Mirai and Ryosuke walked with their friends to attend their first day of school as third-year students. Today, they were officially in their last year of high school. Ever since the sleepover over spring break, the friends had promised to walk to school together in case they didn’t get accepted into the same university. This way, they could at least have some last memories. But unlike the usual hyper mood they were always in when they got together, it was quite depressing. Even Juri couldn’t find the energy to make jokes for the gang. Luckily, along the way, they came across Mayu, who was wearing their school uniform for the first time as she would attend the same high school with them as a first-year.

Juri ecstatically came over but was pushed to the side by Haruka, who wanted to provoke him for fun. He scowled at her. “Mou, what’s that for, Haruka?”

Haruka ignored her friend and went to Mayu. “Waa, Mayu-chan, you’re so cute in our uniform!”

“It matches you,” added Mirai.

Shintaro and Ryosuke nodded while Juri pouted in the background because he realized his friends had telepathically agreed to gang up on him and steal the first compliments to say to the girl he liked.

Mayu shied away. “A-arigatou, everyone.”

“Ne, Juri…” Haruka began, turning back to look at him with a grin, “how does Mayu-chan look?”

Juri froze. His chance had come, but he didn’t want to be put out on the spot. He wanted to compliment her when noises accompanied him, not when everything was quiet—and especially not when she was looking at him with anticipating moist eyes that made his stomach twist and turn.

“I really like this part, Juri.” Haruka pressed her index finger right in between the bosom of Mayu, making the wrinkles of her shirt stretch and curve around the shape of her C-size.

The friends but Juri held in their laughter because they knew he had witnessed the entire thing.

Unfortunately, the play ended because Mayu flinched and covered her chest with her bag. “Sh-Shimazaki-san…”

Haruka pretended to not have realized where her hand was. “Ah, gomen.” She pulled her hand away. “It was nice though.” She then faced Juri again and mouthed, “Big and squishy.”

That was it.

Juri’s face reddened, and he docked his head down. Turning away, he said, “Let’s go to class!”

Haruka’s hand stopped Juri, and she said, “Mou, Juri. What are you doing? You should walk with Mayu-chan and make sure she knows the school well enough.” She tugged at her boyfriend’s hand and hopped forward. Glancing back, she shouted, “Mi-chan, Ryosuke! Let’s leave them!”

Mirai and Ryosuke laughed, nodded, and obeyed Haruka. As Mirai went, she touched Juri’s shoulder and whispered, “You can do it, Juri. Ganbarre!”

Ryosuke also encouraged him with, “Show her your skills.”

Juri furrowed his eyebrows together because he didn’t like the situation but at the same time, he did want to spend time alone with Mayu, for they hadn’t had a chance ever since Rena and Ryosuke had broken up, and Mayu was almost always with Rena, who was almost always with Haruma.

Everything was silent between them until Mayu walked to him and said, “Sh-Shall we go?”

Juri perked up and monotonously answered, “H-Hai…”

*

“Haruka, why’d you do that to him?” asked Mirai, chuckling.

She and everyone, but Juri and Mayu, were walking toward the school entrance.

Haruka smirked. “I had to. It’s my revenge since it’ll be blue.”

“What’ll be blue?” Mirai asked back.

Haruka, Ryosuke, and Shintaro stopped walking. For a slight moment, they had forgotten that Mirai had no clue of what they had planned to do, and they wanted it to stay that way, well, at least just for another three to four months.

Haruka’s awkward laugh put the gang into a weird atmosphere. “What did I say? Ah, that’s right, are you going to join any club this year?”

“It’s too late to join a club since I’m already a third-year student,” answered Mirai. “Besides, I want to focus on college applications and Natsu.”

Ryosuke nudged her with his shoulder and frowned. “What about me? Focus on me too!”

“You’re last on my list.”

“As long as I’m on that list, that’s good.”

She playfully scoffed at his optimistic perspective.

“Ryosuke!” It was a chirpy voice that didn’t belong to any of the friends, and they turned to where they had heard a very familiar but unwanted voice and saw Umika. Without warning as always, she gave Ryosuke a back-hug and squeezed him so tight, he wheezed. She whined, “I couldn’t find you after graduation, Ryo-chan! Where were you?”

And like always, he couldn’t free himself from her grasp and eyed his friends to help, especially at Mirai, but she ignored him like always.

Umika continued to speak, head still resting on his back and arms still around his waist. “Mou, I can’t believe we’ll be miles apart! I miss you already, my Ryo-chan!”

“Please… Please—let…go…!” he begged as he fumbled his hands at his waist to unchain himself.

Umika shook her head. “No! I didn’t get to see you after graduation, so I’m going to hold you for a long time before I leave!”

“Leave?” said everyone, although, Haruka sounded quite happy.

“Don’t think you can have Ryo-chan, Shida.” Umika snarled to Mirai as she glared at her. “When I come back, my body will be better and bigger, something yours definitely wouldn’t become.”

