Behind The Smile||Karmagisa

Chapter 8: The Early One

"Ouch! Can't you be a little more gentle?!"

I flinched, a bit frightened by his scary voice. "I-I'm sorry." I stuttered. "But, this is the only way to disinfect a cut."

He sighed, "Okay then." he crossed his arms, dissatisfied with the comment I'd just gave. "But if it gets worse, I won't play with you anymore."

"Y-You can't be serious."

He laughed, ruffling my hair with his aggressive hands. "I'm just joking, Nagisa." he smiled as he tangled his fingers even more in my oddly coloured hair. "Don't take everything I say seriously. As if I would stop playing with my little brother."

"We're the same age." I grumbled, knowing that he wouldn't listen to that sentence anyway. "We're only a few months apart."

"I'm still older, though." he repeated the answer he'd been giving me since the day we met.

I dabbed the cotton wool into the cut I was treating that scarred his knee, putting in some extra effort to release my little grudge. "Stop it!" he demanded, kicking out his leg to shoo me away. "if you're not going to treat it properly then, just leave it!"

"If I leave it, it'll be painful."

"It's even more painful when you press on it like that!"

I burst into laughter, earning a confused look by him. "Are you going crazy or something?" he asked, his expression truly worried which made me laugh harder.

"Hey, can I just confirm something?" I asked, properly treating his cut this time, wrapping it with a bandage.

"What is it?" he asked as I crawled to sit beside him, his face following my movements.

"We're always gonna stay together, right?"

He gave me a confused look, "What's up with that?" he gagged. "It sounds like one of the lines in a movie."

"We aren't?"

He raised up his pinkie in front of my face, "Of course we are!" he smiled. "Why wouldn't we?"

I smiled back, relieved to hear his answer. As I wrapped my own finger around his, we chanted in unison. "Cross my heart and do not lie, stick a needle in my eye, if this promise is broken the other will die."

"Nagisa," he called, moving his fingers from being wrapped together with my pinkie to intertwining them with the rest of my fingers. "You'll never forget me, right?"

"Never in a million years."

"Even if I'm very far away from you?" he asked. "Even if I won't be with you?"

"You can't say that." I raised my voice slightly. "We made a promise to stay together."

He laughed, staring down at his bandaged knee. "Of course." he smiled. "Never forget it, okay?"

"Never in a million years."

*~*~*~*~*~

I blinked my heavy eyelids a couple of times before realizing that I was in my bed. As I sat up, wrinkling the blankets that covered half of my body, I supported my head-feeling a bit dizzy.

But then, I gagged.

"A dream, huh?"

"They say dreams are treasured memories."

Treasured? The promise was broke in a blink of an eye when he left for London to continue his studies there. But, what did I expect? We were 5 years of age. We were naïve, I'm not even surprised if he already forgotten about that particular promise.