The same campus.
The same corridors.
But now… they felt like two different worlds.
Aiyumi would sometimes see him — through the crowd, across the hallway, walking with his classmates.
Ren.
The boy who once walked beside her every morning.
Now just another face in the distance.
He didn't look at her anymore.
Didn't even pause.
Just passed by, like she never existed.
She smiled around her friends — Haruna, Aiko, Sayaka, Nozomi, Emi, and Yua — pretending everything was fine.
But deep down, every glimpse of him cracked her heart a little more.
At lunch, she'd sometimes hear his voice echoing from the next class.
Laughing.
Talking.
Sounding so normal it almost hurt.
"He looks fine," Yua said once softly.
Aiyumi forced a smile. "Yeah… he always does."
But that night, when she got home, she couldn't stop her tears.
Because she knew — he wasn't fine either.
Ren had changed.
On the outside, he seemed calm, focused, cold even.
But when he walked alone to his bike after class, his expression would fall — like a mask slipping off.
He missed her.
Every single day.
But he couldn't bring himself to talk.
Not after everything.
So he chose silence.
Because silence hurt less than the truth.
And neither of them realized — the distance between them was slowly turning into something much heavier than words could fix.