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Title: Between the Lines
Theme: #2; news, letter
AN: This is all Kashu's fault. She reviewed "Void" asking for Mizuki's side of the story—how would she react to not getting much communication from Sano. So this can be officially considered a sorta kinda sequel to that story. Oh, and woohoo! Officially over a third of the way done with my 30 kisses.
Disclaimer: Not mine. All rights belong to Hisaya Nakajo and various and sundry other assorted corporations. No profit is being made, etc., etc.
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Mizuki got at least a postcard every week; usually, though, it was a letter, a lengthy one detailing all the goings on at Osaka. Who had gotten into what trouble, how the guys were doing in class, the latest sports results.
You wouldn't think it, but Nakatsu was an excellent letter writer.
It was a good thing too, because she devoured every inch of those handwritten pages, reading and re-reading news of her friends' lives. News of Sano.
After all, it wasn't like Sano wrote her himself. Or called. Or emailed. She'd gotten four letters from him in the six months since she'd left Osaka. FOUR. Along with two phone calls.
It was other things that gave her valuable information about him; things that spoke louder than his almost absent words.
The way "I miss you," in his last letter was smudged. As if he'd erased it and then re-wrote it again anyway. As if it had been a struggle to write even that, or to stop there. The grueling schedule Nakatsu all-unknowingly described to her.
It was also from Nakatsu that she learned that he didn't talk as much any more. In fact, he had been in danger of slipping into his old habit of keeping a slight distance from everyone around him. Nakatsu assured her that he and Sekime and Noe had refused to let him do so. Apparently, they made sure that he got dragged into whatever new scheme or mishap they were cooking up; despite the fact that all of them were studying for entrance exams, they still seemed to find time here and there to relax.
Mizuki worried about his silence. How could she not? She wrote to him anyway; long newsy letters much like the ones she got from Nakatsu. She wanted him to feel like she was still there with him somehow.
She still worried.
She worried that he wasn't doing well, that he was sad, that he wasn't getting along with his family, that he was sick—any one of a million possible scenarios that prevented him from wanting to talk to her.
What she never worried about was him forgetting about her. She never worried about him loving someone else. Mizuki couldn't quite even explain it to herself, other than she believed in Sano.
She supposed, in some sort of convolutedly logical way, that his silence meant he missed her too much--missed her beyond bearing. Missed her so much that sometimes it hurt to even think about it.
Missed her the way she missed him.