Shida Mirai. He only learned her name recently. She was his class mate and he was rather surprised he didn’t notice her in the class. Well, they just started high school last week and she did not have any outstanding appearance for him to notice since there were lots of people surrounding him every day. However, it all changed after his encounter with her in the cafeteria. She had given him her strawberry shortcake, and it was not a simple deal for him.

Ryosuke stared at the picture of his highschool friends he saved in his cellphone. It was the picture a day before their graduation when they gathered at school just for the sake of taking their last moment as high schoolers. He focused his gaze at the back row, at the spot exactly behind him who was squatting down in the front. Behind him was Shida Mirai, holding her camera while smiling shyly at the one capturing their pictures.

He turned off the phone in a helpless feeling. He didn’t want to relive the past, but he couldn’t help looking back, wondering what would change if back then he chose a different path, and... if she made a different decision.

Shaking his head to get rid of the useless wonder, he shoved the phone into his pants pocket. He had a meeting in an hour. Out he went, trudging through the busy traffic of Seoul.

**********

She heard the sound of glass breaking and she felt something sharp tore her skin then soon hot liquid ran down her arm.

Her eyes opened wide, staring to the ground below as her body falling. The fear inside was too intense that she could not even scream.

She shut her eyes tight and tears rained out her eyes before her body collide with the hard surface, blowing her an excruciating pain in every inch of her body.

“I’m sorry”... was the last thought flashed in her mind before everything turned black.

Shida Mirai jolted upward, abruptly awaken from her sleep. It had been four years since she had to live with that certain nightmare haunted her. She touched the scar on her right forearm.

She got the scar when she broke her arm four and a half years ago. It was an accident. She had slipped from the second floor of her house, breaking the window glass and eventually falling down the ground below. However, she didn’t remember the detail of what causing her to slip off.

What she remembered was she woke up in a hospital with a fractured arm and concussion, then a few days after that she was told that her mother had died in a traffic accident while her stepfather was arrested because of some criminal cases he committed.

She was depressed that time, but then she received news that she got scholarship to study abroad. With her wound still had not healed yet and nothing left for her in Japan, she eventually left for Germany, staying there until she graduated and decided to return to her home country. Sadly, while back in Germany the nightmare only came occassionally, after she was back in Japan it got more often. And what bother her more was the feeling left in her after that. Recently, the nightmare came with an enormous intensity of fear. Only... she didn’t know what she was scared of, but the feeling was there, and stayed for some times before she forced herself to forget it.

Shaking her head, she reached for the laptop she put on the bedside table. She had been working on some project before going to sleep a few hours ago. Opening her e-mail, she got new notification. She clicked on the new mail, and soon a smile bloomed on her face. It was a mail from her best friend.

**********

“Ryosuke, please forgive me.”

Yamada Ryosuke was settling in his apartment in Seoul, South Korea, listening to the voice mail Umika left in his phone. It was the tenth message from her that day. She left so many more messages the day before because he had been refusing to talk to her these past two days. Never once he felt such anger toward his half sister. In fact, he could never be angry at her before she did what she did three days ago.

She and Yuri had set him up with Shida Mirai. Yuri had provoked him, reminding him about the bitter past he wanted to let go but could not, before asking a help to him to pick Umika up. He did not expect he would meet Mirai, and he also did not expect that he would act out of control. He always behaved gentlemanly toward women, but his frustrated mind got the best of him that time.

“You may not start from where you ended back then, but you can still make a new start with her, Ryosuke.”

He remembered Yuri’s advice the night before he was asked to pick Umika up, and he also remembered how he replied to that.

“She is not the Mirai I knew, Chii. She is not the one with whom I fe— I have had enough, Chii,” he changed his choices of words at the last moment.

Yuri shook his head, disagreeing, “She is still Mirai. Forgeting a little part of her life doesn’t mean she change into someone else, Ryosuke.”

“Unfortunately, that little part she chose to forget was me, Chii,” he rebutted. “It’s enough she abandoned me once. I don’t want to take the risk to be abandoned for the second time. I don’t want to feel the same pain.”

He had been abandoned by most people he considered dear to him. His mother’s family, his father, and... her. They all had choices, but in the end they would always choose to protect their selves by casting him out of their life.

A beeping from his phone woke him up from his daze. His answering machine spoke for him, asking the caller to just leave a message.

“Ryosuke, I know you’re there.”

He heard Yuri’s voice from the machine, but he did nothing to respond.

“You promised to never leave Umika again like you did in the past, didn’t you?” Yuri’s voice continued on, firmly. “But you just broke it by not answering her calls nor reply her messages.”

He sighed as he realized how true it was.

“Are you abandoning Umika just because she wanted to give you a little happiness? What is the difference between you and those people that had abandoned you then?”

Those sentence strucked him hard. What was the difference of he and they?

“If you have regained your senses, open your door. I’m waiting in front of your apartment.”

At this, he perked up. He rushed to the foyer, looking into the intercom and confirming that Yuri was indeed standing before his apartment. Sighing, he realized he had no choice but to face Yuri.

Yuri did not show any change in his expression, as though had known that eventually he would open the door.

“Come in,” he invited Yuri.

“No need,” Yuri answered coldly. “I just came to deliver something for Umika.”

When he knotted his brows, Yuri shoved a package onto his chest.

“You know I hate men who hurt women,” Yuri stated. “But you just position yourself in that category, Ryosuke. Umika is now under my protection, so I won’t let anyone hurt her, not even you.”

That made him reassured but threatened as well. Yuri’s eyes did not look friendly at all at the moment.

“You know better than anyone, I don’t mean to hurt her in anyway. I just...,” he looked for words. “I just need time for myself.”

“Purposedly or not, the result is still the same, Ryosuke. Umika is hurt. She cried fearing that you wouldn’t show up in our