With a current-model laptop in front of him, Len sat on his new bed. The sheets were green and clean, smooth and cold. It'd been a few days since he moved in, but his room still smelled vaguely like cream pie and cleaning products.

He clicked around Amazon absently, searching for new school supplies or whatever. He really didn't think he needed anything, but his dad had come to him the other day, handed him a debit card and told him to do his school-slash-new house shopping. When Len politely tried to put the card back in his father's hand, the latter took it, dropped it on his son's bedside table, and left for work. So here Len was, alone in his dark room, filling his cart.

Len remembered going school shopping with his mother, the first time around. His old computer was too slow and annoying for online shopping, and Lola didn't quite trust the safety of online transactions, so they went to the local big box store. They didn't buy much. Only what was necessary, and what was cheapest.

But now, it was different. Len frowned at the screen. His father didn't give him a budget; the message between the lines was something like 'I trust you'. Len wasn't exactly aware of his parents' financial situation, but he knew his father had a good job, was on the verge of promotion, and didn't keep in contact with his mother since they moved.

He hadn't seen his mom in a couple of weeks. It was a strange, but almost liberating feeling; though he felt bad about feeling it. He wondered if she was doing alright. In the end, he'd convinced himself that things were better this way. She'd be better off not having to worry about feeding two mouths.

It was a new concept to him, not needing to worry about money. Before the divorce, Len's family hadn't really been poor, but like good parents, Leon and Lola didn't simply give him whatever he wanted. He had that ingrained sense of needing to save, never waste. But now…

You could buy anything on Amazon, couldn't you?

Was this what it felt like to be an adult?!

Not like he was purposely buying expensive things. In fact, looking at his cart, all of his purchases were things he hadn't realized he needed. Things to make lunch, since his mom wasn't there to make it for him anymore. Tape and scissors. Shampoo.

Suddenly, Len remembered something else he needed. Or wanted, rather. He typed it into the search bar and inhaled as he took in pictures of sleek, expensive headphones.

He was one of those annoying music elitists (as his friends called him), but he'd always been limited to crappy dollar-store earbuds that broke if you so much tugged at the wire. He used to steal his friends' good headphones all the time, but now, he didn't have to. With a twinge of satisfaction, he put one of the red, medium-priced sets into his cart.

Len's only request for their new house was that it be within reasonable distance of Harinoyama High School. Leon didn't want to stay in the same community as Lola, though, so their new house was rather far-off, and Len would have to take the train to school.

Over spring break, the whole complex process of divorce and organizing child custody and moving houses seemed to complete itself. It was almost scary, how it passed with hardly any stress on Len's part. He felt like it shouldn't have been that way.

It was all more or less settled by the time Len's entrance ceremony rolled around. And so, not even a month later, Len's new life had begun. He was sitting on the train, heading to school for his first—"first"—day.

The more time passed, the more likely it became that this whole time travel schlock wasn't a dream or a joke; that he was in it for the long run. He still possessed a tiny hope that he'd snap back to his own time any day now, but strangely, somehow, he'd adapted to simply living life the way it was.

In a few ways, Len was excited to see how much things had changed in that three-year interim between past and future. Or rather, present and future. Or would you call it present and past? Anyway, whatever it was, he couldn't complain about playing manhunt at lunch again.

It really felt like morning. The sun just rising, patterning rays of light through the train windows. The little bumps on the ride, his schoolbag shaking in his lap, and his mind full of memories of the place he was going to for the first and thousandth time.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something that disturbed him. A girl. She was in his school's uniform; he vaguely remembered her being in his class in first year, though he'd never really spoken to her. Kanon—that was her name, right? Right by her was a blank-faced young man, older than him but also his age, taking advantage of the crowd to blend in and slip his hand up her skirt.

He shouldn't have been surprised, because he knew this kind of thing was common, but it was probably the first time he'd seen it with his own eyes.

With more confidence than he should've had, he slid into the scene, reached out and grabbed the man's arm. Kanon had clutched her skirt, petrified, only just realizing what was happening.

