It's alright.
Third year is stressful, but great as Ruby imagined it.
Aqours is gone, but it's fine. They left a mark, and it was one of the best decisions she has made.
Right now, she's normally going through her high school life, still thinking about idols but also considering taking up designs instead. Being an idol taught her a lot.
But it's not unnatural she'd think about all of them occasionally. Sometimes, however, the memories would ache her chest at the fact that she really misses them and wishes she could go back, but she'll manage. She has Hanamaru and Yoshiko by her side.
The breeze softly blew her face, the scent of the sea resonating back flashes of the first times and failures, the tears of joy and happiness when Aqours started when she was 15.
It's nice nostalgia, but Ruby felt as if nostalgia is too cruel.
This was where Aqours first happened, she thinks, standing at the same beach when there were still only three people in the group. It was the first miracle she had witnessed; a miracle she got to be part of.
It was also the first time Ruby saw someone so beautiful, and sometimes it took so many times for her to actually focus and not stare at her hopeless crush in Aqours.
She tried to hold it back, she really did, but instead her feelings for her worsened to the point she was too in love to look back. She couldn't do anything about it, but instead considered every interaction with her as a miracle itself.
Knowing who she was, it was such an unfortunate thing that Ruby was too shy to say anything, let alone do anything to make her one crush even realize something at all.
"She's really pretty, Maru!" she said, clasping her head between her hands.
Hanamaru only smiled and sighed sadly for her friend, she herself not knowing what to do, too.
"You should tell her, Ruby." she told her, not holding back. "And if she rejects you, well, at least you tried. Nothing will happen if you just let it go on like that."
Ruby appreciates what Hanamaru does for her, considering she was the one who pushed her to become a school idol in the first place.
But sometimes, there are just things someone can't do.
"I would say it's one of the few things I regret," she whispers to no one, letting the sea breeze sweep away her words.
And it's regret she hated feeling the most. She despised her such shy nature, thinking she was too weak to do anything before it was too late.
Even if being a school idol helped her overcome her fright, it seemed as if it did nothing to Ruby for her to say any sort of confession at all.
"She's going to graduate, Ruby." Hanamaru's eyes pierced with concern, doing everything to push Ruby and let her do what she needed to do the most.
"I know."
She did know that, and she thought about that graduation ever since Chika mentioned it a few months before it.
She tried to forget about the graduation ever since she started her second year, forgetting all about her feelings and the thought of goodbyes just so it wouldn't hurt, but it kept coming back and coming back until she had to accept that it was inevitable.
In the end, they left and Ruby swore never to bring her feelings up again.
Right now, the sea's breeze prickles her face and her eyes, as if the nature around her heard her troubles she always hopelessly whispers in the air.
She's going to move on from it. She's going to be alright. All she had to do was try to forget she ever had feelings in the first place.
"I'll try."
The waves splashed silently.
"Ruby?"
And just like that, her stomach sinks and she feels as if the floor could collapse anytime.
The same voice, the same familiar voice of the person she always thought of.
"Y-you?"
She sees her for the first time in months, and she's just as beautiful as she remembers.