Disclaimer: NO.6 isn't mine.

3. The New Life

"Shion!"

I turned around and smiled at a group of friends, one from which had called me just now. They invited me to lunch for tomorrow, which I nodded to naturally. Then I waved and they returned the gesture, before turning around to get into their class.

I headed home. I didn't have any more class for the day—that class my friends were currently attending, I took it last semester, when I had been so messed up that I had purposefully taken more class than what my friends had done, to busy myself, thus preventing my brain from thinking about non-academic stuff.

Non-academic, meaning that guy.

Of course, who else would I think about every time I went to sleep—well okay, my mother, but that's just normal—wishing that he had been there; whose brilliantly grey eyes would I dream about almost every week, wishing I could gaze into them after these frustrating two years; whose long, slender fingers would I imagine seeing, wishing that they were around my neck, never mind that they were choking me; and whose dark blue hair I wish was tangled between my fingers, the ends of which resting on his broad shoulders—I wonder if he grew it longer over the two years?

I sighed.

After the incident, I had been reunited with my dearest mother, and together with the rest of the surviving citizens of the formerly-utopian city of No. 6 had initiated reconstruction. It had been a slow and painful process, especially to remove the imaginary wall between the insiders and the outsiders of the now-history separating wall.

The outsiders had been too used to living in constant danger, that they hadn't exactly very trusting of the extended hands of the insiders who invited them to rebuild the city, together. Similarly, some of the paranoid insiders had been too used to living in constant security, that they had considered the outsiders as highly possible threat to their perfectly ordered life. Nevertheless, the new City Council had been elected, who somehow managed to keep the two parties at ease, and reconstruction had been going relatively well these past two years.

I, too, had been doing my best to rebuild my life with my mother, not to the elite, first-class life we had had six years ago, but the modest, comfortable we had found two years ago. It had been quite great; I had entered university to do the degree I had been focusing on ever since I was ten—Ecology, of course—and mother had reopened her bakery. We didn't stay in our home in the Lost Town, though. The new City Council had offered us residence in our former home inside Chronos, to which we accepted. Nevertheless, we didn't enjoy the same first-class treatment we once enjoyed. No one did. There wasn't any more excessive welfare system where only the elites had been eligible for—everyone had access to it, now.

But that wasn't my main focus.

What I had been feeling these past two years—apart from pride of having rebuilt and reordered my messed up life pre-incident at the Correctional Facility—was embarrassment.

I thought I was strong enough without him.

That had been the too-proud thought that I had when I let him go, without even asking for his reason.

I thought wrong.

I had been living these two years with perfectly-practiced 'real' smile, 'real' happiness and contentment, and I was pretty sure I had done a good job. I had gained new friends in university, a lot of whom were older than me. I had excelled in my subjects, an achievement which would most likely earn a sneer from the grey-eyed guy I missed so much—"As expected from the super elite, eh?" —, whom I had let go so easily.

Without me realizing it, I had reached my house. It happened very often, that I lost track of where my legs were taking me and how they managed to avoid any bodily disaster that could happen with my brain not even registering what I was looking at or hearing throughout the journey home.

I sighed.

Where are you?

I entered the house, the door sliding close silently behind me.

A/N: Ugh, too much angst in this one. Won't happen again after the next chapter (you could pretty much guess what I'm gonna write for the next one, don't you? Haha).

Reviews are greatly welcome! :)

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