“That is what you want to hear, isn’t it?” Kuroko asks her, his eyes blank.
She stares right back at him, deeply insulted by his implication. He knew of her feelings for him, but he didn’t have to go that way about it. She could only take so much. She was human, too. No matter how much she loved Kuroko, she had her limits.
“If I tell you I like you, will you forgive me? Will things go back to normal?” Kuroko asks innocently, heavily unaware of the repercussions of his words.
She pries his arms off of her and gets up, straightening her clothes and brushing hypothetical dust off of them. She looks down at him, a sad smile on her face as she speaks.
“That’s not something you can just throw around, Kuroko. But, thank you for considering what I want. I think I finally understand what I really want now, though.”
She needed to let go, that much she knew. Maybe she needed to go to enormous lengths to achieve it, but she was determined to finally be able to free Kuroko from the confines of her heart. Her love wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. She wanted it to be able to build her into something she could never have imagined her to be before, and, while she may have been successful, she had taken a turn for the worse instead of improving herself. That needed to change, she thought.
“I want to quit being the club’s manager,” she says decisively.
Riko looks at her, concern set on her features, but she nods reluctantly, understanding the predicament of her friend. She only joined the club for Kuroko, anyway, and, now that that part of her life was over, she had every reason to quit. Riko couldn’t find it in her heart to stop her.
It has been two months since she quit the basketball club. It has also been two months since her last interaction with the club. They had been very unwilling to let her go but they respected her too much to make her stay against her wishes. She never received word from any of them besides Riko and Kagami ever since then, and her life in the calligraphy club was very much different from her experience in the basketball club but it was rather refreshing.
She still thought about those days she spent fawning over Kuroko and, sometimes, she misses it, but, for the most part, she was glad it was over. She was just complicating things in her head and that was the last thing she needed. She wasn’t exactly at the top of her class, and it was about time she got serious about her studies.
However, a little break was always in order some time.
She laughed with Riko after hearing about Junpei losing his treasured figurine and getting depressed about it for three days. [Y/N] takes a sip from her soda and Riko looks at her thoughtfully, like she wants to say something but is too afraid to say it.
“What is it, Riko?”
“Huh? What do you mean?” Riko asks, pulled from her thoughts.
[Y/N]’s face has a n entertained look plastered upon it as she remarks, “You have that look on your face that says you want to say something but you’re too chicken to.”
Riko sighs defeatedly. “You caught me,” she admits, but she doesn’t say anything further.
“Well? What is it?” [Y/N] prods, an authentically interested look on her face.
Riko glances at [Y/N] for a moment before looking back down at her hands which were situated atop their table. Her mouth parts but is sealed again as a war rages within the corners of her mind. Finally, she decides she just needs to get it out there and she speaks.
“It’s Kuroko.”
A clouded face takes [Y/N]’s over as she cringes at the name Riko had mentioned. She smacks herself mentally at her reaction. She wasn’t supposed to care at all anymore, so why was she acting so bitter? She musters the sincerest smile she can and urges Riko to continue speaking.
“What about him?”
Riko looks up at [Y/N] with discouraged eyes, but her gaze suddenly turns resolute and she continues speaking.
“He hasn’t been the same ever since you left, [Y/N],” Riko confesses, and it takes everything within her not to laugh, because Riko was being serious, so she needed to be serious as well.
“So? Are you asking me to come back?” she asks her teasingly, and Riko looks down guiltily at her hands, as if she’s been caught red-handed.
“You know I can’t, Riko. I’m sorry,” she says, trying to sound as apologetic as possible.
“Can you at least send him an e-mail occasionally? He really misses you, even if he doesn’t say it,” Riko says, mumbling the last part to herself.
[Y/N] laughs and agrees to Riko’s proposition, even though she knows she won’t do it.
“That kid… He likes you so much more than he lets on,” Riko says, but then she looks at [Y/N] alarmed. [Y/N] sits there with a gentle smile on her face, not showing any hints of discomfort.
“I’m sorry. I know you don’t like talking about him…” Riko says, twirling a lock of hair on her finger while looking away.
“No, it’s fine. It doesn’t really bother me anymore,” [Y/N] assures her, waving her hands to make a point.
But as she was lying on her bed that night, her phone in her hand, she couldn’t help but let it get to her. There on her phone was an unsent message to her former love, waiting for her to hit the ‘Send’ button and build a bridge between the two of them once again.
“Why am I doing this?” she thought aloud as she rolled onto her side, phone still in her hand. She stares hard at the screen as if it, along with the subtle ticking of the clock, will help her decide whether or not to send the message. She sets her phone on her bedside table and palms her cheeks, trying to get ahold of herself. She was acting like she was two months ago! She thought she’d finally put it behind her, but here it was again, biting back! She shakes her head and grabs the phone on her bedside table, hitting ‘Cancel’.
She really had no time for this, she was in the middle of thinking, when her phone lit up all of a sudden.
She tried to compose herself as she checked the message.
Sender: Tetsuya Kuroko
Message: Good evening.
She scratches her scalp in bewilderment, half amazed and half annoyed at Kuroko’s amazing timing, but she sets her phone on her bedside table.
She doesn’t reply and she goes to sleep.
