Love Live!! If Three's A Crowd, Nine's A Multitude!

Mari's Ending

Maybe I kind of sold the "I like Kanan" thing too much. But I had to. If I made everyone (and myself at times) believe that I liked Kanan, then I wouldn't have to admit that I liked Shizuko.

Just the thought of dating a junior kind of turned me off. But spending more time with him I realized it had to be him.

"Why him? Anybody but him." I kept telling myself. "Why did it have to be him?" The guy that eight other people liked. Not to mention those eight were my best friends. 

To play it off, I kept pretending to be in love with Kanan.

At some point however, I just stopped caring about that. I knew that I needed to somehow win this competition between the nine of us.

So what was the best way? Sabotage. At least, that's what I attempted. But when Dia somehow weaseled out of my dare I had to think about it for a while. 

Did I want to potentially make someone cry? Over him of all people? 

When you look at him, Shizuko isn't the greatest human being on earth. He's not a hot model or anything. Far from that, he's the dense, stupid, idiot, kind of good looking guy. Did I forget to mention he's good looking?

But it stretches more than that, he's also kind, relaxed, and never complains, no matter how far we drag him off he's always not far behind. Heck, we took him on a spring break trip on the other side of the country.

What made me fall for him was probably when he let me stay at his house. At first I thought it was sweet of him, but it ended up being the start of my feelings growing with him.

I didn't realize just how large those feelings had grown until he asked You to the dance (yeah I realize it was peer pressure), I felt an emotion I don't feel often: jealousy

I know it's stupid, it was a high school dance whatever. But I still couldn't stand the fact that it wasn't me out there. True, we all got to dance with him at one point, and there wasn't even a point in time when it was just him and You. 

I wanted to spend time with him when we went on our "dates" but some stupid girls wanted to fight instead! And he didn't even help me he just walked away! I still had like two hours left on our date!

When we were about to leave we all anxiously waited his decision. So we sat on the stairs, all of our luggage was ready. When the door opened my heart started to race. It was only Tsuki.

Blah blah blah. We went to the airport without waiting for him. So I left a note for him, the last thing I wanted to tell him. 

"I'll always wait for him." is what I thought. And when we left it was hard. The others kind of gave up on him. Or at least lost feelings for him. 

Kanan and Dia had boyfriends and kept asking me if I was ever going to date someone. 

"Shizuko." Is what I'd reply with. 

They'd look at me sadly and hug me close, "Mari, I'm sure Shizuko would date you too, but here's the problem, we don't even know where he is. He promised he'd text but he never responded." Kanan sighed.

"There's a chance he's in America right now, or maybe he went to Europe. Hell, we don't know if he's alive." Dia stopped herself realizing what she said.

"You take that back right now!" I attempted to strangle her, Kanan held me back.

"She's right Mari, at this point he's long gone. We'll never see him again, I'm sorry."

"You don't know that! He promised! He said 'wherever you are in the world I'll come find you'! That's what he told us!" 

"Kids make promises that they believe can happen. Only to realize later in life that they're impossible." Dia sighed.

Honestly they were right. How was Shizuko going to find me in Tokyo where literally 9.2 million people live?

But like they say, when it really is meant to be, it'll happen.

April 17th. Five years after. We were stopped on our way back to the train station.

It was him. And guess who he picked? 

We were sitting on the couch of his small apartment. "Why didn't you contact us?" I asked.

"I got a new phone."

"Why didn't you text us on that?"

"I forgot your numbers."

"Why didn't you ask Tsuki?"

"She wouldn't give it."

"You really have an answer to everything huh?" I grinned.

"Every question has an answer." he shrugged.

"Doesn't mean it's the right answer." 

"I think it is."

"Hey, you still owe me two hours."

"Two hours for what? Oh... you're right."

"Wait you remember?"

"Yeah, I owe you a two hour shopping day because I took a video of you in your sleep." he smiled.

"No! But yes... You also owe me for leaving me on the date!"

"What date? We were dating in high school?"

"No! Like when you took the nine of us out- never mind." I gave up and looked at him.

He was wearing a smile that told me he knew exactly what I was talking about. 

"So what do you want to do today? Anything that doesn't involve a bedroom."

"Love hotel?" I joked, 

"I'm kind of broke." he laughed.

"Fine, then let's just go mess around with the others." I grabbed his arm.

Now that I think about it, five years is a lot of time. 1825 days, 2,629,038 minutes, 157,742,310 seconds. But as long as he shows up...

I'll gladly wait even longer...

Why do I feel like I wrote this really good? Like better than Riko's. Oh god what am I going to use for Kanan and Dia? 

Anyways I hope you all liked this! Thanks for reading! How are we so close to 15k reads? 

Don't know when the next chapter will be so stay tuned...

Be safe! Mask up! Don't be stupid!

-Kazuya