There was no undeniable proof available for Yukari, but she had always been able to rely on her intuition before, so why should this circumstance be any different? All she had to go on was a feeling and a nickname, but from the exasperated look Minato shot her when she asked his opinion, she was pretty damn sure she was onto something.
When she looked back on it, it was a stupid choice to go to the alley in the first place. For once, Junpei had been smarter than her, though she'd still never admit it to anyone but herself. The three of them had been no match for those punks they encountered, and she still felt bad she had gotten Junpei injured with her own carelessness, but at least some good had come out of it. They knew that ghosts were not the cause of the mysterious disappearances, and she knew why Akihiko liked to stick to himself.
She had wondered about the boy in the trench coat as early as her visit to Akihiko in the hospital. After all, what sort of roughneck stranger went around giving her senpai strange nicknames out of the blue?
But it was in the back alley, when the stranger—Shinjiro—rescued them, and the first thing his mind jumped to was how they were "Aki's" friends, asking if "Aki" sent them that Yukari started looking deeper. She heard the inflection when speaking the word "Aki," how his guilty eyes softened at the thought of the silver-haired boxer. She didn't mention it then, and the only one she asked later was Minato. Seeing his reaction, she knew it would not be wise to ever bring it up again.
She truly hoped that Akihiko knew of—if he didn't share—Shinjiro's feelings.
And that was how Yukari knew.
A/N: I would like to mention at this point that each new chapter-if it isn't obvious-somewhat switches narrators, and which each narrator switch, I tried to get across a new character's inner voice. This will become more apparent in the later chapters, but that also includes how the characters refer to Akihiko and Shinjiro name-wise. I know that Yukari, Junpei, Fuuka, and Minato all refer to Shinjiro and Akihiko as "senpai," but I decided that for their actual thoughts, they'd probably refer to them by their names.