Title: The Sun and the Sea

Characters: Dia, Kanan, Mari

Words: 1740

I have watched these two for most of my life. I have watched how much they cared for one another, and how their feelings have missed and collided and, only at the rarest of times, truly come together.

Kanan Matsuura is a girl who is impossible not to be friends with. She knows nearly everyone in Uchiura. I became acquainted with her in elementary school, and got to know her brilliant smile firsthand. On a perfectly ordinary day, she approached me and told me how pretty she thought my eyes were. She'd told me of her friends, Chika and You, who were still in kindergarten at the time. I'd always been considered to be one of the bossier girls that the boys tended to avoid outright, as well as most of the girls, and having someone come up and talk to me out of the blue had been rather surprising. I had never really known what it was like to have a normal, down-to-earth friend like her. It had been as refreshing a feeling as plunging into the sea and coming back up for air, realizing that all the fuss and formality of my life was worlds away from what I had with her.

And then Mari Ohara came into our lives, and Kanan became brighter than I had ever seen her before. From the moment they met, Kanan's smile changed, until, one day, it became replaced only with sadness. Mari Ohara is a girl who is impossible not to be drawn to, and you never know what may happen when you come too close. The evening after Mari's first day of school, Kanan had jogged all the way over to my house with a flashlight tucked into the pocket of her overalls.

When I'd opened the front door, confused, she'd beckoned for me to follow her. "I found out where she lives! She's at the top floor of that huge hotel across the bay!"

Nonplussed, I had followed her. It had been Kanan, after all, and her very presence had assured me that it would be all right, no matter what happened. Naturally, we had never been to the Ohara family's hotel, and we'd gotten lost several times along the way, but by sunset, we had eventually stumbled upon the only dock in Uchiura with its own helicopter pad. It had to belong to the hotel. Looking up at the grand building before us, I'd realized that I wasn't the only one with a beyond-luxurious life.

"What should we do now?" I'd asked her. We'd been standing on an immense lawn overlooking the water. This had been a little too much for me; after all, my parents had taught me how rude it was to trespass on other people's property, so I had run away from Kanan to hide behind a sculpted fountain. She'd joined me behind the fountain, glancing around to make sure nobody else was there.

She'd answered, "I guess she isn't around," with a rueful sigh.

I admit, I had begun to panic a little by then. "If-If they find us, we'll be in trouble!" I'd exclaimed to her.

Kanan had, as usual, tried to calm me down. "Don't worry!" But, not a moment too soon, a familiar blonde had stepped out from the other side of the fountain, terrifying me out of my wits.

"Who are you?" Mari had asked us as Kanan looked a little abashed at being so easily discovered.

But then Kanan had found a solution, just as she had with me. She'd simply offered Mari a hug. Mari, like me, hadn't accepted it at first, and had asked Kanan who she was again. So Kanan had had to introduce both of us to her and explain that we were in her new class. I hadn't been able to say much to her, but Kanan had talked for me, and it had been okay. And Kanan had done most of the talking that day, telling Mari all about Uchiura and school and the shop her family ran and how amazing it was to move here and see things as brand-new.

Slowly, Mari had come to open up to Kanan. She'd told us a bit about where she used to live in Italy, and how she was being taught both Italian and English so she could someday go abroad again. She'd told us she'd been to Japan before, but only for short visits. Kanan had vowed that it would be up to the two of us to educate her about Japan. The whole time Kanan had been chatting with Mari, I'd noticed how cheerful she'd become, and Mari couldn't help but smile back at her every time Kanan did.

When it got dark and Mari had gone back home, Kanan had stayed on the dock to make sure she got back safely. As soon as she'd spotted Mari's blond head on a high-up balcony, she'd switched on her flashlight and waved to her enthusiastically. Even from there, we'd been able to see Mari grinning back at us.

From then on, we'd always met Mari at the hotel to play with her, and Kanan had always waved her goodbye with her flashlight. We became an inseparable group at school as well, and our elementary school days had passed by in this manner, the three of us closer than anyone else we knew. When I first became enamored with school idols, they had accepted it readily, knowing that it was just another part of Dia Kurosawa. And, before long, we had become school idols ourselves, with Kanan just as passionately advocating it. For that short amount of time, we were happier than we had ever been. Mari even became passionate enough to keep up with us as well.

That was when it happened. The day I regret the most, the day I couldn't overcome my tendency to watch and do nothing more. I had seen that Mari had been injured, but, saying nothing, had left it up to Kanan, who had always been there to guide us before, and her drastic action meant that things had begun to fall apart. We were no longer the three young girls racing around the grounds of the Ohara family's hotel. We had started to grow up.

When Kanan had decided to quit, I had left it up to her as well, knowing that with Mari gone, there would no longer be a point in continuing. Privately, Kanan had nearly begged me to agree with her and disband our group. I knew why. I was the only one who had noticed, after all, how devoted Kanan had been to Mari, her shining sun. Even Kanan herself hadn't known the extent to which she'd cared for her. She'd held back so much for Mari's sake. But Mari had cared for her too, and after what Kanan had done at the Tokyo performance, she'd wanted to stay close to her and try her hardest on a new stage. That was why, brokenhearted, she hadn't had anything left when Kanan pushed her away.

The day Mari left Ucihura, the summer of our first year in high school, I was the one running around town to try to find Kanan to say goodbye, carrying a flashlight as I went. I finally found her at the beach, sitting in the sand with her knees tucked to her chin, looking out at the distance.

"Hurry up, Kanan," I had urged. "She'll be leaving soon."

She hadn't said anything, but I felt how upset she was. It took me ten minutes to convince her to get up and walk over to the hotel with me, to bid Mari farewell. Kanan had been grappling with something deep within herself, torn between what was best for Mari, what would make her shine brighter, and her own strong connection to the third member of our group. On the helicopter pad, Kanan had taken the flashlight I'd offered her and held it aloft, and I'd known that she was committed to seeing this through, to burying her old feelings and learning to move on from someone she had once seen as her soul mate. She and I parted ways that evening, and I buried myself in schoolwork and student council work so that I could save Uranohoshi on my own. You saw how well that worked out, right?

Back then, I never thought I would revisit the world of school idols, for it was something I had cherished with the two who had walked out of my life indefinitely. Of course Kanan and I saw one another at school, but things were never the same. Without her sun, she was silent and lifeless. It was as though she had drowned in deep water, never quite managing to make it back to the surface again. But fate can be strange and surreal at times, and it brought Mari back to us, and beams of sunlight became a part of our lives. And Mari's light drove me to no longer be an observer, but an active participant in the story of my life. It was months ago, of course, before the nine of us came together, but I still remember the first day I rose to my feet and truly took action.

One day, I took a walk and found myself at the beach.

I thought, If I'm the only one who notices what goes on around me, then shouldn't it be best to recognize at least some of it? My past with two people I'd cared for deeply came back to me all of a sudden. I had never really let it go. If I had known back then that they would reconcile, as they had now done, would I have done what I did on the beach that day? Or had I done what I did because I knew that the three of us would be together once more?

I'd moved slowly so that the second-years in exercise clothes who were chatting and brainstorming different names for their idol group wouldn't see me, and as I watched them arguing playfully together, I remembered when Mari, Kanan, and I had been as innocent as they were. I decided that I would recognize them, the three I'd noticed for quite some time. I picked up a stick and began to write in the sand, the six letters that had changed everything.

Aquors.