Sunflower seeds.

Of the one flower that always blooms too early.

- • -

Headphone does not own.

- • -

Shinjiro was always there for me.

He was always there, even when I never wanted him, even when no one wanted him. He stayed in the shadows, ignoring the obvious taunts that would drift his way. "Shinjiro, you need to shape up!" The foster parent would say loud enough for everyone to hear, even though her talk was what you would call 'privately open'. She was a nice old coot, and when dealing with so many kids that had no idea what was going on, it was amazing she still had a full head of hair.

Of course, I didn't think this as a child, no, no, no, I would never have dared to veer off into the mysterious wonders of fiction and rebel. I would never have even hoped for such magnificent things to have been even depicted into such a simple thing as life. I had Miki and Shinjiro, and it was a perfect match, the three of us. But then Miki went away forever, and then I had my perfect puzzle-piece.

He always had a smug grin on his face when I was around. And I found out through what some would depict as 'stalking', that I was the only would he would show that to. I wanted him to learn he was so to say my puzzle-piece, but I never dared say that to him in which to seem creepy or out of place. But through late studies I had learned that I was so to say 'special' to him, though I was terribly dense, and no matter how many smacks I got to my head, there was no getting past my density.

I would get a daily smack, I believe if I remember correctly. Sometimes it was a small tap with a connection of knuckles, as so to say a victory of some sort, but in some cases, those knuckles would square me in the jaw and send me to the floor seeing stars.

Sadly this was a day of stars.

If I remember anything clearly enough, I remember being in gym, about a month into school at Gekkoukan high, the whole school admiring my promising display in the boxing tournaments. No one dared to wonder why I had my ties to Shinji, all they knew was that I was glue to his arm like…well, glue, and there was nothing to bring us apart, or even closer however.

I thought that naively, stepping out of P.E. for a moment to calm my rapid heart and constant chatters in my head. Sweat pulsated down my forehead, and my only straight instinct that I could clearly distinguish at this point of exhaustion was to rub the pearly beads from my pale face. Either I hadn't noticed him standing there previously due to my strained eyesight, or he was a quick mover that sought out perfect opportunities to scare the living hell out of me.

"Whoa!" I squeaked out as dignified as I could muster, trying to cover my shock with a stern expression that I obviously had also mingled with some sort of scrambled smile, as Shinji spared me one of his hastily extincting smiles. The subtle, disapproving shake from his hair told me with little effort to stand up straight, and I tried to gain my composure back, only to scramble up what was left in a terrible misfire. "Geez, Shinji, I thought I told you to stop doing that."

"Thought it was a perfect time." He answered with a voice that was scary enough to intimidate even the sternest of adults, though I knew that from the uplift at the end of his sentence, that he was in one of his casual and very well, rare, good moods. I found this as a perfect opportunity to bring up small talk he would only talk about on such an uncommon occasion where not a single thing in his day had sent him off into another flailing of insults.

"Well, now that you got your jollies out, I was wondering something." Shinji and I joked and jostled about how I would one of these days fry my brain from these sort of antics, but I paid his smart-ass comment this time with no heed, and continued on with only a hint of annoyance. "Were you there last week for the try outs of the boxing teem to see me? I didn't see you." I almost wanted to punch him a little bit to lighten up the girly atmosphere that I was emitting at a hundred miles and hour, but I realized quickly in my train of thought that bumbling around would never be the best of things when it came to such a lug.

"Yeah, remember, I picked you up after it was over." He patted my head, squirming me affectionately into what would look anything like dangerous. A headlock from the unfriendly thug would be anything but lethal in anyone else's case, but in mine, it was a general occurrence that would happen only in his best of moods.

I never realized that I would ever think to do this, but I fought back, trying to stay as light hearted as possible. I lightly poked and prodded, hearing him yelp when I would hit a ticklish spot. This went on for about a minute, maybe even less, but then I got a little more violent in said tickling, and he, as yin is to yang, got just as equal. And as one thing leads to another the fighting had eventually gotten into a bit more like what you would call as 'training'. It wasn't violent enough to send people to the emergency room, and we never hit vital points, but this, this had escalated, and now, there was kicking and I would never want this to ever happen to us. I used my leg to block a not-so-subtle punch. Never would I have thought of using my dire need to vent my anger on him. I never wanted to use my fists to inflict any sort of serious damage.

