Keep Me in Mind - Hikaru and Rose's Story Continues

1|| Time Follows You (and Fades)

Have you ever had to set a book down just as it was getting to the good part? Or had Google Maps tell you to turn left in 600 feet just as the beat was supposed to drop? Felt the anticipation bubbling in your chest just for it to never burst?

Life for Rose Michaels, lately, had felt generally like that. Like she'd pressed pause at the precipice of something great, stopped the ride at the apex of the incline, and then just unbuckled the restraints and promptly walked off. A whole lot of lead-up, no resolution.

She'd done it to herself, don't get her wrong. She was solely responsible for the metaphorical romantic blue balls haunting her life with residual pain, but that didn't make the letdown any better. It didn't make moving on any easier.

Was there a how-to book for this kind of thing? A "How to move past breaking your own heart" for, like, dummies or something? A "chicken soup for the soul that fell on their own sword." No? Yeah, that wouldn't sell. Too wordy.

It'd been months since she sent her heart away on a plane — kissed him, walked away, and then forced him to listen to her whine for hours on end about how lonely she'd be without him. God, she'd been insufferable and selfish. Being a teenager with big feelings and basically zero experience with how to handle them was so cringy. Just thinking about it made her want to scream.

But well, she was in public. And still trying to fool the world into thinking she had her shit together. (Spoiler alert: she did not.) It wasn't really the time to let the neverending montage of regrets and embarrassments randomly playing in her head take over her rationality. There were things that needed to be done.

Rose sighed as she tucked her long brown hair behind her ear and continued gazing down at the textbook in her lap. Despite sitting on the grass between buildings in the warm sunlight and being surrounded by hundreds of echoing voices, Harvard was immensely quiet without a certain redhead and his black-haired twin around.

The silence was the perfect soundtrack to accompany the empty feeling at the bottom of her stomach that she just couldn't shake. It had started the moment she had turned away from Hikaru and told herself she wasn't allowed to look back — like the ground had opened up beneath her and she was just perpetually falling into endless, soundless darkness. There was nothing she could do to stop it. No amount of joy, comfort, or studying could end it. Nothing she could feasibly try would fill the void.

A whole 17 years of loss and rebound, goodbyes and new beginnings, disappointments and triumphs should have more than prepared her for this. For this loss, this goodbye, this disappointment. It didn't.

Now, as Rose got up and made her way to her first fall class of her final year of college, she was breathing deeply in a failed attempt to keep the emptiness under control. This was her last year of school — her swansong — and she wasn't going to let anything get in the way of her victory. (If that was the excuse she gave him when sending him off, she had better fucking stick to it.)

She had already made a mental list to ensure success. 1. Study your heart out, no matter the sacrifice. 2. Soak up every moment for what it's worth, never leave a learning experience unturned. 3. Do. Not. Think. About. Him. 4. Always keep your goal in mind. 5. Believe in yourself.

If she repeated them over and over to herself, the words lost their meaning and seemed easy enough to accomplish, but she had sabotaged herself along the way in more ways than one. (Because obviously reminding herself to forget his laugh, the way his hair swooped in his eyes, the look of utter betrayal on his face as she walked away that last time, it really only ensured she kept thinking about him.) In the midst of her mourning the loss of the only real friends she had ever had, she told herself she could replace their love with learning. If she had nothing to do, she could pick up new hobbies. If regular schoolwork wasn't keeping her busy enough, she could find a niche interest to research. If she couldn't keep the Japanese twins around, then she could learn Japanese in her free time.