Fragmented Nostalgia

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters in this.


Have you ever been so obsessed with what happened in the past, you could never truly open your eyes to the future?…That's what I thought once.

Ever since that day that Yufuin En took Kinugawa Atsushi away for curry, I believed that I would never forgive them – both Yufuin and curry. You can't steal my best friend! my mind had pleaded then, and after that, I held on to that thought.

/

Somehow, I was wandering the halls of my middle school again. Just seeing them brought back certain memories…

Instinctively, I stepped into a classroom and took a seat near the windows. As I rapped my fingers on the desk, trying to figure out how I got here, I recalled Acchan and I were looking at future prospects once (because that was what the teachers made us do).

"What do you want to be in the future?" they interrogated us, but we didn't want to think about it at that time. We had our sights set on the most prestigious high school in the area, a place worthy of our monetary status – Binan High School.

…As for what we wanted to be, Acchan never quite decided. All he knew was that he wanted to get into university. I, however, was firm in my decision that I would become a politician. All Acchan ever gave me for that was a small cock of his head and a supportive smile.

My mouth slowly curled at the ends and I glanced at one window to see a rare sight – a genuine smile for what I had experienced in the past.

Suddenly, two familiar figures appeared at the door. I hadn't heard their footsteps so this was either a dream or something I'd been aware of despite having walked almost the entirety of the hallway.

"...you're fighting without even knowing why? Why don't you ask him?" Yufuin asked Kinugawa.

"No, if he doesn't want to talk about it, I don't want to force him to..." was Kinugawa's reply. A-Acchan? Is that your reasoning for why you left me for so long? To...cool off?

"I-I'm sorry!" I blurted while my face flushed bright red.

/

An older version of the voice I'd heard in my memories snapped me out of my daze. "Kin-chan!"

Before I knew what was going on, a person grabbed me in an embrace and flung me to the ground. A resounding crash that shook the earth followed it shortly afterwards and I realised the person who saved me was Kinugawa.

He trembled and I peered at his back to find a garish scar standing out from his Battle Lover clothing. Glancing at the source of the crash, it turned out the tower Arima, Akoya and I frequented as part of our Caerula Adamas surveillance had been toppled by the Wood Chopper Monster.

That was not something I would let slide as student council president or leader of the Caerula Adamas, so from that point on I decided to let past complications go and focus on the present.

/

Nowadays, I stick to the philosophy I learnt in our fight against the Press Society and Zundar. I still see Yufuin and Acchan sticking together but now my heart is at ease because I also get to be part of it, and the smile I saw in the window during my memory walk is more frequent as a result.

(Actually, now that I've hung out with him, Yufuin is…alright, I suppose. But don't tell him I said that!)


In case you didn't realise, I believe both Atsushi and Kinshiro are responsible for their falling out. That bit about Kusatsu being a politician's a headcanon but it works.

...ah, looking at my past, I'm a bit of a Kinshiro in the fact I like to cling to people once it's established I'm their friend. That's where this sort of mentality comes from.