Prologue
I've been in love with Sora Hikari since before I can remember. Not in the romantic sense of the word, but in the sense that I knew I couldn't live without him. He's been my best friend since we were little kids, and he's always been there for me. No matter what I did, he'd be there with a smile and a hand to pull me up off the ground. I knew, even when we were too small to really know, that what Sora and I had was special. Nothing could touch it, nothing would change it, through thick and thin we'd be there with each other.
I remember this stupid pact we made. We were ten years old, and I remember so clearly because that was the day my parents told me that, after fifteen years of marriage, they didn't love each other anymore. 'It's complicated,' they'd said. Anyway, Sora came and found me, crying my eyes out, and told me that we'd never do that. We'd never abandon each other. Suddenly, even though my life was being ripped apart, I knew Sora would be that one thing that kept me grounded. He smiled, with that lame grin that completely ignores everything awful in the world, and held out his pinkie-finger. That was the end of that, but I've never forgotten. It's stuff like that, random things you'd never expect, that made Sora my best friend.
I've thought about it so much, but I don't know when I started feeling something different for him. Maybe it was just a natural progression, I don't know. I know what the trigger was, though, what made me actually realize that I felt something different.
Kairi Nakamura transferred to our middle school about halfway through our eighth grade year. She came with her stylishly bobbed hair, and her big doe eyes, and her sweet smile, and suddenly she was all that Sora ever talked about. I don't think I've ever felt that jealous in my entire life, but I guess I just thought that she was taking my time with my best friend away. But then, after weeks of Sora complaining to me, he finally got up the courage to ask her out. She stole his first kiss, and I saw it. The way my heart felt when I did, like it had been ripped up and tossed away like so much trash, was something that I never wanted to feel again. If that was what love was, I didn't want anything to do with it.
We both started at Destiny Island High in September of that year. I joined the swim team, Sora joined the struggle team, and with Kairi leeching onto him whenever he was free, we spent less and less time together. I felt his absence like a burn in my stomach, always aching and it didn't help that I knew what I felt for him wasn't normal. He'd be disgusted with me, if he found out, and I figured that maybe the distance between us was for the best. Maybe I'd forget whatever the hell it was that ran through me every time I saw him.
Then, I'd see him again, and it would start all over.