Haha, yup, another abrupt chapter... My lie in April was that you guys were getting longer chapters. April fools. Sorry.

Just kidding. I was just thinking this chapter and the next would flow better if I cut it off now. And also, having such short chapters makes it easier for me to write. They'll come faster this way.

Thanks for continued support everyone!

Run, Kosei!

Kaori abruptly ended her lesson with the doctor with a startled outcry after asking for the time, almost falling flat on her bottom in shock. Dread filled her chest like thick, freezing concrete, making her heart thunder uncomfortably in her chest.

All she could think about was the letter, the letter, the letter.

The second she was levered into her wheelchair, she carted out of the door and zoomed as much as a wheelchair could zoom toward her room, anxiety burning her throat and building pressure behind her eyes.

She was at her room within seconds, breathing harshly, arms trembling. With a loud, thick swallow, she dug her fingers into the slit in the door, threw it aside, and wheeled jarringly over the threshold.

Kaori breathed a massive sighed of relief to find Kosei standing at her windowsill, silently admiring a breeze that filed tentatively into the room and shifted through his midnight black hair, making it writhe like a restless black sea, cloudy blue eyes closed in a peaceful rendition of early spring. Kaori found herself staring unabashedly at Kosei's becoming visage, blushing splendidly as he turned to find her quietly approaching him.

"The weather is saying something, isn't it?" She had to cover up the inexplicable flush coloring her cheeks.

Kosei smiled that serene, soft smile of his, and she nearly melted into a pile of mush right there in her wheelchair.

"'New things are coming, whether you want them to or not,' right?"

Kaori glanced up at Kosei in surprise, a contagious grin lighting up her features.

"How did you know?"

He mysteriously averted his eyes, Adam's apple bobbing. Kaori's grin faltered for a second before her attention was absorbed by garbled chatter in the hallway, followed by two heads popping from behind the entrance.

"Kaori-chan!" Tsubaki and Watari sang in unison, brown eyes gleaming at the smiling violinist. She waved them over in turn as Kosei faced them, adjusting his glasses.

"Kosei, you should be practicing," Tsubaki growled, stalking toward Kosei with a cocked fist. Kaori giggled, looking to Kosei in amusement and expecting the deer-in-the-lights reaction he usually exhibited, but instead gave a decided nod and apologetic smile that she could tell just wasn't quite genuine.

"You're right." He responded in quick resignation instead of his originally defensive flare. The brunette paused in surprise, blinking. He turned to Kaori, offering her a quick, "I'll see you later," before slipping past his flocking friends and exiting the room.

She should've recognized the nervous titter of his eyes, the inscrutable rosy hue in the apple of his cheeks, the way his breath shuddered when she pulled up to a stop next to him. The clumsy re-sealing of her lie, open, spilling and threading it's putrid contents into the air.

Kosei's heart was beating against his chest like it wanted to get out when he heard Kaori's grunts reverberating like a maddening descent to Hell as he hurriedly stamped that stupid black cat sticker down with jarring force to his innocent thumb, thrust it back in place, and jumped up to feign admiration of the spring festivities dancing in the air around him and out of the window. He busied himself by watching children frolic and laugh merrily while chasing cherry blossom petals, their boisterous laughter taking away some of Kosei's trepidation. He shut his eyelids over quaking pupils, praying that his jittery adrenaline would melt away into stoic indifference.

Kaori seemed embarrassed at her abrupt entry, stealing away at his side with a sheepish smile before turning her eyes to the splendors of an alternating season, its whims scenting the air.

The receded palpitations of his heart did a mighty restart when her plush pink lips parted with a whimsical sigh. His mind was discombobulated and filled with uncertainty, muscles taut, ready to launch a fight-or-flight response on que of Kaori's anticipated derision.

"The weather is saying something, isn't it?"

He took a massive inwardly sigh, and his frame deflated from it's rigid posture. She didn't know. Not yet.

Kosei stole a sidelong glance before casting his sight upon the myriad of color and life blossoming from every crevice of land, jeering at the dead leaves fluttering away into storm drains and gutters until the only thing left was the vibrance of spring rid completely of a forgotten winter. He decided to respond to her ruminative muse for once, humoring the ignorance that sated his deadly turmoil.

Instead of reflecting on the livelihood of the contouring pastures of the weather itself, Kosei compared it to the shifting gears connecting Kaori's letter to his situation, how it completely changed it, how it brought forth an entirely new wave of overwhelming feelings and desires.

"'New things are coming, whether you want them to or not,' right?" He prayed the wobbly smile spreading his lips appeared somewhat natural.

Her question was supposedly rhetorical, for shimmering blonde hair tumbled around Kaori's face as she angled her eyes up at him in surprise.

"How did you know?"

His breath caught at her unguarded, imploring silver eyes. Her smile was radiant and blinded his good sense, and he stared at her for several dumbfounded seconds. Retaining some self-consciousness, Kosei turned away from resplendent light that was the girl he loved, swallowing down the emotion threatening to drown him in a suffocating, intoxicating sea.

He had to leave. Somehow, he had to escape the eagerness reeling him in, the innocent vulnerability, the confirmation he didn't know he needed drawing out something illicit in him.

"Kaori-chan!"

Kosei gave silent hallelujahs as his gravely needed distraction came in the form of his two best friends, who bounded avidly into the bright room. Tsubaki took several threatening steps forward, claiming he should be practicing piano at that very moment, a fist poised for the rims of his thick black glasses.

He took advantage of their oddly flipped situation, threw Miyazono a quick goodbye, and shuffled past the stunned pair of brunettes. Kosei walked quickly down the hallways, breathing already picking up speed. The blush he had somehow forced down in that room exploded in his face and trickled down his neck until his entire body was alight with a feverish glow, in which a nurse stepped forward worriedly and asked of his health.

Kosei gave her a shaky response and burst out of the hospital doors, and

ran.