As if that wasn’t enough to pop an invisible vein for Mirai, Ryosuke let out a laugh and knew she caught him, yet he added a fake shrug, implying ‘what’.

That Ryosuke, thought Mirai, I’ll get him for thinking that my body won’t grow.

“Umika.” It was Yuta this time, coming from the same way his younger twin sister had. He elegantly stood there with brown denim shorts and black and white sneakers. His top consists of two layers, a white shirt covered by a black jacket. For once, he emitted a normal-looking teenage boy instead of a hard-working baseball player.

“Nii-chan,” Umika stated while still holding onto Ryosuke. However, her grip had weakened. “But-but Ryo-chan….”

“We have to go if we want to catch the flight.”

“You guys are leaving Tokyo?” Shintaro asked.

Yuta shook his head. “Japan.”

The friends’ eyes widened. They knew the twins were in the top three percent of their year’s class rank, but they didn’t know, or at least think, they were that academically smart.

For the first time, Mirai sadly looked at Umika. She caught her trembling lips and wet eyes. She had known all along that Umika was a good senpai. She had seen it a couple of times before, but it was just that Umika was always against her for being friends with Ryosuke. Although the situation was different, Mirai could somewhat understand how painful it was to leave a beloved behind.

She tapped Ryosuke on the chest. “Go with her.”

Everyone looked at her because they thought they had heard it wrong.

She looked at Yuta, the first time they had locked eyes together since the incident, and asked, “Is it okay if she takes a night flight?”

He nodded.

Ryosuke caught on and tugged her by the hand and hissed, “What are you planning?”

She faced Umika with a smile—the sincerest, the first, and the last smile she would ever, probably, give to Umika. “He’s all yours.”

Umika’s expression brightened for a quick moment but quietly asked, “But…school…?”

“I got that under control.”

*

It was lunchtime, and the gang including Mayu and without Ryosuke were at their usual spot.

Juri frowned with disappointment because he was always the last to know something. “I thought his constipation was over?”

Mirai put out an index finger to . “Shh, it was a lie.”

“A lie?” Mayu and Juri whispered.

“Umika-senpai stopped by because she wanted to see him before she left.” Under her breath, she muttered, “This is revenge for laughing about my inadequate body, Ryosuke.”

Juri frowned. “But she’s always on the leave for her photoshoots. It’s not like she’s going out of Japan and won’t…” When he caught the blank faces of his friends, he realized that what he was saying was the situation Umika had. “What? Really? She’s leaving and never coming back?”

“Well, the ‘never coming back’ part is a ‘we-don’t-know-yet,’” answered Haruka, “but for sure, they’re leaving Japan.”

“They?”

“Yuta Tamamori-senpai is going too.”

Juri shrieked and looked at Mirai. “Jaa, what about you and Tamamori-senpai? What about your guys’ relationship? Long-distance?”

“We broke up,” answered Mirai, and the friends looked at her with gaped mouths.

Haruka put two hands on Mirai’s shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell us? When did this happen? Is it because of the long-distance?”

Mirai broke free from Haruka and scooted back because she knew she would need some space between her and her friends, or else she’d be accidentally hurt by them, especially by Haruka, who usually got emotionally worked up and tend to use her hands to express her state of emotions. She answered her friends, “We broke up…on that day.”

“What day?” the friends asked together.

“The day…Ryosuke and I made up.”

Haruka gasped and gloomily whispered, “Is it…because of what I told you?” She gulped and spoke to herself, “I ruined your first relationship.”

Mirai protested, “No, no, no. Haruka, you didn’t—I did. It was all me.”

“Does Ryosuke know?” Juri asked.

Mirai nodded. “Yeah, I told him.”

“How-how did he take it?” Haruka asked, worried.

“He took it quite fine. I told him it wasn’t his fault either, so…yeah.” Her trailed off sentence wasn’t persuasive, but the friends knew better to not touch on a wound that was slowly recovering. She scooted back into the circle and picked up her lunch box. Smiling, she said, “We better finish lunch before break ends.”

*

Around the same time that Mirai and her friends were having lunch at school, so were Ryosuke and Umika. They were dining at a fancy French-like restaurant right across the three-story museum they had recently come out of and had spent almost two hours looking at artwork from painters back in the centuries before they were born. This whole day had been planned meticulously by Umika, who wanted Ryosuke to spend a day with her even if she had to use force.

He wasn’t interested in walking around and hearing someone explain the importance of the art pieces, but she was. What did catch his interest was how extremely different Umika was in comparison with Mirai. That thought came to him when they had passed by a water-color art piece of a mother and a daughter standing atop of a hill, looking at the horizon as the sun kissed the agricultural landscape goodnight. He knew Mirai didn’t have a girly side but when he saw how Umika was excited at almost every picture she came across, he couldn’t help but see Mirai not acting the same ecstatic way as Umika. He knew that if he and Mirai were to ever choose a place to date, it’d never be a museum.

