// ❥ bittersweet シ // ✔︎

Chapter One

"Is this the last time I'll see you, Suguru?"

I breathily questioned aloud, only to feel the slight tremble of my vocal cords vibrating in a nervous and tense manner that could only so desperately hold back all the emotions I wanted to cry out in that moment.

I bit my lip for the inevitable answer that I didn't want to happen yet was going to happen anyways with or without my consent. Then again, my whole life was almost always a take and no give situation. People always took from me and never gave back, and that's what scared me most in this moment.

When did it come down to this?

Was I not a good enough friend, was I not a good enough person? If I were one would he have stayed by our side no matter what. I couldn't help but let the questions fight endlessly for an answer within my brain.

"Probably."

Such a straightforward answer for what we had for 3 years. My best friend, or one of them, leaving to fulfill a desire that only he had. Leaving to fulfill something that would never happen, yet was willing to throw away everything that ever mattered to him away like we were the insignificant dirt on his shoes.

Maybe we weren't the absolute trash that he considered to be failures and disappointments to the human race, the 'monkeys' he resented immensely just because they fed off of what he considered we were.

Considering us the strong who didn't deserve to have our powers wasted on the weak. Considering us the people who deserved to rule among the rest because we were jujutsu users, and they weren't. Considering us the superior race.

Maybe that was why he wanted to leave.

Because I wasn't a good enough person to stay by his side, wasn't a worthy enough person to carry out what his so-called desires for a perfect world were.

Was I not good enough to be his overarching desire that ruled everything else out? Ruled out the option of leaving the school, leaving us... leaving me? Did I ever mean anything in the end of all of it? Was I ever a deciding factor for what was going to come next?

A big step in our lives that I never saw coming. It felt like a life-time ago whenever I thought about the times we've cherished, the times that I could constantly feel a smile on my face that meant so much to me.

The flashback of hearing his small laugh that vibrated in my ears to the point where I could feel my smile grow even more, even if it had just pulled the skin of my mouth backwards, made me question things even more.

What I didn't expect next was when we were mere centimeters away from our bodies, close enough where I could feel the warmth of his body radiating off of himself and onto me.

I felt a variety of numerous emotions then as I do now, and whenever I think back, my lips always tremble, my heart aches and fastens its pace, and I never understood why.

Whence our lips touched I knew it was the end of whatever happened between us for the last 3 years. I knew that whatever we had was no longer there. Just like wax at the bottom of a candle when fully burnt out, a chemical change that could no longer go back to what it was used to before. Our relationship was so insignificant when left by separated and it does nothing, yet when together, it can build a candle and have use again.

His lips, warm, tasteless, yet stirred my 5 senses so deeply that I wasn't able to react as on par as I would've liked to. I resented the fact that something so insignificant would have meant so much if it meant letting go of it forever.