Summary: In which Yukinoshita Yukino and Hikigaya Hachiman were a couple.

Rating: T

Tags: gen, slice of life, drama

Disclaimer: Characters are property of Watari Wataru

What was it again? Right. They say that love makes you blind. Well, whatever perception you had of that false ideal, anyway. Love was nothing more than chemicals compounded together, travelling through the gates of heaven and hell that composed the human frame. It was a falsehood that stood the trial of the ages and continued to persevere. It was humiliatingly powerful and devastatingly fragile.

Love, much like youth, was nothing but a seed of blended pulp that blossomed into withered buds. It bore no fruit, even after it flowered. Love was a curse that I thought that I knew. Instead, it was only after she tortured my heart that I learned love was nothing. After all, anything of substance would not shatter with but a touch. Be they memories, kisses, or… No. Love, love is nothing.

This was my creed. After all, Yukinoshita Yukino did to me what Orimoto Kaori began but could not finish. In hindsight, while my experiences with Orimoto made me think that emotional attachment to persons outside of my family was attraction, evidence suggested that I simply yearned for a friend but misplaced my words.

In the case with Yukinoshita Yukino, there was no mistake. I loved her. I believed her. I believed that I loved her. But she took leave of that, but her face, a mask of fresh frosted smiles, belied no deeper horrors. Because I trusted.

You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take, Tobe once told me. But conversely, if you were going to miss those shots in the first place, then of course you should not take them. Life, unfortunately, is neither black nor white and the pressure builds over time; as such, humans take their chances.

Mine simply failed to work out. But then again, if I had looked at the history of my life, I should have seen it from the start. Apologies, then; sorry that I believed in myself. Sorry that I loved you, Yukino.

Because love was a wasteland, and no hunger could hurt as bad as the thirst.