"W-What?" the man scoffed.

Len threw his arm down. "You know what you were doing." Then, under his breath, "Piece of shit."

The man, obviously not wanting to cause a scene, simply slinked off into the sea of people without another word. Len turned to Kanon.

"You okay?"

She seemed to be in shock. Wide-eyed, not moving her gaze from Len, she nodded slowly.

"Sorry about that," Len said, feeling like he had to apologize for the man. "People can be scum."

She was slightly shorter than him. Her high ponytail swung back and forth as the train rattled. She smiled at him genuinely, the kind of smile he was sure many people saw. He'd never really associated himself with this type of girl before.

"Thank you," she said. "You really saved me there."

"Don't mention it. Just be careful, yeah?"

"Mm." She glanced to the left, to the right, then when she concluded that Len wasn't interested in leaving, she spoke again. "So, are you also a first year?"

Len smiled. "Yeah."

"Wah, that's great! I hope we're in the same class!"

"I hope so too," he said, even though it was less like hope than certain knowledge.

They continued to chat amiably on the walk from the station to the school, but he'd lost her by the time he reached the wall where the class lists were posted. (Surely enough, they were in the same class; both class one, just as before.)

Len stood there awhile, staring up at the lists of familiar names as the owners of said names jostled him around to get a good view. He never would've thought he'd be in this position again. He still couldn't completely believe it. It made him feel extremely small in the world, the fact that something so improbable was indeed possible. He'd never believed in the supernatural, but he pretty much had to now, didn't he?

"E-Excuse me."

The voice was so familiar, he almost didn't notice it calling out to him. She had to repeat herself a few more times before she reached him.

When he looked at her, smaller and quieter and further than he remembered, he couldn't help but smile like he was looking at her baby pictures. As subtly as he could, he lifted his fist to cover his mouth. "Yeah?"

"Um, you're kind of blocking the way, so if you're done, could you move?"

"Oh, sorry." He stepped back to allow her to move closer to the lists, and watched as she found her name under class one, right beside his own.

She turned to find her classroom, and Len sprung up, suddenly deciding he'd help her not get lost.

"Sorry for standing in your way, back there. I just kinda got lost in thought there, you know? Thinking, like, I can't believe I'm in high school now…"

She glanced up at him, puzzled as to why he was following her. But she smiled slightly as she said, "Don't worry about it."

"I'm in class one," Len said, and he was able to note the subtle changes in her expression as she realized that he was in her class—in such detail, he could've written an essay. "What about you?"

"I'm also class one."

"Ah, really? What a nice surprise." If Len wasn't a good actor, he was going to have to learn.

She laughed clumsily, only politely. "There are only four classes, so really, it was a one-in-four chance."

"Yeah."

He smiled.

There were a few things he noticed about fifteen-year-old Rin. Things that didn't quite surprise him, but unsettled him, like looking away from your desk one second and noticing that someone moved your pencil from beneath your hand to just out of your reach.

Her sentences trailed off, and she never finished them. She was walking rather quickly. She smiled when he invited her to, but didn't huff in upset when he tried to prod her. She just blinked, and laughed like she didn't know what was going on. He was reminded that they really must have had something, for him to feel its absence so poignantly now.

Of course it could all be rebuilt, but it probably wouldn't ever be the same. Maybe that bummed him a little.

When they reached their classroom, Rin took one of the seats next to the window, and Len helped himself to the one next to her. He offered her a smile, and she didn't seem to mind—only didn't mind.

Over the next few minutes, he thought about saying something to her, but in the end he left her alone. Instead he watched her as she stared out the window, and he thought about the many times in the past when silence had suited them so well.

"Len!" A voice, girlish like the owner decided she wanted it that way.

Kanon was suddenly at his side, along with other vaguely familiar faces he recognized as her friends.

"Kanon, hey," he said pleasantly. "So we're in the same class after all?"

"It was probably fated, huh?" she giggled.

"I had no doubt it was going to happen," he said. Kanon's friends eyed him curiously.

