I don't own GA

"Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses."
-Ann Landers

The Sixth and the Last Meeting: The Quiet One, The Troublemaker, The Class Clown and the The Motherly-like

Mikan

Alice Academy. It had been many years since I heard of the name of that school, and I briefly let a regret wander into my heart when I thought that I didn't even get to finish one full year in that place. It held so many memories that I would always smile whenever I overheard people talk about that certain school. At the same time, it also reminded me of the friends that I hadn't seen in eleven years.

Hotaru.

Ruka.

And I only met up with Natsume just recently.

It had been a month since I got back together with him, and there was, without a doubt, a comfortable and normal routine that we fell back into now. I had to be a representative in the college that I graduated from and Natsume would always drive me there before he went to his own workplace. Occasionally, I would meet up with Aoi and Youichi and the couple would invite me to lunch. They really looked like a match made by the heavens because they perfectly filled in the qualities that the other lacked; Aoi was a little stubborn, just like her brother, and a little too headstrong while Youichi was calm and patient. They could truly testify that "opposites attract" was true. Sometimes, at the sight of the bickering couple I would bring myself to a nostalgic part of my memories, and I could practically see how was I like with Natsume during high school. And the thought of high school brought me to here.

I was in front of a very familiar building; I certainly failed to appreciate its vastness in my youth. There was an open window on the third floor and it made my lips tug upwards because I remembered.

I remembered that I used to sit there and gaze at the sky with no particular thoughts in mind. I remembered that I would sometimes observe my classmates, wondering how different we were back then in terms of our personalities. I remembered looking at the dark-haired kid at the back of the class, earphones stuck in his ears like he didn't care about the class. Only now that I thought about it, maybe Natsume was actually just bored because he already knew the stuff we were learning. Talk about being the genius he was.

I didn't think of the next thing I would do now that I was there, but my feet carried me inside where there were lockers lined up in sections. There was no one there and it was deafeningly silent, which made me think that maybe going in there alone wouldn't be a good idea.

It was not until a voice startled me out of my wits that I moved and jumped back.

"Ohh. I'm sorry if I startled you," the person said.

I turned around, and right by the lockers was a tall man with black hair and brown eyes staring at me. I realized that he looked familiar yet my mind couldn't come up with the name that I was specifically looking for.

"Are you Mikan Sakura?" he suddenly asked, and I noticed how his eyes widened slightly in recognition. And I did the same.

"Mi-Misaki-sensei?"

The fact that he called me Sakura caught onto me and the feeling of the nostalgia was even stronger now, because someone who didn't know me before that incident was actually right in front of me and conversing with me right now. I felt like I was fifteen years old again, just arriving late for school and my teacher had caught me. It felt pleasant to think up of a scenario like that.

"It's been a long time," Misaki-sensei said. He was beaming at me and I returned it with equal enthusiasm. I was really happy to meet one of the people who I had known in the past.

"Yes, it's really been a long time. I'm surprised that you remember me."

He smiled at me knowingly and stated, "It's hard not to when the class had all talked about for one full semester and so on was your name."

Needless to say, I was surprised and it must have had shown by how my lips parted and my eyes blinked rapidly to keep the incoming tears at bay, because my former teacher patted my shoulder.

"I'm glad that you're back," he told me with all the sincerity he could muster. I vaguely remembered that he was the one who set up the cleaning duty list that day when I first met everyone, and I was extremely grateful that he acquiesced with Hotaru's request.

"Me too."

Natsume

Mikan was supposed to stay at the college for another hour, so here I was in my car, listening to music that I was afraid to turn up high because the area that I was in was too quiet for this. I got out of the hospital early and it was merely because another doctor, Kaname-senpai, had covered my shift. He was probably one of the few I could tolerate in that place. Most nurses were too gossipy to have a conversation with, and I very much preferred peace and quiet in my own time, thank you very much.

I clicked my tongue in annoyance. Truthfully, I didn't know what I was doing when I drove down to this familiar neighborhood and down the street that I always passed by for an entire four years of my life. And right now, my car was parked in front of the iron gates of Alice Academy.

I had a conversation with Ruka two nights ago and I organized a dinner with him because I wanted to surprise the crap out of him when he sees Mikan. I wanted to dial one more number however, she already changed her phone a gazillion times that I stopped keeping track of it. Which brought me my current dilemma that not even Ruka had an answer to.

How do I contact Hotaru Imai?

She was Mikan's best friend and the most important person that she'd met during high school—during her short stay here in this town. She was supposed to be one of the first people to hear about Mikan's return, and I really wanted them to meet each other again.

Because I knew that Hotaru was also hurt when Mikan disappeared.

I sighed in exasperation, leaning my head on the steering wheel for a good minute, trying to breath in and out like what I usually did to calm myself and to be able to think properly. I turned sideways and my eyes caught that familiar building behind the gates and I suddenly had the urge to step inside of that edifice again. I straightened up and removed the music in the car before I got out.

I strolled inside, like there were literally no guards and that was weird because I was used to seeing a teacher or someone standing there, hoping to catch the troublesome students who would always come late and try to sneak in. Then in a matter of a few yards, I was right in front of the beige building. I glanced up and I could make out the fence of the rooftop, and I smiled.

