Chapter 1
THE SUNSET
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How long has she been standing here in her archery attire, striking target after target? Minutes? Hours? Days even? The archer sighs as she brings herself up. Her gaze takes in the kyudojo and her mind wanders at the familiar warmth that embraces her as her eyes shift towards the back of the room. Like the ghost of a lost memory, it comes back to haunt her.
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“Y-You don’t have to watch me practice. I’m sure you have more beneficial things to be doing now.”
Warm sunset eyes gazes upon hers and she wonders where the soft gentle sensation welling inside her chest came from. How incredibly weird for her to feel so warm during the middle of winter.
“Umi-chan, you always say things like that but honestly you want me to be here.” She takes a step closer to the archer, who is now clenching her bow as if she would fall if she let go. With hands behind her back and a smile that could light up the sky, her childhood friend leans in to look at her. The archer steps back unconsciously, never used to the feeling of having her heart beat five folds faster whenever her childhood friend looks at her. She’s too close.
“You want me here right?” She persists.
What did she want from this? What good would it do if she-
The sudden dimness in her eyes catches the archer off guard.
Of course. She wants her here.
The archer averts her eyes and focuses on the wooden walls, but she isn’t looking at anything, all her other senses are directed at the girl in front of her. The unwaverable stare and silence is killing her so she nods.
A quick nod, that would hopefully be enough.
It is. Her childhood friend steps back and giggles. The melodious sound would forever be etched in the archer’s heart.
“You’re so red.”
“I-It's warm here.”
Kotori grins and brings her hand forward to caress the blushing archer’s cheeks and she is sure she’s going to explode right that second. She can’t even open her mouth or move. Frozen, unable to escape the gaze of a small bird. This is shameless. What kind of a samurai would she be if she couldn’t even -?
Her thought trails off as a second hand lands on her other cheek. She’s about to faint any minute. She can feel it.
“Since you were a child you’ve always told me you aim to be in the top 3 of the World Kyudo Taikai, right?”
She tries to nod but those sunset eyes keeps her from even taking a breath.
“I want to be with you every step, from the beginning when you had your first junior competition to when you stand on that world stage.” Her hands are still on flaring red cheeks. “Will you let me?” She moves to brush the bangs off her best friend’s forehead.
The archer’s heart swells and before long her childhood friend is wiping tears from blushing red cheeks.
“Really?.” The archer manages softly, afraid this is all a hallucination.
“I promise to be next to you when you do.”
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“Liar.” Umi subconsciously mumbles, before realising what she had said. She shouldn’t be putting her selfish desires onto anyone and blaming them, that...that would be incredibly selfish. She couldn’t allow herself to be someone like that.
She rummages for her water bottle in her backpack and as she does a single creamed coloured envelope falls out of her bag and slowly floats towards the ground. She follows the movement with her eyes and watches as it reaches the floor, lifeless. Her name is inscribed in the middle of the envelope in black familiar writing and a fair sized water-coloured heart sits in the right hand corner of the envelope with ‘lonely heart no more’ inscripted in the center.
As if mocking her. With her own lyrics.
“You’re not going to pick that up?”
Umi turns slowly, scared her mind is playing some sort of twisted hallucination game with her. Again. “Kotori...” The name tastes numb on her tongue. How long has it been since she’s said her name. She’s seen this scene so many times in her dreams, it's incredibly weird so she turns back around. She isn't ready.
She listens to Kotori’s footsteps towards her, and as she nears, she hears the familiar rhythm of her subtle skip. She does that when she's nervous. “Is that how you greet your old friend after 5 years of not being able to see or hear from you?”
Umi abruptly turns. “I-I’m sorry. Where are my manners.” She jumps back a bit and politely takes a deep bow. It’s so formal that she cringes.Her hands are still gripped to her bow and it isn’t until she hears a giggle that she realises, really realises who is standing in front of her. But she isn’t that teenage girl anymore, so despite her heart racing like a jet coaster, she doesn’t wear it on her sleeves. She’s changed, she’s trying to become a better person.
Or so she thought.
“You haven’t changed. Well...taller but still red.” She says as she moves to touch Umi’s cheek, but as soon as a single finger makes contact with her skin, the archer pulls away as if electrocuted. Kotori brings her hands back to her side, her smile, though now forced, still present on her face.
“Sorry.” They both say in unison. Out of nervousness Kotori brings her hands together and fiddles with the jewellery on her finger.
Umi’s eyes follows Kotori’s left hand and her heart sinks and she reprimands herself for feeling this way. Five years and still she has these unacceptable feelings for her best friend. She really thought she was over them. Her clench on her bow tightens and she looks away.
An awkward silence falls between them for several long seconds and Umi frowns because the last thing she ever wants is to take away Kotori’s smile yet here she is, placed in an uncomfortable position because of her.
With her right hand still gripping to her bow, she picks up the fallen letter on the ground with her left. “Congratulations for your first place on your design. You're... incredible.”
Kotori turns back to look at her best friend, a tinge of pink appears on her cheeks and Umi sudden realises that as long as Kotori has happiness and that glint in her sunset eyes, it would be enough. “Thank you.”
“Also” Umi holds up the letter. “Congratulations. I'm very happy for you two.” She smiles sincerely.
Kotori returns the smile. “So…. you’ll be coming, right?” Uncertainty laces with her voice.
