Summary: I thought we were going to grow up together and spend the rest of our lives together as well. But they all grew up first, and I was left in the dust.
My friendship with Semi Eita started when he moved down the street, into a home that was collecting dust. I was running late that day, and it was fortunate that the bus stop was right in front of my house. As I fidgeted by the stop, earning glances from a senior student, who I would later know as Aki-senpai.
The bus arrived at the same time a boy with silver hair sidled up next to me, softly panting. He'd been running, and I turned to him curiously. Aki-senpai slipped past me, wiping her palms on her skirt.
"Excuse me," the boy said to me, looking sheepish. "Is this the bus to Shiratorizawa?" He meant the junior academy, of course, because there was no way he was a high schooler. He was taller than me, but not as tall as Aki-senpai, who was in her third year of junior high. He'd catch up to her very soon.
"Yes," I replied.
"Well," he said, "Thanks. I'm Semi Eita." He held up his hand for me to shake.
I took it. "Tanaka Kyou."
I quickly discovered that Semi Eita was a hothead when a classmate teased him for being a dead-last. Semi had little patience for those who are unnecessarily cruel, and those who were mean just for the sake of being mean.
Semi socked him in the face during break-time, making a few girls scream and run away. We were in the yard, and I scowled him.
"Enough!" I cried, yanking Semi back from the red-haired boy that he had punched. "Stop it, Semi!"
"Kyou-chan!" I heard someone cry.
"Wow," said the other boy, holding one palm over his blackened eye. Or, it would be black soon enough. "You punch hard." Then he grinned. "I can respect that in a person. The name's Tendou."
Friends come together in the strangest of ways. Tendou Satori befriended Semi Eita when the latter punched him in the eye.
"Yosh!" Tendou lifted a fist into the air, grinning wildly and nearly poking my eye out with the sharp end of his dango stick. "Finally! New Year's is upon us!"
We—Tendou, Semi and I—had exited the school gates not long ago and had taken a detour to the sweet shop.
Tendou's family are of Chinese descent, and my friend idolized the Chinese actress Fan Bingbing. This was why we were heading to the video shop—Semi and I had offered last week to take our friend to watch one of her movies in celebration of New Year's Eve.
Since the movie was in Chinese, we had to rely on the subtitles. Tendou couldn't read or speak Chinese because he'd been living in Japan since he was two and had grown up with Japanese.
When the movie was over, we all gathered at Tendou's house, where his mother was making supper. They celebrated the Japanese New Year as well as Chinese New Year.
I honestly didn't know how they kept track of their holidays so well. The clashing cultures didn't seem to bother them much at all.
"Tendou, what did you get on the math exam?" Semi inquired when dinner commenced.
"Ahh, absolute crap," Tendou muttered, covering his mouth with his bowl of rice. "You?"
As of our second year in junior high, Semi was no longer dead-last and had advanced quite quickly. "I did alright," he said modestly. "Eighty-seven percent."
"Show-off!" Tendou accused, pointing his chopsticks at a very amused Semi. He turned to me. "What about you, Kyou-chan? What did you get?"
My cheeks went slightly pink. "Ah, I got full marks." It was from all the studying I did in my free time. I thought that it was very important that we did well in school so we could get into good universities and find respectable jobs. It was a bit old-fashioned (and boring, according to Tendou), but it was simply my ideology, and one that I had gotten Semi to respect at the very least.
"Good job!" Tendou praised before shaking his head. "Maa… you're still a nerd. We need to get you out of the house more often, don't you agree, Semisemi?"
Semi's eye twitched. "Don't call me that."
I quickly intervened before a fist fight broke out. Shaking my head, I thought to myself, It wouldn't be the first time that happened. Their friendship, after all, had begun with fists.
"Happy New Year," I chirped. "Or it will be, in a few hours." I held up my glass of juice. "Cheers?"
The boys exchanged a glance before Tendou grinned, lifting his own cup of soda, Semi following his example.
"Cheers!" we all shouted.
"To volleyball and crushing wimps!" Tendou crowed enthusiastically.
"And good sportsmanship," chuckled Semi, feeling the need to balance out Tendou's declaration.
"To doing well in school," I added, and the boys laughed.
"Nerd!"
I blushed, my black hair falling over my face in a curtain. "I'm not the one that needs to bring up their grades, Tendou!"
It was the last week of the holidays (and just a week before our entry into high school) when I was reunited with Aki-senpai. She disappeared halfway through junior high, and I hadn't talked to her for a long time.