I remembered climbing up there to skip classes which I found boring or cumbersome, sometimes finding another person there with vivid hazel eyes. I remembered listening to my music as I watched my classmates chatter and laugh at the class clown, wondering how would they react if I were to show them my crude humor. I remembered catching one or two of the brunette's gazes toward me and I would pretend that I didn't see it because I knew that we would both get embarrassed. Oh, how right I was.

I peeked inside and the hallways were empty. The familiar locker shelves brought me back so many memories and I smiled wistfully. I confidently walked in, knowing that there would be no one to catch me if I were to trespass the area. Well, it wasn't really trespassing if I was a former student here, right?

I passed by the classrooms and suddenly, in my mind I was the fifteen-year-old Natsume Hyuuga again. I would amble into the room, not caring if the teacher was irritated that someone dared to interrupt his lesson, and I would simply sit on my seat. It made me laugh now that I thought about it; I really was rebellious back then. Oh, and anti-social.

Everything probably started with that staircase that was in front of my eyes right now. It was after the first time I'd talked to Mikan in high school, right after we came down from the rooftop, and everything was so awkward because we witnessed Hotaru Imai reject an upperclassmen. It brought another bubble of laughter inside me and my gaze had probably softened because the nostalgia of the things that surrounded me was too strong for me to suppress. Not that I wanted to, anyway.

I walked up the stairs, to the floor where my first class in freshmen year was.

To where I could unravel the rest of those precious memories.

Ruka

To say that I was surprised to hear from Natsume was an understatement. And to hear him invite me to a dinner had my jaw hanging, which left me incapable of replying properly, and the ass hanged up on me.

Like, what?

It was hard to believe that my best friend would actually forget to contact me for months, which I thought that was reasonable since he was a doctor and all. But I was also a doctor too, you know. A vet.

I was completely living my life normally and routinely, which could be pretty tedious and uninteresting sometimes, but the animals that were brought in my clinic could brighten anyone's day, including mine. I met different kinds of people—ranging from that cute girl who would bite anyone who dared touch her poodle, to that middle-aged man who looked like a mafia boss but would comically gushed at his fluffy white cat. Well, that was actually really entertaining. The best part was meeting your old friends and we would all be surprised at the sudden encounter then ended up chatting about our lives and whatnot. One of them was Koko, and wow, that guy sure knew everything. He told me that Nonoko had married Yuu, Anna was a chef, and that he met Natsume in his "glorious" white coat. Even if I didn't really need to know certain matters, he would still tell me. I could only wonder how his relationship with Sumire was working.

But there was one information that he couldn't get a hold of.

Mikan's whereabouts.

And the urge to actually go back to the high school where I'd graduated from hit me with its full force when I thought of her, because one thought led to another and now I was standing in front of the building that was hella familiar to me.

It made me think about a certain amethyst-eyed woman. Next to Natsume, she was the one who changed the most after Mikan's disappearance. During the time when all of us were together, I learned that she was more than what meets the eye, and it saddened me that she had to go through the pain of losing of the most important friends that she had here. And probably the last.

Natsume talked to me about her once and he told me that Hotaru probably thought of denying herself any happiness if her best friend was suffering with her own past. After Mikan's absence became known, her facade was only stronger and more often put up, and on the outside she probably looked the same motherly-like figure of the class, but I knew that she would shed tears if she allowed herself to. I hope on more than one occasion that I could comfort her and Natsume, because they became few of the trustworthy friends that I had who never bothered to hide their true personalities around me. And I showed them what I truly was in the inside too.

Reminiscing made me blink up the tears that threatened to unravel inside me, so I made my way to the building and hoped that I would somehow find here what I was looking for.

However, I didn't have any clue what it was.

I passed by the lockers, the hallways, and then that staircase. Oh, God, that staircase. I could still feel the secondhand embarrassment when I recalled that awkward incident, and it made me laugh because it was also the first time that I interacted with those three people—Mikan Sakura, Hotaru Imai, and Natsume Hyuuga. It was like fate had somehow pulled our strings and we were all gathered at one point—a point where everything changed for us for the better or for the worse.

I walked up to the stairs, feeling a bit giddy because this really made me feel like I was that class clown again, ready to make jokes and replace my emotional pain with some laughter, no matter how faked it was. I didn't mean to hide under a persona but it was the easiest way for me to cope and interact with everyone without feeling isolated, and it made me remember how could those two people at the back of the class not want the interaction with their classmates. But when they did actually want it, I felt like I could stop my pretense and make the whole class laugh genuinely.

One encounter could really change someone's life, huh?

Hotaru

Eleven years had passed and yet, I still hadn't talked to her.

I focused on my studies and graduated as one of the top students in both high school and college. I majored in business, something that my parents weren't expecting because their standards were up to my brother's progress in life. But I wasn't having any of that.

I built up my own ground, learned how to walk on my own feet. In college, I had a dorm and refused to accept any more help from my parents after the first year, which was the year when I pulled all of my resources and found a part-time job that could help me save up bit by bit. I was the one who paid for my tuition fees afterwards, and after I finished my degree that I found what content was.

