. something mature..

While I was thinking about it, I hadn't noticed her hand slowly stretch out and land on my head. I let out a small gasp- purely out of shock, not any sort of excitement or anything- and felt a little warmth bubbling in my chest.

"Well, I guess you can be a little cute. When you aren't being a complete pain in the neck, that is." Kagami admitted, stroking the top of my head gently. It was a rare moment of kindness, when her temper dropped below zero and her hostility disappeared. I'm not calling her mean or anything, it's just the way she was. Moments like these were the ones that never failed to remind me about that loving, caring side of Kagami.

"Ahaha, see? You do like to pet me. No shame in it, no shame in it, petting each other is something that we should all do from time to time."

Kagami grunted, lightly tapping me on the head as a reminder of not to ruin this moment. I took it to heart and hummed in agreement then hid my face in my arms- just in case I looked like I was overly enjoying this.

Miyuki, who was sitting opposite of Kagami, hadn't said anything so far. A quick peek revealed that she probably didn't plan to either. She was the girl with abundance in the volume of her hair and her bust, and her wide eyes behind the round lenses that told you everything about how she was feeling. The only catch was the way her mind worked: quickly, calculatingly, and in ways that should be impossible. I can never tell what she's thinking, and right now is no exception.

It was our typical lunch routine, with the only modification being the conversation. We all sat in the same spots, took out the same lunches. With Kagami to my left, Miyuki to my right, and Tsukasa across from me, we made a pretty diverse group. The otaku, the type-A tsundere, the airhead, and the glasses girl. The anime enthusiast, the hard worker, the innocent one, and the perfect student. Yeah, we covered every area.

"Hey. Mind if I sit here?" Someone spoke up from behind us. It was a boy's voice, and I could tell that before I even turned to look at him. He was standing a reasonable distance away, and he was smiling gently for no apparent reason. I didn't recognize him from this classroom, so I automatically placed him as one of the kids from Kagami's class.

"Hmm? Oh, hey. What are you doing here?" Kagami turned around and greeted him. While she didn't immediately welcome him, (It was obvious by the way she answered a question with a question) it was clear by the tone of recognition in her voice that she at least had seen him before. Although we were definitely not in any dangerous situation, I felt a bit safer knowing that Kagami wasn't too friendly with this guy.

"Just visiting. My friend wanted me to visit him at lunch, and it just so happens that he's in the same room you visit every day." He shrugged, then as if on cue someone calls out to him from across the room. He looks up, then looks back at us with a smile that seemed almost apologetic before he walked over to the boy who had yelled out.

"Who would that be, Kagami-san? I believe you're acquainted with him?" Miyuki spoke up for the first time since Kagami had entered the room.

"Oh, he's just from my class. Name is Kazuo Fukui. He's the class president." She told us with a shrug like it was unimportant. I agreed with her- he wasn't that important.

"Oh ho hoh, the class president huh? Aren't you the head representative?" I grinned, seeing room to make a potential tease. Kagami looked at me with slightly narrowed eyes, the cogs in her head turning to figure out where I was coming from.

"Yeah.. What about it?" She asked slowly, not quite reluctantly but she sounded unsure.

"Could this be the start of a romance within the student council? The class pres and the head rep, a relationship that everybody saw coming except for they?" I chuckled to myself, even though I was under attack by one of Kagami's withering gazes. My laughter stopped after the rather disturbing image of Kagami standing next to this new guy, their arms intertwined-

"Well, maybe not a romance quite yet. After all, isn't it best to get to at least get to know someone before you start dating?" Someone said from behind me, and I almost jumped as I realized it was the Kazuo guy. Damn, he moved quietly and quickly. I hadn't even noticed him approach us, and he had managed to catch me off guard.

"Right? Unfortunately, this idiot here has a bad habit of putting people together without any regards to how they feel about it." Kagami was only half-joking, and she gently hit me on top of the head with a closed hand.

"Oww! Don't worry Kagamin, my one true pairing has to be Konami! It's canon!" I cheered, throwing out the shipping name I had come up with for the two of us. She rolled her eyes, dismissing me almost immediately.

"Konami?" Kazuo phrased it as a question. I turned my head to give him a calm, piercing gaze.

"Mm hmm. Konata plus Kagami!" I explained with a smirk, reaching out and hugging Kagami's arm tightly.

"Oh. So you two are dating?" Kazuo raised an eyebrow while he posed his innocent question. I didn't even blink, nor did I dare to move a muscle as I waited for Kagami's reaction to the touchy subject. I imagined icicles to be forming in the air from the pure, frigid tension.

"D-dating?! No, of course not! We don't have any feelings for each other." Kagami almost yelled. By the end of her declaring her lack of love for me, she had freed herself from the vice grip I had on her arm.

"Uhh.. yeah. Of course not.. I was just joking around." I laughed shakily, because it was probably the closest thing to positive emotion I could manage at the moment. It only took me a moment of searching for a way to play it off, after which I sighed dramatically and sat back in my seat, placing a finger on my closed eye and tracing it down my cheek.

My acting skills are top notch, but I still felt a twinge of satisfaction, along with relief, as I heard a small chorus of giggles and muffled chuckles coming from my friends and a couple others who had been watching. Those feelings of success vanished soon after I opened my eyes, though; it was painfully obvious that not all of us were great actors.

"Haha.. yeah, Konata and I are just friends. Good friends, sure, but there's nothing going on between us. I just find some reason to stick with her, even though she can be extremely annoying when she tries, and when she isn't." Kagami was talking to Kazuo again. Something about her body language and her voice was off. Like she was trying not to snap.

I reached for my lunch with a hand, an uneaten chocolate pastry shaped like a spiral shell. Everybody returned to their conversations, and so did our group. I glanced to my left, and Kagami was twisted around in her seat, engaged in some sort of vivid retelling of a story to Kazuo, who nodded a couple of times, then the two of them shared a laugh, having reached some sort of punchline.

I forced my eyes to break away from the two of them, and on the other side of me Tsukasa and Miyuki were turned towards each other and chatting almost constantly. Miyuki gestured with her hands, holding up fingers and tracing shapes in the air, and Tsukasa watched entracedly. Her mouth formed a perfect circle as she came to some sort of conclusion, and Miyuki giggled at the cute image that the younger girl had made.

I didn't really feel like butting into anyone's conversation, which is something that I normally didn't mind doing when I was bored. Instead, I stared at the pastry in my hands. I absently pinched the tip of the shell, tearing a piece of bread off and dipped it in the soft chocolate on the other end.

I was the first one to finish eating. Miyuki finished shortly after, and when Tsukasa noticed that her friend was finished, she looked up at the clock and back down at her half-eaten lunch before hurriedly picking up her chopsticks. Kagami hadn't even started eating.

The bell rang. I stirred and lifted my head from my arms, trying to open my eyes and wishing I hadn't dozed off for the rest of the lunch period.

While the bell forced everybody else into action, I didn't move. I nodded my head repetitively, trying to shake off the befuddled haze that short naps always inflicted me with.

When I finally got my eyes to open, the first thing that came into focus was an uneaten bento. Then someone's pair of pale hands picked it up, and it was gone.