"Aki-senpai!" I called to her when I spotted her in the park. "You're back!" Before she left, she and I had gotten quite close. Aki-senpai looked very tired when I neared her. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"
"Maa, maa," Aki-senpai placated me. "It's nothing, Tanaka-chan." But it wasn't nothing because I could see the fading bruises on her neck, the ones that she tried to conceal with makeup.
I frowned, but let Aki-senpai go on her way. At that time, I had no idea what those ugly bruises implied. I wish I'd never found out.
School started in April, and Semi and Tendou quickly rushed me to to our new school—Shiratorizawa Academy—so that they could check out the volleyball club. Tendou and Semi had both been playing since elementary, and they'd tried many times to get me interested in the game, but to no avail. I was confident in my knowledge thanks to always having one ear in their volleyball rambles, but it simply wasn't a priority for me.
My shoelace became untied, and I nearly tripped and fell on my face a few times before I urged the boys to just go without me. I'd join them later. I was bending my knees into a squat when a shadow loomed over my crouched form. I tilted my head backward to see a figure blackened by the shine of the sun behind his head. He had broad shoulders and a square jaw—I could see that much, at least.
"Excuse me," said the boy. "Where might I find the office?"
Ushijima Wakatoshi had always been a tall boy, but, strangely, that never frightened me. I smiled at him. "You must be a first year like me. I need to go to the office, too, actually, so I'll take you there." The senior students at the front gate had been handing out maps to the new students, but he must have been overlooked. I said as much, and he confirmed it.
"My friends are in the volleyball club," I told him when we left the office and headed toward the main building. "Their names are Tendou Satori and Semi Eita." I smiled at him. "I hope you'll get along."
"I hope so, too," he said honestly, and my smile grew bigger.
They did get along, it turned out, and all four of us were studying in the library one day when I found out that they'd gone out together without me.
"It was all smash and bang!" Tendou loudly said. There were folded pieces of paper sitting on the table in front of him. Tendou had always been gifted with origami, though he normally ended up flicking his creations at Semi.
The librarian appeared around a bookshelf to shush the red-haired boy. At the same time, I asked, "What was?"
"Oh, the volleyball match we went to see last Saturday," Semi explained, Ushijima nodding in affirmation.
"Ah, I see. Did you have fun?" I tried not to let the hurt show in my voice, and it worked. I knew I was being irrational. There was no way I couldn't have expected them not to hang out without me. I wasn't always available, preferring to study in my spare time, and they were beings of testosterone, after all.
"We did," Semi said, and I smiled crookedly.
"I'm glad you did."
That night, I called Aki-senpai on the phone. She was preparing for college exams, but I was hoping to just have a quick conversation with her concerning what I had discovered.
It ended less than pleasantly.
"Why are you asking me, huh?!" she shouted at me. "I'm not constantly surrounded by guys like you are. Figure it out yourself, I'm busy studying." Then she hung up, leaving me to stare at the wall. It was a mistake to have called her up at such a stressful time, I thought. Aki-senpai had been getting more and more irritable nowadays.
Quietly, I turned off the lights and climbed into bed. But I didn't sleep immediately. Instead, I stared at my ceiling, trying to imagine a scene that would calm my mind and lull me to sleep.
The last thing I saw before I nodded off was Semi, Tendou, and I in Tendou's room. Semi had his head rested in my lap and his earbuds in his ears, while Tendou was animatedly chatting to me about the latest issue of his favorite Shounen Jump manga. A poster of Fan Bingbing smiled down at us.
A few weeks later, I had been the millionth customer to enter a popular ramen shop, and had been gifted with two tickets to the latest kung-fu movie. It didn't seem so interesting, but I thought that Semi and Tendou might enjoy them.
I found Tendou first. He was hanging out in the schoolyard with a few guy friends that were in his class. When I gave him the ticket, his friends started to snicker. My face flushed, and the sniggers grew louder.
"Really?" Tendou's eyes grew a little wide before he gave me one of his rare, genuine smiles. "And a kung-fu movie, too... Thanks, Kyou-chan!"
When I left, his friends started to make kissy noises.
I ran into Semi later in the day. He was getting a drink at the water fountain, sweat on his forehead.
"Here," I said as I gave him the remaining ticket. "There's a new kung-fu movie playing and I was wondering if you wanted to go see it. It's this Saturday."
"I do," Semi said, grinning. "Thanks, Kyou-chan."
