[F/N] [L/N] meets with an eccentric girl named Mina Ashido by chance. Through this meeting, [F/N] learns of Mina's "secret" and ends up spending Mina's final August with her.
My Hero Academia/Boku No Hero Academia and its characters belong to Kohei...
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 6:50 P.M. / Sunday, August 12th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I ran. I ran as fast as I could. My emotions were so confused that I just started to move without thinking. Even though I knew it was the wrong choice, I couldn't stop myself from running.
Eventually, I made it back to my house, panting from exhaustion. I quietly entered and walked through the hallway into the living room. Yuuko was sitting on the couch watching some magical girl anime and I could only assume that dad was in his room playing with Kotone, my baby sister, seeing as he wasn't there. I attempted to stealthily walk past Yuuko without her noticing me, but it didn't work out how I planned. She quickly took notice of me and stared with a confused expression.
"[F/N]?" she questioned. "I thought you were in your room? Where did you come from?"
I promptly stopped in place and turned my head in her direction. "Aha... I was just coming out to get a snack... or something," I said, attempting to lie. But, seeing as Yuuko had grown up with me, she was extremely good at figuring out if I was lying or not.
She paused her anime and a sly smile grew on her face. "You were out with that girl, weren't you?" she asked.
Instantly, I made an overdramatic reaction to her guess. I gasped and took a sudden step back, basically giving away that I was lying.
"You were!" she exclaimed.
"Shhh!!" I shushed her with my finger on my lips. "Like I said before, not so loud...!"
Yuuko stood up from the couch and clasped her hands together. "You gotta tell me about it! I didn't get to hear anything about her last time you brought her up! I'm really genuinely curious!"
I then grit my teeth and shut my eyes, going into deep thought.
'I can't tell her about Mina... she'll just assume that she's my girlfriend again!' I thought. 'But... if I don't tell her then she definitely won't stop asking... Ugh...'
Sighing, I pointed at the door to my room. "Fine, but if I'm gonna tell you anything it has to be in my room. I don't want dad hearing any of this,"
Yuuko's face brightened up like a light from my response and she nodded rapidly. "Alright!"
...
A minute or two later Yuuko was seated on my bed while I was in my desk chair across the room facing her. I shut the door to make sure dad wouldn't hear any of what I was about to say. Luckily, he never bothered me when my door was closed, so I wasn't too worried about him coming in.
Preparing myself, I let out a deep breath and gulped. "So... what exactly do you want to know...?" I asked.
Once I asked, Yuuko started kicking her legs back and forth on the edge of my bed, full of excitement. "Hmm... Well... let's just start off easy," she said. "What were you doing with her today?"
"Easy... huh?" I muttered. "Alright, I'll give you a brief summary. Is that okay?"
She nodded in response.
"Alright, today was the last day of a carnival that was in town, so she wanted to go to it. End of story," I explained, obviously leaving out a lot of important details.
Yuuko tilted her head to the side with a slightly disappointed look. "That's it? Then, why are you back so early? Wouldn't you wanna do something after going to a carnival? Like dinner or something?"
Why are you back so early? That was the one question I didn't want her to ask. It was the question that I feared the most since I still felt guilty for what I did to Mina.
"Well, I'm back early because..." I began to speak.
'Don't tell her you ran away,' I thought. 'Don't tell her you ran away. Don't tell her...'
"I... ran back home... leaving her behind..." I muttered.
"What...?" asked Yuuko, looking more concerned than before.
"She tried to give me a flower to remember her by..." I explained.
'Why am I saying all of this?'
"And I couldn't handle my emotions in the situation... and..." I continued.
'It's just pouring out... I can't control my own words...'
"I ended up... running away..."
All Yuuko did was stare at me. Her expression was hard to describe. It was a combination of confusion, concern, and shock all in one face.
"Wait," she said. "What do you mean by 'remember her by'?"
I gulped and moved my view to the ground below. There was sweat streaming down my face, even though my room wasn't hot. The anxiety was too much.
"She's... dying..." I mumbled. "She's expected to live until the end of August... and then..."
I kept my head down, attempting to explain to Yuuko that Mina didn't have much time left on Earth. But, I just couldn't bring myself to continue. So, silence filled the room as I continued to stare downwards. After a few more seconds of silence, I heard a small sniffle coming from Yuuko's direction. I shot my head up and saw her face filled with tears and snot.
"A-ah...! A-are you alright?" I blurted out.
She sniffled a few more times before beginning to speak. "I'm... so sorry... [F/N]..." she muttered between sniffles.
"Huh...?" I questioned.
"I know that... you haven't had many friends..." she continued. "So, I thought that... you had finally found someone... that cared about you... Well, I'm assuming she does care about you... But, how much longer... will that last...?"
"Yuuko..." I whispered.
"I was just... so happy for you... [F/N]... I'm so sorry... that this has to happen to you..." Then, she grabbed a nearby pillow and started sobbing into it.
I smiled gently and walked over to her, sitting right next to her. "Thank you, Yuuko. I didn't think you cared that much about me..." I said. Then, I placed my hand on the top of her head and rubbed it. "But, it's okay. You don't need to cry for me. I'll be fine,"
'That's a lie,' I thought. 'But, I can't make her feel any worse than she does right now. Thank you, Yuuko. You made me realize how much Mina means to people, even if they haven't met her... and how much she means to me,'
It's funny how things turn out in ways that you don't expect them to. I went into that conversation with Yuuko expecting to be comforted by her, but I ended up being the one to comfort her instead. But, thanks to that, she helped me calm down a bit more. I realized that I had to apologize to Mina for what I had done. I needed to apologize. As soon as humanly possible.
