It's five am and he's out of breath when he finds her, his heart beating loud and quick as a drum cadence. She sits on a bench in the park - his park, the one he visited when he needed to think, needed to breathe, needed to remember - her knees tucked under her chin, as she stares at the pink lemonade sunrise. He's a little angry, a little relieved.

"Kuriyama-san," he breathes out shallowly, jogging over to her.

She keeps her eyes on the sky. "Leave me alone."

"What the hell were you thinking?" he demands, running a hand through his wind-blown hair. Its cold - he can see his breath turn to clouds when he speaks - and she's been sitting out all night with just a scarf. "Sakura called me at eleven last night because you still hadn't come home!" He sheds his jacket and throws it over her, blocking the view of the dawn breaking over the horizon.

"Why do you care?" she mutters, unfolding herself and pushing the coat away. "You're just my senpai, right? So why do you care?"

He almost says it then, teeth clenched, eyebrows knitted, skin flushed.

But he doesn't.

::::

She's stuffing her face. Eating him out of house and home, putting an impressive dent in his wallet. Many things changed when she came back without her memories, but this is the same. He thinks he's crazy for having missed this, but she never looks happier than she does when she's eating. She practically shines.

"Are you sure?" she asks around a mouthful of noodles. "Are you sure its okay to order more?"

He grins at her, finding it hilarious to hear those words come out of her mouth. "Until you can't eat anymore."

She swallows and then smiles, and there's something caught in her teeth. "Thanks, Senpai. I'll buy next time, okay!"

"No." He says it too quickly and suddenly, she loses complete interest in her meal, eyes sharp as her gaze pins him to the wall. His pulse spikes - she always gets this look in her eye when she realizes she's close to uncovering a memory, memories he'd rather keep away from her. So he quickly covers himself, smiling insincerely and flapping his hand in the air as if to dismiss her curiosity. "No, I'm your senpai, it's my duty to treat you."

She's unconvinced. He doesn't blame her. "I wish you wouldn't lie to me like this," she tells him irritably. "It's unpleasant."

He thinks maybe, for a split second that its wrong, all wrong. That he should tell her how much she used to enjoy making him pay for her dinners. That she would eat over her platters and bowls with a smug sort of air. That she'd show up on his doorstep at 9 pm and demand that he take her out to dinner; that she never would have insisted she foot the bill. That he'd complain about it, but savor the time he got to spend with her.

The moment fades, though, and he drops his eyes with a shrug.

::::

Akihito walks a thin line. Watch over Kuriyama-san, but make sure she doesn't know why he cares so much. It's hard and she's not stupid. Avoiding her is his best bet - after all, she has encouraged him to leave her alone before so it makes sense. She won't know that Sakura texts him regularly about the bespectacled beauty, even though he never asked for it.

The Literary Club isn't much of a club anymore, but Kuriyama-san doesn't come anymore, only because no one told her that she used to be a member. Akihito thinks its better - just one less place to run into her, one less place to cause her anxiety and stress. He skips most days anyway, just because memories of her are so ingrained into the bookshelves and the tables of the room that it hurts to sit there. Mitsuki scolds him half-heartedly, though she is absent often as well.

Instead, after school, he spends a lot of time on the roof. Kind of masochistic, considering everything with Kuriyama-san and him and both started and ended here, but there's something almost soothing about it. It's quiet and it breaks his heart to know that this place belongs to only him now. He revels in the solitude. He'd always been good on his own - he forgot that, while Kuriyama-san had been around.

He lays on the ventilation system with his arms crossed behind his head and stares at the clouds with his lips pursed. He can do this, he thinks painfully. He can live the rest of his life this way as long as she's alive, as long as she's happy. And he'll make sure she's happy.

The gate creaks from far away and he knows that he's not alone anymore. With a sigh, he sits up and peeks around the edge of the vent wall, his stomach dropping when he recognizes Kuriyama-san standing there, the wind tearing at her hair and her clothes and she looks around hopelessly. He knows he should stay hidden, but she looks so distressed. So he casually pockets his hands and then makes for the exit, stepping into her line of sight. He won't stay long, he tells himself. He'll just find out why she's here and that'll be it.

"Kanbara-senpai," she says in a startled voice, looking at him with her sunshine eyes.

"Yo," he says flatly, avoiding her gaze. "It's cold out here. Were you looking for something?"

She fiddles with her fingers, dropping her eyes to the ground. "U-Um, not particularly," she admits. "I. . .this place just feels important." She's nervous; he can hear the tremor in her voice.