Umi smiles. “Of course. Wouldn't miss it.” Those words were true, it had to be because she wasn’t about to let her bothersome feelings take hold of her morality. But at the same time she always stood by honesty and yet she wasn’t entirely honest right now.
Kotori punches Umi’s shoulders lightly. “You could’ve RVSPed us. Everyone else did already.”
She fiddles with her fingers again, her voice dims. “You’re the last one. I thought you wouldn't come.”
Umi smiles. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“My mum told me you came back a week ago...and you didn’t even contact us. Me.” Kotori shoves her hand in her woollen jacket pocket and looks around. “Of course I’d find you at the school’s archery dojo, on a Sunday.”
“ I wanted to practice.”
“You couldn’t do that at your home dojo?”
“I wanted somewhere...warm.” She says, her mind not quite catching up to what that really meant herself.
Kotori looks up from the ground and mouths the word “warm” and a nostalgic smile crawls onto her cheeks. “Your...world archery tournament you did well.”
Umi tilts her head in confusion. “I came last.” She points out.
Kotori’s hands are out of her pockets now and settled to her side. She looks at Umi and shakes her head. “You did well.” She repeats. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.”
Umi shakes her head and scratches her cheek with her index finger. She could clearly remember herself looking over at the audience, searching each and every single one of the seats, hoping that her eyes would meet with the sunset. But….she wasn’t there. Promises doesn't mean anything anymore, huh? “It’s okay.”
“We saw you on TV though.” Kotori says. “The Tokyo archery stage seemed so nice too. M-maybe next time I- we can all come to see you.”
Ah, such an empty statement.
Umi smiles. “Maybe.”
“I know you can make it.”
Another silence. There is so much Umi wants to tell her, but at the same time there is so much that cannot be said or mentioned. There’s essentially a barrier now. A barrier between Kotori and Umi. She feels a sort of twinge at the pit of her stomach as she realises that she has lost a part of a friendship with the girl in front of her. She wonders if she can still call Kotori her best friend?
How did things get to this?
Oh right...that’s right when Kotori found out...and then Umi took the first opportunity to leave for 5 years straight without any contact with her childhood friend at all. How utterly cowardly of her. She knew for a fact that they couldn’t return back to their casual conversations, to their careless banters, to where they were...time does that to people. And she wonders if she could ever get that back.
“You’ve gotten prettier…”
Umi doesn’t even blush, instead her mood kind of drops. It is just a formal obligation for those you haven’t seen in awhile. Umi is sure, that’s what Kotori was doing, to ease up the conversation, to stop the awkward silences, to tell her she is pretty out of obligation. She is sure it is out of obligation because since long ago Kotori’s eyes has never seen her. Her eyes were always on someone else.
And Umi knows because her eyes has always searched for Kotori. Always. But they never met. It is kind of tragic.
“And you.” She says simply. But she means it.
Kotori tucks a stray hair behind her ear. “S-So um how was your archery tour?”
How good could it have been if she completely humiliated herself on the world stage? Nevertheless she replies with a soft ”good”.
“Still not a talker.” She teased, the smile forced.
“Probably never will be.” Umi says and judging from the small drop of her smile, she knows that Kotori knows she wasn't just talking about her incapability of holding a long conversation. She tries to lighten up the mood. “ But i sure was a whiner most of the time...especially during our America trip.”
“I thought it was cute.” Kotori says. “ Doesn't that just mean you were opening up and comfortable with muse?”
“I guess but I would've whined less if you let me win at Old Maid that night.”
Kotori laughs. “Your face then was priceless.” She tucks another stray hair behind her ear. “You really wear your heart on your sleeve.”
“So you say.”
Kotori simply smiles.
Umi watches as a strange emotion seemingly arises from behind her smile.
Desperately wanting to erase whatever that foreign emotion hindering Kotori’s beautiful smile, she reaches into her backpack, to bring out a 30cm alpaca plush dressed in a beret and a woollen jumper that has a small kotori bird stitching.
She hands the plush over and the shine, the glinting sunset reflected in Kotori’s eyes was something that never fails to make Umi feel like she is the luckiest person on earth. Some things just don’t change.
“Souvenir.”
“Umi-chan…Did you knit this?”
Her name spoken in Kotori’s voice was something she also missed. Too much. Way too much, she’s sure it isn’t good for her mentality or heart.
As well as the bear hug she got right after. Her bow falls right out of her hands and onto the ground.
Yeah, she’s okay.
Umi smiles into the hug, with one hand wrapping around her friend and the other holding onto the cream coloured invitation. She has read it so many times, so many times, hoping that it wasn’t what she was reading, but no matter how many minutes, hours or days passed it was the same. In fact the entire invitation is burned into her mind. The same black printed writing, the same date, the same names.
You are invited to the wedding of Kousaka Honoka & Minami Kotori on the March of 16th to join in the celebration of their love and the beginning of their lives as one.
In 2 weeks. A day after her birthday.
Who chose the date she wonders. How cruel they were.
She closes her eyes, savouring the warmth as a single tear drops onto the envelope smudging the black ink of her name. Why was she being so selfish...those were her closest friends, she knows for a fact how happy both of them would be with each other. So why? Why did she feel this empty? Why even after five years, could she not be a good person?
No one answers her, but at the same time Kotori’s embrace tightens.
And Umi knows that she has to be okay. What her best friends have together is beautiful and in no way are her selfish feelings going to come between them.
For Muse. For Honoka.
For Kotori.
I’m okay.
Chapter End