But with one singular punch, I sent him into the wall, his own fists the only thing supporting him up at this point.

"What the hell is your problem, today?" He snarled, and I didn't want to answer, I couldn't. I couldn't mingle plausible thoughts, and due to previous fatigue, I was feeling even wearier then before and I could have sworn I was seeing three of a slightly crouched Shinji. Seeing him shift upwards, I noticed that he was soon pacing over to me, a clearly visible glare on his face, and I knew that there was no way of getting out this spur-of-the-moment fight. I had somehow or another managed to trip over my feet and fallen to the ground, finding myself in one of the most lethal positions anyone could ever find themselves in.

"I-I don't know." I muttered out in response to his question, finding that no matter what I did, it would hopelessly end in failure, as the more I tried to crawl away from the ticking time bomb, the more I got cornered. Hitting the wall, I tried to slide up it without any sort of withdrawal from Shinji, but obviously he wasn't letting up on his grudge over being sucker punch by me.

"Well you better start knowing, and you'd better figure it out before you get back to the dorm," He said with as much spite as possibly could be held in a single man's voice, and by the way he had perched himself over to get up in my personal space, if he hadn't been the one go-to guy in school for possible ways to torture someone in seven days, anyone could have come up and broken up this 'make out feast' as one would assume from us. "Because I am not going to deal with this shit." And all I could do was nod like the idiot I was, my face obviously a look between amazement and absolute horror mixed with a pungent look of macabre.

And with that, he got up, walking away like nothing happened. All of my being was yelling to him saying anything it could, but as of that current moment, the lump forming in my throat was much more than I could have liked. It was like someone had taken a pair of scissors, this person namely being the lanky brunette that had just previously walked away from the discarded pile of limbs that could have other then be dubbed me, and just snapped my vocal chord like a power-strip.

He walked away and I remembering dubbing this day as 'D-day', as I would soon figure out as to how at exactly 11 minutes after midnight and 49 minutes before the next day.

- • -

Waking up in the middle of the night by a tall figure that you can hardly recognize is one way of walking up that I won't soon forget. I remember it as clearly as the fire on what I had first set as D-day. But, this, however was the scariest thing I ever remember seeing in my life. The figure stood approximately 5'0'' short and was anything but friendly. They sat on me as a way of awakening, screaming stuff like proclamations of the end of the world. I honestly thought it was part of my dream, and easily lifted my fist up and decked them square in the jaw. Though I was half-asleep and I most likely had gotten a miss fire and ended up only tapping them or missing the figure and hitting their, per say, hair or face.

But then I noticed the green hue coming in from outside. And then I recognized the hair that I had grown up with to be brown, and then above all, I noticed a distressed face that was anything but calm, and somehow, I had registered this all up to one thing. 'The end of the world, and Shinji is the messenger of it. Who would have not guessed? I mean, he was always wearing black like a mourner, and he was always stiff around everyone.' And then that thought was sent down into the rabbit hole and I ended up with ivory soap suds and how Shinji would, as a child, try to squirt me in the eye with a water-gun.

"Shinji, why are you on top?"

And then there was silence. And though I was half-asleep and not thinking straight, I had known well-enough what I had just said, but found it to be entirely appropriate, as I soon found myself pulling the brunette into the inner part of my bed by ways of his wrist.

"Aki, if you don't stop," He warned, trying to seem as intimidating as possible, but in the end, he knew that my state of mind was anything was comprehending and decided to let it go until morning until I was truly up to arguing with a state of authority that the thug and I had come to know as the devil AKA Mitsuru Kirijo. This little empress was no force to be reckoned with, and was by any doubt, that scariest little girl in the world. She stomped around the dorm, snapping at Akihiko about any relations about how she had found the brown-haired teen to be in the only other occupied room that did not belong to the women, or his own. This was a problem, in her rule-book, but Akihiko paid it little to no heed and continued on with his so called 'scandalous' acts. "You know Mitsuru will find out. And you know what will happen if that happens."