I don't know what went on after that, but Semi and Tendou were in a black mood next Monday. They refused to talk to me, Tendou especially. At least Semi shared a few short, curt words with me.
It hurt.
Since Tendou didn't seem to be as forgiving as Semi, I approached him after school, ready to apologize for whatever I'd done. He was with his friends again, boys that I didn't know and didn't really care to get to know.
They gave me bad vibes. It was like seeing the bruises on Aki-senpai's throat again.
Speaking of Aki-senpai, I hadn't spoken to her since that disastrous late night phone call. She hadn't been coming to school either, according to another senpai.
"Tendou," I started, reaching out to touch his shoulder hesitantly. "I'm sorry—"
Someone in his friend group snorted, and Tendou saw red.
"What do you mean you're sorry?!" he yelled, his brows slanting downward in anger. I flinched back, shocked. Tendou had never shouted at me before. When I stuttered out a reply, he went on, "Of course you were just leading me on. You never liked me! You only stayed because Semi was there. Who would want to be friends with a monster, anyway?" he added bitterly. He stormed off, and when I tried to follow him, his friends formed a barrier between him and I.
"Let me through!" I demanded, my voice wavering. All of these boys towered at least a head above me.
They refused, and shoved me around for a bit before leaving me to gape after them in the empty courtyard.
We reconciled a few weeks later, thanks to some parental interference, but I wasn't blind.
Things weren't the same.
Tendou hardly spoke more to me than necessary. Ushijima, who was uninvolved, hardly spoke as it was, so he didn't talk to me all that much either. Semi was my only stable bridge throughout the whole ordeal.
When I asked him what I'd done wrong, he stared at me in disbelief before shaking his silver head. "You really don't know?" Semi said, scornfully. I flinched at the barbs in his voice. Then he sighed exasperatedly. "Man, you really are dense."
I wished I'd understood what he'd meant back then.
Aki-senpai dropped out of school a week before college entrance exams were about to commence. I never heard from her again, but I refused to listen to the dirty rumors that circulated around the school, spreading like wildfire.
Everywhere I went, nasty words about Aki-senpai followed.
"... Got herself knocked up..."
"That poor girl..."
"Wasn't she in an abusive relationship...?"
"... A disgrace to her family..."
"She was going to be a doctor, right?"
"If she was stupid enough to get herself pregnant, she'd never make it as one."
"We don't actually know if she got pregnant..."
"What kind of girl who looks like Akiyama doesn't get her slut-ass knocked up?"
I hated them for it all. Aki-senpai deserved none of their loathing.
One day, I'd had enough. I grabbed one of the whisperers by the hair and slammed her face into her locker when I heard her spreading her poison for the fifth time in a week.
"Stop it!" I screamed. "Stop it!"
I was suspended. Semi visited whenever he could, and it made the lectures my parents gave me more bearable. Ushijima dropped by as well, though not as much as Semi. Tendou didn't come by a single time. He didn't even look at me when I returned to school.
My actions did nothing to stop the rumor mill. It further fueled the fire, actually, but people were no longer talking about the disgraced Aki-senpai.
No, they were talking about me.
For the rest of the year, they wrote horrible things on my desk and put tacks in my shoes. Even now, remembering the words makes me shudder.
Slut!
Go kill yourself, bitch!
Jump off the roof! Nobody will miss you.
Serves you right for playing the whore with Satori and Eita.
I later found out the student body had a grave misunderstanding of the relationship I had with my friends. My only friends, one of whom I barely saw after the movie ticket incident. I also found out that Tendou's friends were the ones who started the rumors.
Huh.
A few months later, the rumors stopped, and I had a feeling Semi had been the one responsible for squashing the horrible words.
Tendou never apologized for what his friends had done.
Towards the end of our second year, Semi decided have his hair dyed. Not all of it, because his mother would freak; just the tips of his hair. I fingered the darker strands of hair in wonder, and he huffed.
"I'm not a zoo animal."
"Sorry," I said with a cheeky grin.
"Semisemi!"
Both of us turned to see Tendou racing down the street toward us, Ushijima not too far behind.
"You actually did it!" Tendou exclaimed, as if he couldn't believe it. He all but grabbed Semi's hair. Unlike what he had done with me, Semi didn't protest. He only rolled his eyes. "Damn, it looks good on you."
"It does," Ushijima agreed. "You should keep it like that." His brows raised ever so slightly. "It makes you look more intimidating, actually."
"Oh, that reminds me!" Tendou snapped his fingers.
