Pull

The group splintered when they left the park - Caelis running ahead to catch a bus, Aren waving off in the other direction, her excuse something about dinner and homework. Mirei wasn’t sure if she believed it, but she didn’t question it either.

Which left her here. With Gale.

They walked side by side down the dimly lit sidewalk, the quiet of the neighborhood settling around them like a thin blanket. The night air was still warm, but cooler than before, and Mirei could feel the heat radiating off her skin from climbing and laughing and pretending, for just a little while, that things were normal.

Normal. As if that word ever meant anything between them.

Gale had his hands stuffed in his pockets again, his bag swinging slightly with each step. His steps were always just a little too long, like he was half a second away from breaking into a jog. Mirei had to match her pace to his, but she didn’t mind. It gave her something to focus on besides the weight in her chest.

“Caelis is gonna fall off something one day and break his neck,” Gale said, his voice cutting through the silence like a skipping stone across a pond.

Mirei huffed a soft laugh. “I'm sure he's careful enough to not get a major injury."

“Still, it's true.”

The conversation drifted easily, like they were both scared to tug too hard at the real thread between them. They talked about the vending machine that ate Caelis’s coins, about the park’s busted slide, about the cat that sometimes lurked outside the school gates. Little things. Little and seemingly meaningless things.

But there was always something underneath.

A pull.

She could feel it every time Gale glanced her way - a brief flicker of something that used to be familiar. Something she thought she’d lost. It was in the way his shoulder almost bumped hers, close but not quite. Like even now, he was holding back. Like he wasn’t sure if she was still the girl who used to collect his broken erasers like treasure.

The silence stretched between them, long and thin, until Mirei couldn’t hold it anymore.

“Why…” Her voice came out smaller than she wanted, and she swallowed hard before trying again. “Why didn’t you ever reach out?”

Gale’s steps slowed, just slightly. Not enough to stop, but enough that she felt it. The shift in the air, the weight settling in. She shouldn't have asked.

“To you?” His voice wasn’t defensive. Just quiet. Careful.

Mirei nodded, her fingers curling into her sleeve. “I mean… we were friends. Before.”

He didn’t answer right away. They passed under a streetlight, the glow catching in his hair, turning the edges gold like it used to when they were kids. It made her chest ache.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I thought about it. A lot. But every time I wanted to… I figured you didn’t want to hear from me.”

“That’s stupid,” Mirei said, the words out before she could stop them.

Gale laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “Yeah. It was.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. They kept walking, the silence filling back in like water rushing into a broken dam. But it wasn’t the same silence they started with, this one felt fuller, stretched taut between them, but not ready to snap just yet.

“I’m sorry,” Gale said, so soft she almost missed it.

Mirei’s throat tightened. “Me too.”

They didn’t say what they were sorry for. The years they lost, the things they didn’t say, the distance they let grow between them. But somehow, it felt like they both knew.

The street stretched ahead of them, winding and empty, but they walked it together. For now, that was enough.