sort-of spoilers for chapter 57.

i can't even tell you how hard i ship mamura and suzume. almost harder than i ship her with bb shishio.

your ex-lover is dead - stars

i chose to feel it and you couldn't choose

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A year is a long time, Suzume muses, straightening out her skirt. Yuyuka gave it to her for her last birthday with a flippant remark on how poorly she dresses, and the skirt is very soft and a deep burgundy colour. Yuyuka has better taste than she does, anyways. She very carefully avoids thinking that maybe even after all this time she still wants to make a good impression, still wants him to look at her like he did before.

As she walks through the hallway of a school she no longer knows, her eyes flit back and forth between all the new students. She wasn't even very aware of people outside of her own friends when she was still in high school, and now it overwhelms her how she does not recognize a single person. Some of them stare a little longer at the unfamiliar girl with street clothing.

Finally she finds the office.

A new teacher she also does not know answers the door, and directs her to the same classroom she had been in for her first year of high school.

She waits outside of the room until lunch break. The bell rings, and students leak out. Lastly she sees a dark-haired man, still handsome as ever with his hair slicked back and dressed as well as she remembers. She knocks on the open door and breezes in.

When he looks up, he drops his pen.

"Chun-Chun," he says. She closes the door and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

"It's been a while," she says. "You look good. Mind if I sit?"

She is as blunt as ever. He swallows, hard, and works up a smile. The type a teacher gives to a former student, not the one that he has always reserved just for her. She notices and shuts her eyes for a little too long when she blinks. He motions for her to sit when they've both had a moment, and she takes the seat right in front of him.

"You do, too," he replies casually. And she does. Her hair is mid-back, now, no longer in the pigtails he liked to see them in when she was in high school. Instead it is loose against her shirt, and she is lovely and calm.

"How are you?" She asks. His smile thins.

"I'm fine." He pauses before barrelling forward. "Chun-Chun, why are you here?"

She stills, grabbing her bag strap as it lays across her torso. "I wanted to talk to you again."

Throughout the last of her high school years, the conversation wore thinner and thinner until eventually it was gone altogether. The first thing he said to her in months was to congratulate her when she'd graduated.

She doesn't even have a name for them. He was never her boyfriend. Ex-lover, maybe. They had kissed. She'd loved him. She runs the name over the ridges of her teeth, not for the first time. Ex-lover.

"I wanted closure, Sensei," she says finally. He tenses up, runs an agitated hand over his face, and sits down, unaware of the stiffness in his legs from having stood still for so long.

"I'm dating Dai- Mamura," she plows forward. He already knows that. He already knows, but an ache forms in his chest when he sees the softness in her eyes for the boy with messy hair and sleepy eyes.

"Congratulations," he says, the same wan smile crossing his face as it did years ago, one of the first times he saw her after they separated. Back when that brat Mamura wrapped an arm around her and told him, more with his eyes than with his words, to back off.

She smiles at him, then, looking apologetic instead of happy for the congratulations. "I came here to apologize."

There is a very significant, poignant pause. He stares at her, brushes a stray hair off his face. He has missed her last few years. Her last year of high school, her first year out of it. Even being her uncle's friend has not helped him keep in touch. Yukichi only forgave him when he learned that he had let Suzume go. And throughout all of this, he has missed her growing up. Her eyes are wiser than he ever remembers.

"I was waiting for you to need me," Suzume continues, her eyebrows drawn together as if she is only realizing this as she says it. "But it doesn't work like that. You shouldn't be with someone who wants you to need them, and you shouldn't need someone to need you for it to work. I was really immature then." She breathes a small chuckle.

There is a pause, and he looks at her wide eyes and her dark hair, swept back. He doesn't tell her how closely he came to needing her, with her simplicity and her thin legs and her smile.

"I'm sorry, Sensei," she says, her eyes too bright for him to look at straight on.

Here is this beautiful girl who is apologizing for loving him, and he can't even tell her how much he has loved her, too. Even he is not selfish enough to do that to her.

"I'm sorry, too," he murmurs instead. Something shifts in her eyes as she looks downward, and when she looks back up there is resolution in them. She takes a step forward and brushes her lips on his stubbly cheek before drawing back.

"Thank you for being my daytime shooting star. And for letting me love you. See you," she mumbles, stumbling as she leaves the room. He feels his ears warming from something as juvenile as a kiss on the cheek, and his hand cradles the lingering warmth left behind.

Satsuki Shishio decides he is the biggest coward in the world.