He stays at the train station long after everyone has already gone home. He doesn't know why, but he does it anyway. They weren't that close, sure they were "partners," but it didn't extend much beyond that. When he thinks about it, they weren't really friends. Not that it matters, he never sees him again after he goes on those tracks back to the city.
He spends his time thinking about her, even after a year or so, he can't push her imagine out of his mind. It's stupid, he knows, but he's starting to think he'll never get over her.
It isn't until another girl throws herself at him, a shoulder to cry on, a person to listen, a lover to whisper that things are going to be alright. He clings to this, desperate for someone to protect. He doesn't have the company of anyone else, so they grow closer without actually becoming close.
He drops out of high school to take on more hours. He gets promoted to floor manager fairly quickly, but without an education he guesses he'll never move higher. He doesn't mind, really, he just asks to be no where near groceries. That's where she worked after all.
Eventually they get married at a small ceremony by the river. He wishes she was someone else, even after years of marriage. Slowly his mind warps her face into her's, it's torture, absolute torture. Now he's just trying to forget, move on from it. But his mind and body bend his thoughts and his will so he can't. Bends it so far that he finally snaps.
She finds him dangling from a ceiling fan with one of his cheap ties around his neck.
All he thinks is: he's with her in death.
In the battle in Heaven, she's badly injured. She knew she should have trained more, but she never had anyone to spar with her. So it was easy to let it slip through her finger tips. Both her shins are snapped in half, she can't feel anything from the waist down, blood is everywhere, healing spells can stop the blood, but they can't fix broken bones, she thinks she's going die here. She passes out.
A manic leader, unbeknownst to her, yells for teammates to leave her as they retreat. Luckily for her, they refuse and bring her back out, unconscious, bleeding and broken, to drag her through an already closed store. They say it's a car accident, no one has reason to doubt.
Her legs are too far gone, they amputate them. Her insurance covers prosthetics, so she gets those. It takes months of physical therapy for her to actually use them. It take much longer for her to actually get use to them.
She doesn't look at him the same again, she doesn't go to the station the day of his departure. She is fine.
Her best friend leaves a few days later. Heartbroken, she turns to the next person she's closest with. She clings to him, scared that he will leave her too.
For much of her life she's always been the protecter, but her world has crumbled around her. It's stripped her rough exterior, leaving her more vulnerable than ever before. She's always had that front. Now she's just the girl that spends her days after school crying on the rooftop into the arms of the only one that's left.
She emails her friend at least once a week, asking why she left, how she's doing, if she's coming back. She even goes as far as lying about her family's business to see her return, although it turns out to be true. Not one answer. In due time, she stops.
Along the way, she falls for her friend. She was already sleeping with him to try and comfort herself, but she never foresaw this. When she tells him, he reciprocates, even though she knows he doesn't. But if he's willing to make a commitment, she's not going to push him away.
They get married on a Sunday morning, the only ones that attend are their parents and one of their kouhai. She wasn't looking for a crowd, but she hoped that certain someone would be there. Even though she would have no idea she was getting married.
Soon she starts to feel safe, secure, in where her life is headed. That her armor is starting to build up again. Only to find it ripped away a few years later when she finds her husband dead.
Why is she never good enough? Why can't anyone stay with her? She needs someone to protect. She needs someone to protect her. Is it really that hard?
Before she realizes, she's on the bathroom floor. Loose pills and empty containers litter the inclosed space. The hinges on the medicine cabinet creak as the mirror can't stay stagnant, creating the simple background noise to her own death.
Two of her kouhai are the only ones to show up as a monk sends their ashes down the river together.
She died weak, something she had always prided herself in overcoming.
She leaves a few days after him. No warnings, no goodbyes, just disappears like she did last spring. Finally mustering up the courage to just take off breathes new life into her. After contemplating the idea in her mind, keeping it all to herself, her little secret, it was nice to spread her wings and fly.
At first the thought is exciting, no obligations, no responsibilities, she's free to be whoever or whatever she wants. She starts out in the city, in a little shoe box apartment, a shit wage job to pay the rent and for a diet consisting of nothing but instant noodles. Not that she had the ability to make anything else.
