DISCLAIMER (I remember it for once!): I don't own Anohana (I don't have the brilliance) The charators and plot belong to Mari Okada...

Whoa this is my first fanfiction in the Anime section :P

Warning: A slightly Emo one shot here.

They couldn't have known.

There was no way. A person can't predict anything like this, no, a person wouldn't want to. There had been no way of knowing, no way.

It's our fault. Each of them think. My fault.

No one's fault.

An unfortunate accident.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Those phrases are thrown around the most these days as the five of them move around, whether in a group or individually. The loss of a member had struck them down to the core.

The very idea that there wasn't six of them anymore, that there was one of them was soon-to-be six feet in the ground, just wasn't entirely registering.

At least, not until the funeral.

The five of them stand close to each other, parents watching them from further behind, two girls, three boys. One girls has auburn curls, cut at shoulder length, with thick black glasses. Anjou Naruko, Anaru. She stands clutching the other girl, tears streaming down her face in rivulets. The other girl's hair is short, cut to her ears, her dark head bowed as she comforts the other, lightly stroking her head. She does not cry, but looks as though she is being stabbed multiple times in the stomach. Tsurumi Chiriko, Tsuruko. The three boys, surprisingly, are a larger mess. The smallest one, with a shaved head and large dark eyes, screams and shrieks and cries and cries, looking as though a dam had broken. Tetsudo Hisakawa, Poppo. The second boy stands shaking, his hands covering his eyes, his light brown hair trapped under a blue baseball cap. Matsuyuki Atsumu, Yukiatsu. The saddest sight is the last boy, who face shows disbelief and grief beyond all measure, as though he grew thirty years in the past thirty minutes. Yadomi Jinta, Jintan. Tears stream from his eyes, but he doesn't make a sound, just shows the heartrending expression that could convince a rock to cry.

Yet nothing changes. Despite the grief worn on their faces, the funeral resumes, the man standing at the front continuing his speech on Honma Meiko's values.

Honma Meiko.

Menma.

The missing member in their group.

The one who's gone.

Who left and will never ever come back.

After everything, but before they lower the coffin into the grave, the children are approached.

"You were her best friends? Perhaps you would like to see her one last time, before she's gone." The man says, bowing his head to the children.

"She's already gone." Tsuruko whispers.

"Tsuruko." Yukiatsu hisses, finally peeling his hands away from his face to glare at her.

"Yukiatsu." The dark-haired girl responds with a glare of an equal level of, if not more, ferocity.

"I don't want her to be gone." Anaru whimpers into Tsuruko's shoulder, interrupting the glaring match between the pair. "I want her here with us. She shouldn't-She-she-she-"

"AGHHH!" The one nicknamed Poppo screeches, clawing at his shaved head, his cries drowning up the rest of the auburn's sentence. "She was the one who deserved to die the least!" He bursts into a fresh waterfall of tears.

"Look here; calm down." Jintan straightens up locking eyes with Anaru first, then Poppo. "Look, this is our…" He swallows, then clears his throat for good measure. He doesn't want his words to be teary. "Last…our last…chance to see her."

"Jintan?" Anaru whispers as she lifts her head.

"I have something to give her." Tsuruko takes Anaru's hand and drags her to where the coffin is set up, open.

The two girls go first, looking over the edge of the box almost tentatively, for up till now their only experience with death is the beetle Poppo once sat on, a squashed bug that wriggled and twitched as it slowly died. They expect something grotesque, something disgusting, something extreme that marks death from life.

And yet.

Menma lies still, her hands crossed on her stomach, looking as though she was merely asleep.

Anaru let a scream escape her lips, flinching back.

Tsuruko's lips part, but no sound escapes, even as Anaru forcibly drags her away from the coffin.

Finally, the two girls peer into it again. Menma's silver-blond hair looks freshly washed, spread around her like a halo. Her face is pale, but not the strange colour it had been when she had been fished out of the river. Her eyes are open, its usual bright blue dulled. She's in the white dress she often wore in the summer, worn even the day she died. Her sandals are on her feet, both of them, which is what surprises them.