I grumbled wearily, not so much as listening, as to say as far as caring. I drifted in and out of consciousness, not making any sense as to why the half-full moon outside was a color that would be depicted from ancient texts about Armageddon, and continued to snuggle with my own little end-of-the-world-surprise. "Shinjiii, you know I still love you, though." I was normally never this upfront with him, and I never realized I would only say those few words to him about ten more times in his life. At some point or another, I had successfully pulled him down next to me, and was currently snaking my hands around his waist. I felt his uncanny squirms and squiggles, but I held tightly and had pulled my head up to his chest to hear his beating chest.

"Aki, please stop this, you know it'll end badly—" Shinji had finished what he had needed to say, but the hitch at the end of his voice made it sound like it was being cut off by some sort of something. I could hear his chest beating faster and faster as I more eagerly continued to snake my hands to even lower depths. By this point in my dreary day, I was at a state where my stomach felt raw and my entire body felt too tired to sleep. It was like adrenaline had come into over-load, but it was in such a composed fashion that I hadn't even noticed it when it entered my system.

Now feeling the rimming of sagged below his hips pants, and what was most likely a pair of maroon plaid boxers, I had decided almost officially in my subconciousness that 'sleep' was no longer a part of the menu. The brunette squirmed under my almost angelically light touch, as I presumed from his after-math dwellings, and I could feel a little pump hit my lower regions of his flesh. My left thumb looped it's way into his pants, tugging on the fabric as lightly as could be, yet with enough force to actually remove of the article, which had yet to be successfully done.

Simultaneously, I had taken this opportunity to nip lightly on him, receiving little mumbles from him with what seemed to be the most out of character squeal that was girly enough to be screeched from a big-breasted blond. This, however, did little to stop me, and if anything, it encouraged me to continue on with my business to 'ruin' him, as he so habitually put after I would have my ways.

"Aki," He panted out, obviously being affected by my lewd acts upon him. I didn't much care to stop, and continued, only whispering a 'hmm' towards him to show him that I still knew he was still human and not just another entity within my being. He squirmed more and more, trying to remove my hands, and at some given time, I had given up and spared him a glance from my eyes, only to notice pearly tears bawling up in his. I almost instantly was feeling a pang of lament, and almost an armful of distaste in my mouth where I had once held small inches of skin upon his neck. "Aki, s, just stop it."

He was out of character, and I believed for a second that he was Juliet. Though that was only one dress-less yet redeemed nightmare out of very many yet to come.

- • -

The night of October, 4, 2008, was one of the bloodiest to be seen. Our mission directly from the queen-bee herself was 'Get in, kill the shadow, get out, and avoid accidents.' This however, seemed as inevitable as fate itself. The irony in it all was that if anything died, it was everything but the raging beast we had claimed to be known as a shadow. It veered and turned, and everyone had somehow foreshadowed something to go wrong. The feeling in my gut told me to get out, and to take my life with it, but my brain persisted, and now it's almost like I couldn't have ever fought against the fact of life.

It happened to fall on a night of serenity, on a night of pure and utter bliss, the blood seeping from the floor adding the perfect effect to what I would have imagined as a picnic in the park. "Let's get this over with." I slowly chattered to myself, the cold winds of fall slowly making their turn-up throughout the days, showing up slowly, then sternly. The red-head next to me nodded slowly, her eyes fixed ahead, and I couldn't help but feel like the once-friendly feeling that the princess had held for me was a now well-drained memory. I incased my arms around myself, and I felt as though the taller male to my right should have been the one to fill this role in naturally.

'No,' I thought sternly to myself, feeling the self-restriction fill it's place in naturally. 'I'm not going to risk it anymore then I have.' There was no way of knowing whether I was actually right in the head, or if I was a loony-bird in the making, but either way I was achieving such a title slowly.