"I just wanted to thank you again for the train," Kanon said as she took the seat to Len's right. Her friends took the seats surrounding them.

"No, really, it's what anyone would do."

"It was pretty brave to confront the guy, though," one of her friends said seriously. "I don't think many first years would go up against a college guy, you know?"

Evidently, she'd shared the morning's debacle with her friends. Personally, Len would never have shared any stories about himself getting molested on the train, but to each his or her own. "Well, I dunno. You might be surprised. For every bad guy in the world, there're maybe ten good guys, don't you think?"

"I'd like to think you're right." Kanon and her friends all seemed to agree.

Len felt an itch on the left side of his head, and when he turned, he saw Rin had been watching. He smiled and said with his eyes, 'Do you agree too?' but she pretended to adjust her glasses and turned back to the window, so quickly that if he hadn't known her better, he'd have assumed she'd never been staring at all.

He'd been playing guitar since he was six or seven. So by this point, he'd been playing it upwards of eleven years.

It was the end of music class, and everyone was standing around talking, waiting for the bell to ring. Len was sitting alone in the corner, vacantly plucking at the strings when Kanon came up to him, bent her knees cutely to speak level to him.

"So how long have you been playing?"

"Ummm…" He scratched the back of his head. "A bunch of years? Sometimes I perform in cafes and stuff," he added sheepishly, before realizing that he hadn't yet, at this point in time.

"Ooh, you must be pretty good, then! Play me something?"

"Eehh, I dunno. I don't normally take requests."

She karate-chopped him on the head, in a friendly-or-maybe-not way. "Come on. What kinds of songs do you know? Can you do pop covers? D-Do you know any supercell songs?"

"You listen to supercell?" he teased.

"Th-That's not a bad thing! Is it?" She blinked at him, because didn't everyone love supercell?

He just stared at her questioningly for a few seconds, and relished as she grew more and more uncertain about her music taste. Then he laughed. "Of course not! I love supercell. I think he's really talented."

He could feel her relief. "Jeez. Supercell's actually my favourite, you know. For a second there, I thought I had to call all this off."

Ah, high school girls. They'd once seemed complicated, but in the end, they were actually quite simple. "Call what off?"

"Nothing," she seemed to sing, pressing a finger to her lips. His gaze flitted upwards, as if sharing a wry look with the gods.

"Hey, hey," Kanon prodded, "Len, can you play The Story You Don't Know?"

It was a popular song. He knew it. He remembered listening to it, figuring out the chords, practicing it among several other supercell songs—in, what, eleventh grade? Rin used to like it. Supercell was one of her favourites too, in fact.

"I could play it," he said, emerging from his memories. "But…" he trailed off thoughtfully. "Like I said, I don't take requests." At her frown, he looked down, smiled and began strumming the intro. "You sing."

"What?!"

"I said, you're singing."

"Um—"

"C'mon, the vocal starts in three, two, one—"

And as he counted her in, she took a breath, and all eyes in the room were suddenly on them.

At the edge of the room, Kaito, arms crossed, was watching interestedly. Len caught his eye, and Kaito raised a brow. They weren't officially friends yet, but they would be soon.

Kaito, Len remembered amusedly, had always been jealous of his musical ability; apparently guitars got girls. Guitars, and drums. Len tried to assure his friend by lying that encyclopedic knowledge of dinosaurs and the Mesozoic era was sure to nab some kind of girl, but Kaito obviously didn't buy it.

On the other side of the room, near the windows, Kanon's friends were giggling madly, bless them. They were probably really shipping it. To be honest, Len himself really didn't know where he was going with all this. He glanced at Kanon, who seemed to be absorbed in the song. Was he 'leading her on', as they say? Shouldn't he sympathize a little more? Was it morally reprehensible to not say what needed to be said? If so, then they were both at fault, weren't they?

In the end, though, it was only teenage drama. These kinds of things seemed so small, post-high school. Mentally shrugging, he proceeded into the chorus, wryly deciding to sing a harmony for her. Kanon glanced to him and smiled. He had to give it to her—she had an impressive voice for someone forced to sing on the fly.