He choked on his water when he realized what he had thought of—a date with Mirai. That wasn’t possible between them. They were good friends, and to go on a date together? Impossible!

“You okay, Ryo-chan?” Umika asked, laying her fork upside down on the side of her plate. Leaning forward with a worried expression, she added, “Is the food not tasty?”

After he wiped his mouth with a tissue, he forced a smile. “I’m okay, thanks.” He looked around the area. “I’ll be in the bathroom for a bit.” He stood up and headed to his left.

She sighed and looked at the time on her cell phone and saw that it was almost one in the afternoon. She had promised Yuta she’d be at the airport at seven, so they could arrive in England by the next morning.

Yes, England. Oh, beautiful England was where she and her brother would stay for the next two to possibly three years. Although she wanted to go after her dream career of becoming a biochemist, she also didn’t want to leave her first die-hard crush. But she knew all along that she’d never get him. He was sweet, caring, and always understanding, and that was why she could never look away from him.

Feeling depressed, she blinked the tears away because she feared he’d return and see them fall. With these tears, memories of how they first met crossed her mind.

“Onii-chan,” whined Umika to her brother, who was in the equipment shed, as she stood outside the shed, “you promised we’d go home early today.” It was after school, and they were at the baseball field, and they had just become second-year students. Because she mostly interacted with people who followed what she asked for—the people she worked with—she was used to getting her way. The only one who didn’t give in to her was her older twin brother. “I have a shooting tomorrow, and I leave tonight.”

“Matte, Umika,” said Yuta, not looking back and searching for something. “Coach asked me to help the team for fifteen minutes.” He poked his head out of the shed. “You can wait that long, can’t you?”

“I can, but I don’t want to.” She scowled and looked around. “I don’t want to see a group of immature boys. If they fawn over me and smell like sweat, I’m going to hit them.”

“They won’t.” He walked out and pulled a cart full of bats, balls, and gloves. “Let’s get going.”

As she followed him to the stands, she expected wild cheers and wooing whistles because she was usually featured in gravure magazines, and of course, being the teenage boys they were, they had to have seen her at least once on the front cover. Within two seconds of catching the young boys’ eyes, indeed, it got loud. It was so loud that Coach Sugita had to blow his whistle five times, each louder and sharper than the first.

Yuta smiled at the responses his sister received. He was used to the popularity she had. Even so, he was focused on getting the cart next to his coach. When finished, he stood beside the cart in between him and Coach Sugita.

“Oi, pay attention!” Sugita-san shouted, and his pink face gradually reverted to its original color.

Although it took a while, the boys finally unlocked their gazes from Umika to their coach, and she went to sit on the lonely bench adjacent to the stands.

Coach Sugita clapped. “Congratulations on passing the health tests, but do not celebrate just yet.” He put his arms behind his back. “I can eliminate you anytime I want if I see you lack determination, have no teamwork, or have no sportsmanship.” He pointed to Yuta. “This is our ace. He’s been playing baseball for over four years, and each year, he always surpasses his previous. I want you to follow or at least use him as your athletic model.”

Yuta bowed and then introduced himself formally, “Konnichi wa. I’m Yuta Tamamori, but I’m not that great yet. I still have plenty to learn. As your senpai, I will do my best to guide you.”

Watching her brother spoke to the crowd with much comfort made her envious. She knew she had a problem with speaking nicely, but she could never help but speak with a snide attitude. She had no friends to begin with and had learned the ranking of superiority first through working. Her dejected eyes wandered amongst the crowd and saw a young boy annoying a girl by poking her arm and the girl was ignoring him. Umika arched a brow in response. She hated those kinds of ignorant people who didn’t know when to stop irritating others, and she felt bad for the girl who might be friends with that boy—or worse, his girlfriend.

As the introduction and welcoming speech was over, the next thing on the agenda was a baseball warm-up of catch so that Coach Sugita could get an analysis of where everyone’s athletic abilities currently lie.

Once everyone was down at the field and feeling bored for having stayed longer than fifteen minutes as her brother had said, she walked to the cart to grab a bat and swung it with little force or thought. Suddenly, a laugh came from behind her.

“That’s not how you do it,” said someone, making her turn around quickly and blush because she didn’t think anyone was there to see. It was the annoying boy she had seen earlier. “Want me to show you how?” He put out a hand and had a smile so irresistible, his puffy cheeks made his mouth look smaller and cuter.

Enamored, her hands gave him the bat without her knowing and when her forefingers gently scraped against his, she felt an electric shock throughout her body.

“You want to place your grip at the handle, not in the middle of it.” He chuckled, still finding her wrong hand placements amusing. He demonstrated by gripping his right hand on the top half of the handle and then his left hand on the bottom half. He shot a look back at her. “Like this, you see.”

All she could do was nod, too lost at how beautiful he was.

“The most important part of holding onto a bat isn’t the grip, but where you place your grip.” Letting his right hand go, he pointed to the middle of the bat, just where she had held. “If your hold is too close to the top of the bat or too close to the end, th