"What is it?" I asked, only to be completely ignored by the Guess Monster. That was what people were calling him now, ever since Shiratorizawa won the nationals last year. It was strange; the way that he had embraced the moniker when just a few years ago, calling him a monster was a taboo perfect for the suicidal.
"I got a part time job," Tendou elaborated, speaking only to Semi and Ushijima. "At the local convenience store. You guys should drop by sometime—I'll give you free stuff when my boss isn't looking, heh."
Semi and Ushijima took their teammate up on his offer, and I went along. Whenever I went with them, Tendou always handed out free stuff. But when I went alone while Tendou was on his shift, I would be charged.
It was such a minute thing, yet it stung painfully.
A few days later, Ushijima had his place secured in the world of professional volleyball. Semi, Tendou, and a few of their teammates treated him to yakiniku.
I wasn't invited. In fact, I wouldn't have even known had my father not gotten a promotion at work and treated my mother and I to barbecued meat at the same restaurant.
Their table had been near the back, while ours was in the middle of the room. My parents had their backs facing the rowdy bunch, while I was seated across from them, allowing me a full view of Tendou's red head.
When they all clinked their glasses together and cheered, my hand twitched around my glass of orange soda.
"Something wrong, dear?" my mother asked.
I shook my head. "Nothing, okaa-san."
Our form was cleaning up the school, and I was headed to the incinerator when I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke and stiffened. I peered around the back of the building with my bag of trash in tow.
My heart dropped to my stomach when I saw Tendou smoking with his friends—the ones who had started the rumors—and laughing at inappropriate jokes.
Stop that, I wanted to tell Tendou, a list of diseases and cancers connected to smoking running through my mind. Don't you know how terrible that is?
But I held my tongue.
I had no place telling Tendou what he could or could not do. So I turned around, leaving the boys to smoke their lives away and be none the wiser of my presence.
"My boss is such a jackass!" Tendou complained to Semi a few weeks later. I just so happened to be standing right next to him when Tendou appeared and started to rant vehemently. "How could he fire me?! Why would he go through security footage, anyway?!"
They were stupid questions, but answering them would get me into nothing but trouble.
"Idiot," Semi sighed. "I told you you should've been more careful. If it helps, I just secured a job at the fast food joint next to your house. Come over sometime if you want free food."
"Have I ever told you that you're the best?"
Fast food joint? I was confused. Semi had mentioned no such thing to me.
Maybe he'd just forgotten.
So I cleared my throat. "Fast food joint, Semi?"
They froze, as if they'd just noticed I was there. My eye twitched.
"You know," Tendou said before Semi could answer. "You're the only one who doesn't have a job or a direction in life." He turned away. "Man, how pathetic..."
"I'm doing better than all of you," I retorted sharply. I was fed up with Tendou and his hostile attitude toward me for an offence that I still didn't know the details of.
"What do grades mean, at the end of the day?" Tendou sniped, crossing his lean, but muscular arms across his chest and looking down on me. "You can't be book-smart all your life, Kyou-chan. You know what your problem is? That you can't see opportunities that are right in front of your face. Maybe if you finally took your nose out of your math textbook, you wouldn't be so blind to everything."
With that, he led Semi away.
Our third year was just beginning when I was called to the career counselor's office. The careers officer told me how I was doing better than all of my peers, and that my academic scores had beaten records.
I knew I should have been happy at what she offered next.
"A scholarship to study at a prestigious school in London..." I tuned her voice out after that, and numbly took the paper she offered me before leaving the office. It was only after I was standing outside in the corridor that I read what the program entailed.
It was perfect.
I was going to take it.
"Yo, Kyou-chan." I looked up to see Semi walk past me with a female friend by his side. He was quickly gone.
My resolve wavered.
But then it strengthened with a force that nearly knocked me off my feet.
Clutching the paper in one hand, I went after Semi, my shoes clicking against the tiles. He turned just in time for me to throw my arms around his form, ignoring the yelps of his female companion.
"Kyou-chan?" he said, uncertainty in his voice.
I pulled back from him, my eyes hard. "Semi. Thank you." I was walking away when he called after me.
"For what?"
I halted before turning back. "For showing me the way." Before he could ask me to elaborate, I was gone and signing my name onto the paper on my desk at home. I handed it in to the career's counselor the next day. She smiled at me, praising me for making the smart decision.
Semi and I no longer walked home together after school, but I was okay with that. I thought we were going to grow up together and spend the rest of our lives together as well. But they all grew up first, and I was left in the dust.