And at the back of the room, he saw Rin was watching, too. She was sitting on one of the desks pushed haphazardly against the wall, legs swinging and foot bobbing to the rhythm. He had the faintest feeling that she was humming along, though quieter than a heartbeat.

He and Kanon had reached the bridge.

I bluffed in my faint-heartedness,
Acting like I had no interest.
However,
That prickling pain in my chest, growing...
Ah… that's right.
This is what they call falling in love.

It was a nice song, if not a little overdramatic. 'Just tell him, I mean, seriously,' Len mentally berated the million lovesick schoolgirls across the world.

And with those lyrics of unrequited love filling his ears, Len wondered briefly if Rin had ever felt that way about anyone. Well, he knew she did—she wasn't an emotionless zombie—but whenever he used to ask, she'd deny it coolly, without slowing or quickening her pace. She was one damn convincing liar.

Contrasting her intelligent personality, though, she'd always been a bit of a romantic. She could tolerate cheesy movies better than he could, and she got mad at him when he was too logical about them. He told her that she she shouldn't turn her brain off just to enjoy movies, and in reply, she told him that he didn't have to turn his heart off to not enjoy them. That part of their relationship was an easy shoujo manga cliche, he realized bemusedly.

As he strummed the last note, the class began to clap. Around the classroom, the girls had stars in their eyes, and the boys were all kind of laughing to themselves, as if to congratulate him and convey how impressed they were. He grinned and pretended to be modest, but he did enjoy the spotlight.

He glanced at Kanon, and wasn't surprised that their eyes met. Her face was red like the sunset but she was smiling widely, as if to thank him for bringing out her good side and showing it to the world.

In the periphery of his vision and the other end of the world, Rin kept swinging her legs under the desk, watching them with a small smile.

He wouldn't get caught.

It simply wouldn't do for his pride.

He could not, would not lose to a bunch of teenagers.

—is what he was thinking as he dove behind a row of desks in an empty classroom.

No sooner than he settled into his hiding spot did the door slam open and a female voice call: "I saw you come in here. Come on out, Len."

Shit. He inched further along the row of desks. He couldn't get up just yet, or he'd reveal his location. Teto was blocking the only entrance, so he had to wait until she moved before making a bolt for the door…

He heard a cupboard swinging open. "Are you hiding in here? There's no escape, you know. Might as well just come out and make things easy."

Never.

He continued crawling along the floor, careful to lift his limbs so as to not make shuffling sounds (and get his clothes dirty. Laundry was hard work, he'd discovered). Teto, meanwhile, was making progress through the row of cupboards on the other end of the room.

When she'd gotten to the last cupboard and didn't find him, Teto scratched her head. "That's weird. He has to be in here. I saw him. So where…"

She paced towards the cubbies at the back of the room—

Okay, now!

Len sprang up and sprinted to the door, hurdling over a couple of desks along the way. He thanked his middle school self for having joined the soccer club.

Teto, shocked, bulleted towards him.

"You bastard! You can't run from me!"

"Just try to catch me, bitch!" he yelled back, concentrating on not laughing—it was hard to run while laughing.

But as is universally known, concentrating on not laughing will only make you laugh harder.

"Damn… it…" Len ran around the corner, cursing his lungs. His insides felt like they were about to burst—he needed more air! But at the same time, he felt like the air inside him was compressed helium, dangerously close to open flame—

And then there was gravity.

"Ah, fuck!"

And then he was on the ground.

This, kids, is why schools have rules against running in the halls.

As his vision cleared and his heart rate slowed, he came to realize he was in fact not on the ground, but on someone.

Just the sheer irony of it made him feel strangely nostalgic.

Her hair was fanned out on the floor and her glasses had been knocked askew. He knew it was repetitive, but her body beneath him reminded him how much smaller she was than he remembered.

He himself was a lot smaller, too.

Time slowed a little, and for a second he forgot about the game of manhunt. Rin seemed still too shocked to move. And so they lay there awhile in the middle of the third-floor science hallway.

People found comfort in the strangest of places.

