3:00 A.M.
Linda sat up in bed. A muffled grumble sounded nearby; Nana rolled over and hit Linda's side with a fist, perhaps not accidentally.
"All right, all right," Linda sighed, and crawled over her friend's limp form and dropped off the bed with a quiet thud.
The room was dark. It was finally silent. Tada Banri and his friends had been partying next door until late at night. Linda smiled softly, painfully.
Banri was just fine.
She had been worried, like always. Just the other day, he had snapped at her for not saying anything to him. For pretending that she didn't know him. Then there was that moment in the bathroom when he had locked himself in the stall.
"I forgot everything," his words which she barely heard.
For a second, she thought that he had remembered. That was too much to hope for, huh? After everything, she should be grateful he was even alive. And she was. But there was no denying it.
No amount of determination can push down the feelings she still had for him.
Even if she couldn't move on, Banri had. For that, she was grateful. He had friends to help him. He even had a girlfriend now. He was going to be fine.
He didn't need her anymore.
Before she knew it, tears were dripping loudly onto the wooden floor, and she couldn't stop them.
Even now, she could still feel how it felt to have his arm around her shoulders, protecting her as they walked away from her brother's cheating fiancé and the menacing man in the window. She still remembered how those underclassmen had questioned her after school that day, and she had denied her feelings.
She had liked him then, she knew. But not for sure. Not yet. It wasn't until Banri had started to ignore her after overhearing them that she realized. She could not live without him.
The rain hitting her back, soaking her hair and clothes. The cold air, her breath coming out in misty puffs. Her legs, going numb from staying crouched for so long. Other students walked by, muttering amongst themselves, wondering what she was doing.
She had left behind her umbrella that morning on purpose. She didn't care if she got soaked, if she caught a cold. It was her repentance, but it was nowhere near enough to heal the damage she had done.
She heard his footsteps stop before her. She glanced up, but didn't really look at him. She was on her feet, taking steps toward him. She couldn't stop the tears from falling back then either.
Was she not obvious enough when she said it was the opposite? Should she have directly stated her feelings then? Would it have changed anything?
In present time, Linda wiped her eyes. Her phone, sitting on the floor where she had abandoned it earlier, buzzed and lit up. She crawled over to it.
A grin split her face.
"As expected," Linda mumbled to herself. "Even if you don't remember me, we're still connected, you and I."
The idea brought tears to her eyes once again. Gritting her teeth, she decided to call him. It had rung only a few times before she opened the sliding door and stepped outside.
When he asked if it was okay for him to speak casually with her, she could only nod, speechless. Of course it felt natural for them to be casual with each other.
Nothing could break the link between them. Surely this Banri must feel it.
They joked around a bit, and reminisced about their past. The club training camps. Him sneaking into the girls' room to find her. Her somehow knowing that he would be looking for her, so she had stayed up and waited. Not that she told him that part.
He said he had probably liked her then. That he had wanted to see her sleeping.
You can catch me sleeping if you want, Linda thought — screamed in her head. You can sneak into girls' rooms, whatever. You can do what you want, just be with me.
Just be with me.
Banri was looking at her, waiting. She snapped out of it, and teased him for her missing panties. She had expected him to be embarrassed. She had expected a cute blush to appear on his face, for him to stammer and deny it.
All he had was a troubled look on his face.
Banri was with Kaga Kouko now. It would be troublesome if Linda still remembered these things, still remembered how the old him had liked her, still expected him to feel that way.
She laughed, and he laughed. But then he asked her. What was your answer?
Yes. It would always be yes.
The mood was tense, and she knew the answer he wanted to hear. It didn't matter what she wanted to say. It wasn't about just the two of them anymore. This wasn't the same Banri who had loved her.
All the same, no matter what, she still loved him.
But she didn't have the right to say that to him anymore. She had been too late.
"That's obvious," said Linda. "The answer was 'no.'"
She did not miss his relieved sigh, not for a goddamned second. She forced herself to continue, forced herself to lie. She would support the new Tada Banri. After all, they were one and the same to her.
It would always be him.
"Linda . . . Senpai." The sudden honorific startled her, a little. She looked at him as if a wall had just been slammed down between them.
"Do you want to go back?"
The question struck hard.
"To that time, to that place where I was?"
She saw the watch on his wrist. She felt the words rise up and catch in her throat. Don't you dare say it, she told herself.
He lowered his head and said, "I want to go back!"
Linda felt her heart skip, then he was looking up at her with wide eyes, asking what he had just said.
He was with Kouko. He had made a new life for himself here. He was happy, damn it! How could he say things like that; that bastard, how dare he say he wanted to go back?
It was Linda who wanted to go back more than anyone.
"Wow. . . You fell asleep for a moment there."
She forced cheerfulness into her voice, and told him to go to sleep, that lack of sleep wasn't good for him, that it would make him say things he shouldn't. A warning, that he wasn't allowed to want to go back.
Such feelings were taboo.
She walked away, waving a hand as she left. She didn't dare let him see her face.
"Good night, Tada Banri."
She was barely inside with the door closed before she collapsed in a heap of tears, sobs stifled by her hands pressing roughly into her face.
"You're an idiot."
Nana was leaning against the wall next to her, next to the sliding door. She must have been listening. She had her arms folded as she looked over at Linda's crouched form.
"If. . . If I knew — knew that he was going to, to disappear, I . . . I would have never been late. . .!" Linda turned to Nana, grabbed her wrists as she stared up at her with a broken gaze. "I would have told him. . .!"
"Tell him now."
"You know I can't do that!"
"You're pissing me off." Nana shoved Linda away, knocking her to the floor.
"Don't you see?" Linda's voice cracked. "It's too late!"
Linda tackled her, but Nana stood steady, having already expected it. Linda's loud crying filled the silent room as she gripped fistfuls of Nana's shirt.
"Enough," Nana told her, uncharacteristically pulling her friend into her arms, wrapping them around her tightly. She grasped the back of Linda's head and smothered her face against her shoulder. "Tada Banri might hear you through the wall."
Linda immediately stopped speaking, but silent sobs still racked her body.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Linda wasn't sure who she was apologizing to anymore. Too many.
Nana led her to the bed, and they both went under the sheets together.
"Sleep, Linda." Nana told her as her eyes drifted closed.
"There's still time for you."