Even though she studies hard, she only obtains one vocational license. At least it was the one she wanted. So she spent her days consulting others and designing rooms for business and personal use. She loses her passion for it quickly and recycles her decor designs for almost every client she comes in contact with.
She's not in contact with anyone from back home. The occasional email from her best friend, begging her to come home, that her mother is under a lot of stress, that the inn is going under, just reminds her how lonely she is. She never responds, and with time her friend stops trying. No one else bothers, eventually her phone service is discontinued and she has to get a new plan. Although it sits silent on the kitchen counter, never used, until she buys a new one to replace it.
Along the road, she gets married. Trapped in a union with a business man who's never home and who she's sure has a woman on the side. But she can't leave him because it turns out she's pregnant. Once it's born she has to quit her job, not that it was much of a loss.
She reaches an epiphany one afternoon as she stands in the meat aisle of the supermarket. Her crying baby in one arm, and her basket full of groceries in the other. She's back at square one, except no prince is going to save a broken and washed up princess.
With no one to protect her, she's all alone.
With the case over with, he has no reason to stay friends with the remainder of the team. All they ever did was poke fun at him and his so called sexuality, which he is still trying to figure out. He already felt down on himself, he didn't need others to constantly remind him of his struggles.
Against all odds, he finishes school. A feat even his mother had trouble believing. He never applied for college, he didn't have the money and really didn't need the degree to inherit the family business. It was a settled future which he was sure he'd enjoy. He liked sewing and helping his mother around the shop, so it wouldn't be too bad.
A number of years later, he finds his mother has passed away in her sleep. He buries here at the cemetery on the outskirts of town where she can enjoy the beautiful changing of scenery through the cycle of the seasons. Many people from all around Inaba pay their respects, slipping him a few bills saying that twenty is too young to be alone.
The days pass by and he somehow manages to keep the business open. The shopping district continues to struggle due to Junes' presence. It gets so bad that his shop, the Chinese diner, and the tofu place are the only shops that haven't closed their doors. He thinks it's only a matter of time, especially now that the traditional inn is selling their property to a chain. They won't want this poor bastard's services.
A woman dressed in a sharp blue jacket comes into the shop one day. The one who caused him to question his sexuality more than once. She doesn't say anything, just waiting to be noticed. He greets her and asks if she needs anything. He can see she's startled at his use of formal speech. She apologizes and says she's mistaken before going straight out the door. That is the last time he sees her.
In his late forties, he marries the tofu girl who's the same age. They've both been alone so long, they married simply out of convenience to try and fill something that had never been there. The sex is bland, not that he had much to compare it. They do it because they feel it's the normal thing to do, not because they really want to.
He's failed his father. He's not a real man.
She convinced herself she was in love with him, that he was her big city boy turned country sweetheart. She'd flirt with him nonstop, but he never acknowledged any of her advances. When he left, he took a part of her with him. She knew she was being dramatic, but in that moment she mistook her feelings of intense infatuation as ones of genuine true love.
Inaba is a pretty boring town, and she only has like four friends. Although one ignores her, two would rather be in each other's company, and one returned to her family business. So even though she had people to call friends, she was still alone.
She never returns to the idol industry. Soon all of her merchandise is taken off the shelves and with it her overall fame.
Out of high school she dates a few guys. But they all end the same way, a big fight escalates into angry break up sex. They only used her to say they were dating an ex-idol. Now that she's been on the dating scene, the industry won't want her.
People come into the tofu shop, order their food and leave. She doesn't get asked if she's has been idol, no one remembers her fame anymore. In the industry they come and go like clock work, an idol is easily dropped off the face of the earth once they goes on a permanent hiatus. Sure, she gets stopped in the street by people asking if they knew each other. When she slips that she was once famous, they just smile and ask for her autograph. But she can see in their eyes that they do it out of pity more than anything else.