Eventually, with the gradualness of falling asleep, he came to a stand. He gave Rin an apologetic smile and offered his hand, and she took it, and he watched as she straightened her bow and adjusted her glasses. They stood there another split second, neither really understanding what just happened.

Then he took her wrist and ran.

"Ah— Are you it?" she asked.

"Not yet," Len grinned. "I haven't been it once, yet. You aren't, right?"

"Well, I'm… I'm not… playing, so—" she panted.

"Eh, why not? It's fun! Everyone's playing!"

She only played before because he'd made her. Well, he'd make her again.

"I'm a slow… runner…"

"Ha, I know! I mean, I can tell." He led her around another corner. "But trust me, the game's more about stealth than speed."

They were in the south hall now. They needed to find someplace to hide. They'd put some space between them and Teto, but she was going to catch up any moment now…

Then Len remembered something.

He tugged Rin towards the bathrooms. You weren't allowed to hide in the bathrooms, but between them was fair game.

He could cry.

"In here." He pushed her in and went in after her.

It was just big enough for the two of them. But like he remembered, it was an excruciating fit.

He wasn't pressed up against her per se—the space was narrow, so they were lined side-by-side—but he felt her panting more than he heard it. He, too, was out of breath, but he took care not to breathe too loudly, both for the game's sake and for Rin's.

He couldn't quite turn his neck to look at her, and so he instead observed her by sound—her breathing, gradually slowing back down, and the simple yet tangible feeling of her being there.

And so they waited. Eventually, Teto came running past. Len listened with bated breath as her footsteps faded down the hall. Then, when he could no longer hear them, he laughed as loudly as couldn't be heard outside the cranny.

"We got her."

Rin reflected his grin at a fraction of the luminance. "I'm not playing, though."

"Aw, but I thought you were! After all we've been through…"

"I-I dunno," she said uncomfortably. "I don't want to tire myself out between classes."

"I— that's fair, I guess, but come on, Rin, it's really fun! You're missing out."

She just hummed in reply.

Len frowned and said quietly, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

She didn't take any convincing before. Was there a subtle change in the way he approached her that'd made the difference?

"Would you mind moving?" Her voice was so close.

"Oh, sorry." He slid out of the space so Rin could get out. Then he slipped back in.

Rin eyed him questioningly.

"I'm gonna hide here until someone finds me. So don't let anyone know about this space, okay? Our secret." And he winked.

That used to piss her off.

But just now, the narrowing of her eyes wasn't the same. She was put off, yes, but more puzzled and curious than anything. She held her left arm in her right hand as if pulling herself away from him, furthering from him without moving her feet. Len looked at her sadly, wanting to tell her, 'There are no puzzles here, Rin. Don't you see?'

But she left without another word.

Len rested his head against the wall and let out a sigh. Now that he was alone, he realized the cranny really wasn't all that small after all.

—chapter 2—

if she's small to him, to her he's larger than life.

.

つづく

AUTHOR'S NOTES

hoo boy, thanks for reading! I'm super behind on my schoolwork again, but this is more important to me :)

I've been having doubts about this story lately, but hopefully it'll get better ;u; I went back and tweaked the first two chapters- nothing too big though!

I've noticed, this Rin and Len really are similar to SWB Rin and Len! They're different in their own ways, too, though, and I hope they'll become more fully realized in later chapters! I-I have hopes for you, my children... don't fail me...

in this chapter, I wanted to emphasize the growing distance between them.

the whole guitar scene was inspired by this len/kanon duet of Close to You by hyurno. /watch?v=E13ZaEF_1bg And Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari is magic in sound waves. there's something mystical and tender about it I just can't explain. deneb, altair, and vega. also, kaito as a dinosaur fanatic is number one headcanon.

I'd like to thank everyone who's reviewed so far! special thanks to an anon called lalala: I really appreciate hearing your thoughts, and also thank you for your encouragement about school ;n; I've been doing better!

hello, you there, yes you: please review as well! I don't bite ; u ;

also damn you ffnet and your character limit on chapter titles :(