*SPECIAL CHAPTER* Waving, to the Person I was.

Celebrations, tears of remembrance, and hugging. That’s what happens. At the end of the year, each year, people want to give thanks to those who’ve helped them become who they are today.

“I’m gonna miss you!”
“Me too!”

Two girls are hugging at the front of the school, many smaller groups are doing the same, given the day.

Those two were close, if I had to guess. The tears are selling it though.

Kazuki Hirose walks around for a bit, before finding his classroom, where more people are giving their last goodbyes.

That whole speech about “taking pride in the person you are” didn’t really matter to me, all those words came from someone I didn’t even know.

Kazuki lets a small laugh out at the displays of affection, then completely empties his desk.

As he’s piling the stacks of notes into his bag, a single sheet of paper sticks out from the rest, causing him to relive some of his old memories of school.

“Nice to meet you! I’m Toge Nasagiwa, it’s a pleasure!” a skinny and shorter boy speaks out, his short blue hair not long enough to hide his fears.

Kazuki and another boy, Rindou Yaguchi, laugh off this embarrassing intro.

“You only have to thank us once!” Rindou points out him and Kazuki laughing to Toge’s embarrassment.

Kazuki closes the distance, wrapping his arm around Toge

“Welcome to the fantasy club, Toge Nasagiwa” Kazuki happily says, giving a smile to Toge, and Rindou giving a huge thumbs up.

There wasn’t any way of predicting our futures, but the one thing we held certain…was that we were gonna be the ones to write it.

Days pass, as more and more memories of the three boys reading, talking, and playing games flash into Kazuki’s mind, and a brief smile flashes on his face in the present.

It was like, the three of us, we could’ve done anything, or gone anywhere together.

Kazuki briefly looks up in the present moment, making eye contact with someone who just walked in the room for less than a second. He made eye contact with someone he once considered a friend, Rindou Yaguchi.

They both look away, and continue to avert their attention to different things, pretending like the other person didn’t exist.

Of all the times, why’d I have to see him now? Just a while longer and…

Kazuki looks down one more time, seeing His name, along with Toge Nasagiwa and Rindou Yaguchi on the paper he was reminiscing on, with it being the club sign up sheet.

Kazuki gets up, grabs his bag, and leaves the class, walking in the halls.

The walking sends Kazuki back into his mind, when he and Rindou were hanging in the club room, when suddenly a loud noise was heard.

THWAK!

Rindou and Kazuki get up quickly to see what that noise was, but when they open the door they see the source, Toge Nasagiwa with a stack of books strewn around and on him as he lays on the floor.

“You alright man?” Rindou asks, helping him up.

“I’m fine! Really!” Toge replies, an innocent smile cementing it.

Kazuki cleaned up the books in the process, and brought them into the club room, and once again they began having fun, like they always do.

“What’s that scar from?” Rindou asks, as Toge’s arm has a smaller scar with fading bruising

“You know how I am! I fell down the stairs a while ago, guess it just never healed!” Toge reassures them, and they don’t think about it for another second.

There was something up with him, but we were having too much fun to realize it.

Back in the present, Kazuki reaches the door to the Club room, and opens it.

Everything’s in the same place, neither of us wanted to come back after that happened.

His memory flashes one more time, with Rindou and Kazuki in the club room. Only there was no thunk, no loud noise. Just silence.

Days of silence turned to weeks, then months, which leads to today.

“Did you hear? Nasagiwa disappeared! They’re saying it was some sort of dispute with his parents, or something.” A random classmate says, Rindou and Kazuki overhearing.

“Who?”

“Was he in this class?”

“Who cares! I didn’t know the guy!”

I care. I knew him. He was better than most of you dirtbags any day of the week, he wasn’t just some nameless nobody!

Rindou gets up slowly, then exits the classroom silently, only Kazuki noticing. Kazuki follows him to the club room, where the two of them hold hope that Toge will be found.

He wasn’t.

Back to the present, Toge appears in the doorframe, asking to talk to Kazuki.

They head up to the rooftop, surprisingly alone, then sit down.

“It’s graduation day! Aren’t you excited?” Toge asks

“Nah, just happy that I get to leave this place” Kazuki jokingly replies.

“You’re done good for yourself these months I’ve been gone, and now here you are! Ready to see the world!” Toge excitedly states.

Tears well up in Kazuki’s eyes, and he tries to wipe them away.

“You know, I only have one regret about these years,” Kazuki states.

He lays a fist on Toge’s shoulder, but nothing’s there. Nothing was ever there, and it won’t be there again.

“It’s that I never got to see the person you’d become”

Kazuki cleans all his tears up, but more seem to come.

“I always dreamed of the day I’d leave this place with you guys. The happiest day of my life, something to always look forward to”

“But the truth hurts when you’re face to face with it. The truth that the future I was looking forward to won’t happen; that it can’t”

Kazuki stands up, and leaves the roof.

“That no matter how hard I try to change things, try to fix what’s broken…only two of us are able to graduate and move on”