You were always there, in the corner of my mind, the edge of my vision.

  You appeared in my dreams, a faint silhouette cast in shadow; a snapshot of thin fingers; a blur of cheekbones. You appeared in my reality, a whisper of black hair turning the corner; the slam of a locker door ringing through the hallway; a guarded expression. Although you were just part of the landscape, a brushstroke among millions, I always noticed you.

  You, in your beautiful simplicity, always matching the background as if you were born to go unseen.

Stuck in school on a perfect mid-autumn day, I began to realize that all those romances had been wrong.

Those stories depicted that one special thing about someone that pulled you in helplessly, even with the whispered dangers lurking behind them, even with the aura that simply told you not to trust them. You fell in love through one big thing, then continued to discover on the road to impending heartbreak.

I trusted all those tellings of romances in worlds worse than mine. I trusted them because, without any experience in the field myself, I had no other source to listen to, no red light to alert me if something was slightly off.

So when you walked into the classroom on the third week of school, a new face in an old building, I didn't take much notice of you.

When you placed your bag down on the desk beside me and asked in a voice full of hidden anxiety and late-night debates if you could sit there, I nodded, still not taking much notice of you.

But when the teacher walked in, and your back automatically straightened so I could see the smooth valley between your shoulder blades, my heart skipped over a few beats too many. From that moment on, I was drawn to you through the most trivial things-the way your front teeth closed over your bottom lip when you were thinking; the way you turned your head ever-so-slightly so the morning sunlight washed across your pale features; the way your hair fell in front of your face in clusters of red, like strawberries.

Strawberries. That was what you reminded me of.

When the bell rang for lunch, a cramped, metallic chime, I almost didn't want you to go. 

  In a warmly lit setting, mugs of steaming liquid wrapped in our cold fingers, you told me you had a fear of falling.

  A tentative hand held up a torn edge of paper as you looked down, trying to hide your unnaturally crimson palette that I noticed anyways. As if being afraid of plummeting, surrounded by screaming air and blurred landscape, was something to be ashamed of.

  Now, looking back on all those chances to get closer to you that I'd missed, that I wish I'd seen, I can only say that I tried.

  I tried to find something to say as I watched darkness and scars flood your expression.

  I tried to do something, anything, instead of just sit there and watch as the barrier you'd built behind the sheen of your eyes finally broke after 18 years.

  I tried to comfort you as you sobbed into my shoulder, liquid pain dampening my flimsy shirt.

  And when you looked up at me with soft, vulnerable features, your bangs forming a thick veil across your forehead, I tried my very hardest not to fall in love with you.

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A/N: Agh, sorry for the really short chapter :(  I was running into an author's block (which kinda explains the crap writing) and kept editing and deleting parts of different scenes, then realized a bunch of them didn't fit so...

Stuck with a 620-word chapter for now! I'm really sorry! :(:(:(:(

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