"Mm," he replies, though her response throws him into agony. He walks toward the gate, opening it, taking the first step down the stairs.

"Senpai!" Mirai yells and it takes everything in him to smile when he turns around.

"Yeah?"

"Why are you avoiding me?" she demands, sounding close to tears. The sunlight reflects off her glasses, the fringe of her bangs hiding just how upset she really is.

Because I'm in love with you, he thinks wryly. And you deserve more. "I'll see you around, Kuriyama-san." He turns his back, and leaves.

::::

It's 2 am and his phone rings. Disrupting the silence in the tomb of his apartment. He startles awake and fumbles around in the dark for the device, cursing when he knocks it off his bedside table. Instead of rolling out of bed, he hangs off the side and grabs it off the floor.

His heart stutters in his chest when he sees Kuriyama-san's name lit up on the front and for a moment he's terrified. "Hello?" he answers quickly, suddenly wide awake.

"Senpai?" she responds in a small voice.

"What is it?" he asks, sitting up in bed, throwing off the sheets, prepared to run to her in this instant if he had to. "Are you okay? Where are you?"

She sighs breathily. "I'm okay. I'm home."

He collapses back against his pillows. "You scared me," he half-laughs out of relief. His whole body seems to relax. "Its 2 in the morning."

"I couldn't sleep," she admits. "It's too quiet."

He wants to say he'll be there in a moment - he'd grow wings and fly to her if that's what it took - but he can't be close to her or he'll lose his mind. So he closes his eyes and presses his phone against his mouth. "The sun will be coming up soon."

::::

Mitsuki and Akihito have had their ups and downs, but at the core of it all, she's the only person he feels close to these days. She understands what he's going through, in some ways. Kuriyama Mirai had been her only friend, too. She stares him down blatantly, eyes crinkled with sadness. "Are you sure you're okay with this?"

I'm not the one that matters here. It's her.

His mouth quivers but he smiles and drops his gaze. "Yes."

It's always her.

::::

Its 2 pm and his phone rings. There's no school today and Akihito has been spending most of it in a napping stupor in an attempt to move along the solitary hours. He snatches his phone off his nightstand sleepily and presses it to his ear without even opening his eyes.

"Hello?"

"Senpai, it's me," Kuriyama-san says in a voice that's tiny and uncertain.

He rubs the sleep from his eyes. "What's up?" The adrenaline kicks in as fear takes over.

"Nothing. It's. . .It's just too quiet here," she says, as she has said a thousand times to him over the phone in the last couple months. His heart clenches and he wants to be with her so badly he feels like the space he's forced between them might kill him. "I. . .I know I keep bothering you," she continues. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," he says brokenly.

There are tears in her voice after a long stretch of static silence on the line. "Why do I miss you?" she asks desperately.

He almost breaks. Almost confesses to the lies he's told her. Almost.

::::

The sakura blossoms fall like rain. He can't make himself look at her, he's too irritated with himself, too upset that he couldn't keep the Spirit World away from her. She stands behind him with fear and anger in her voice, the blood dripping from her hand into the form of a sword.

"What am I?" she yells, voice brimming with emotion. "I'm not human, right? So what am I!? Please tell me!"

It hurts, he thinks. It hurts. "I can't."

::::

Mitsuki holds his hand and he feels like its the only thing that is keeping him from flying everywhere at once.

"She's miserable, too, you know," she scolds him half-heartedly.

"I don't understand why," he mutters, unconsciously squeezing her fingers. "I've cut every bad thing out of her life. Even if I was important to her, that was before she forgot all of us." It's been keeping him up at night lately.

"It's because you won't talk to her," she says forcefully, and then a small, outraged, "I hate seeing you like this almost as much as she does. Stupid."

He sighs weightily as his voice suddenly goes tight with emotions. "Kuriyama-san and I. . .we can't be together. We can't exist together. That's the fate we have. Even if she remembered, something else would have happened that drove us apart."

She leans back on the bench, still holding onto his hand. "My brother says something bad is going to happen." She slides her hand away and then begins to pat his back in a strangely soothingly way - very uncharacteristic for the Nase princess.

"My mom thinks so too," Akihito replies, recalling the letter Ayaka-san had opened for him a couple weeks ago.

"But I mean," Mitsuki says, "is that now is not the time to keep your distance."

"I don't want to hurt her. It's better this way."

"You already are."