Rika didn't ask to be his friend. She just acted like they were.
They didn't talk about it—not what they were, not where it was going. It wasn't romantic, not quite. Not yet. But it was something. Something neither of them had words for.
It was the way she leaned on his shoulder when she was tired. The way he'd text her "lunch?" even though he hated small talk. The way they sat on the rooftop together, day after day, eating convenience store snacks and watching the sky go from blue to gold to orange to bruised purple.
"Do you think people change?" she asked once.
Yuu didn't answer right away. He was lying on his back, arms behind his head, eyes half-lidded against the setting sun.
She waited.
"I think people pretend to," he said eventually. "But they don't really. Not deep down."
Rika made a noise in her throat, something between a laugh and a scoff. "You're such a pessimist."
"I'm just realistic."
She tossed a half-empty bag of shrimp chips at him. "You're so dramatic, you know that?"
"Coming from you?"
"I own it," she said proudly. Then quieter: "You just hide."
Yuu turned to look at her. She wasn't smiling.
"Why do you even hang around me?" he asked.
Rika stretched out beside him, her fingers fiddling with the frayed hem of her skirt. "I like broken things," she said. "They don't lie about what they are."
He didn't know what to say to that. So he said nothing.
The silence that followed wasn't awkward. It never was with her. But it felt heavy, like the sun pressing down on them, warm and a little painful.
By winter, the city started feeling smaller.
They had patterns now. Rika would drag Yuu to random places after school—a bubble tea shop that was always too loud, a secondhand fashion store where she tried on leopard print jackets, the train station steps where she once cried about a failed test, and then laughed five minutes later.
Yuu followed. Not because he liked the noise, but because when he was with her, the quiet inside him didn't feel so hollow.
He took photos again. Not a lot. Not of everything. But he started seeing moments again—light through her dyed hair, steam rising from her cup in the cold, the reflection of her laughing in a puddle after she slipped on ice.
He never posted them. He just kept them on his hard drive, under a folder named "Rika, probably".
But she started changing.
She got quieter when people weren't around. Sometimes she'd flinch when someone shouted too loud in the hallway. Sometimes she wore long sleeves, even when it wasn't cold.
She laughed too hard when she was tired. Smiled too wide when her eyes were dull.
One day, she didn't show up to school.
Then another.
Yuu didn't have her number—Rika always used DMs, claiming she hated phone calls. So he waited.
When she came back three days later, she looked fine. Too fine. Layers of foundation, heavier eye makeup, a big hair clip she never wore before. She acted like nothing was wrong.
But she didn't meet his eyes
After school, he caught up to her outside the gate.
"Where were you?" he asked.
"Miss me?" she teased, but it was mechanical.
"You're wearing sunglasses. It's cloudy."
"I'm a fashion icon."
He stopped walking. "Take them off."
She froze.
Her fingers twitched at the frames. Then dropped. "Don't," she said.
There was no bite in her voice. Just tiredness.
"I'm fine, Yuu."
"No, you're not."
She looked at him then. Not through him. At him. And for the first time in weeks, he saw it—the fear. The exhaustion. The little girl inside the firecracker.
She shook her head. "Don't try to fix me. I'm not one of your broken cameras."
"I never said you were."
"Good." Her voice cracked. "Because I don't need saving. I'm not some tragic girl in your story."
"I know," he said. And he meant it.
She pulled her sleeves down a little farther. "I just want someone to sit with me when I'm burnt out ."
"I'm not going anywhere."
That night, he sent her a picture.
It was of the rooftop at sunset—no people, just the sky on fire.
Caption:
You remind me of this. Bright. Warm. Dangerous. Worth watching.
She didn't reply.
But the next day, she sat beside him at lunch again. No words. No jokes.
Just presence.
That was enough.
For now.