It was time for me to grow up, too.
Midway through the year, the results for those accepted into the scholarship program were posted on the announcement board.
It was Tendou who approached me first. "London?"
"Yes," I said without hesitation. "You were right, Tendou-san. It's time for me to start taking opportunities that are presented to me. I can't sit around any longer and let my future drift away. Thank you for showing the way. You and Semi, both."
The slack-jawed expression he had on his face was worth every second I had suffered in our broken friendship.
"You can't go!" he protested hotly when he recovered. "Look, I know we're not friends, but what about Semi? You'd be leaving him behind."
I tilted my head to the side, something oily and vindictive coating my heart. "Oh? You mean like how he left me behind? For you?" I chuckled mirthlessly. "You know, Tendou-san, I still to this day have no idea what I did to wrong you. But whatever it was, I'm still sorry. But I don't think I want to be friends with you anymore." I paused before adding, "You weren't a monster. I don't know what I did to give you the impression that I thought you were one."
Weren't.
He noticed the past tense, too, and at least had the decency to look ashamed.
Perhaps he wasn't beyond redemption.
When Semi found out, he walked to my house in the middle of the night and threw pebbles against my bedroom window until I finally went out to the balcony to greet him. Just like we used to do when we were kids.
"What is it?" I said shortly.
He didn't answer immediately. I was about to say something even more cutting when Semi finally spoke, shaking his head, "Nothing. Just that I..." He cleared his throat. "Nothing. Good luck. I know you'll do well. You deserve it."
He was gone before I shut my curtains.
For the first time in a long time, I cried.
Well, Tendou was right about one thing, I think as I drop my keys on the kitchen table. Reading really is bad for your eyes, especially when you read lying down. Unfortunately, I was one of those people. Glasses have never really suited me, so I wear contacts instead.
I take my blazer off and hang it on the chair so that I am unhindered by cuffed sleeves as I open my mail. I already know what's inside, because I've received many of these over the years.
An invitation to a high school reunion. It's something that famous alumni (Ushijima) organize, and only a select few are invited, which is strange why I've always received one.
I've never gone. Is there even a point to going? I'm a busy woman.
But tonight, my schedule is free. Tonight is the night of the reunion. I really should have collected my mail earlier. Then I could have planned something that would overlap with the gathering.
I snort to myself.
Why the hell not? It might give them a scare. I'm pretty sure that think I'm dead to the world, anyway.
The restaurant is loud, and coincidentally the same yakiniku place that Semi and Tendou had brought Ushijima to during our second year. I'm led to a private room by the staff, and there's about ten people there.
Most of them, I don't recognize.
However...
Semi stares at me through a crowd of men and women. He pushes past them until he's finally standing before me. I can't help but quirk my lips. Ten years and the guy still towers above me. I really shouldn't have expected anything different.
"Before you ask," I say. "No, this isn't the bus to Shiratorizawa, and you're drunk off your face."
He's not. He's sober as, well, someone sober, but it brings me some amusement to poke fun at him.
Semi's smile is crooked. "Do you miss London?"
I blink. A decade, and that's the first thing he says to me? Typical. "No," I tell him. "My heart has always belonged to Miyagi."
"I'm glad," he says, visibly relieved. "Tanaka-san."
"Kyou-chan."
He blinks slowly.
"My name is Tanaka Kyou," I enunciate slowly, my heart pounding as I point to myself.
I'm expecting his response to be a raised eyebrow or a deadpan "I know" but he surprises me further when he holds out his hand. "I'm Semi Eita."
I stare at his calloused fingers before shaking his hand.
"Nice to meet you... Kyou-chan."
"The pleasure's mutual, Semi."
Our voices are unsure. We don't know what to do, that's for sure. But we're not teenagers struggling to find our place in the world anymore. We haven't been those people for a long, long time.
Maybe things can work out this time around.
And when Semi smiles lopsidedly, I know that he seems to think so as well.
A/N: I was in Chinese and reading through the textbooks with Dawei and LanLan when their story of growing up inspired me. So I decided to share this story of growing up as well. Because, well, why not? P.S. Some things have been changed, like how Wakatoshi didn't go to Shiratorizawa Junior High. Why? Because Tanaka Kyou existed and she took the final spot in the entrance exams, beating him by a mark.
Also, yes, I'm aware that I switch from past tense to present tense. This is because Kyou is telling the story. In first person, at that. I literally never write first person *shudder*.
I tried to make this seem realistic. Hopefully, it worked, idk. R&R?