The only thing that is left of the Russian-Japanese girl with a radiant smile is a sandal, bobbing on the riverbed. A sandal that Poppo retrieved and brought to the Honma family.

"Tsuruko…" Anaru mumbles.

"I know," Tsuruko says quietly. She leans over Menma and slips a folded sheet of paper into the coffin, next to Menma.

"Oh god." Yukiatsu mumbles from behind them and both the girls turn instantly. They hadn't heard him come up. "Menma…"

"This is sick," Tsuruko announces, promptly turns green and disappears into the crowd.

Anaru doesn't follow. Instead, she unfolds Tsuruko's drawing and leaves it next to Menma.

"She put some effort into this." She studies the drawing intently, often, Tsuruko leaves double meanings in her artwork.

"It's not one of her better ones." He snorts.

"She looks the same," Anaru observes, half-striving for a change in subject, staring down at Menma's body.

"Yeah." Yukiatsu stares. He watches as Anaru finally sighs and places a bouquet of wildflowers next to the body, along with a Nokemon cartridge, no doubt meant for Menma's birthday.

Yukiatsu extracts something from his pocket, holding it up to the light. Immediately understanding, Anaru takes it from him and waits.

He shifts Tsuruko's drawing to the side, holds up Menma's arm. Anaru slides the bracelet of iridescent glass beads onto Menma's delicate wrist, watching silently as Yukiatsu rearranges the hands their previous position.

Like a puppet.

They exchange glances, sorrow painted on their features; seeing Menma like this is a blessing, a memory to hold onto, yet also a curse, for it taunts them with the fact that Menma would still have been alive if-

Our fault.

Jintan and Poppo come out of nowhere and Anaru and Yukiatsu are pushed to the back as Poppo cries out to Menma, lamenting in indiscernible words. Jintan just leaves a half-folded piece of paper tucked under her hands.

The funeral people make their way forward, with 'excuse me's and 'her family wishes to see the body'. After almost twenty minutes, the coffin is ready to be shut.

"Wait!" Tsuruko surges from the crowd, rushes up next to the coffin.

Snap.

The lid shuts.

"We didn't close her eyes," Tsuruko explains later, seated with her back against the wall of the church. "She won't be able to rest in peace."

"How would you know?" Yukiatsu snarls.

"She probably read it somewhere." Anaru says tiredly. "I'm exhausted." She adds.

"I can't believe it." Poppo mummers. "If she can't rest in peace-"

"I'm leaving," Jintan says and does just that.

To everyone else, they move on with their life. They press play, carry on, get over it, etcetera.

But deep in their hearts, they know.

They haven't moved on, they're just ignoring the elephant in the room. Their childhood nicknames fade in the space of a year and their group splits up in half of that time.

Anaru spends her time with new friends, the most popular girls in school. She changes the way she acts and the way she looks and despite her hard work, gets into a low standard high school. Yukiatsu delves himself into preparation for his exam, acing it and heads on to an elite high school. Tsuruko shades her papers black-black-black-black and only draws when she's not thinking. Unsurprisingly, she ends up in the same school as Yukiatsu, but the day she starts wearing glasses is the day Anaru trades hers for contacts. Poppo leaves, halfway. After he graduates from junior high, he throws down his books and disappears, like a breeze in Summer. Jintan fails his exams and doesn't manage to snag a position at the same school as Tsuruko and Yukiatsu. He quits school and spends his days at home, feeding his guilt.

Until one summer, the fifth one since Menma's death, when Jintan is playing a violent game.

"Eh? Is that a Billsprout?"

These words were the first words that announced Menma's reappearance into their lives, this time as a spectre.

Gradually, time moves again. There's a shift, and every one of them feels it.

Please R&R, cause as aforementioned, this is my first fanfiction in the anime section. (And I'm sorry the ending was so weak...)