Shu Nishijima had played both Frankie and Noa.   In reality he had only played Frankie, but Noa had believed that Shu’s intentions had been good in pursuing her friend. He had been attentive and kind to her, and had shown serious interest from what Noa had seen on the double date, but seeing him in Nob Hill with his other woman showed Noa that Shu was capable of being kind, attentive and interested in anyone; it didn’t make Frankie any more special than any of the others (because there was bound to be others) and it pissed Noa off.   She was so angry that she could hardly focus on her classes on the day of her first shift since the outing. She fumed internally for hours as she went from class to class, masking it beneath a composed expression (especially whenever she was around Frankie) as she went through the motions of the day, but internally she was replaying the events of that day over and over. As far as she knew, Shu and Frankie had never officially become a couple, but he’d had them both under the ruse that he was completely into her, and no one else; Noa knew that Frankie was head over heels for him, even at such an early stage in their relationship. She was crazy about Shu, and to see him out with another woman was devastating, she knew. She was angry for her friend, who was quickly becoming like a sister, and she wanted someone to know her pain, even if Frankie never said it herself.   When it was time for her to go into work she immediately left her dorm and took the Cobra down to the student center, storming her way up to the entrance and into the building. The sight of the Safeway logo outside of the store fueled her fire and made her walk faster, her sights set on one person, and one person only.   She had a good idea of where to find him, and she made a beeline for the frozen section; she found Hikaru in front of the ice cream, his hands full of Talenti cartons and his eyes intent on the task at hand. Her movement caught his attention and he glanced over in her direction before doing a double take, his eyebrows snapping together in a wary frown as he watched her walk up, a frown of her own on her face.   “What the do you want?” he demanded, giving her a once over.   “I came to tell you one thing, and one thing only,” Noa said evenly. “Your friend ain’t .” Hikaru’s frown deepened.   “What?”   “Your friend isn’t ,” Noa reiterated clearly.   “What the are you talking about?”   “He played my friend,” Noa retorted. “All she wanted to do was be with him and he played her.” Hikaru said nothing, his expression unreadable. Noa’s eyes widened. “You knew, didn’t you?”   “Look,” Hikaru began lowly. “Shu never said that they were a couple; he never lied to her-”   “Oh, he never told her that they were a couple, but he never told her that he was seeing other people, either,” Noa countered.   “He didn’t have to!”   “My friend really liked him, alright? She wasn’t seeing anyone else, and to make matters worse, you jumped down my ing throat, defending him and trying to make me feel bad for being suspicious of him and you knew he was playing her!” Hikaru said nothing, holding her gaze angrily. “You don’t have anything to say to that, do you?” Before he could respond his name was called over the intercom, catching his attention. Hikaru sighed, turning back to look at her.   “Did you have anything else you wanted to say?” he questioned lowly.   “Your friend ain’t and neither are you,” Noa spat venomously. “There, I’m done.” She turned from him then, heading back up to the front in order to get to the employee break room on the second floor. Frankie was a lot more innocent than most of the girls that Noa knew and had gone to school with, but Noa and those girls had been exposed to quite a bit when it came to guys. She had been naïve to sit on the sidelines and just play the friend because of Frankie’s overflowing happiness. She had allowed herself to turn blind eyes to Shu’s association with Hikaru, who was nothing but bad, and the consequences had arrived for them to deal with.   *  *  *   october   One thing that no one could ever say about Noa Alexander was that she was lazy.   As if going to school full time and working at Safeway wasn’t enough, Noa had started an internship only a couple of months into her very first semester of college. In her defense, she hadn’t gone looking for an internship to add to her workload, but her Algebra professor had presented the opportunity at the end of one of their classes: a paid internship under a data analyst in a company in the financial district, and as a mathematics major with hopes of doing something similar to this in the future, it just didn’t seem right for Noa to just let the chance pass her by without trying. Her luck had been surprisingly good, and she had been selected for the internship, which would occupy her late afternoons and early evenings for a couple of days during the week. This was in theory, of course, and she realized this just a short while into the start of her internship, when the sun went down, the street lights came on, and she found herself still at her boss’s office, working. She was a quick, constant thinker, and had immediately decided that if the clock reached 7:30 and she was not finished, then she would have to take it upon herself to leave; good opportunity or not, she still had homework to do, and would just like some time to herself in general.   Luckily, it didn’t have to come to that. At about 6:45 her boss released her for the night and she happily called it a day, heading out of the building, only to be met with the sound of faint thunder rolling overhead. Noa didn’t pay too much attention to it as she walked down Montgomery Street; it wasn’t the rainy season, and the chances of rain actually falling in October were very slim. She quickly learned that the odds were not in her favor, however; she had only walked a block before the rain started, seeming to drop every ounce of rainwater predicted for the month at once. By the time she crossed the street she was soaked, with no umbrella, and no desire to stay out any later than she already had; she tried standing in the covered entrance of the building at the corner of Jackson and Montgomery to wait out the shower, but it was cold, and the rain didn’t seem to be ready to let up anytime soon. She was left with no choice but to move through it, and so she did, moving briskly down the street with her eyes on the ground, occasionally glancing up to keep track of where she was going.   “Noa!” Noa paused, slowing to a stop as the call of her name in a familiar voice reached her clearly from across the street. She turned slowly, squinting through the rain at the building directly across from her; standing in the doorway was a man, his tall, lean frame dressed in a black button down and black dress pants – she frowned as she realized tha