Back at high school...
The air smelled of summer grass and worn rubber soles. The buzz of cicadas was almost deafening in the midday heat, but no one noticed—not during lunch break, not when you were seventeen and your heart moved faster than your brain.
The school courtyard buzzed with students in neatly pressed uniforms, boys tossing baseballs, girls huddled under the shade with their bento boxes, and the occasional teacher pacing back and forth with a clipboard in hand.
Hinoka had never liked summer. It made her hair stick to her neck and the air feel too heavy in her lungs. But more than that, summer was when everything felt like it was about to change—like the days themselves were trying to outrun her. And that particular summer afternoon, the one seared into her memory, was when everything did change.
It started with the rumor.
She had been sitting with two of her classmates on the third floor, sipping canned peach soda and only half-listening to their chatter.
One of them, Airi, leaned in suddenly, a mischievous glint in her eyes. "Did you hear? Someone saw Fujihara and Koizumi sneaking off during cleaning duty yesterday."
Hinoka froze.
The other girl giggled. "Seriously? Koizumi never breaks the rules. That sounds fake."
"Well, maybe not breaking them," Airi corrected, twisting the tab on her soda can, "but someone swears they saw them behind the gym. Together. Alone. And it looked like—well—intimate."
Hinoka forced herself to laugh, to roll her eyes, to pretend like it was just another rumor tossed into the bonfire of high school gossip. But the laughter caught in her throat like thorns.
By the time the bell rang for afternoon break, she had already made up her mind.
She wouldn't confront them.
She'd just check. Quietly. Like peeling the edge of a wound to see how deep it really ran.
The gym stood on the far side of school, its paint flaking in some corners, its structure old but reliable.
Behind it, a narrow stairway led to the storage shed—a place students often used to store sports equipment or sneak away for a moment of quiet. Or secrets.
Hinoka walked quickly, her shoes barely making a sound against the gravel path. She passed by the tennis courts, the vending machines humming behind a maintenance shed, and finally turned the corner toward the back of the gym.
She stopped.
There they were.
Shinichi leaned against the wall, one hand in his pocket, the other awkwardly scratching the back of his neck.
His school tie was loose, and his bag was slumped next to him on the steps. Koizumi stood in front of him, her fingers fidgeting with the hem of her skirt, eyes locked on his. The tension in the air was so fragile Hinoka felt it could snap with a whisper.
They weren't touching.
Not yet.
But there was something—an invisible string pulled taut between them. Words she couldn't hear, gestures that spoke volumes.
Then it happened.
Koizumi stepped closer. Just a breath away. Shinichi didn't back up. His expression was unreadable, caught between surprise and inevitability. And then—
She kissed him.
It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't long. Just a single, lingering kiss on the lips. But it was real.
Hinoka stumbled backward before she could stop herself, a sharp inhale catching in her throat. Her back pressed against the brick wall of the gym, hidden just beyond the corner.
Her chest ached—not like heartbreak, but something deeper. Something primal. The pain of being left behind.
Her knees shook.
All at once, she remembered every laugh they had shared. Every pinky promise in childhood.
Every late-night study session when she stayed up just to match his pace. She remembered the time she first thought she loved him, really loved him, not as a friend or as a rival, but as the boy who made her feel seen.
And he had kissed Koizumi.
No—Koizumi had kissed him. But he didn't stop her.
Hinoka turned and ran, her vision blurring with tears she refused to let fall.
She didn't return to class that afternoon. She spent the rest of the day by the riverbank, kicking pebbles and letting the wind dry her cheeks.
The reflection of clouds drifting lazily across the water brought no comfort. The blue sky seemed to mock her.
When she came home, her mother asked if she had caught a cold.
She nodded. Said she had a headache. Went straight to her room.
She didn't talk to Koizumi for two days. When she finally did, she smiled too widely and laughed too easily. Pretended nothing had happened.
But inside her, something had cracked. A mirror she once looked through had shattered, and no matter how much she pretended otherwise, the reflection would never be whole again.
The next few weeks passed in an unbearable blur. Koizumi never brought it up. Neither did Shinichi.
Everything resumed, but with the stiff awkwardness of a drama too long in rehearsal. Hinoka caught them looking at each other sometimes in the hallways, in the classroom, during group work.
A glance held a little too long. A silence that should've been filled with laughter.
Summer ended, and autumn arrived with its brittle winds and falling leaves. But the wound stayed fresh. Like a page that refused to turn.
Hinoka had never known how jealousy could quietly erode the soul, like a river carving its path through rock. She began to resent Koizumi's quiet confidence, her careful words, the way she seemed so gentle with Shinichi even when saying nothing at all.
In the early winter, they had a school field trip. Snow had just started to dust the ground like powdered sugar. Hinoka had hoped to sit next to Shinichi on the train. She had even saved the seat. But when the group gathered, Koizumi sat beside him without asking.
Hinoka stood in the aisle, holding her lunch bag, heart thudding like a war drum. Shinichi looked up at her, surprised, and was about to say something—maybe offer his seat—when Koizumi gently tugged on his sleeve.
She smiled at Hinoka. That same soft smile she always used. The one that didn't quite reach her eyes.
So Hinoka sat elsewhere.
And that night, in the dark of the inn's shared room, she stared at the ceiling and whispered to herself, "I won't lose."
It was the first time she admitted it—not to her friends, not to her parents, not even to herself until that moment—that she saw Koizumi as a rival.
Not because Koizumi stole Shinichi.
But because Koizumi could have him.
And that possibility—that future—was what Hinoka feared most.
Years later, long after graduation, after part-time jobs and the chaos of university entrance exams, after settling into her new apartment next door to Shinichi, she still carried that moment like a stone in her chest.
When she had mentioned it casually during their conversation—the kiss, the old rumor—she hadn't meant to hurt him.
She just wanted to see his reaction.
Because part of her still wondered if it meant anything to him.
She saw the flicker of guilt in his eyes. Saw the way he looked away.
And that was enough.
That was the proof she needed.