"So," I drawl out slowly, making little to no hints of solace in my voice, and trying to keep it as level as possible for one with such a drawn-out heart. "Where exactly is this 'terrifying beast'." Trying to keep things light-hearted was one of the most difficult things to do when the current situation you were in involved shooting yourself in the head in order to rid an island of creepy, crawling, mask-wearing, night fends. I could feel the snacks I neglected to eat before leaving churn around in my stomach, and with just a pinch of dignity, sucked it up and decided to ignore this tedious little fact that lowered my performance.

"Don't laugh, Aragaki. It's not funny." Mitsuru was the first to point out the rude chuckling from the lug that anyone who hadn't known how rare it was, would have described as a sound that could have been misinterpreted as a pig squealing all the while some super-villain laughed manically from a mountain top, only faintly being heard over the swine's abrupt wails. Faintly I hinted a smile, showing the disappearing grin only in the direction of said 'Aragaki', who in return, gave me a toothy grin, his eyes squinting to make it appear as a smirk, but I knew from past experience, that it would have been labeled anything but that.

A wail emitted from the center of the shopping district, and with evoker in my right hand, and a dutiful pair of gloves resting on both, I set off often the other two with a swift speed to match theirs. My heart beat faster and faster with every step, and with every pulse my mind told me again and again to halt and return, as something terribly wrong was going to happen.

It was only later that night when that so predicted horrible fate was emitted onto us, and thus came responsibility, and after that, the never-sought social status of 'murderer's. And it was only after that, that Shinjiro had stopped always being there for me, and had now relented his visits to my room to once every other month. Though, I knew this only as the beginning of the end, and I, in some distant and obviously unimportant part of my tired body, had felt that I was just hurting myself in the end.

- • -

A year later from that day, and I was holding that brunette's head in my lap. His face looked almost too serene to belong to himself, and I almost wanted to punch him, wake him up, do anything in the whole fucking world just to wipe that stupid smile from his face. I had removed his common beanie, and I had removed any part of my being that had belonged to myself.

Shooting myself, I thought as sincerely as I could without trying to bring water works up in the same process, would have been more efficient then watching the brunette suffer as the one with the lead in his chest. Hearing rapid breathing, and from all around me, white noise, I felt as though there was a part of me that was unkempt, like there was a part of me that was determined on his reality. There was some part in my chest that ached and there was yet another chunk that was so sick of seeing that stupid grin on his face that it was almost sickening.

"Don't look so sad, Aki." He whispered, and I wanted him to save his breath. Hearing him was all that mattered, though, I told myself, and I tried to block out all of the white noise in the background with as much effort as I could, and a raging, bubbling, maddening burst in my stomach wanted to over-flow and yell at the top of my lungs, 'Leave me alone', or 'Stop it.' But I knew all too well that those small little sectors of my stomach and gut, and every other part of my body that had over-run my common sense at this point, that saying such hateful words would be like falling back three spaces into the space that was so constantly consumed. "At least now you don't have to see me grow up into a failure."

This threw me over the edge. I let out a cry, I let the colorless tears fall down my cheeks, I let everyone stare at me as if I had gone mad, and I let the world know in some way or form that I had witnessed my best-friend grow into a beautiful butterfly. And now, my mind told me, I was to let this insect go, and I was to let it be with every other one of its kind.

"Shinji, never leave me, ever." I was, as literally as I could have been, raining onto Shinji, and he, being as calm and out of character in this situation as I would have always expected him to be, just let it fall, taking no offense. I wanted to wipe the smile on his face, but even as I could almost faintly hear the cliché piano music in the background, his peaceful smile never faltered. Never in my life would I have expected ever wanting him to go back to being an asshole, and being rude and incompetent, but now was my moment of trial. And I suppose if the world was my judge, they would be the most commandeering arbitrator in the whole island, and I would have loved to walk out, to wake up.

"I never will." But I suppose Shinjiro was the first rose to bloom of us, and the first one to wilt gloriously as well.

And with that single last word, he passed away into the depths of the shadows and I let his wings sprout without a word. And I knew with some odd realization at that exact moment that Shinjiro would always be there for me, even if he wasn't there in person.

The end.

- • -

Dedicated to my sister, who was craving some AkiShinji.