A few years pass, her face starts to show sighs of aging and she's bigger in the middle. Most of her time is spent in the tofu shop, not getting any invitations for outings with friends or asked out on dates. The other part of her time is spent taking care of her grandmother who's on bed rest. She attempted to get in touch with her parents to ask for some assistance, but her calls go straight to voicemail. After six months, she stops leaving messages; after a year, she stops calling.
On her 48th birthday she sits on the steps of the bank foreclosure that was the tofu shop and openly weeps. She doesn't have her youth. She weighs twice as much as she did thirty years ago. She's buried under millions and millions of ancient idols. All her friends are gone, some even dead. No husband, kids, or family to turn to. Nothing is right. She feels a presence next to her, an arm around her in comfort. It's the textile boy, well, man now.
They get married in a matter of weeks. The relationship is awkward and forced on both sides. She feels pity for him since he's married to her. Neither want to be married to the other, but life is a little easier this way.
No one ever attempts to see the real her, and no one ever will.
She spends her Christmas Eve of that same year packing up her apartment so she'll be out by the time her lease if up at the end of the month. She hadn't bothered bringing anything of importance from the estate for her short interval of time in this small town. All it is is her two school uniforms, a few other outfits, and some personal files. The furniture in the rented space belonged to the leasing company.
Her life her fit into one suitcase and small box that easily can be tucked under her arm. She retreats the next morning, opting to skip out on the small party her colleagues were holding for his little cousin. She had turned down the invitations to many events over the last several months, she was here for work. Not to make friends, even though they considered her one. Which was preposterous at best, it would be a waste of time explaining the situation to them.
In the following years she accompanies her grandfather on cases, and goes on a few of her own. Luckily, word of her true gender didn't get out. It was important that she keep up the family legacy at all costs, and that meant disguising herself as a man for as long as she can. She can't let her family name fall to shame, respect has been and always be, a top priority.
She works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even in her sleep she thinks about leads and evidence and anything her prodigy mind can crank out to help. It sucks the life out of her, but she tells herself that's just what one of her profession and prestige does. The pressure and weight of the family is solely on her shoulders, even a blink would cause her destruction.
While on a case, she's shot in the shoulder. Her active partner attempts to help dress the bleeding wound, even through her constant refusal. But she doesn't get her way, and she can't hide her bindings from him when he discards her button down shirt. He doesn't say anything, but she knows what he's thinking. They don't discuss it, but he doesn't look at her the same for the remainder of the case.
Her grandfather encourages her to dress more like a woman, that her resume has enough bulk to disregard her gender. Since it's bound to get out after the incident. It's not easy, and it takes much more force than she's willing to admit. But she knows he just wants her to attract someone, anyone. She she can't do that as a man.
She is starting to feel the need of something more. It took her some time to realize that she wants children. After all she needs to carry on the name. It's something she's been trying to push to the back of her mind. In due time, she tells herself. In due time. But she can't wait too long, she tells herself.
News of the deaths of her senpai travels to her quickly. An old colleague cries to her on the phone and begs her to come for the memorial service. She wants to decline, but her mouth says yes before her brain can catch up. Her composure is slipping, she needs to watch that.
The service is short and they are the only ones that show up. So the two go back to her store and have a quiet lunch. She doesn't know why, but she tells her old comrade that she wants to have a child. When asked if she had a husband, she says she doesn't need one.
She tells her to go see the textile boy. That he's still not married and will also need someone to take over the family business. Even though she was never her friend, she could always tell her true intentions without much detail. So she does, remembering that he had a thing for her all those years ago.
They are the only two in the shop. She just looks around, a small part of her wants him to notice her. When he does, he's strictly formal. This makes her flustered and she abruptly leaves, a little ashamed to ask a man she doesn't really know to have a child with her. Even she knows it's not a social normality. Not at all.
She dwells on her family business, but she can't keep it alive.
He is able to understand his importance, his purpose, his existent. He is the only one.
But the distance is to far etched in the minds of his friends. He too does not show up at the train station that day. Staying in his world, living his reality.
Time passes, he is still alone.