Content that your handwork paid off.

My brother was the one who was there for me during the graduation, wearing that smug proud smile on his face and I guessed he could be all like that because he did help me pay up some of the liabilities that I'd taken up. And to be free from those and to accept that paper that declared a new life for me had worked wonders.

I was the independent Hotaru Imai since then.

My parents and I remained distant over the years, but now we would warm up to each other every now and then, thanks to some push from Subaru-nii. Over the coarse of the eleven years, I'd built up my own business from the ground and it turned into a small but prosperous corporation. It brought me amusement at how Natsume Hyuuga, the seemingly-genius of the class who claimed the title of the valedictorian, wasn't a bit subtle about tracking me down. I merely changed my phone numbers because there had been quite an annoying amount of people calling me about the latest inventions in my company. I couldn't get a break. Well, that and...

I actually saw Mikan once.

I broke my composure when I did see her in one of the gatherings of the big companies, and I really wasn't supposed to be that surprised because I knew that her parents were quite well-known in the business world. But I was.

She stood there on the stage with Izumi Yukihara, dressed up like one of the upperclass ladies that I used to scoff at. However, she looked nothing but gentle. She looked more mature, beautiful, and...happy. It was that moment when I knew that I had to let go of the past, of the hope that she would want her old life back. It was that moment that I figured that I should let go—let go and be happy for her and for myself.

That meeting was a little over a month ago and now I stood in front of Alice Academy.

This damn school better be the same old school I'd been to.

I walked to the interior of the building and was greeted by the sight of the nostalgic rows of lockers. This was where I would tap the spaced out Mikan and bring her back to earth because her mind had wandered around with stuff that she could draw again. I briefly wondered if she was able to become an artist; I didn't really dare look up at her files after knowing that she was just nearby, no matter how tempting it was. I just had to know that she was content with her life now. That was it.

However, I knew that I was lying to myself.

I wanted to see her again, my best friend. I wanted to know what happened to her in those eleven years and if she was truly happy with her new life now. Really, before I entered high school I would've never thought of truly befriending anyone, much least care for them this much. And yet, she allowed herself into my heart and discovered my infatuation with Ruka Nogi along the way.

The thought made me smile.

I hadn't seen the certain blonde in years, and the last time was when I accidentally met him at Starbucks. And with me as the barista.

The flabbergasted look on his face was priceless to say the least. He probably never expected me to be working in that kind of place where there were lots of irritating people that made me want to chuck the blender at their faces. Good thing I had more self-control than that.

It made me remember of the things that I would do in order to establish that pretense of being the motherly figure of the class. I wanted to put up the false appearance that I was getting along with the class in order to spite my parents, knowing that they used to think how friendship and love were mere distractions for me. Then, somehow I ended up taking the role seriously after Mikan left. I became more dishonest with everyone because I knew that the normalcy of everything would not return without that certain brunette.

She really did move my heart, huh?

The sight of the staircase on the right wing of the ground floor almost made me laugh. Almost. I could still remember the eyes bulging out of their sockets and the frozen looks on their faces when they saw me reject Hayate Matsudaira. Then, when they ran away like scared little mouses, I really did snort in laughter and I had to apologize to senpai again.

That was the start of everything, and I was glad that it happened.

I went upstairs, a certain classroom in mind, not knowing what or who would I find there.

And I wasn't aware that a certain surprise was ready to topple me—us—backwards.

Normal POV

Four people stood faced each other near the staircase; the quiet one was right in front of the door of a classroom, the class clown and the troublemaker were near the railings, and the motherly-like was the on the last step of the stairs.

Gazes darted to one another.

Eyes widened.

Mouth opened.

Audible gasps.

Voices collided with one another.

"Mikan?!"

"Natsume?!

"Ruka?!"

"Hotaru?!"

A beat of silence.

Then, laughter.

Lots of laughter.

And lots of happy smiles, too.

No one had thought that the four people were pulled towards each other, once again by the red string of fate.

And thus, their frozen story had started to play again.

A/N: Good? or nah? hahaha I had this scenario in my mind after I wrote the eleven years one and I have to say that I'm actually quite happy with this chapter. Writing this one made me feel a bit warm in the inside, like meeting your friends like that in real life would be one hell of a happy surprise XD I wish I'd have that meeting hahaha. Okay, my dear readers, I know that it's been a short ride but I want to thank you for entertaining this story and me (hahaha) for your reviews and for making me happy that I get to share a story (which plot uh I kinda forgot but glad that I was able to get back into XD) with you guys. I've been working with a SnK fanfic, which I know some of you don't like because of its ship (understandable, but if EVER you actually get into EreRi ship, don't forget to visit my one story up there hahaha I have another one coming but it won't be on this site but on Ao3), but I just really love the feeling of having people read the stories I come up with. I feel like I've visited this story with you guys :)

It really made me happy.

Thank you for reading and I hope you put aside some time to drop a review~ I would like to read your reaction and your comments about this story. I feel like this is like totally different from TBPL XD but I hope that you enjoyed it.

An epilogue may come up sometime this week or next week. Stay tuned~

Lots of Love
-CrimsonHazelEyes